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Title: Dixie: A monthly magazine, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1899
Author: Various
Language: English
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Copyright Status: Not copyrighted in the United States. If you live elsewhere check the laws of your country before downloading this ebook. See comments about copyright issues at end of book.
*** Start of this Doctrine Publishing Corporation Digital Book "Dixie: A monthly magazine, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1899" ***
I, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1899 ***
[Illustration:
FEBRUARY 1899 10 CENTS
DIXIE.
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
THE DIXIE
BALTIMORE PUBLISHING CO.
Vol. I No. 2.]
_Terms: $1.00 a Year In Advance. 10 Cents a Number._
DIXIE
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE. FEBRUARY, 1899.
HENRY CLAYTON HOPKINS, Editor, 326 St. Paul St., Baltimore.
G. ALDEN PEIRSON,}
CLINTON PETERS, } Art Editors.
CHAS. J. PIKE, }
GEORGE B. WADE, Business Manager.
CONTENTS.
I. Frontispiece, Drawn by Lucius Hitchcock.
Illustration for “How Randall Got Into The Salon”.
II. If Like a Rose (Poem)—_Edward A. U. Valentine_ 3
III. Anna Evauovna—_Margaret Sutton Briscoe_ 4
Full Page Picture by Katharine Gassaway.
IV. Death and Love (Poem)—_William Theodore Peters_ 17
Illustration by Clarence Herbert Rowe.
V. Channoah—_Edward Lucas White_ 18
Head and Tail-Piece by G. A. Peirson.
VI. Here and There in Maryland—_Edward G. McDowell_ 33
(Eight Illustrations.)
VII. How Randall Got Into The Salon—_Clinton Peters_ 49
Illustrated by Frontispiece.
VIII. A Valentine (Poem)—_Maurice Weyland_ 56
IX. Elena’s Daughters—_D. Ramon Ortega y Frias_ 57
(To be Continued.)
Head-Piece by Chas. J. Pike.
X. Quatrain (Poem)—_H. C. H._ 78
XI. Extracts from the Log of the Rita 79
Illustrated by Numerous Sketches.
XII. The Four Fears of Our General (The Second Fear)—_Adele Bacon_, 95
Full Page Picture by Clinton Peters.
XIII. The Happiness of Being Nearsighted—_Walter Edgar M’Cann_, 113
XIV. “An Eighteenth Century Beauty” 117
Reproduction of the Miniature by Hugh Nicholson.
XV. Comment, 119
XVI. Books and Authors—_Edward A. U. Valentine_ 125
Copyright, 1899, by DIXIE PUBLISHING COMPANY.
[Illustration: _Drawn by Lucius Hitchcock._
_“He slowly pushed the massive door ajar, and the next instant perceived
he was standing in the actual, awful presence of the famous master”—(See
page 49)_]
[Illustration: DIXIE.]
VOL. I. FEBRUARY, 1899. NO. 2.
IF LIKE A ROSE.
If life were like a rose designed,
That proves its purpose to be fair
And with the grace its bud divined
Distils June’s sweetness on the air;
Then would the stubborn sheaths that hold
The flower of the heart’s ideal
Beneath the stress of time unfold
And what we dream become the real—
If life had but the rose’s art
And beauty burgeoned from the heart!
Then like the rose that o’er the grass
Spills leaf by leaf its lovely freight
And tho’ its purple fortunes pass
Is calm in an accomplished fate,
Might we with less reluctant will
Yield up the harvest of our hours,
Seeing the inner grace fulfil
Its promise in old age’s powers—
If life had but the rose’s art
And beauty burgeoned from the heart!
—_Edward A. Uffington Valentine._
[Illustration: ANNA EVAUOVNA
A STUDY OF RUSSIAN LIFE
_By Margaret Sutton Briscoe And M.A.R._]
They stood in the village street talking together, two little Russian
peasant girls, dressed in rough carpet skirts, thick leather boots, with
hair plaited in two long plaits and heads covered with bright kerchiefs
as became unmarried girls.
Grusha was larger and taller than Masha, and her coloring stronger, in
fact, she was stronger in all respects, and good-naturedly conscious of
her superiority. She stood looking down on Masha with a mischievous smile
on her red lips and in her black eyes.
“Is it that you mean to marry Ivan when he comes from the war, Grusha?”
Masha was asking.
Grusha laughed.
“Perhaps,” she replied lightly.
“Then you are a bad girl, Grusha. Why do you keep Alioscha dancing after
you?”
Grusha laughed again.
“What if he likes it? Alioscha would be more unhappy if I did not let him
do his dancing. And besides, I like him.”
“Do you mean to marry him then, Grusha?”
“Perhaps.”
Grusha caught Masha’s hand as she turned from her with a gesture of
anger.
“Come back, Masha, listen to me. Ask Anna Evauovna what I mean to do. She
knows all things, the old witch!”
Masha crossed herself, glancing over her shoulder.
“And she will know you have said that,” she answered.
Grusha’s face wore a reflected uneasiness for a moment.
“Bah!” she replied, shaking herself. “What harm can she do me!”
Masha nodded her head gravely.
“That was what Marusa said, and how did the Njania punish her? Has she
a child to call hers? And look at poor Julina. She defied the Njania
also, and has had children showered on her faster than she can breathe.
Her isba is like a beehive. Anna Evauovna can give you a draught that
will cure any sickness if she will, and oh! what fortunes she can tell,
Grusha! And what do we here in the village that she does not know of at
once?”
“Who teaches her and who tells her? Answer me that, Masha. Oh, you may
well cross yourself! Ask her if you want to know anything and if you are
not afraid of her teacher. Have done then. What are you after?”
While the girls talked, two of the young men of the village had crept
behind Grusha unseen. Each held one of her plaits in his hand as a rein,
and they began shouting as to a restive horse, when she struggled to
escape. Grusha’s heavy plaits were favorite playthings, never safe from
attack; for she was a belle in the village. In the confusion of the romp,
Masha turned away and walked off.
“I will go to Anna Evauovna,” she said to herself.
It is easy to state the positions of Grusha and Masha. They were only two
little Russian peasant girls, who worked in the garden of the Prince in
Summer, and about his great house in winter.
But for Anna Evauovna, the Prince himself could hardly have defined
her position. She had been Njania (nurse) to his children, and was now
housekeeper. Anna Evauovna was the only peasant on the estate who wore a
cap, who spoke a pure Russian, and wore dresses and shoes. She was older
by years than her actual days numbered, capable, resolute, silent and
invaluable to her employers. The peasants spoke to her with deference,
calling her Anna Evauovna. Behind her back they called her the old
witch, and the Princess had been appealed to for protection from her more
than once.
Anna Evauovna was in the housekeeping room assorting the house linen from
the wash, when Masha came to her and humbly proffered her request to know
the future.
The old woman looked up at the girl keenly.
“He who wants to know too much grows old too soon, Masha,” she said.
“Tell me only a little then, Anna Evauovna, but tell me that.”
“Have it your own way then, Masha. Open the drawer of the table and
look in the left hand corner, and you will find a pack of cards under a
wooden box that has a strange smell about it. Bring them to me, but no, I
forgot—the box has something lying open in it which you might touch and
find harmful.”
As Anna Evauovna opened the drawer herself, Masha made the sign of the
cross furtively.
The old woman turning sharply, caught the gesture, and the girl’s head
drooped in confusion.
Anna Evauovna’s eyes twinkled. She shuffled the cards and began to deal
them out on the table, glancing now and then at Masha, who sat opposite,
the light of the lamp falling on her round good-natured face, fair hair,
and solemn blue eyes.
“Ah! there you are,” said Anna Evauovna, as the queen of hearts fell.
“And there is a dark man near you—the king of clubs. Now mark, you are
nearer to him in thought than he to you. Ah! ah! ah! I thought so. Here
she comes, there lies the cause. The queen of clubs, a dark woman, lies
between you and him. She separates you.”
Masha bent forward breathless.
“And will she succeed, Njania?”
“We shall see. Who comes here? The king of diamonds—and near the queen of
clubs. Here is one who is away, very far away, but coming nearer. He is
thinking of the queen of clubs. ‘Is she waiting for me, is she waiting
for me,’ he is thinking. Look for yourself, Masha. The queen of spades,
emblem of all that is bad, lies across him, and thus it is easy to see
that he is worrying about the dark woman, your rival. Once more I will
lay the cards. Now see; the king of diamonds is thinking of a journey and
of home. The dark woman is restless, she thinks of the king of diamonds,
and then of the king of clubs. But how is this? The king of diamonds is
close to your dark rival, and the nine and ten of diamonds on either
side. A marriage!”
Masha clasped her hands.
“And does that leave the king of clubs to me, Anna Evauovna?”
Anna Evauovna swept the cards into a heap.
“God knows,” she answered. “Would you seek to know as much as He, Masha?”
“May the saints forbid!”
Anna Evauovna returned to her interrupted occupation, and Masha still sat
gazing at her, awestruck.
“Njania,” she said timidly, “is it right that a girl should keep a man
dangling after her, as a lash to a whip, if she means nothing by it?”
“You mean Grusha and Alioscha,” said Anna Evauovna shortly. “Is it not
her own affair?”
Masha blushed and hung her head.
“It was Grusha I thought of,” she stammered. “You know the very hairs on
our heads, Anna Evauovna.”
The Njania nodded, not ill pleased.
“I know what I know. Grusha thinks Ivan will marry her when he comes back
from the war.”
“Then why does she keep Alioscha waiting and sticking to her like a wet
leaf?” cried Masha passionately. “It is wicked, Njania, if she loves
Ivan.”
“Who said she loved Ivan!” answered Anna Evauovna drily. “Do all girls
love some one?”
“Did not you say that she loved him?” stammered Masha.
“I did not, my child. Njania is not to be fooled by a Grusha. Ah, but
she is a girl of wits, is Grusha, and so smooth to see. In still waters,
devils thrive, remember that, Masha.”
Masha’s lip quivered.
“But if she does not love Ivan, Njania, she may marry Alioscha.”
“Perhaps, who knows! It takes a wise man to tell the future, and a wiser
yet to tell a girl’s mind.”
“And she will surely marry Alioscha if Ivan has forgotten her by the time
he comes back,” added Masha more piteously.
Anna Evauovna laughed a dry chuckle and rubbed her hand on the girl’s
head.
“Your wits sharpen, little Masha. You may grow as wise as Grusha some
day.”
“Ivan does not write to her—I know that.”
“Now, now, as for writing, Masha, could Grusha read if he did? Ivan may
have been fool enough to remember her but even a peasant does not like
his love letters read from the house-tops.”
“But Grusha could take his letters to the doctor or the deacon. They
would read them to her alone.”
“Would they? A man is a man, doctor or deacon. He may keep another man’s
secret, but a woman’s—no. Come, child, Grusha will marry whom God wills,
and meantime, let her have rope. All is for the best. Did Grusha know
Ivan faithful to her, she would not have this curiosity which makes her
wish to wait and see how he will act when he finds her waiting. Meantime,
Alioscha is the best singer and dancer in the village. And what could the
village have to talk of but for her behavior? For your part, eat, drink,
sleep on the top of the stove at night, and work by day. Let each hold up
his share of the burden, and all will go well.”
Masha listened, sighed, and assented.
The next day, as Anna Evauovna was walking in the field near the village
street, she heard sounds of music, the clapping of hands and beating of
feet in measured time, and loud shouts. She might have walked to the isba
whence the sounds came, and inquired the cause, but that was not Anna
Evauovna’s way. She slipped behind a hedge, and walking along in its
shadow, reached the spot where the merry-making was taking place.
[Illustration: MASHA CLASPED HER HANDS
“AND DOES THAT LEAVE THE KING OF CLUBS TO ME?”
_Drawn by Katharine Gassaway._]
On a bit of ground in front of three of the principal isbas, the peasants
were assembled. A wooden bench had been brought out, and a plain deal
table, beneath which could be seen a wooden pail of vodka (brandy). On
the table stood a steaming samovar, a white stone teapot, some huge
pieces of rye bread, thick tumblers for tea, and a paper bag of lump
sugar. Spoons were not needed, as the sugar was held in the fingers and
nibbled between the sips of hot tea served in the glasses.
Ivan had returned, and this was his welcome.
The samovar had been borrowed for the great occasion; for not every
peasant can afford that luxury, and Ivan’s parents were not rich.
There were three musicians present, one playing on a concertina, one on
a trumpet-like instrument, which gave out bag-pipe sounds, and the other
on a melon-shaped guitar, strung with a few strings, on which he twanged
merrily.
The peasants kept time with feet and voice in barbaric medley. Ivan,
the hero of the day, sat at the centre of the table in an unsoldierly,
weary attitude, unkempt and unwashed. He had been tramping for days. The
trousers of his weather-stained uniform were tucked in his travel-worn
boots, and he wore a summer cap on his dark hair.
He was replying at his leisure to the numberless questions asked as his
fagged brain comprehended them, but when the table was cleared, and the
musician with the concertina leaped upon it, his loose linen trousers
tucked in his boots, his kaftan into his belt, his hoarse voice cheering
the company to the dance, Ivan sprang to his feet, and seizing Grusha as
his partner, danced more furiously than any.
Anna Evauovna, peering through the leaves, could see it all. Alioscha, as
eager in his welcome to the wanderer as Grusha herself, was now dancing
merrily also, and Masha was his happy partner. Her kerchief had fallen
back, leaving her good-natured, round face unframed, and exposing the
line of white forehead which had been protected from the sun. She was a
pretty picture.
The dance grew wilder, the voices louder, the stamping and clapping more
vehement. The musician on the table shouted more lustily as he danced
himself, now on one foot, now on the other, all over the table-top.
Anna Evauovna looked at Grusha’s excited face flushed with her exertion,
and then at her rival suitors, both of the same height, both well built,
and both with the same heavy square face and mass of thick hair. That
Ivan was fair, and Alioscha dark, seemed the only difference.
The old woman turned away with a wicked chuckle.
“There is not a pin to choose between them,” she said to herself, “Grusha
must draw lots.”
When, a little later, Masha came into the housekeeper’s room, breathless
and over-running with her news, Anna Evauovna could be told nothing. She
knew when Ivan had arrived, from where, by what roads, and, in fact,
everything. The only thing she did not know, or as Masha believed, would
not tell, was how Grusha would choose.
On her way home, Masha came across Grusha sweeping the leaves from a path
in the garden. She was alone, and Masha could not help questioning her.
“Grusha, Ivan has come back, what are you going to do now?”
Grusha leaned on her broom and looked at Masha’s earnest face. She
laughed aloud, but good-naturedly still.
“I am going to sweep this path when you stand off it,” she said, and
Masha could get no further satisfaction.
But the next day, Anna Evauovna was able, or willing, to relieve Masha’s
anxiety.
“She takes Ivan, and they are to be married in a week. Both get what they
want and have waited long for. Now we shall see what we shall see,” said
Anna Evauovna grimly.
Ten days later, as Anna Evauovna walked through the village, she stopped
at the door of the isba belonging to Ivan’s parents. There in the doorway
sat Grusha, the bride, peeling potatoes for the evening meal, as unmoved
and uninterested as if she had been peeling potatoes in Ivan’s doorway
for years. She had gone from one isba to another: She had peeled her
father’s potatoes, and now peeled Ivan’s—that was all.
“Good luck to you, Grusha,” said Anna Evauovna. “But I suppose you think
you have luck by the forelock, as Ivan was faithful to you in all that
time.”
“Yes,” answered Grusha indifferently, splashing a potato in the bowl of
water.
“You have all you waited for—if I may say so and bring no ill-luck.”
“I have everything,” Grusha replied without enthusiasm.
Anna Evauovna looked at the girl’s stolid face, and laughed aloud.
“But you have lost one thing that you can not get back, Grusha. You can
never again wonder if Ivan is going to be faithful. An unsatisfied wish
is a fine thing to have, my child.”
She walked off still laughing, leaving Grusha puzzled and vexed. At the
corner the old woman met the bridegroom and gave him greeting also.
“What a man you are, Ivan, to keep a girl faithful to you in all those
months. Were you not surprised at finding Grusha unmarried?”
Ivan scratched his head meditatively.
“I was surprised,” he said finally.
“And grateful?” asked Anna Evauovna.
“And grateful,” repeated Ivan, slowly.
“What would you have done if you had found her married?”
“Heaven bless me! If she had not waited, I could have found another.”
Anna Evauovna nodded.
“They grow thickly, these women, but now you can settle down quietly
after your wanderings, Ivan.”
Ivan turned his cap round on his hand, and shook his head.
“Wandering is not bad, Anna Evauovna. One sees men and women then. A man
does not care so much to live in one place after he sees the world. But
we shall get on nicely, I suppose.”
Anna Evauovna walked on, her wrinkled old face all puckered with laughter.
“That is what comes of what one waits and wearies for,” she said to
herself.
As she passed the hedge, behind which she had watched Ivan’s home-coming,
she heard two voices on the other side, and paused to listen. A man and a
woman were talking earnestly together.
“But you know it was you I always loved, Masha,” said the deeper tones.
It was Alioscha speaking.
Anna Evauovna went on her way, bending double with laughter. She did not
need to hear the answer Masha gave—for she knew all things, did Anna
Evauovna.
[Illustration: THE END]
[Illustration: “_Death and Love._”
_Drawn by Clarence Herbert Rowe._]
[Illustration: DEATH AND LOVE.]
Thus runs the maxim, “All are born to die.”
Grief follows joy as twilight follows day.
Old loves depart and beauty will not stay.
Wherefore, too sad to weep, henceforth must I
Encounter only Death, the Passer-By.
For every pleasure we with sorrow pay,
We are but dreamers, dreaming dreams by day.
Yet there be those who suffer cruelly
Who find a rainbow in their cup of tears.
Smiles beget smiles on faces sad as ours,
The pale moonlight silvers the sobbing sea.
One love supreme and constant through the years
Is dearer than fine rubies, sweet as flowers,
Sweet and as dear as that you gave to me.
—_William Theodore Peters._
[Illustration: CHANNOAH
BY EDWARD LUCAS WHITE]
The garden had been overgrown these three years. As the house was
tenantless nothing was ever trimmed or cut and the paths skinned over
with the green of intrusive weeds. The shrubs expanded into masses of
high dense leafage, the roses had run into long stems that covered
the walls or wound under the tall wavy grass, the annuals had seeded
themselves till they mingled in every bed, and the whole was a delightful
wilderness, more flowery than any wood and more woodland than any
garden. Milly and Jack regarded the place as their own special domain.
The house belonged to Milly’s father and they were left to enjoy the
garden unwatched and undisturbed. Because their fathers were partners
in business they had made up their minds to marry when they grew up and
they announced their intention with the preternatural seriousness of a
boy of five and a girl of three. As they were really fond of each other
they never wearied of being together and as a part of their precocious
program they cared nothing for other playmates. The garden was theirs
and they were each others’ and they lived in a community where children
were little overseen or tended. So they spent day after day in games of
their own invention, with no companion except a black kitten. Milly,
who was proud of her French, had named it Channoah and would have been
deeply grieved if anyone had insinuated that her pronunciation was far
from Parisian. Channoah was able to do without his mother when they
first began their games in the spring and was still a kittenish cat when
the autumn merged into winter. He entered into their sports with almost
a human interest and those long happy summer days made a background
for both the boy and the girl, which loomed up behind all their future
memories and where there were endless pictures of each other, in long
processions, punctuated and divided by various postures and contortions
of a coal-black kitten. As they grew older and their companionship
continued they had passwords all for themselves and jokes that no one
else entered into, all full of allusions to the same pet.
II.
It was a rather awkward boy who came home from college for his summer
vacation. He had not seen his native place since the autumn before, and
the letters which had told him he must remain at college, and which had
disclosed most tenderly the fall in the family’s fortunes had been worded
so carefully that he had not realized the full force of what had happened
and had chafed at his exile as if it were not inevitable. The first sight
he had of his mother waiting on the platform brought it all home to him.
Her dress told more than any words could have conveyed. He made a brave
effort to be bright and took care not to stare round him at the ugly
walls of the cramped and unfamiliar house, nor to look too curiously at
the furnishings. The gaps in the old belongings struck a chill to his
heart, but he chattered away about the college life to which he was to
return, and over their painfully frugal supper all were as cheery as old.
The talk was a trifle nervous and there was an anxiety to let no pause
occur, but nothing marred the warm greeting which had been made ready for
him and the meal ended naturally. The afternoon of talk had exhausted
most of what the greeters and the greeted had to ask and answer and
after they left the table the boy slipped into the entry and was hunting
for his cap among a litter of coats and capes, with a sick longing for
the old hall-piece and a strong distaste for the plain little walnut
hat-tree. The mother slipped out after him, shut the door noiselessly
behind her and asked:
“Where are you going, dear?”
“To see Milly, of course,” the boy answered.
“Has she written to you lately?” his mother queried.
“We haven’t written to each other at all,” he said. “I hate to write
letters, and it would make so much less for us to tell each other
afterwards.”
“You mustn’t go there, Jack,” she said, putting her hand lightly on his
shoulder with a caressing gesture.
“Why not?” he asked hotly, the blood rushing to his face.
“You know they have nothing to do with us any more, dear, since your
father and Mr. Wareham quarrelled.”
“I didn’t know it. You haven’t told me anything about what has happened.
And even if they have nothing to do with us, that wouldn’t make any
difference between Milly and me.”
“Isn’t it natural she should come to feel as her father and brother
feel?” the mother suggested tremulously.
“You mean she wouldn’t see me if I went,” he demanded, and he was growing
vexed and defiant.
“I did not mean that, dear. But her father might not allow her to see
you, and Albert always disliked you. And now they all hate all of us.”
“Why should they hate us? What have we done to them?”
“It was that selfish man ruined your father and people always hate those
they have wronged. Please don’t go, Jack.”
The boy twisted his cap in his hands and forced back his tears. He was
silent a moment and then he kissed his mother.
“It’s all right, mother dear,” he said, “I’ll go somewhere else. Thank
you for warning me.”
He went out into the dark. It was to the old garden that he walked. The
house was lit up and through the iron gate he saw trimmed and unfamiliar
shapes of shrubberies. He leaned against the bricks of the gate-post and
hated it all.
III.
A very lanky and gawky lad was waiting in the railway station at the
junction. He was loose-jointed and ill at ease in any position. His
clothes were mean and old and badly kept. His face was sad. For some time
now he had been waiting and he had hours of waiting before him. He had
looked over and over at everything in sight. Then a train came up and a
party of smartly dressed and handsome young men and women entered. The
lad’s face flamed. Jack had not seen Milly for years. His father and
mother were dead. He had to work at hard and uncongenial things to make
his living. He had as yet no self-confidence and while he saw dimly a
hope of better prospects, neither to himself nor to his employers was
anything apparent that made his lot easier. Milly was a very lovely girl
now. She was perfectly dressed and the centre of a merry party. The boy
watched her hungrily, but she never glanced toward him. Her friends
amused themselves in various ways, but it seemed to the onlooker that
Milly was the soul of each diversion. After a while she took out a pair
of scissors and began cutting out figures from paper. Jack recalled with
a fresh pang the hours he and she had spent so. She had a newspaper and
cut out large and small shapes, of men and women, of animals and other
more difficult subjects, all with so neat an eye for form and so keen an
appreciation of what was striking that her audience were carried away
with admiration and delight, and one or two who had never seen her do it
before were amazed beyond any powers of expression which they possessed.
Their train came before Jack’s and they rose, bustling, to go out.
Milly’s dark scornful-browed brother was with her and had stared at Jack
sarcastically. Milly had shown no sign of seeing him. The paper she had
was full of big advertisements and one sheet bore only six words on a
side, in broad black letters. Just as she stood up she cut out something,
while the rest were gathering up their belongings, and held it under
her thumb against a gaudily covered novel she carried in her left hand.
As she passed Jack she did not look at him, but he saw the thumb of her
glove move and a silhouette of an inky black kitten fluttered down upon
his knee. He took it up and stared at it. Then he saw her look back at
him from the door.
IV.
The german was a very dazzling and magnificent affair. The hall was
large and beautiful, splendidly lighted and most lavishly decorated. The
gathering was of people who were well satisfied with themselves and had
every reason to be so. John Henderson was as well satisfied with himself
as any man in the room. It gave him keen pleasure to be in that set
and to know that he had won his way into it. His life was now one made
delightful by every luxury and by the constant sensation of success.
Money came to him faster than he had any use for it and friends gave him
the most flattering evidences that he was valued and liked. He was a
tall strong young man, well-knit and lithe. His clothes became him and
he danced perfectly. He was not merely among these courtly people, but
welcome there. His partner’s name had a decidedly patrician sound. And
she was as handsome as any girl in the room, he said to himself, save
one. For opposite him sat Miss Millicent Wareham. Her beauty was at its
best in her yellow satin ball-dress, and she looked proud and elate. He
had encountered her often recently, and they had been more than once
presented to each other, but had exchanged no words save the formal
acknowledgement of an introduction. He could not make out whether she
disliked him or merely reflected her brother’s manifest antagonism. He
took care not to look at her openly, but he glanced toward her furtively
very often. Toward the end of the dancing she saw him approach her. Her
face set and she looked at him full in the eyes without any sign of
expression as he asked her to dance with him. But just when he uttered
the last words of his slowly spoken invitation he opened his hand and she
saw the favor he was offering her. It was a tiny kitten of black chenille
made on wire, with minute yellow beads for eyes. She blushed and smiled
at the same time as soon as she caught sight of it, rose graciously and
they whirled away together. Neither spoke at all and their separation
came almost immediately. Yet he felt more elated by that fragment of
a dance than by all the compliments of word and look he had had that
evening from men and women alike. She smiled at him again as she seated
herself and his heart leapt. He saw her as she was leaving, her wrap open
still and a bit of black on her yellow corsage.
V.
It was a dirty little square by the harborside, thronged with boatmen,
sailors of all nations ashore for a day’s outing, picturesque
cigarette-smoking loafers, fruit-sellers, negroes, uniformed police and
open-shirted porters. The shops facing it were dingy, the stones of
the quay awry in places, and the filth was more than is usual even in
Rio de Janeiro. Tawdry like every populous quarter there, it had yet
that pictorial air which all semi-tropical scenes, however much defaced
by man, never quite lose. To a stranger its most salient feature was
the clutter of six-sided, gaily-hued kiosques, which are scattered all
through the streets of Rio, many decorated with flags and each selling
lottery tickets, whatever else it might have for sale. By one, which
dispensed coffee in steaming cups and cognac in tiny thin-stemmed
glasses, stood an American talking to a Portuguese. The noticeable thing
about the Brazilian was that he was usual and commonplace in every way.
There was nothing in his form, features or dress which could possibly
have served to remember him by. One might have conned him for an hour
and after he was out of sight it would have been impossible to recall
anything by which to describe him so as to distinguish him from any one
of hundreds in the crowds of the capital. Not even his age could have
been specified or approximated to. He was deliberate in his movements,
watched his environment without appearing to do so and attracted no
attention. Now he sipped his brandy while his interlocutor drank coffee,
and the two talked in subdued tones. Discussing a purchase of ship
stores, one would say.
A boatman in a suit of soiled white duck was loitering near, looking over
the harbor. He sidled up to the American and cut in between speech and
reply, in a deprecating voice:
“You wan’ Macedo see you talkin’ at Guimaraens, senhor Hen’son?”
“Where’s Macedo?” the other demanded.
The boatman pointed and the two men followed his hand. A boat was
approaching across the sparkling water, and they saw the peculiar stroke
of the navy and police-boats, in which the men pull and then rest so long
with their oars poised that they seem hypnotized in mid-stroke and a
novice expects them to stay so forever.
“There Macedo now, comin’ from Nictheroy,” said the fellow meaningly.
“What do you want me to do, Joao?” the American asked.
“Oh, Guimaraens he wait anywhere, come back when Macedo gone. You get
in my boat, I row you roun’ pas’ those docks. Then Macedo won’ see you
’tall.”
The Portuguese disappeared softly into the crowd. The boat unobtrusively
threaded the swarm of small craft, whipped behind a lighter, doubled
the nose of the nearest pier, and drifted imperceptibly on while Joao
reconnoitred.
“I guess we get behin’ that Lamport and Holt lighter. I don’ know wha’
Macedo goin’ to do.”
They scraped along past the spiles of the wharf and then dexterous
strokes of the stubby oars kept them practically motionless under the
wharf’s planking, close to one spile.
“What on earth is that?” the passenger queried, and put out his hand to
the post. He grasped a watersoaked kitten, clinging desperately to the
slippery wood, and too exhausted to mew.
“A cat!” the American ejaculated. “I didn’t know you had cats in this
country. The city is knee-deep in dogs, but I haven’t seen a cat since I
came.”
“I guess he fall overboard from that Englis’ bark, what jus’ tow out,”
Joao said serenely. “That captain he got his wife too, an’ I see some
little cat along the children.”
The kitten was coal black, not a white hair on it, and very wet.
Henderson dried it with a handkerchief and warmed it inside of his
jacket. Presently Joao said:
“Macedo’s boat gone roun’ Sacco d’Alferes. I don’ see Macedo. You bett’
not go back.”
“Go round to the Red Steps, then,” came the indulgent answer.
They rowed past the ends of the long piers, all black with shouting
men in long lines, each with a sack of coffee on his head, or hurrying
back for another. Then they bumped through a pack of boats of all kinds
and Henderson stepped out upon the worn and mortarless stones. Joao
nodded and was off without any exchange of money. The morning was a
very beautiful one and this was the landing most frequented always. At
the top of the steps John paused in a whirl of feelings. Before him
stood Millicent Wareham in a very pretty yachting suit, and she was
accompanied only by her maid. She was looking alternately back toward the
custom-house and out over the bay. Secure in the fellow-feeling of exiles
for each other he stepped up and greeted her. She looked startled but a
moment and then her face lit with an expression of real pleasure and she
held out her hand. They had not had a real conversation since childhood
and yet she began as if she had seen him yesterday:
“I am so surprised. I had no idea you were here. We came only last week.
That is our yacht out there. When did you come?”
John looked once only at the yacht, but keenly enough never to mistake it
afterwards, and answered:
“I have been here a long time. I am on business, not pleasure.”
“We may be here some time, too. I like this part of the world and we mean
to go all round South America.”
John wondered who “we” might be. He knew her father was dead and he had
heard of the breaking off of her betrothal to a titled European. It was
her brother she was with, likely enough, but he hoped it might be some
party of friends instead.
“You’ll like it all if you like this,” he answered. “But I certainly am
astonished to see you. Few Americans come here as you have. And the odd
thing is that I was just thinking of you, too.”
She looked at him with an expression he remembered well from her
girlhood, and smiled banteringly:
“You mustn’t say that. You know you don’t really mean it. You are just
being complimentary.”
“I have documentary proof right here,” he laughed, sliding his hand
inside of his coat. The kitten was dry and warm now and it mewed hungrily.
“The dear little thing,” she exclaimed. “Give it to me, won’t you?”
“Indeed I will,” he said fervently. “I am glad to find so safe a
harborage for it. And ten times glad that I had the luck to find it just
in time to give it to you.”
She beamed at him, fondling the wriggling little beast.
“I am going to call it Channoah,” she said, mimicking her childish
pronunciation archly. The maid standing by, and the moving crowd all
about, they stood chatting some minutes. The sunrays danced on the
little waves of the harbor, the soft August weather of the sub-tropical
winter of the southern hemisphere was clear and bright, the yellow walls
of the custom house, of its warehouses, of the arsenal and military
school and the army hospital, strung out along the water-front, with the
bushy-headed leaning rough-trunked palms between and the red tiled roofs
above made a fine background. Beyond and above the round bulging green
Cariocas rose hill behind hill, topped and dominated by the sharpened
camel’s hump of Corcovado. From one of the islands a bugle call blew.
The throng hummed in many tongues. Then John asked:
“And may I hope to see you again before you leave?”
Her expression changed entirely, her face fell and she looked confused.
She said:
“I am afraid not. I quite forgot everything in my pleasure at seeing
a fellow-countryman and an old playmate. I could not deny myself the
indulgence of greeting you and then I quite lost myself, it was so
natural to be with you. But Bertie may be back any minute and it would
never do for him to know I have been talking to you. Please go now.”
Her manner was constrained and her air was resuming that distance and
hauteur which he was used to seeing in her.
“Goodbye,” she said, “and thank you for the kitten.”
John walked quickly to the coffee exchange and from out of the crowd that
filled it he had the satisfaction of seeing Albert Wareham pass and of
knowing that he did not notice him and could not suspect that Milly had
seen him. It was something to have even that secret between himself and
Milly.
* * * * *
After gun-fire no boat is allowed to move about Rio harbor or bay without
a formal signed, sealed and stamped permit from the authorities. All
night the half dozen fussy little steam-launches of the water-police are
shooting about on the dark water, cutting flashing ripples through the
trails of light which the shore lights shed over the bay and probing the
pitchy shadows with stiletto flashes of their search-lights. The penalty
for being caught without papers is forfeiture of the boat and a night in
the calaboose for all, and a rigorous trial for any suspected of intended
stealing or smuggling. Between the American and Norwegian anchorages a
small boat was moving noiselessly. It was after gun-fire but still early
in the night. The oars made no sound and the craft kept to the obscure
parts of the water. In the dead silence they preserved the two men in it
heard a faint puffing still far off. They were at the most exposed part
of their passage, far from any ship and farther from the nearest wharf.
By the sound the search-light would reveal them in a moment, they judged.
The launch was coming from the west, and to eastward of them, nearer the
entrance of the bay, was the anchorages for vessels temporarily in harbor
and for pleasure yachts. One said something and the rower began to do his
utmost, after turning toward the east. Henderson had seen that he had
but one chance. He knew what would happen to him if he were caught and
he could see no escape. He had sighted the Halcyon, Wareham’s yacht, and
formed his plan at once. If Milly was on her and her brother ashore he
might be saved. If not, he was no worse off for rowing up to her.
They had more start than they had thought and both began to regret they
had not kept on toward the wharves. The launch turned the light toward
them, but their distance was such that it only half revealed them. They
were near the yacht now and the gangway was not on their side. Joao
rounded the yacht’s stern and bumped on the lowest step, the launch
throbbing after them at top speed. Henderson stepped up the gangway. The
anchor-watch had not hailed them and he had his heart in his mouth at the
certainty that either the best or worst was coming. Before he reached the
deck a face leaned over the rail well aft and a soft voice asked:
“Who is that, please?” and the words were in English.
John’s heart leapt.
“Jack,” he answered with almost a cry of relief.
Just then a yellow glare swung round from aft and an excited voice called
out in Portuguese.
Milly took in the whole situation instantly. She had been told of the
regulations and she had heard of Henderson’s supposed real business in
Brazil. The instant the pulsations of the tiny engine ceased as the
launch slowed down she spoke clearly in French, with a pleased tone of
recognition in her utterance:
“Is that you, Captain Macedo? What did you ask?”
“Ah, Miss Wareham,” came the deferential answer, “ten thousand pardons. I
thought I was addressing the watch on your vessel.”
Miss Wareham said something in sharp low tones to someone behind her and
replied:
“Will not I do as well? I was in hopes you were coming to see me, Captain
Macedo.”
“I am on duty now, not on pleasure, alas. Did not a boat approach your
yacht just now?”
The keen reflector shone full on Joao and on Henderson as he stood on the
gangway.
“Certainly,” Milly said. “One of my friends has just come to call on
me. He is under my permit, I sent it ashore to him. Can’t you come up a
moment and meet him, Captain Macedo?”
The officer muttered something and then after a flood of apologies
uttered in a very vexed tone, the launch sheered off and bustled away.
Henderson went up the steps of the gangway and a rather conventional
greeting passed between him and his hostess. She said something to the
officer of the yacht and he disappeared into his quarters. The man on
watch was well forward, the maid sat under the farthest corner of the
awning, and Milly motioned him to a seat, herself sinking into her
deck-chair. He could not see her well by the cool starlight, but her
voice was friendly as her prompt action had been, and he was advised
of the presence of the kitten in her lap by its loud purring. He took
courage.
“I have much to thank you for, Milly,” he said, half hesitating over the
old pet name. “I was in a tight place but for your sharpness.”
“I hope I shall be forgiven for my falsehoods,” she said. “But that is
not what I want to talk to you about. I have heard about you on shore
and I am very much concerned. Sammy Roland had a great deal to say of
you. He tells me that everyone feels in the air the presence of plots to
overthrow Fonseca as he did with the emperor, and Sammy says that the
conspirators are buying arms and ammunition and that it is whispered
about that you are the chief of the foreign agents engaged in this
dangerous speculation. I am worried beyond expression to think of the
risks you run if this is true.”
John looked her straight in the eyes and she returned his gaze silently.
After some breaths he spoke.
“I know I ought to deny totally your insinuations, but I can not help
trusting you, Milly.”
“God knows,” she said, “you can trust me utterly.”
“And I will,” he replied. “This puts not only myself but others in
your power. You must not breathe a word of it, Milly. I am on just
the business you have heard of and on others like it. The profits are
something enormous and the risk is proportional. If I had not found
refuge behind your subterfuge and quickness I should be now under the
certainty of being shot before daylight.”
“Oh, not so bad as that, Jack,” she exclaimed in an excited whisper.
“They would never shoot an American citizen that way.”
“The matters I am mixed up in,” he answered, “are not things for which
one dares to ask the protection of any flag. I am as near to being a
pirate as one can come in these days. And Fonseca is a man who would
shoot me first and take the risk of the legation and consulate never
suspecting what had become of me, or even of having to reckon with them
if they did. He is quick and heavy-handed.”
“I do not think him as ferocious as you do, Jack,” she said; “but I
am quite as anxious about you as possible. Sammy’s gossip might be
exaggerated and generally is. But Mr. Hernwick is a very different
person. And he, while he has had nothing to say about you, has talked to
me a great deal about the general situation here. He says that Admiral
Mello is at the head of the malcontents and is preparing to lead a revolt
of the entire navy. You probably know more about that than Mr. Hernwick.
The thing that struck me was this. He says Mello is over-confident and is
going to bungle the entire plot from haste and temerity. If Mr. Hernwick
says that, don’t you think there is something in it.”
“Indeed I do,” Jack answered heavily. “I have had some glimpses of
something of the sort. Now can you solemnly assure me, Milly, that
Hernwick did say so? For I have half a mind to give up the whole matter
and all its golden promises of fortune. There is another opening for
me elsewhere, not so glittering but safer and fairly profitable. Mr.
Hernwick is a man I respect highly and no Englishman knows so much about
the tangle of intrigues which envelopes this nation. If he had said that
to me, openly and emphatically, I should act on it.”
“And won’t you believe me, Jack, and act on what I say? I am so anxious
about you?”
The night was clear and cool, the breeze soft and even, it was cosy under
the awning and it was very pleasant and very novel to have a woman so
interested in himself. He was silent a moment, his elbows on his knees,
leaning forward on the camp-stool on which he sat. The tiny ripples
swished under the counter as the yacht swung on her cable. A banjo
twanged on a vessel somewhere near, a military band was playing a native
air in one of the plazas by the water-front, the lights danced on the
surface of the bay, and the kitten purred. Jack sighed and said:
“It is hard to let slip such possibilities. But I’ll promise.”
She held out her hand to his and they clasped. It was a long pressure.
And then she began to talk of other things and to change the current of
his thoughts. They went back to the old days in the garden and she told
him much of her life in the years between and he also narrated much of
his. They recalled the old pass-words and mutual jokes for themselves
only. And through all their long talk the purring of “Channoah the
third,” as Milly called him, ran as a sort of undertone. Jack could not
recall any evening which he had enjoyed so much.
Milly even spoke of her brother and deprecated his hatred of Henderson.
She did not deny it nor try to excuse it, but her dexterous talk left
Jack soothed and feeling that however much her interest in himself was
merely friendly, it was certain that she did not share her brother’s
contempt for him.
The launch had been circling about a half a mile off or so. Now Joao blew
a soft low whistle. The coast was clear for them to slip ashore and Jack
said goodbye.
VI.
During the years following his abrupt departure from Rio Henderson
flitted about the Southern Hemisphere. He was in Australia, in South
Africa, and on many islands, but most of his time was spent in South
America, on one side or other of the Andes. In his last venture he saw
the face of death near and ugly and felt that he had lost some of his
nerve afterward. Likewise, as he himself expressed it, he had made his
pile. So he resolved to run no more risks, but to return to his native
land and settle down to enjoy his gains. Like many another wanderer he
fancied he would like to buy the house in which he had been a happy
child and he was not sure but he would find his native town a permanent
bourne.
He noticed the change in grade of the railroad as his train steamed in.
It entered the city now over a viaduct which cleared the streets on
trestles and crossed the main thoroughfare on a fine stone arch. Under
that arch he passed in the hotel omnibus. Just beyond it he noticed a
shop with cages of birds, stuffed animals and a pretty little black
kitten just inside the plate glass of the front. He noted the number and
meant to return later after he had had his supper.
A square or so farther on he saw pass him a handsome open carriage.
His heart stood still at sight of the figure in it. Milly saw him and
returned his bow with a cordial smile. She was still beautiful, with a
full-grown woman’s best charms. Very haughty she looked too, as became
the heir of the Wareham fortune. Henderson had heard of her brother’s
death sometime before.
About sunset John entered the animal-seller’s shop. The kitten was gone.
Could not say when it had been sold. Could not say to whom it had been
sold. Could not send to the purchaser and try to buy it back. Grumpy and
curt replies generally. John left the shop in a bad humor.
Flicking with his cane the tall grasses in the neglected spaces before
wooden front-yard fences John strolled in the twilight to the old garden.
The house was empty again and the garden had run wild. It was not the
wilderness he remembered but it had the same outlines and the same
general character. His heart warmed over it and memories thronged.
His feet carried him he knew not whither. In the late twilight he found
himself before the splendid Wareham mansion. He was vexed that he had
not been able to get that kitten and send it to Milly in a big box of
pink roses, like the roses in the old garden. Then he was vexed that he
had not thought to send her the roses anyhow, as soon as he had found he
could not get the kitten. Then he opened the gate, walked springily in
and rang the bell.
Yes, Miss Wareham was at home. The warm lamp-light which had led him
in shone from the room into which he was ushered. Milly was reading by
the lamp itself. She rose to greet him. Her yellow satin gown became
her well and her voice was sweet to his ears. Her words were cordial.
But what Jack noticed to the exclusion of everything else was the very
black kitten he had failed to purchase, tucked under her arm, purring
vociferously, and very becoming, it seemed to his eyes, to the color of
her dress. The instant he saw it he knew what he meant to say to her. And
the look in her eyes told him almost as plainly as the pet she fondled
what her answer would be.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: HERE AND THERE IN MARYLAND
BY EDWARD G. McDOWELL.]
[Illustration: _Near Pen-Mar, Western Maryland Railroad._]
[Illustration: _Old Mill Race, Walbrook._]
[Illustration: _Near Annapolis._]
[Illustration: _In Green Spring Valley._]
[Illustration: _The Old Liberty Road._]
[Illustration: _Tred Avon River._]
[Illustration: _On Gwynn’s Falls._]
[Illustration: _Smith’s Lane, Walbrook._]
[Illustration: HOW RANDALL GOT INTO THE SALON]
It was fully a minute before Joe Randall could summon up his courage to
knock. He was ordinarily a phlegmatic Englishman, not easily moved, but
to-day he was out of breath from an exceptionally long walk, and the
excitement which invariably attends the first visit of an inconsequential
young art student to the studio of a world-renowned painter. At length
he resolutely pulled himself together and rapped. He received in reply
a command, rather than an invitation, to enter. In obedience to the
imperative summons he slowly pushed the massive door ajar and the next
instant perceived he was standing in the actual, awful presence of the
famous Master. The shock produced on him by the sudden change from the
comparative darkness of the hall to the fierce, out-of-door light of the
studio, blinded and troubled him nearly as much as did the contrast of
his own littleness and poverty with the evidences of oppressive affluence
and power before him. In his confusion a large, weather-beaten canvas,
ill-tied and wrapped in an old journal, which he had carried under his
arm all the way over from the Latin Quarter to far-away Montmartre,
slipped from its flimsy envelope and fell with a resounding bang upon
the floor, thereby adding to his already great embarrassment. He stooped
nervously to pick it up, giving vent at the same time to a half audible
“_Bon jour!_”
He had timed his visit so as not to interfere with the Master’s morning
work, and noticed with a feeling of satisfaction and returning
confidence, that the model had gone, and that the Master himself was
languidly engaged in cleaning up his palette. The Master, on his part,
was evidently used to visits of the kind from other shabbily-dressed
young men, for he promptly roared back, “_Bon jour_,” and even added
“_mon ami!_” in tones in which it would have been difficult to detect
a single friendly note. The unexpectedness of the second part of the
greeting served partially to reassure Randall, and enabled him to explain
the cause of his intrusion.
“I have come,” he began in halting, broken French, “to ask you if you
will criticise a picture which I intend to submit to the Salon jury next
month? I am not a pupil of yours at present, although I have studied for
a short time under you at Julian’s,—before I entered Monsieur Rousseau’s
class at the Ecole des Beaux Arts, where I am now working. I have been
told that you are always willing to give advice to young men of your
profession, and especially to those who, like myself, have once been
members of your school.”
The Master, who was a fat, energetic little man of about sixty, glared
at the intruder from under a pair of bushy eyebrows, as though he were
trying to look him through and through and read if he had any other
motive in coming to call upon him; and then, with a movement bordering
on brusqueness, whisked the canvas from his trembling hand and placed it
on a vacant easel by his side. He intended no unkindness by his action,
as Randall soon found out for himself. He was only authoritative, and
this was his habitual manner towards friend and foe alike, as well as
the secret that underlay his success and power in the artistic world.
For power he certainly had; not the kind perhaps that comes from fine
achievement or a noble personality, but a sort of brutal, political,—and
as he put it, “administrative”—power, which caused him to be courted and
feared, and enabled him to make and unmake the reputations of countless
of his fellow craftsmen. It was an open secret that he managed the only
Salon then in existence practically as he pleased, and put in or put out
all those whom he happened at the moment either to like or dislike; that
he medalled, or left without recompense, whomsoever he chose; and that on
more than one occasion (it must be confessed to his shame) he had even
unjustly withheld the official honors from those who were most eminently
entitled to receive them.
He regarded the picture with the stony stare of the Sphinx for what
appeared to Joe Randall to be an eternity, and then, turning suddenly
towards him, said, with astounding candor—perfected by a long and
constant cultivation,—“Personally, I don’t like your picture at all: It
is a landscape, even if there are two unimportant little figures in it,
and landscapes, however well done, are of little consequence and prove
nothing. This one, with the exception of the distance, which is passably
good, is not comprehensively treated; the foreground is not at all right
in values and doesn’t explain itself; it is, in fact, a wretched piece of
work and spoils whatever small merit there may be in the picture. Can’t
you yourself see that it does so?”
Randall had thought his picture fairly good when he had taken it away
from his poor little studio in the Latin Quarter that morning, but here,
in the midst of all these gorgeous surroundings, he had to admit that it
looked insignificant enough.
“If I were in your place,” the Master continued, “I should not waste any
more time on _that_ production, but would paint a figure piece—a Jeanne
d’Arc, or some classical, or Biblical subject: pictures of this kind
always create a sensation in the Salon, and—get three-fourths of the
recompenses besides,” he added shrewdly.
“But it is too late to do that this year,” answered Joe; “there is barely
a month before the pictures must be sent to the Palais de l’Industrie.”
“That is true,” admitted the Master wearily.
“I must send this picture in,” continued Joe, “or nothing.”
“Then,” replied the Master promptly, “I would send in nothing.”
Randall was silenced and thoroughly discouraged by this rejoinder. He
thought bitterly over his want of success. He had sent pictures to the
three preceding Salons, and all of them had been declined. If he followed
the advice just given him he would have to wait a whole year before he
would have another chance to make his bow to the public as a real, a
professional painter. It was too maddening and the more he thought about
it the more miserable he became. He showed this state of feeling plainly
in his face, and the Master forgot himself long enough to notice it, and
to his own very great astonishment was touched.
“Is it very important that you should exhibit something this year?” he
inquired in a kinder voice.
“Yes,” replied Joe, nearly bursting into tears, “it is of the _utmost_
importance to me. I have been refused for three years in succession, and
if I do not get something into the Salon this spring, my father will
think that my picture has been rejected again, and will probably send for
me to come home and make me give up art.”
“In that case,” said the Master firmly, “_we must get you in_.”
He walked over to his Louis XV desk and picked up a small red note-book,
bound in Russia leather, which was filled with the names of his private
pupils and alphabetically and conveniently arranged.
“What is your name, young man?” he asked; and on receiving his reply, he
turned the page reserved for the R’s and wrote down hastily, “Randall,
J.—landscape.” “Now,” he went on, “do what I tell you! Go home and paint
up that foreground more carefully. Even _I_ could not get my associates
to vote for it as it stands. I will see to the rest—don’t worry! You can
count on me!”
Randall, light-hearted once more, expressed his thanks profusely for
these highly comforting assurances, and was on the point of departing
when the Master abruptly demanded, “Why didn’t you go to the Pere
Rousseau, instead of coming to me? He is your teacher now, not I!”
“I did go to him.” admitted Randall, blushing deeply, “and he said my
work wasn’t half bad, and⸺”
“But did you ask him to speak a good word for you to the jury?” inquired
the Master maliciously.
“Yes,” nodded Randall, smiling but blushing still more deeply. “I felt
that so many of the professors protected their pupils that it was only
fair that I should receive the same treatment.”
“Well! what then?” demanded the Master, ill-concealing an irrepressible
tendency to laugh.
“He became very angry and ordered me out of his place,” responded Joe.
“He said that any man who was not strong enough to get into the Salon on
his own merit, _ought_ to be thrown out.”
The Master was rolling over and over on his divan in a most indecorous
way, holding his plump hands on his plump sides, in an explosion of
merriment. Then, suddenly realizing how undignified his behavior
must appear, he recovered his composure with a jerk, and remarked
thoughtfully, with just a tinge of pity in his voice, “The Pere
Rousseau—the dear old man—always acts like that when he is requested to
protect anyone! He is a sort of modern Don Quixote and can’t understand
how matters are arranged to-day. If it weren’t for me—his best friend—he
wouldn’t see the work of many of his pupils in the Salon; and let me add,
young man, that it is a mighty good thing for you that you could say just
now you were a pupil of _his_ and not of some of the other so-called
artists I could name to you if I chose.”
The Master’s eyebrows became ominously contracted again, and he only
deigned to snap out a ferocious “_Bon jour!_” to the departing Randall,
omitting the more cordial “_mon ami_” of the first salutation.
The annual banquet given by the Alumni and the present students of the
Atelier Rousseau, was offered to that distinguished artist, as was usual,
just before the opening of the colossal Parisian picture show. It was
also, as usual, a very gay affair. The Pere Rousseau himself, affable
and stately, appeared punctually on the scene of the festivities and
was promptly ensconced in a huge armchair, thoughtfully placed half way
down a long vista of coarse, but snowy, tablecloth. Opposite to him, in
another similar armchair, sat his best friend—the Master, to whom Randall
had so recently gone for advice. He was radiant and happy; a sense of
duty well done pervaded his entire personality. The dinner—a truly
marvelous production at the price—was eaten with avidity by the younger
men, who were not used to such luxury every day, and with a good-natured
tolerance by Monsieur Rousseau, the Master, and those few of the guests
who had been born with silver spoons in their mouths, or whose feet
were, by their own creditable endeavors, firmly planted on the highroad
which leads to fame and fortune. Such small formality as existed at the
commencement of the feast gradually disappeared and, when the inevitable
champagne was finally brought forth, there were not over a hundred
individuals with a hundred diverse interests present, but one great human
family, presided over by a dearly loved and affectionate father. Then
speeches were made, and Lecroix, the most irrepressible, fun-loving man
in the school, became bold enough to produce a Punch and Judy booth from
a room nearby and proceeded to give an audacious parody on the Atelier
and its illustrious chief.
Randall not having heard from his picture, and dying to know its fate,
managed, under the pretence of seeing the performance better, to work his
way up close to the Master’s chair. The Master saw him and smiled: “It is
all right,” he whispered, “you are well placed, nearly on the line in the
_Salle d’Honneur_. Why, however, did you change your picture so much? The
distance was fairly good when you showed it to me at my studio, and you
ought only to have worked on the foreground. The changes you have made
in the composition were so badly done, and ill-advised, that I had to
fight hard, I can tell you, against a pack of over-conscientious fellows,
before I could get them to vote for it at all. If it hadn’t been lunch
time, and so many of them were hungry and wanted to leave, rather than
to dispute over pictures, I don’t think that even _I_ could have managed
them satisfactorily.”
“But,” interrupted Joe in astonishment, “I didn’t change the composition
a bit. I only altered the foreground as you told me to do.”
“Then there must be some mistake,” said the Master uneasily. “But no!
Here we are.” He produced his faithful note book from his pocket and
fumbled its pages until he came to the one devoted to the R’s, and
pointed to the words he had written over a month before, “Randall,
J.—landscape;” after which he had scribbled with a blue pencil the words
“Accepted” and “John.” “You did not give me your first name when I wrote
this here, so I copied it down afterwards from your picture when I saw
that it was safely and desirably hung. You see that it’s all right after
all: you almost made me feel for the moment as though there were some
error.”
“But there is a mistake!” groaned the young man in his agony, “my first
name is Joseph, not John, and you have protected some body else whose
last name and initial happen to be the same as mine.”
“_’Cre nom de nom!_” whistled the master profanely.
* * * * *
John Randall—an American from Vermont—returned from the Salon on
Varnishing Day. He sat down and wrote to his people across the water,
telling them triumphantly the news of his acceptance—the bare fact of
which he had cabled to them the week before. He described graphically the
memorable opening day, and thus ended up his letter:
“You have heard no doubt long ago that I have passed the difficult test
of the Salon jury, and that my very first picture has been accepted.
I am all the more pleased and proud over the result because it was
received _solely on its own merits_. I painted it by myself, without
any outside advice or criticism, and did not solicit the protection of
the professors of the school, as I found, to my disgust, so many of my
comrades were engaged in doing. Besides the fact of getting in under
these circumstances, I am also pleased to be able to tell you that the
hanging committee have seen fit to give me one of the very best places
in the whole Salon—in the Gallery of Honor. Having done so well with my
first picture, I feel that I am fully justified in anticipating a like
measure of success with my second.
Give my love to all at home, and believe me,
Most affectionately your,
JOHN RANDALL.”
—_Clinton Peters._
[Illustration]
A VALENTINE.
I send my heart across the years to you!
With all its humanness and all its waste;
With all that yet is tender and is true,
Though time has triumphed and youth’s hope disgraced.
What though the snows are gathered on the ground,
And bare the bough within the aching chill?
I think of you—and in my ear a sound
Breaks, and enraptures with its April thrill!
I hear the trailing hem of laggard Spring,
And daffodils seem leaning to my hand,
And on the air I glimpse the eager wing
Of birds that wander from a softer land.
And I forget—forget the world of loss,
The drift and change of things, the pain of age:
For dreams have turned to gold life’s gifts of dross;
A sweetness lingers on time’s yellowed page.
I send my heart across the years to you
As missive of the season’s hallowed day,
To you who make the heavens seem so blue—
Make love forget its livery’s grown gray:
—_Maurice Weyland._
[Illustration: ELENA’S DAUGHTERS
BY D. RAMON ORTEGA Y FRIAS]
_From the Spanish by L. Solyom._
CHAPTER I.
DOÑA ELENA, DOÑA LUZ, DOÑA ESTRELLA.
Never, either in the times when the Spaniards were ruled by a King who
was the best of cavaliers and worst of poets—yet still a poet—a King who
paid too much attention to pretty women, and none whatever to affairs of
state,—nor yet up to the present time, has any one known or hoped to know
the history of the famous Elena and her three daughters who have acquired
a fame scarcely inferior to her own. Yet it has become known. We know it,
and the reader shall know all that afterwards happened to these three
women and to their mother, who made them worthy of the celebrity which
they acquired.
Doña Elena used to affirm that she was the widow of an “Alcalde de casa
y corte” (a sort of justice of the peace), and that she was able to live
decently and at ease on the property consisting of her marriage portion
and what her husband had left her; and certainly she did live in this
style. She was very devout, went to mass every day, to confession and
communion every Sunday, and there was never a religious festival at which
she was not present. She received no visitors except a Dominican friar,
a very virtuous man; a gentleman who was very rich, old, and belonged
to the order of Santiago, who never left the cross except when he went
to sleep, and then only because he had another at the head of his bed;
and a retired captain, lame and one-eyed, who had once held an important
position in the Indies. Neither their age, characters, nor condition
could give rise to any suspicion, or give any reason for censure.
The widow had three daughters, grown to womanhood, and brought up in the
fear of God, as they must have been with such a mother. It was supposed
that they wanted to get married, which was very natural, yet as they
never gave any cause for scandal, it was impossible not to recognize
their virtue. As far as could be ascertained, the family was as honorable
as any other, and led a saintly life, yet the widow and her daughters
were looked upon with a certain avoidance, some distrust and some
fear. Why? Nobody knew. The suspicions, though apparently unjust, were
instinctive.
People persisted in their determination to see something mysterious in
the family, and that was enough. When the occasion arises, we shall
repeat some of the grave and extraordinary things that were said about
them, things touching the miraculous and supernatural; but, as no one
could affirm that he had actually seen anything, it was all hearsay, and
there was reason to suppose that an evil-disposed, hidden and despicable
enemy had spread these reports, in order to harm the widow and her
daughters with impunity.
Many people came to this sensible conclusion, but still there was always
some doubt left, and a lack of confidence was justifiable because the
_vox populi_ might be right, and it has always been considered better to
err on the side of prudence than that of daring.
If the enemy was some discarded suitor, who was resolved that no one else
should have what he could not obtain, he might well have rejoiced at
the success of his scheme, for it was not an easy thing for these three
girls to find husbands while such doubts and rumors concerning them were
afloat, in spite of the virtues which adorned them.
We are not sure how old Doña Elena was, and it was not an easy thing to
guess her age, for her looks varied. In the street, dressed in black
and wrapped in a cape, with her head bent and eyes fixed on the ground,
the only visible part of her face her large nose,—which was shaped like
the beak of a bird of prey and adorned with a black and white wart,
shaped like a sweet pea, a legacy of her misfortune,—she looked about
seventy. But at home, without the cape, with her face held erect, with
her abundant black hair which a young girl might have envied, with her
energetic movements and sharp, penetrating eyes, one could not have
imagined her over sixty.
From what we have been saying our readers will suppose that the widow
was ugly, and really her ugliness was perfection. She was very tall,
with a muscular and somewhat masculine form, a very large mouth, with an
overlip covered with a black down that resembled a moustache, with only
two large and sharp upper teeth remaining, with two patches of hair on
each side of her beard, a narrow furrowed forehead, thick bushy eyebrows,
and round sunken eyes. One of these, the left one, she invariably closed
when speaking rapidly or looking attentively at any object, while the
other then became very expressive, and it was impossible to avoid her
penetrating gaze. Her voice was heavy and obscure, sounding, whenever
she raised it, like an echo from the distance. Some of her ill-natured
detractors had even said that there was reason to doubt the sex of Doña
Elena, as she might as easily be a beardless man in disguise as a bearded
woman.
Now that we have described the widow, if not as she really was, at least
as she was known to the world, we will speak of her daughters. They did
not resemble the widow in the least. They were young, nineteen, eighteen,
and seventeen, and were all prodigies of beauty. They were called Sol,
Luz, and Estrella, and with the dark clouds of Doña Elena’s ugliness,
formed a heaven on earth.
Doña Sol’s face was somewhat dark, and oval, her hair black, and her
eyes of the same color, lazy, wide open, with glances penetrating and
expressive, such glances as set you on fire, and produce an effect
similar to that of an electric current. It was impossible to look at her
unmoved, for her lips were as provoking as her fiery eyes were burning,
and it was unnecessary for her to speak or smile to set the coldest
hearts on fire, and turn the heads of the steadiest.
Doña Luz was not so tall, and of somewhat fuller though wonderfully
perfect proportions, with a fair skin, chestnut hair, and large gray eyes
with long lashes, through which passed her sweet, quiet and melancholy
glances. There was always a slight smile on her lips, her words were
pleasant, she showed great tenderness and common sense, and was one of
those gentle spirits, who, instead of promising ineffable pleasures,
offer a sweet happiness and all the delights of an unalterable calm.
It is impossible to draw a correct likeness of Doña Estrella, who was
a spiritual and sublime being, one of those angels in human form,
apparently descended from Heaven to give us a conception of celestial
beauties. Her blonde hair, pure transparent azure eyes, slender form and
delicate shape presented a combination of unutterable charms. Sensible,
innocent, candid, and timid,—we repeat, it is impossible to give a
correct description of Estrella.
It seems impossible, too, that three girls such as we have tried to
describe could all fail to find husbands, but as we have observed, public
opinion was strongly rooted against them, and there were people who
firmly believed that their wonderful beauty was the work of Satan to lure
the innocent to destruction.
The four always went together to fulfil their religious duties, the
girls in front, the youngest first, and the mother bringing up the
rear that she might watch over them all, even with her left eye closed
as it usually was. Those who met the little procession, saw first
of all Estrella, whose timidity kept her eyes fixed on the ground,
and, impressed with the sentimentality and sublimity of her blushing
innocence, they looked up to see Doña Luz, full of artlessness and
enviable tranquility, showing her face like one who had nothing to fear
from malice; and finally, willing or unwilling, were compelled to meet
the running fire which darted from the eyes of Doña Sol—eyes that in
the street did not look upon you face to face, but slyly as if they did
not wish to see. After all these pleasant, fascinating and enchanting
visions, they beheld the round sunken eyes of the widow, eyes with pupils
like phosphorescent lights in the depths of some cavern, and her big nose
with the wart on it. And they would ask themselves if such a horrible
looking monster could really have given birth to such beautiful daughters.
In spite of all that was said about them, the influence of their charms
brought many daring wooers to the street inhabited by Doña Elena, and
the sounds of the guitar, and voices filled with deep emotion chanting
their sweet love songs, could frequently be heard there, yet no one of
these nocturnal troubadours could pride himself upon having noticed
the smallest opening of a window or balcony in the dwelling of these
bewitching women. It happened, too, that none of these serenades ever
ended in bloody affrays, as was frequently the case in those times, and
these are our proofs for the assertion that the young ladies never gave
rise to any scandal which could injure their reputation.
But curiosity is never hindered by obstacles and is perhaps more
tenacious than love itself, and so sometimes the lovers and sometimes
inquisitive outsiders attempted to bribe the servants of the widow,
but succeeded only in learning that there are some servants who are
incorruptible. Yet their attempts did not stop there, for the slyest of
all found some means of entering into relationship with the only three
persons who visited the widow, that is, the Dominican friar, the Knight
of Santiago, and the lame, one-eyed captain.
But the friar when approached on the subject only said:
“It is not permitted to clergymen to speak about their children of
the confessional, for this might lead to indiscretions which, however
harmless, might become dangerous in the end.”
The Knight of Celibacy would answer angrily:
“This respectable lady is my friend. I don’t know anything more.”
And the veteran, looking askance at the interrogator with his remaining
eye, would say, twisting his moustache angrily:
“Por Dios Vivo! What I detest most is an inquisitive person.”
And all this contributed to the fact that Doña Elena and her daughters
were looked upon as mysterious people.
We have now only to state that they lived in a large house in the street
called “de las Infantas,” which in those days began in “La Hortaleza”
street, and ended in a dirty alley, which formed an angle following the
garden wall of the convent of the Barefooted Carmelites.
CHAPTER II.
THE WOOERS.
It was in the month of November.
The clocks struck ten, an hour of the night when most of the inhabitants
of Madrid are at home, and the streets were almost deserted, dark, and
silent. There was no moonlight and the stars were not very bright, for
the sky was clouded near the horizon.
A man entered Infanta street, coming from the direction of Hortaleza,
while at the same time another appeared from the other side. It was
impossible to distinguish their features, but one was taller and thinner
than the other. They advanced rapidly to the middle of the street,—it
was dangerous to walk near the walls as an arm clasping a dagger might
dart out from near any entrance,—saw each other and stopped, while at the
same time a third man, short and stout, came out of San Bartolome street,
and stopped likewise on seeing them. The three remained immovable about
fifteen or twenty steps apart, and scrutinized each other as closely as
the light would permit.
The space where the Bilboa Square is now situated was at that time
occupied by some houses belonging to the licenciado (jurisconsult)
Barquero, and it was there that, later on, the convent of the Capuchin
Friars was built, for reasons which will be explained later.
What the three men thought of each other is hard to tell, but it was
plain that each one was displeased to find that he was not alone. About
five minutes, which must have seemed an interminable time to them,
passed, and then all three turned their faces in the same direction,
and were able to watch Doña Elena’s house, and to see that a light was
visible through a crevice in one of the balconies.
“They are not asleep yet,” said one to himself, “but these fellows are in
my way.”
“Are they after the same thing as I?” the second asked himself.
“I shall be patient and come back later,” murmured the third.
“They are looking at the balcony.”
“Which of them is it?”
“This affair is beginning badly and may end worse.”
Another five minutes passed, and then the tallest one, losing patience,
turned and walked slowly up the street.
“Since he is going I sha’n’t stay here. I’ll follow him and try to bring
to light that which is as dark as this unfortunate night.” And the one
who came out of the garden also went up the street.
A few minutes after, the chubby one followed the other two.
We cannot tell whether each one knew that he was followed by the others,
or not, but after passing several streets they reached one called
“Majaderitos,” or to speak more correctly the first reached it, the
second being in Carretas street, and the third in Puerta de Sol.
In those days there was in this Majaderitos street a hostelry, the resort
of all gay young people, and more frequented by night than by day, as a
general thing. The doors were always locked at the hour prescribed by
law, but would be opened for every customer, and at all hours of the
day and night one could find there good eating and still better wines,
while as the house had many large apartments and small rooms, and as
the hotelkeeper and all the attendants were accommodating, wise, and
discreet, those who honored the house at any time that was convenient
found there independence, freedom, and forgetfulness of their troubles.
The muffled wanderer stopped at this inn and called. A small window
opened immediately, and a voice asked,
“Who is there?”
“A very good friend.”
Apparently this was the countersign, for the door opened, and the visitor
met a man who greeted him with,
“God protect you, Señor Alonso.”
“Are there many people here?”
“Nobody at all.”
“Then there will be no noise.”
“Are you alone?”
“Can’t you see that I am?”
“The whole house is at your disposal.”
“Put me wherever you please.—Here,” said Señor Alonso, entering a room
whose only furniture was a large table, “and give me whatever you like
for supper, but the best wine that you have, for I have something
important to talk to you about, and I want to get my head clear.”
“Would you like a piece of loin with gravy, and a slice of roast lamb?”
“Yes.”
The innkeeper went out, and Señor Alonso, taking off his coat, sat down
at the table with the lamplight full in his face. He was, as we have
already said, tall and spare, and we will now add that he was about
thirty, was well dressed, and that there was nothing extraordinary in his
manners except, perhaps, the keen glance of his small round gray eyes.
His movements were energetic, and he seemed endowed with a great deal of
muscular force. The length of his arm would have made him a dangerous
opponent with a sword in his hand, if he had known how to use it.
While the keeper was away someone else knocked at the door, and a few
minutes later, another person entered the room. There was no reason why
he should not stay, and so he stayed. Giving a “Good evening” to Señor
Alonso, and taking off his coat, he also sat down, at the other end of
the table, saying to the landlord,
“I leave the supper to your discretion, but the wine—”
“Shall be an old one and pure, Señor Hidalgo.”
“That is the kind I want.”
This second person was the one who had been following the first. He
looked about twenty-five and his face was aquiline, swarthy and bilious,
with a clear forehead, black hair, wide black eyes with long lashes,
and a glance fiery and expressive, sometimes penetrating, sometimes
melancholy. He showed much intelligence, not a little cunning, valor, and
courage. While taking his seat he glanced at Señor Alonso, who was also
watching him, and both frowned slightly.
The landlord went out to get the supper, but soon returned without it,
bringing with him another guest, apparently also a hidalgo, short and
bulky, with an apoplectic complexion, shining eyes and a large mouth
which was slightly opened in a pleasant smile. He might have been about
twenty-eight, his clothing was good and new although dark, contrasting
with that of the second arrival, whose clothes were not only bright
colored, but adorned with all the ornaments that were permitted to people
of his class. He saluted very politely, took off his coat, ordered his
supper, and sat down, whereupon the looks of the other two were centered
upon him, while he examined them alternately.
“I recognize them. They are the same ones,” said Señor Alonso to himself.
“I have followed them, and they are after me,” thought the one with the
black eyes. “So much the better, for now we will get rid of all our
doubts, and finish things once for all.”
The supper was brought in at last and the three men, as if obeying the
same impulse, filled their glasses and began to drink. Then they began
to eat in almost absolute silence. It was, however, only the calm before
the storm. Apparently the three hidalgos were only occupied with their
supper, but while eating and drinking they were stealing angry glances
at each other. Each one was trying to find some pretext for opening a
conversation, but could not find anything to suit, till at last he of the
bright clothes lost patience, and, calling the landlord, said,
“I cannot live without talking. Silence vexes me, and I cannot digest my
supper without conversation.”
“Since I am busy waiting upon you—”
“You will serve me better by listening to me.”
“You honor me more than I deserve.”
“I will tell you what has happened to me, and as you are older and wiser
than I, and have more experience, you shall advise me, for I feel half
stupified and perplexed.”
“In that case, speak, Señor Hidalgo. You have all you want here now, and
I can stay.”
“Tripas de Satanas! I am the most unhappy of living creatures, for I am
madly in love with the most beautiful and bewitching woman ever born.”
“If she is unmarried—”
“Yes.”
“And honorable, and of your own station in life—”
“She is all that.”
—Señor Alonso knit his brows. The chubby-cheeked no longer smiled.—
“And does not this noble lady return your favor?”
“She has given some indications that make me feel hopeful.”
“Well, if she does not love another.—”
“Vive Dios! But there are others who aspire to her love. I have just
learned it. I have seen it, and—I went to the street where the beauty
lives who has captivated me, and when I got there two other suitors
appeared. They watched as I watched. I waited and they waited. What ought
I to have done? At first the blood rushed to my head, and then I laughed,
for what followed seemed amusing to me. And now I don’t know how I feel.”
“And do you know your rivals?”
“In the daytime I could have recognized them, but in the dark all I could
see was their two bodies. When they found me there why did they not come
to me and tell me that I was disturbing them?”
“Excuse me,” said Señor Alonso, “but since you are talking in a loud
voice and I am not deaf—”
“Well, say what you please.”
“Since you kept silent and did not draw your sword, why do you think
it strange that they did the same? And besides, are you sure that they
looked at the same balcony and had the same object in view as yourself?”
“From the place where they stood—”
“It seems to me that I know one of your supposed rivals.”
“Indeed?” said the black-eyed quickly.
“As surely as this wine is from Arganda,” answered Señor Alonso, raising
his glass to drink. “And Crispin here cannot deny that it is Arganda
wine.”
“And I know the other rival,” said the stout man.
Two sparks shot from the eyes of the youngest, and he sprang to his feet.
“Vive el cielo!” he cried. “What are their names?”
“Here is one,” said Señor Alonso, pointing to their chubby companion, who
rose, and standing behind his chair as though to make a rampart of it,
laid his hand on his sword and said quietly,
“And you can see the other now.”
“Rayos!”
“Por el infierno!”
The three swords flashed, but for a moment the hidalgos stood motionless
and silent.
“Dios misericordioso!” exclaimed the innkeeper in accents of terror.
“What are you going to do? Have you all taken leave of your senses? At
least wait until you are sure that you have not made a mistake. And then,
how are you going to fight? There are three of you, and all enemies.”
“Let me alone.”
“How can I let you alone when you are trying to ruin me? The police
have never entered my house as yet, but if they should once succeed,
everything would be lost, and my reputation ruined.”
“That will do.”
“You must talk like reasonable beings, until you are convinced that there
is no possible agreement.”
“It is impossible. I would sooner die than yield.”
“And I, too.”
“I say so, too,” said the chubby-cheeked.
“The love of that enchanting being is my life.”
“To me it is happiness.”
“And I have lost my senses through her looks.”
“Well, let her belong to the bravest or the luckiest.”
“I suppose you are not going to kill each other _here_,” said the
innkeeper.
“No matter where.”
“I will scream and the patrol will come.”
“Stop your talking this moment!”
“Let us finish it at once.”
“I have decided, and I am at your disposal,” said Señor Alonso. “Which of
you is ready to fight with me?”
“I am,” said the youngest.
“I have nothing to say against that, for I have the comfort of knowing
that one of you will always be left for me.”
“You have too big an abdomen. It will be a hindrance to you.”
“And you have more tongue than is needed on such occasions.”
“Cuernos de Lucifer!”
“Come into the street.”
“No, right here.”
“Unfortunate men!” cried the innkeeper, seeing that the swords began to
move, that the eyes flashed, and that the rivals began to approach each
other. “They are going to kill each other, and they do not even know that
they are in love with the same woman.”
“There is some reason in that.” said the chubby-cheeked, “for it is
possible that we are deceived by appearances.”
“Vive Dios!” exclaimed the black-eyed. “You are getting scared already
and trying to find an excuse, but you won’t succeed, for only one of us
will be alive after to-night.”
“What I feel is not fear, but common sense.”
“Is it possible that there can be a mistake?”
“Yes.”
“Weren’t you watching in front of the licenciado Barquero’s house?”
“And I, too,” said Señor Alonso.
“Then since she lives there—”
“Thank God! you are not going to kill each other then,” interrupted the
landlord, whose face was covered with cold sweat, “you are not going
to,—no.”
“Why?”
“Doña Elena—But quiet down now. Put your swords in their scabbards and
sit down and listen to me.”
It was all that was needed to let the first burst of passion subside
without further consequences.
“Explain to us,” said the fat one, sitting down.
“In the first place, it is impossible that such hidalgos as you should
kill each other for such women, who, it is said, owe their beauty to the
diabolical arts of their mother.”
“Take care, Master Crispin! If you let your tongue run away like that⸺”
“I repeat that it is said so. But leaving that aside,—though it ought not
to be, for it is important,—there is still the fact that since there are
three daughters—”
“Three!”
“Didn’t you know that?”
“Fuego de Satanas!”
“It is quite possible that each of you may have fallen in love with a
different one. Then in that case you are not rivals, but you ought to be
the best of friends.”
“Certainly.”
“You, Señor Alonso, came here a month ago, and yet you do not know the
ground you are treading on.”
“I have been here for the last fifteen days.”
“And I twelve.”
“Bah! The subject is changing its aspect.”
“How are we going to find out whether it is the same one or not who has
set all our hearts on fire?”
“They are not like each other. Doña Sol has a dark complexion. Her eyes
are as black as jet—”
“That is the one I am in love with. She must have a soul of fire,” said
Señor Alonso.
“Still I am not satisfied,” said the youngest.
“Nor I either,” echoed the chubby-cheeked.
“The second is Doña Luz.”
“White?”
“Yes.”
“Thunder!”
“Oh!”
“Chestnut hair.”
“You mean red.”
“No.”
“And gray eyes.”
“Are you sure they are not blue?”
“Doña Estrella’s are blue. She is the youngest.”
“I am so happy!”
“What luck!”
“Light of my soul!”
“Star of my existence!”
“Sun, whose rays set my heart on fire!”
“Let’s have more wine, Master Crispin.”
“But I don’t want Arganda wine.”
“Let it come from Jerez.”
And the cries of rage were succeeded by joyous shouts. Their faces
expanded, and their lips opened in smiles. The host brought the bottles
with the fiery sherry, and they drank, toasting the beauty of Elena’s
daughters and the friendship which was to unite them from that moment and
last forever. They vowed to protect each other, and being true hidalgos
were sure to fulfil their oaths.
“Listen,” said Señor Alonso suddenly.
“We are listening.”
“Our friendship must be so firm that it will stand above all other
considerations.”
“A good idea, and well expressed.”
“Is not a friend worth more than a strange woman?”
“Much more.”
“Well, let us swear that not one of us will marry unless the others
succeed in their courtship, too.”
“I swear it.”
“And I.”
“Another cup.”
“To Elena’s beautiful daughters!”
“To our love!”
“To our success!”
“More wine, Master Crispin!”
“Yes, yes,” said the landlord, “wine instead of blood. But don’t you
forget that the faultfinders—”
“I shall tear your tongue out.”
“Let us be more quiet, my friends,” said the chubby-cheeked. “Why
shouldn’t we know all that is said about Doña Elena and her daughters?
We will lose nothing by listening to Master Crispin, and it is only just
that we should appreciate his good intentions.”
“You speak sensibly.”
The landlord brought out more wine.
However, before we repeat what he said, it would be well to take more
particular notice of these hidalgos.
CHAPTER III.
IN WHICH WE COMPLETE OUR ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE THREE WOOERS, AND OTHER
THINGS.
We will begin with Señor Alonso whose surname was Pacheco. He was a
native of Salamanca, where he had studied philology, and left his home
because he was displeased at his father’s second marriage. He followed
the only career possible to him in that epoch, that is he enlisted and
served for three years in Italy, leaving behind him proofs of his great
valor. This profession might have proved lucrative for him, for he was
much thought of by his chiefs, but he was dangerously wounded, during
his three years service, and before he had completely recovered his
strength, he received a letter from his father in which he informed
him of the death of his step-mother and complained of feeling sad and
lonely during these last years of his life. Since the cause of Señor
Alonso’s discontent was thus removed, and as he loved his father, and
was besides growing tired of the reckless life of a soldier, he left its
perils and its glory to others, and returned home. Two years passed
away, and his father died, leaving him a sufficient income to allow him
to live decently, and a lawsuit of great importance which, two years
later, brought him to court, where he had been only once before, for a
few days on his way to Italy. Señor Alonso had never been in love, first,
on account of the circumstances in his family, and afterward, because,
in his life as a soldier, he had never had a chance to think of women,
except as objects of diversion, beings who helped to make his life more
pleasant. For the last two months of his stay in Madrid, he had been
absorbed in his lawsuit, which was apparently approaching its end and
looked so promising that it seemed not only possible but probable that
he would soon find himself quite wealthy. Eight days before our story
opens, he had in coming out of the church of San Jose,—which is now no
longer in existence,—noticed among a crowd of people the head of a lady
on whose face he had been compelled to fix his gaze, even against his
own wishes. We may mention that the hidalgo’s suddenly became as red as
though the blood were trying to rush out, and then he turned pale and
nervous, and began sighing and trembling as though he were quite weary.
What had happened? He himself could not explain it, but the fact is that
Doña Sol’s black eyes were the cause of this commotion. It was only for
a moment, a single moment, that the young girl had looked into the face
of the hidalgo, but it was enough to make him feel as he had never felt
before, and he became so excited that very little was wanting to make
him forget that he was in a sacred place, and force himself through the
crowd toward her, causing the greatest scandal. But he soon lost sight
of those eyes of fire, and provokingly tempting lips, and longing to
see them again, he moved forward, elbowing his way from one side to the
other, and looking about him constantly, until at last he reached the
street. Here he could move at ease, for the faithful (Catholic Christians
who live in obedience to the church) were dispersing in every direction.
He looked about him like a dog nosing in the air, but he had lost his
black eyes. He ran up the street, and then back, but the bewitching
being had completely disappeared, making it impossible for him to find
out who she was or where he could see her. When at last he rested he
was out of breath. He clenched his fist with all the force of despair,
for his desires were kindling more and more as the obstacles which he
encountered increased. Thus the hidalgo stood for more than half an hour,
leaning against a wall, with drooping head, eyes closed, arms folded, and
mind engaged in contemplating the lady of the black eyes. As he could
do nothing more, he had to resign himself to fate, trusting that an
accident might bring about better luck. He went to church the next day,
but without meeting her. Thus he passed four days, always preoccupied,
sleeping very little, and eating still less, when one morning, returning
from mass, and passing down Las Infantas street, he heard a woman’s
voice, and raising his eyes, could not restrain an exclamation of
surprise and joy, for there on the balcony was the bewitching brunette,
leaning out to call after a man who was just leaving the house. The man,
who was small, ugly and stupid looking, returned and entered. Doña Sol,
as if by accident, looked at the hidalgo, left the balcony, turned round
to close the blind, gave him another glance, and disappeared.
“Ah,” sighed Señor Alonso, as though he wished to send his soul after the
young lady, “how happy I am!”
There was no longer any necessity to search for her; all he had to do was
to approach her. Judging correctly that the little man was a servant,
he decided to wait for his return, imagining that as his purse was well
stocked it was all that was necessary. In less than five minutes the
servant came back and started on his errand. Señor Alonso followed him,
stopped him in La Horteleza street, and, showing him a gold piece, said,
“Don’t be offended at my offering you a little present. Take this.”
“What do you wish?” asked the servant, smiling, and examining the hidalgo
from head to foot.
“Almost nothing, but it is a great deal to me. I worship your lady—”
“Ah, already?”
“I am a hidalgo, have enough to live on, and before two months are over I
shall be quite rich, and you, too, if you serve me.”
“I understand.”
“My name is Alonso Pacheco.—But here, take this.”
“No.”
“You refuse to serve me? Perhaps your lady is no longer mistress of her
heart?”
“She loves no one,” said the servant, candidly.
“How fortunate!”
“I am obliged to tell my noble lady everything I see or hear in the
street, and everything I do or say.”
“In that case—”
“May God keep you!” said the servant, turning and running away so quickly
that it would have been impossible to overtake him.
Señor Alonso was left behind with the money in his hand.
“Vive el cielo! Could anybody imagine such a thing?”
He had, however, the consolation of thinking that his words would reach
the ears of the beautiful young girl, and that she would make him some
sign if she should reciprocate his affection, or wish to correspond
with him, and he was glad that fortune favored him so far that there
was no rival in the case. Next day Señor Alonso went again to Las
Infantas street, and was rewarded by seeing the young girl, who opened
the balcony, put out her head and immediately disappeared. And the same
thing happened day after day, and as Doña Sol always gave the gallant
a glance, he was induced to think that she reciprocated his affection,
although he expected still to have to surmount many difficulties. He
came again at night to look at the house and sigh, and behaved in every
respect like a beardless lad of seventeen. He had never been in love
before, and now it had taken such firm hold of his heart that it would
never leave it again. Señor Alonso regretted very much that he had never
learned to play the guitar, and that his voice was not pleasant, for
he was deprived of the pleasure of serenading his beloved. Pacheco was
honorable, brave, and had a noble heart, his one fault being that his
only solution of difficult questions was the sword. That was the result
of his old training and soldier life. He had thought more than once that
the best plan would be to scare the stupid servant with a cudgel, instead
of offering him money, but fortunately he could not find an opportunity
of carrying out his absurd resolution.
* * * * *
Now, let us say a few words about the black-eyed hidalgo. His name was
Jacinto Carmona, he was from Sevilla, and he, too, had enough to live
decently, although he was not rich, and spent all he had—and more too—in
enjoying himself, and dressing as extravagantly as possible. At ten years
old he had been left an orphan under the guardianship of a clergyman, a
man of honor, but very strict and severe, who had always tried to do his
duty in bringing up the orphan in the ways of virtue and training him to
work and to be a useful man. He made him study Latin for five years, but
could not accomplish anything more. The boy was as turbulent as possible,
and the more severe the punishment, the more he rebelled, the result of
which was that the good priest became so weary that he had finally to
acknowledge himself conquered. The good man complained of his misfortune,
but his young pupil complained still louder, asserting that he was the
victim of exaggerated severity and the stale prejudices of his guardian.
“You can see for yourself,” he would say. “You have only to look at my
clothes to see how I am treated. They have been worn out and mended so
often that it would be hard to tell which was the original stuff. Didn’t
my father leave me an income of six hundred ducats? Why shouldn’t I be
dressed decently? And as for eating, even without counting fast days, how
often do I get meat? Very seldom, indeed. For my uncle says that gluttony
is a mortal sin, and whenever he wants to punish me he makes me do
without breakfast, dinner, or supper, and as he wants to punish me pretty
often, the result is that I fast half the days in the year. That’s the
reason that I am so thin and pale and weak, and in the end I shall die,
not from any disease, but from starvation. Though my uncle does say that
I look that way on account of my sins, and that I would be possessed by
an evil spirit, if it were not for his fervent prayers which the good
Lord has heard.”
Whenever Jacinto spoke in this strain he appeared much moved, his eyes
would become moist and at times he would even weep. And being a handsome
young man, he always appealed to the women, so that he found plenty of
defenders whenever he quarrelled with his uncle. The fair sex was his
weakness, and his follies in this direction excited serious disgust
in more than one of his acquaintances. When the young man reached his
twenty-fifth year, his uncle surrendered to him his inheritance, in
a greatly improved condition, and gave him some good advice besides.
Jacinto felt like a man who has been a long time in prison and suddenly
recovers his liberty. He threw himself with avidity into a life of
dissipation that would have speedily accomplished his ruin if his good
uncle had not continued his advice and sometimes admonished him severely.
“I want to see the world,” said the young fellow at last, and gathering
together all the money he could obtain, and bidding his uncle farewell,
he took the road to Madrid, leaving behind him three women who had been
foolish enough to believe in the love of a young scapegrace.
Apart from this failing, Jacinto was very kind-hearted, and could not
look upon distress unmoved. What was his object in going to Madrid? He
wanted expansion, emotions, life, and went without any definite object.
He had never been seriously in love, and, to his misfortune, the same
fate as Señor Alonso’s overtook him. One day he saw Doña Luz on one of
the balconies of her house, and, as we have mentioned, she neither looked
at people on the sly, or sought to hide herself, as did her sisters.
Jacinto stared at her, and she contemplated him with perfect tranquility.
He felt that his heart was beating more strongly than usual, and Doña
Luz, probably unconsciously, smiled.
“Where am I?” cried the young man. “Not even in dreamland can one
conceive such a vision of beauty.”
The quiet look, revealing the tranquility of its owner’s mind, charmed
the young man all the more in that he was beginning to tire of his stormy
pleasures. He could contain himself no longer, but lifting his head was
preparing to call to her with his customary daring, when Doña Luz smiled
a second time, and disappeared.
“She would not have listened to me!” exclaimed the young man in despair.
“And yet she smiled to me when she left. Now that I think of it, it would
have been folly to do what I was thinking of, and she has given me a
lesson that will teach me to be more prudent.”
After this Doña Luz came to the balcony every day at the same time,
always perfectly tranquil, and always smiling, and Jacinto finished by
falling seriously in love. Not knowing any one in Madrid, he could not
find out who the lady was, and as luck would have it, he never saw the
stupid servant, either going or coming. This was the situation of affairs
when he met the other two gallants.
* * * * *
And now we will finish by saying a few words concerning the plump
chubby-cheeked one.
His name was Santiago Morcillo. He was a native of Leon, had no parents,
and was one of those quiet beings whom it is difficult to rouse, either
through anger or pleasure. When anything unpleasant happened, he said
only, “God’s will be done,” and if he had reason to feel pleased, showed
it only by a smile or by going to church to thank God for the favors
which he bestowed on him. His father’s conduct had been disorderly, and
he left but few unencumbered possessions, his affairs being in confusion,
but the good-natured Santiago did not mind this. He was quite the
opposite of his father and, by force of work, economy and shrewdness,
he recovered what was lost, and even improved his condition so far that
finally he was free from debt and in easy circumstances. Until then he
had never thought of women, and when he did, he said,
“I shall take a rest now. It would be folly to begin a dangerous
experiment immediately. My mother was a very virtuous woman, but all
women are not alike.”
The good Morcillo was not only economical, but somewhat avaricious, and
it occurred to him to use the influence of his relatives to obtain some
sort of office, and with this object in view he had come to the court at
Madrid. One morning he went to mass at St. Joseph’s Church, and standing
near the entrance, and turning aside to let a caballero pass, he saw Doña
Estrella, who was kneeling in prayer, her virgin lips moving in religious
fervor, and her eyes raised to Heaven with a most sweet and tender
expression. For the first time Señor Santiago felt a vivid impression,
and involuntarily he made a somewhat impious comparison between the
sublime young girl and an angel. He was always timid in the presence
of women, but this being was not a woman, she was a cherub. Being a
good Catholic, the hidalgo instantly repented of his sinful attention
to worldly affairs, and turning his back upon the young lady, began to
repeat his prayers; but he was unable to forget the cherub with the blue
eyes, and ten minutes later, moved by an irresistible attraction, he
turned and looked again. He saw her a second time, and felt his heart
beating. When the mass was over, the good Morcillo could contain himself
no longer. He turned quickly round and looked for her. The mother was
very near her daughter, and in front, one behind the other, were her
two sisters. However, in the crowd it was not easy to see that the four
belonged together, and besides, the hidalgo had no eyes for any except
the fair one. He tried to get nearer to her, but every one rose at the
same moment, and he again lost sight of her for a few moments. He tried
his best to force a way for himself through the crowd, but, being quite
confused, he paid no attention as to where he planted his feet, and many
of the faithful accosted him roughly, while others threw themselves
against him and prevented his getting out. The poor fellow was almost
suffocated, crushed and choking. He could hardly breathe, and perspired
freely, while his face became livid. His stoutness was his great
misfortune, and he missed the lady.
“Is it possible that I have fallen in love?” he asked himself when he got
into the street.
He could not forget the fair face, and began to think the matter over
with as much calmness as he could muster in his embarrassment. Having
met such an angel of a woman, why should he not marry her? A bachelor’s
life was very nice, but only up to a certain age. He went to mass the
next day, and again he saw Estrella, and lost her in leaving the church.
At last, on the day when our story begins, Morcillo, like the others,
discovered by accident the residence of the charming maiden. He saw her
on the balcony. Nothing else happened, but, feeling sure that he was
in love, and that his will power was not strong enough to resist his
passion, he made up his mind to go on with his wooing, and not to stop,
unless this marvelous being with the face of an angel should prove to be
a demon, which was, of course, impossible.
* * * * *
Now we know the three hidalgos, who did not resemble each other in the
slightest degree.
(_To be continued._)
QUATRAIN.
To dash irradiant on the barren shore
The wave is born; the lark to sing and soar;
To traffic with the sun upsprings the tree—
Man only has no certain destiny.
—_H. C. H._
[Illustration: EXTRACTS FROM THE LOG OF THE “RITA”
BEING A DISCONNECTED ACCOUNT OF THE DOINGS OF SOME ARTISTS ON A SUMMER
CRUISE....]
[Illustration]
“First day out. We can scarcely realize we have left behind the heat,
the noise, and the dust of the city for three weeks. Far to the north,
overhung by clouds of noisome smoke, our late prison is gradually sinking
from sight. Only the tallest spires and houses can be seen. As the
distance grows greater our hearts grow lighter, and dance in unison with
the leaping waves. The day is a miracle of light and color,—and we’re a
happy crew!”
[Illustration]
“Came very near being wrecked last night. Even the moon was full—but that
fact saved the lives of all on board. Spike made a sketch this morning
that will explain better than words.”
[Illustration]
“The fashionable portrait painter’s man and girl flirting on the shore
turned out to be rather clever devices for frightening crows. He has been
advised to consult an oculist.”
[Illustration]
“Fuzzie-Wuzzie and the Languid Aquarellist got together in the forecastle
to hatch a scheme to get possession of the champagne. Nick, the Nipper,
woke up and heard the conversation. He called to Mock-a-Hi. Hi took in
the situation at a glance, and skewered Fuzzie and the Aquarellist with
his prize finger-nail (with which he does his etchings), and thus the
villains were balked. The conspirators had been eating Anti-Puncture,
so that when Hi withdrew his nail, none of the wind came out of their
tires. There was little blood and much wine spilled over this affair. The
Skipper instantly had the schemers put in irons, and Nick, the Nipper,
was allowed to torture them in their helpless condition with a few of his
songs and imitations, as a reward for his vigilance.”
[Illustration]
“To-day we took on board a small party of guests, several ladies being
among the number. The finished style in which our fashionable portrait
painter received the latter excited general admiration. There is very
little doubt but that he will be promoted to be Assistant Skipper, with a
cook’s pay.”
[Illustration]
“The Skipper complained this evening of “feeling queer in the head,”
and the Duke made unkindly reference to the moon (which is known to
have a peculiar influence in certain cases), but got “sat on” for his
inopportune display of wit. Fuzzie’s allusion to the banquet in the cabin
last night was perhaps more truly explanatory.”
[Illustration]
“Sailing close to shore,—and enjoying the beautiful glimpses of field and
wood seen through the golden haze of a summer afternoon. What a glorious
land!”
[Illustration]
“The Languid Aquarellist is singing the national anthem. Perhaps he is
being unconsciously stirred by all these wondrous beauties of nature.”
[Illustration]
“Here Truthful Freddie—sits by the hour, in the golden evening glow,
dreaming of—what?”
[Illustration]
“Salad day. Before seven o’clock this morning Curly and the Duke
had caught enough crabs to supply the mess of a man-of-war. The
salad—prepared by the Duke, of course—was pronounced excellent in
technique, although somewhat after the manner of Bouguereau, being
extremely smooth and delicate. But this can be forgiven in a salad.”
[Illustration]
“Late this afternoon we passed a sailing party homeward-bound. As they
passed, quite close, Spike, with his ever-ready pencil, transferred
several of the most conspicuous members to paper.”
[Illustration]
“For his marvelous success in mixing salads, the Duke, who studied the
culinary art in Paris and Rome, has been made Second Mate.”
[Illustration]
“Three days out. The Languid Aquarellist insisted this morning on going
ashore and shooting ducks—wild ones. After he had almost decimated
a farmer’s prize flock of pekins (without noticing their barnyard
confidence in man)—he was promoted by the Captain for excellent gunnery,
and the addition to the yacht’s stores.”
[Illustration]
“Tomson, (of the Barber’s-Own School), spent the entire afternoon trying
to convince Miss ⸺ that his own peculiar method of painting is the acme
of art. Miss ⸺ seemed delighted with his efforts, and thinks his pictures
are “just lovely.” She wants him to attempt an imaginary portrait of the
sea serpent.
* * * * *
Owing to the ceaseless motion of the boat, Tomson’s pictures are
decidedly impressionistic.”
[Illustration]
—“And then Bill Weatherbones gave us his version of the great naval
combat at Santiago, in which he took a very prominent part. ‘I tole yer
how it wuz,’ Bill began; ‘it wuz dis way, sur. I wuz a-settin’ on de aft
hatch a-smokin’ a cigar Bill Sampson giv’ me, an’ Bill an’ Winnie Schley
wuz a-workin’ out a little game wid de cards. Bill t’rowed down his papes
an’ sed,—
“I aint got no luck, I got to shake yuse fellers. Mc. he’s sent me de
wire to go over an’ chin dat man Shafter, wot’s runnin’ de army push,
an’ make him git a move on hisself.” “Don’t go, Bill,” sez I, “send
one o’ de gang, it’s too hot fer yer, wot’s de good yer workin’?” “Dem
aint me orders,” sez Bill, den turnin’ to Winnie Schley, he giv’ him de
stern look, an’ sed, “Winnie, yer do de stunts here till I gets back wid
meself, an’ if de Spaniels tries ter get out de bottle squirt de guns on
’em.” “I’m on,” sez Winnie, an’ he giv’ me de wink, “if de farmers shows
up I shoots.” Den de Admiral he gits in his little ya’t an’ sails off.
Winnie den piped up de grog all eround, an’ de game went on ag’in. I
aint much stuck on de game de navy push puts up, it’s on de squar’, an’
so I set dere gappin’ an’ feedin’ me face, while de boys plays. All of
a sudding I seen over dere where de guy Hobson sinked de Merrymac some
smoke. I wunk t’ meself, but didden say nothin’ to break de boys up,
but soon Winnie Schley looked up an’ seen it. “Hully gee!” he yelled,
“de blokes is a-chasin’ out,” an’ he grabbed a bunch o’ flags an’ did
de signal act o’ his life. He worked dose flags till he looked like a
skirt dancer. De udder ships looked like a back yard wid de clothes-line
full of red-flannel shirts from de wavin’ de guys put up. “Git dem guns
loaded,” yelled Schley, “yuse blokes look lively, dere.” Boom! busted out
one o’ de big guns, an’ de noise it knock de win’ outten me works. It
hit de Spaniel an’ turned him bottom upwards; when he come up ag’in he
shot his gun at us, but it wuz half a mile too high. Schley he rung out
de joyous laugh. “Dere optics aint no good,” sez he, den he lets anudder
ball go at him dat went clean t’rough him an’ hit anudder ship two miles
off an’ sunk it in a minnit. Den up comes anudder Spaniel, an’ I seen⸺’”
[Illustration]
“The steering gear is a little rattled: a puff of wind blew a lock of
Mate Fuzzie-Wuzzie’s hair into the wheels, and instantly the vessel swung
round. The engine was stopped, and in the excitement that ensued, a case
of champagne was almost lost overboard. We had to run backward for a mile
and a-half to disengage Fuzzie’s hair from the machinery. Fuzzie has been
reduced.”
[Illustration]
“Spike’s interest in the war has grown to be a matter of serious
inconvenience to all on board. He has literally covered the yacht
with Military and Naval cartoons. The boat will certainly have to be
re-painted. This morning he came on deck with a drawing he did sometime
during the night, which represents Uncle Sam admonishing Spain to stop
kicking the “yaller dorg”—Cuba. It’s not half bad, but his claim of it’s
being the best yet made on the war is a little strong. He has been so
busy admiring it all day he has not thought to make any others—and we
have had time to breathe.”
[Illustration]
“We came to anchor this evening near the wreck of the “Two Sisters,” in
the vicinity of which—on the shore—was situated a dog-pound, containing
some two hundred canines awaiting execution.... We enjoyed a night of
delightful rest.”
[Illustration]
“The Skipper went out on his bicycle gig to take a survey of the harbor,
but the roadway was running so high he found it difficult to make any
headway, and had to return to the yacht.”
[Illustration]
“Curly has been pronounced unfit for the duties of an able-bodied seaman,
and has been handed over to the Duke for treatment. It is suspected he
is afflicted with some curious, and hitherto unknown, form of love.
Yesterday the Duke administered a very carefully prepared shrimp salad,
but it failed utterly to bring about the desired results. He’s still very
pensive, and seems to wish to be alone. Grave symptoms indeed. Ever since
our last visit ashore, when he was seen walking through the fields with
a tall, willowy creature of undeniable attractiveness, he has been very
dejected and apathetic.
[Illustration]
We shall try keel-hauling as a last resort,—but trust it will not be
necessary.”
[Illustration]
“The last glimpse of the glorious old Bay, and the last day afloat. The
cruise has been one of continuous delight, but we can not but regret
the end has come, and we must tread the bricks of uninteresting streets
instead of the swaying deck of the Rita. But, as Bill Weatherbones would
say, “Wot’s de use? Man aint born to be happy,—an’ dats straight.”
[Illustration: THE END]
[Illustration: THE FOUR FEARS OF OUR GENERAL
_SOUVENIRS of CHILDHOOD_]
_Adapted from the French by Adele Bacon._
THE SECOND FEAR.
The battle on the mountain had passed off much better than we had dared
to hope, and, although we had not found our enemies as sound asleep as
we had desired, our early morning attack had never-the-less completely
surprised them. We managed to seize their recent position on the plateau
with scarcely any loss. This position, although a very exposed one, was
worth a great deal more, from the strategist’s point of view, than the
valley in which we were encamped the night before. Besides, in making
war, it is always desirable to occupy those places voluntarily selected
and defended by an opponent.
Our work, however, was by no means over; another sort of effort lay
before us.
Our foes, driven from their position on the heights, had succeeded in
forming another; and were strongly entrenched on the lower extremity
of the same plateau, from the loftier end of which we had so lately
dislodged them.
With a considerable amount of adroitness, they had succeeded in placing a
little river, called the Oued-el-Kebir, between our camp and their own.
We were compelled therefore to cross this river, in order to force them
to move farther on, and abandon to us the territory that we both coveted.
We had resolved, once our morning’s work was over, to enjoy a much needed
repose on our hardly earned mountain; but, towards noon, everybody was on
foot, excepting several badly wounded soldiers, and the little group of
officers, who had chatted together near the General’s tent the preceding
evening, were invited to drink a cup of coffee with him in the most
picturesque smoking room that I have ever seen, although the picturesque
quality is by no means rare in Algeria.
It was an enclosure walled in by rocks in the shape of heaps of large
pennies, arranged side by side, so as to form an amphitheatre, the slope
of which permitted us to see, by the aid of our glasses, the new field on
which we were soon to operate.
The country, which was beautiful so far as the scenery was concerned,
presented no insolvable military problems; it was wooded, but not
impenetrable.
We would of course have much preferred not to be separated from the
place of attack by a long, serpentine strip of water, which, swollen by
the recent melting of the snow, added materially to the defence of our
adversaries. It goes without saying that we possessed neither artillery
to protect our passage nor boats to effect it. In pursuits such as now
occupied us, a train of artillery could only be an encumbrance, and the
river which flowed sometimes in a valley, and sometimes between high,
steep banks, made it almost a certainty that we should get a thorough
wetting before we reached the other side. We knew that the General had
sent the necessary men to measure the depth of that barrier of water,
and to see if we should have the good luck to find a place for fording
it. In default of this, we should be forced to make use of our temporary
bridges, but we did not wish to count absolutely on them. In making war,
one can usually tell best what to do on the spur of the moment. While
waiting for the necessary information to be brought in for making such
preparations as were possible, and for the night to come, fully half a
day must elapse. The General had thought that crossing at night was less
dangerous. Little Jacques, grown up, had no longer a horror of shadows,
and even liked to utilize them. When we had considered, found great fault
with, and speculated upon the meditated expedition, we returned to our
conversation of the preceding night.
The General had had the imprudence to speak to us of _two_ stories; we
had heard one; what about the other?
Captain Robert,—the officer with whom the General sometimes quarrelled,
perhaps because he felt that he had an especial partiality for him,—being
slyly urged on by the rest of us, had the indiscretion to ask him for it.
“Oh, as to that one, my children, you must not insist,” said the General.
“It is only a story of childhood, which has none of the qualities which
made the other acceptable to grown men. I have no taste for failures,—you
will cause me to be guilty of one.”
“General,” replied the obstinate captain, “you have just called us your
children, therefore a child’s story is quite suitable for us. It will
rejuvenate us. Children are amused by everything, you know, and if
by chance your second tale is a trifle more gay than the first, very
well,—we shall enjoy it.”
“Gay!” responded the General, “I don’t know about that. However, it is
not a tragedy. But you shall see. You wish it,—so here goes!”
* * * * *
“Perhaps all of you here are not fond of the water,” began the General,
casting a significant glance at the river which had preoccupied our
thoughts.
“That depends on circumstances,” responded the captain; “water is very
good, but there are times when one would rather do without it.”
“Water, mingled with too many gun-shots, and after a difficult march,
might prove unhealthy,” interrupted a hoarse voice, that of the doctor.
“I should not recommend it as a remedy for my cold, but the water of your
story, General,—for I suppose by your commencement your history is going
to be a wet one,—will perhaps do me good.”
“Good!” said the General, “here is the doctor who imagines I am going to
give him a tonic. But so long as you have wished for it doctor, you must
drink it. But no more interruptions:—I have already forgotten where I
was.”
“General,” replied the doctor, “you have just said ‘every one here is
perhaps not fond of water;’ and you were not contradicted.”
“Thanks!” said the General. “And silence in the ranks; I will recommence.”
“Every one here does not like the water I said, very well, when I was
little it seems I was of that same opinion. I didn’t like water. Let us
understand each other fully as to the importance which you should attach
to my repugnance to this fluid, during these first years of my life.
I accepted water in many ways: I loved it sugared, and even with a
little orange flavor, but I hated it cold on my face in winter, and only
allowed myself to be washed willingly when it was warm. I liked, too,
to stand on a bridge, and watch the water flowing underneath, and by a
strange contradiction, I even enjoyed going on it, in a boat—_with papa_.
But I should have had a horrible fear to fall in the water, or have it
go suddenly over my head. To be frank, I believe I should have been
frightened to have it up to my ankles, otherwise than in a foot bath. But
then, one is not born perfect.
“This fear of the water was the despair of my father. He, like a
practical man, thought my love of boats and navigation, and my horror
of all actual contact with it, were contradictory if not incompatible
traits; that the liking for it on the one hand and the dislike of it
on the other argued as complete an absence of logic in the brain of
his little son as in his physical and moral organisms. He was right.
Aunt Marie and my mother were guilty of the sugared and warm water,
but my antipathy for it, otherwise than in these forms, seemed to be a
fundamental part of my nature.
“‘There is a reform for you to make in my absence,’ said my father to
his wife and his sister-in-law. ‘If I don’t find it accomplished when I
return, I agree in any way that you may find best, you will force me to
intervene myself, with a method perhaps a little brusque, but of which I
have more than once seen the efficacy.
“‘Understand that if I have to throw Jacques into the water like a little
dog, to teach him to save himself, I shall do it over and over again,
until he finds it agreeable, until he conquers his fright, and learns to
swim. Jacques pretends he wishes to become a sailor, like his father,
but I shall not allow him to become one of those sailors,—and there are
such,—who are actually afraid of the water.’”
“‘Afraid of the water? The child is not _afraid_ of it,’ said mamma.
“‘It is only the cold which he dislikes,’ added my aunt.
“‘Really! And you can suggest no other remedy than to heat the brooks and
the rivers, the lakes and the seas, expressly for our little darling?
That would be, according to your ideas, a reform more easily carried out
than the correction of his fear of cold water!’
“‘Correction! Correction!’ replied aunt Marie impatiently. ‘One can not
“correct” one’s nervous system at will, my dear brother, one has to cure
it as one can. There are certain organisms which must be left to correct
themselves, with age. Our Jacques is brave in many ways, as you well
know; he has really only one fear,—that of contact with cold water. Well,
that will pass in time, as he grows older.’
“‘Time! time!’ returned my father, ‘time passes, but not our defects,
when, instead of correcting them, we leave them alone, or envelop them in
cotton. Sister Marie, do not change my boy into a little girl.’
“‘Your son,’ responded aunt Marie, ‘is as yet neither a boy nor a girl:
he is an angel, and you ought to be glad of it.’
“‘Glad!’ replied my father. ‘I can tell you about that better on my
return. However, I reserve the right of trying to find a young sailor
in your angel, some fine morning. I will not take you unawares. I have
warned both you and my wife. When I come back, I will take your little
Jacques with me in a boat, and whether he knows how to swim or not, I
will make him brave, in spite of himself.’
“This conversation made my aunt and my mother tremble. Although they
were apparently against me, they were really on my side. They tried to
encourage me, telling me I should be a sailor first, and a brave one,—an
admiral soon after. This delighted me. ‘What a pity, though,’ I said to
myself, ‘that water is so cold and wet, and that one can not walk on it
without sinking. Why should it be so?’”
* * * * *
“The moment has come, to speak to you of my uncle, my father’s brother.
This brother, who was older than my father by about ten years, was a
retired officer. What a wonderful man he was too! It seems to me that I
had known only great and heroic people, in my childhood. It was hardly
possible to turn out badly, in the midst of such fine beings. What is
good in me, I owe altogether to them. My uncle had traveled extensively.
He had taken part in all the campaigns of the first Republic, and of the
First Empire, and had brought back from them a love of flowers which
you may explain as best you can. He loved the land as much as my father
loved the sea, but only for the purpose of covering it with flowers.
He possessed a charmingly situated property, on the outskirts of the
town, where he cultivated, with excessive care, a magnificent collection
of roses, celebrated throughout the entire horticultural world. This
collection contained more than four thousand varieties: I repeat, four
thousand, catalogued, numbered, each with a name and a history. Certain
people pretend to tell them apart at a glance, but I must say it was
easier to confound them in an equal degree of admiration. I should have
felt unjust in preferring one to another, and I admitted a difference
in them only in their colors. My father called his brother’s place ‘the
Garden of Roses.’ The Garden of Roses was for me the only serious rival
of the court of aunt Marie’s hospital, and do you know why? Not because
it was sweeter smelling, and richer in flowers than any place I have ever
seen elsewhere; not because I always brought back beautiful _bouquets_
for my mother, for aunt Marie and for her chapel; not because it was
bordered on one entire side by a pretty little river, but because upon
that river my uncle Antoine, out of honor for his brother, the sailor,
kept a small, but very attractive looking, boat. In this boat, which
appeared immense to me, my father used to take me on short voyages, not
in the water, but on the water, which frightened me so much. When I was
navigating on the little stream, how many times have I imagined that I
was on the ocean, _en route_ for America, India, the North Pole, or the
Island of Robinson Crusoe.
“At the time of which I speak, my father, after a year passed upon the
seas of China, returned to spend a three months’ holiday with us. I felt
that I must make the most of it. The year before, I had been delighted to
go with him on many little expeditions, both by land and water. But this
year, alas! I expected little pleasure on the latter. One of the first
questions he asked was whether I was still afraid of my old enemy. I was
obliged to confess that I still felt the same in regard to it.
“‘What! But how old are you?’
“Brother,’ said aunt Marie, ‘he was just six years old when you left us.’
“‘But according to that your pupil is now seven.’
“‘Yes, papa, seven,’ said I. ‘I am getting to be a big boy.’
“‘Big! Yes, that is possible. But the larger you are, my poor Jacques,
the less excuse you have for not knowing how to swim, for having fear of
the water.’
“‘He has tried,’ interposed my aunt. ‘I had uncle Antoine’s gardener, who
is an excellent swimmer, give him a lesson in the river, but he came
out so blue with cold that I dared not let him go back again. Although
he neither cried nor complained, I am certain he would have died in less
than five minutes.’
“‘You believe that, perhaps, my poor dear sister,’ replied my father.
‘It is, however, an experience which he will have to repeat. But I warn
Jacques that in the meantime, or until he is able to swim, at least a few
feet, there will no longer be a boat for him at the “Garden of Roses.”
The St. Jacques (which was the name given in my honor to my uncle’s
boat)—the St. Jacques must remain at anchor.’
“This was terrible, but it was irrevocable. It never entered my head to
try to make my father alter his decision.
“Then he said to me, ‘My boy, you love boats, but hate the water;
when you have rendered two such contrary propositions a little more
harmonious, when you are no longer afraid of wetting your precious little
skin, you may voyage all you like in uncle Antoine’s boat. Until then,
do not dream of doing so. One should never go in a boat unless one is
capable of taking care of one’s self in case of accident.’
“The following morning we went to see uncle Antoine.
* * * * *
“My father and I at length set out. It was good to have him back, to hold
his hand, and our disagreement upon one point had not seriously troubled
our friendly relations. When we arrived, we found uncle Antoine, who
occasionally suffered from the gout, incapable of taking a step in the
garden. My father offered to give him his revenge for the game of chess
which he had gained from him the year before,—the day previous to his
departure.
“‘As for you, Jacques,’ said uncle Antoine, ‘as you have no gout, run
away, pick my cherries, eat my strawberries, look at my roses, go and see
your chickens and rabbits and feed them for me. You would perhaps do well
to take along a book, your ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’ go and read it in the
hammock. Take a nap, if that pleases you, but whatever you do, be good.
When one is not watched, there is a double duty and a double merit in
being good.’
“‘I will add,’ put in my father, ‘that you may go in the path by the edge
of the water, and you will do well to watch attentively what goes on in
the river. Flowing water is an instructive spectacle for a boy like you.’
“‘Instructive?’ queried my uncle.
“‘Full of information,’ answered my father. ‘It is in the water that the
fishes swim. It is in the water also that Jacques will have to swim very
shortly,—like a fish.’
“‘Like a fish?’ said my uncle. ‘Then you will have to give him fins.’
“‘One doesn’t need fins to swim with,’ replied my father. ‘Frogs do not
have them, yet they manage to swim beautifully. If Jacques will examine
those which he disturbs when he approaches the bank, if he studies the
way they keep their heads out of the water in order to breathe, and the
art with which they manage their arms and legs, in directing themselves
about in that beautiful fresh water which so frightens your nephew, he
will receive from these little animals a swimming lesson superior to any
that your gardener can give him.’
“‘That is very true’, uncle Antoine replied. ‘Go, Jacques,—go take your
lesson. It has never before occurred to me what services my frogs could
render you.’
“I was about to start, when my father stopped me with a gesture.
[Illustration]
“‘You understand, do you not Jacques, exactly what you are permitted to
do? I have still, however, to tell you what you must not do: you are not
to set foot upon the St. Jacques; this is forbidden until I tell you
otherwise. Do you understand?’
“‘Yes, father, I understand, but⸺’
“‘There isn’t any “but,”’ replied my father.
“Uncle Antoine threw me a compassionate look. However, this look was only
meant to say: ‘I am sorry, Jacques, but your father has spoken. I have
nothing to say.’
“I did, one after another, the things which were authorized. I ate some
cherries, I picked some strawberries, gave grain to the chickens, and
cabbage-leaves to our rabbits. I re-read, lying in the hammock, two
chapters of my ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’ but, far from making me sleepy,
this book awoke in me a longing for adventure. I then directed my steps
towards the river. I had, however, the wisdom not to go in the direction
of the boat,—that is to say, in the direction of temptation. I regarded
the flowing water curiously, and found real pleasure in doing so. My
uncle’s river was not one of those lazy streams of which the movement
is imperceptible. How could it rest mute between its borders, when it
was forced to carry its fresh water past the lands of a hundred owners,
which, from the right and the left, cried to it—‘Wet us,’ ‘Refresh us,’
‘We are dying of thirst.’
“It certainly was a spectacle well worth seeing, this continuous flow
of clear water over a bed of golden sand, dotted here and there with
flexible green plants, which, swaying with every movement of the tide
make such charming little retreats for the fish. The minnows and gudgeon
glided like shadows between the few large stones which took the place of
reefs on this miniature coast. Their goings and comings amused me very
much, and I made up my mind that some day one could apply to me as to
them the proverb, ‘Happy as a fish in the water.’ All this would have
been perfect, if little by little I had not approached the spot where,
under the boughs and between the roots of an enormous willow, my uncle
had anchored the famous St. Jacques. Desiring not to disobey my father.
I had made up my mind not to look at the St. Jacques, not to take a step
towards it; this was prudent, but it was ordained that I should break my
word that day. Reasons for doing so were not lacking: first—the portion
of the walk by the water where I intended to stay being in the hot sun, I
had not seen a single frog; the hot herbage did not suit them.
“To take my swimming lesson it was necessary to go to the side where the
boat was moored. Only under the willows, and in the damp grass which
surrounded the Bay St. Jacques, could I hope to find them. Second—as
my father was anxious that I should study how frogs swam, I had made a
mistake in keeping away from the only place where I stood some chance of
finding them. I knew well that there alone could they always be seen.
Besides, going _near_ the St. Jacques was not the same thing as going
_on_ the St. Jacques. Third—it is not difficult to refrain from getting
into a boat, even when one has a great desire to do so. So I pushed aside
the long branches of the great willow which hung down to the ground,
and found myself in the presence of the St. Jacques. What a beautiful
boat she was! Since I had last seen her my uncle had had her repainted.
Her new costume of mingled red and white suited her marvelously; her
mast,—there was a mast,—painted also, was even more beautiful than one
of those lovely paper wind-mills that one’s parents never buy one. Her
pennant had also been renewed. It was certainly for my father’s return
that uncle Antoine had gone to the expense of this brilliant _toilette_.
The hull hardly stirred. Its imperceptible balancings on the water
resembled the quiet breathing of a sleeping person. Under the transparent
veil of the drooping branches of the weeping willow, no breath could
reach it. The St. Jacques had the air of a little potentate in repose,
under a canopy of verdure. If papa had not forbidden me to get in the
little boat, it would have been delightful to read my ‘Swiss Family
Robinson’ out upon the water. Sitting in the bow, leaning against the
mast, one might imagine one’s self on an island. But then, that which is
forbidden one can not prevent from being forbidden.”
“I tried at first to think of nothing but frogs. But, as if on purpose,
not one showed himself. I was sure they were hiding in the shadow of the
boat. I went up quite close to the St. Jacques, and still nothing jumped
into the water. Decidedly, and in spite of all my good intentions, I
was not to take my swimming lesson that day. But what were those three
green spots that I saw down there on the white edge of the boat? They
were,—yes, they were three frogs taking a nap at their ease, as if the
St. Jacques belonged to them.
“One could not tolerate a thing of that sort. I stepped gently over the
edge of the boat to chase away the trespassers. Paf, paf, paf, with a
single hop, each of them made one of those famous dives of which my
father had spoken. Now or never was the moment to ask them for a lesson.
I did not fail to do so. I was lost in admiration of their talent.
Papa was right; a frog swims to perfection. It swims so correctly and
elegantly that by its vigorous, regular movements, one understands
clearly what one ought to do if one happened to be in its place. This
sort of lesson, illustrated by an example, shows one much better what
movements to make than when the gardener holds you under the stomach, and
shouts you don’t know what in your ears. If father should throw me into
the water, I should think of the frogs: I should do as they did, and I
should certainly swim.
[Illustration: “_What a beautiful boat she was!_”
_Drawn by Clinton Peters._]
“I had reached this point in my resolutions, when the sound of something
heavy falling suddenly into the water made me raise my head. The noise
was followed by a cry, and this cry by five or six others.
“That which made the noise was something which looked like a big blue
package, which was squirming and beating the water frequently, across by
the opposite bank.
“I looked with all my eyes, and was filled with horror in recognizing
the little boy—still in dresses—of the gardener across the stream whom I
had sometimes seen from the bank. The poor little one—I should be more
correct in saying the poor big one—had evidently escaped from his mother,
and had taken advantage of the occasion to come alone to the river, and
turning a summersault by mistake, was now in danger of drowning. He was
not exactly happy. He cried like a little madman in the instants when his
crimson face emerged from the water, and, by a sort of instinct, beat the
water with both hands and feet.
“I noticed that his skirts held him up temporarily, but that could not
last long. I began to cry in my turn, and call,—‘Papa! uncle!’—but the
sound of my voice could not reach so far, and I felt that there must be
something better to do than cry. I said to myself that one must go into
the river to rescue the poor child. Yes, but in order to do that, it was
necessary to wet one’s self in the cold water, which was particularly
disagreeable to me, as you already know, and what was worse, they would
see, afterwards, by my wet clothes that I had disobeyed, that I had not
stayed in the path, but had broken my word; that was the most terrible
part. In a couple of seconds all views of the situation flashed through
my mind. Should I try to save the gardener’s little boy? Then I must
disobey. An idea came to me which struck me as brilliant. I would take
off my shoes, my stockings and my trousers, and leave them in the boat;
the water evidently was not very deep, because I could see the bottom;
I was quite large and by rolling my shirt up under my vest, I thought
I could go. In a moment this was done. In another moment, and without
stumbling, I had descended into the water, which, alas! was far from,
warm. But that was not all. I had miscalculated the depth of the water
and my height, and, when I had taken two or three steps towards the
child, who still cried, I saw that if I went any farther I should wet my
shirt and my vest. That seemed to me impossible to do. I took one step
back toward the boat. The thought did not occur to me that I should have
undressed completely at first, and that I might do it even now. Yes, I
very nearly left the child to drown, for the sake of not wetting the
clothes which I still wore (which, it is true, were new ones) and of not
having to admit afterwards, that I had disobeyed.
“My hesitation did not last long. ‘Father will forgive me.’ I said to
myself, when he knows all about it, ‘and giving myself up altogether
to the sentiment of a duty which I felt was superior to all others, I
succeeded, scarcely knowing how, in crossing the river, in reaching
the little boy, who had already stopped crying, in pulling his head
out of the water first, and then, with infinite pains, in seating him
on the first step of a worm-eaten stair-case which mounted the sloping
river-bank, towards his father’s garden.
“No one appeared; no answer came to my cries. There were still four steps
to mount, to reach the garden: I finally contrived to climb them with
my burden. Once there, I laid the child down among the cabbages. From
violet, he had become quite pale, and much frightened, I ran towards his
parents’ house.”
VI.
“Then I found the little one’s mother, whom I knew by sight.
“She was a large, healthy-looking woman, and, as I rushed into her
presence, was working at her spinning-wheel, singing meanwhile. When she
saw me suddenly appear, scarcely half clothed, and soaking wet, she was
seized with a fit of anger, and before in my trouble I could manage to
explain myself, boxed me vigorously on both ears.
“It was the first time in my life I had received such treatment. Furious
at this proceeding, I threw myself on her, calling her every name I could
think of, and holding her by the skirt, I cried to her that out among the
cabbages there lay a little boy who might be dead.
“The good woman, astonished, began to imagine from the little I was able
to tell her, that she had been too quick; she concluded to follow me. I
feared I was taking her to a dead child, all was so quiet over in the
cabbage garden. But I was wrong. The little fellow I had pulled out of
the water was in better condition than I. We found him sitting tranquilly
in his wet garments, his arm resting carelessly on a fine large cabbage.
Without saying a word, he was staring straight in front of him. But at
the sight of his mother he suddenly recovered his voice, and commenced
bellowing even louder than he had done when he was paddling in the river.
Why should he cry? I thought it stupid to cry just when help had arrived.
He was, however, not so far wrong, poor, fat little fellow: he was a
little man who had already experienced many things in life; he knew well
what awaited him. To tell the truth, he knew that his mother’s first
action, in moments of excitement, was at once quick and varied.
[Illustration]
“Seeing him in good condition, but wet from head to foot, mother Brazon
lifted him up by one arm, and pulling up his frock, administered a
spanking which considerably augmented the loudness of the little boy’s
shrieks. I was indignant. It appears that I was wrong. I have since heard
it said that, medicinally, the maternal treatment was admirably suited to
the occasion. Is that true, doctor?”
“Quite true,” answered the doctor, laughing.
“With all this going on, I was scarcely contented; on the one hand, I
was beginning to shiver with cold, and on the other, for the first time
in my life, I found myself with strangers far away from the remainder of
my clothes, and I had a terrible fear lest Madame Brazon should profit
by the occasion to administer to me (otherwise than on my ears) the same
treatment she had so recently applied to her own son, and which the
doctor, no doubt, would have approved. But these two exercises had been
sufficient to calm the good woman.
“We had no sooner entered the house than she proved herself a loving
mother to little Auguste, and very kind to me. Quick as a wink she
undressed us both entirely, and bundled us both, in spite of our
resistance, between the white sheets of her big bed.
“Three minutes later she made us each drink a glass of sugared wine—very
hot—which put Auguste in an extremely jubilant frame of mind. I could not
share it. The worst was perhaps over. All was finished on our side of
the river, but that which was soon going to pass on the other side began
to occupy my mind. I thought alternately of papa, of mamma, of my uncle,
of my wet clothes, of the two boxes on my ears, of the boat, and of
aunt Marie. All this was very complicated for a childish brain, already
confused. Little Auguste, searching for a warm place, had curled up in my
arms and gone to sleep. Scarcely knowing it, I followed his example, and
became unconscious in the middle of my sad reflections. It seems they let
us sleep nearly two hours. When I awoke and found myself in that room and
in that bed, and felt the head of a chubby little boy on my shoulder, I
was, at first, much astonished. I opened my eyes without daring to move.
But soon my memory returned, I remembered everything, and cried, ‘Papa!
papa!’
“‘Present!’ replied my father. He had been there by my bedside,—my dear
father,—for one hour, and my darling mother was there also. Aunt Sister
Marie had been unable to leave, or she would have been there, too.
“Madame Brazon, it appears, had at length succeeded in recognizing in the
small gentleman so scantily clad, whose ears she had so lately boxed,
the little boy she had often seen in the garden across the river, and to
explain the enigma, she had sent a neighbor to uncle Antoine’s. It had
suddenly interrupted the game of chess. My father arrived soon after,
bringing with him my uncle’s doctor. The doctor, after looking at the
pretty picture we made in Madame Brazon’s bed, had said, ‘Let them sleep.’
“While waiting for us to wake up, father had sent to town for dry
clothes; my mother had brought them herself. When I was dressed, my
father took me between his knees and said to me:
“‘Tell me everything.’
“I gave him, in fewer words than I have just used, an exact account of
what had happened. My father listened to me. I saw clearly that he was
not angry. At one moment, however, I saw him grow pale; it was when he
realized from my explanations that to go and _undrown_ little Auguste
(this was the word I used, and it has been so well remembered by all the
family that I have not forgotten it), it was, I say, when he understood
that I must certainly have crossed the river to reach the child.
“‘It is incomprehensible!’ said he to mamma and the doctor. ‘The middle
of the river is every where at least five or six feet deep. What did he
do?’
“‘Papa,’ said I, ‘I did as I saw the frogs do.’
“‘But then, my child, you _swam_.’
“‘I do not know, papa; perhaps—’
“‘Did the water go over your head?’
“‘No, papa, surely not.’
“‘You got no water in your mouth while you were going across to rescue
little Auguste? You did not go altogether under water?’
“‘No, papa; no papa.’
“‘Very well, my wife,’ said my father to my mother, ‘that proves that
when one has to swim, one can swim. Jacques swam, because occupied with
something besides his fear of water, he thought only of the end he wished
to attain. I am sure that he is now cured of his former fright, and
that with a few good lessons he will become a good swimmer. And to be a
good swimmer is very useful: it enables one to save one’s self as well
as others. Without this baby, Madame Brazon, without his courage and
_sang-froid_, your child would have been lost.’
“‘My God!’ she cried. ‘And I thanked him with two blows!’
“‘Yes, papa,—two hard ones!’
“‘Madame Brazon,’ said my father, ‘kiss my son on the two cheeks that you
treated so roughly. There is nothing like a kiss to repair an injury.
When one is kissed, all wounds are cured.’”
VII.
“My story,” continued the General, “should not give the idea to children,
or to grown persons either, that it is always wise to make an abrupt
debut in the art of swimming, but it shows that the movements by the aid
of which a man swims are as natural to him as to most animals, and that
if suddenly forced to do so, he has no fear of wetting himself, and can,
by not losing his head, and by thinking of frogs, cross a little river in
safety.
“If you have to make the effort to-night, remember this, and help one
another. To leave a comrade behind is not a creditable proceeding. Many a
time have I congratulated myself that I pulled little Brazon out of the
water.”
“Brazon! Brazon! General?” said the doctor. “But I have known someone
of that name in the army,—a lieutenant-colonel, a strong, brave fellow.
Wait! It was he whose arm I cut off after our expedition against the
Beni-Raten. He was forced to retire—brave fellow!—after that. I shall
always remember what he said to me when the operation was over: ‘Thanks,
doctor. I regret my arm, but don’t regret the occasion that made me lose
it.’”
“And did he tell you,” said the General, “what that occasion was?”
“Faith! no!” responded the doctor, “he needed sleep too badly.”
“Very well, I will tell you,” continued the General, in a voice full of
feeling. “I had had my horse killed under me and my leg broken. I should
have been left to the mercy of the Kabyles, but he rescued me, took me on
his shoulders, carried me to a place of safety, and only when this was
done, discovered that during the trip a ball had shattered his elbow.
Brazon lost his arm in saving my life.
“The story I have just told you made us good friends. Uncle Antoine
became interested in him, my father also: we were educated together, and
have had more or less the same career. Poor Brazon! When he retired, he
returned to ⸺ and lives in what used to be his father’s garden, opposite
uncle Antoine’s ‘Garden of Roses.’
“Since then we have joined the two properties by a bridge, under which a
boat can pass. When I retire, in my turn, I shall not have to swim to go
and see my dear Auguste.”
VIII.
“General,” said the young captain, “will you permit me to ask you one
question? Did not your family spoil you a trifle after this incident?”
“Oh, yes!” replied the General. “I did not lack attention. Aunt Marie and
my mother both kissed me. My uncle declared I was a fine little fellow,
and Madame Brazon, about two weeks later, sent me the very biggest
pumpkin in her garden. She had found out that I adored pumpkin soup.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE HAPPINESS OF BEING NEARSIGHTED]
When Dr. St. George Mivart contributed to a well-known English periodical
his article, “The Happiness In—Ahem!”—the title naturally attracted
immediate attention and won for the paper a consideration which led to
the universal discussion that immediately followed. No one wished or
expected to go to the place concerning which he set forth some of the
particulars, and even some of the secrets; but as everybody had friends
who were in danger of such a fate, and enemies who were certain of it,
there was naturally no little curiosity to learn from the writings
of the early Fathers and later learned ecclesiastics whom Dr. Mivart
quoted how these persons would fare there. To the general surprise, he
disclosed that even in that dismal abode, with an eternal summer of a
temperature the height of which no thermometer known to earthly science
could measure, there was yet to be expected at times a certain degree of
felicity. Christmas and Easter, it may be remembered, were days off, when
holiday existed, the fires were banked and comparative coolness prevailed.
To the man or woman of acute sight, who sees everything far or near
without the necessity of optical aids, and to whom all surroundings are
definite and clear, and who recalls the fellow-being who must either wear
glasses or grope and stumble and be uncertain of environment, it would
appear nonsense to say that there is a happiness in being nearsighted.
And yet in a certain form of nearsightedness there are sources of delight
which even the man of perfect sight never knows. There are scientific
distinctions which the oculist who examines your eyes and the optician
who is anxious to sell you a pair of glasses will explain between the
nearsightedness which compels you to pore over a book, holding it close
to your eyes, and the other form which enables you to read the finest
print without glasses, and yet debars you from recognizing your wife or
mother-in-law half way across the street. There is certainly not much
happiness in the former, because, although it may give the impression
that you are a close student and a man of deep erudition to go about with
a book or newspaper directly at the end of your nose, the appearance you
present is not heroic or graceful, and the young ladies seeing you are
apt to smile; and being regarded as a book-worm and pedant you can never
hope to create much of a figure in society.
It is only the nearsighted man who can not distinguish things very well
at a distance, and who, therefore, gets a strictly impressionist view
of life, who really enjoys existence. He can do without his glasses, if
necessary, or if he does not think them becoming, and yet experience
almost perfect comfort. For him, indeed, the world never loses its
illusions, and years, far from robbing him of this boon, only adds
to the glamour of enchantment in which he lives. There are those who
maintain that the really great men of history have always been short—not
in funds, but in stature—and they instance Socrates, Napoleon, Edmund
Kean, Victor Hugo and a multitude of others; but, in point of fact it
may be still more conclusively shown that the majority of great men have
been short-sighted. Much of the romantic view of existence taken by the
ancients we may ascribe to the fact that many of them were near-sighted
and had not the use of spectacles, which did not come into vogue until
the Thirteenth Century, although the Chinese, it is said, had them
for some time before that. Nothing but nearsightedness could have so
stimulated the imagination of Shakespeare and idealized everything about
him, although, indeed, it is true that we have no portraits or busts
in which he is shown to have worn glasses. Still, there are so many
references in his writings to “thickness of sight” and difficulties of
vision, and there are such exquisite descriptions of color effects, that
we can not doubt him to have been the victim of what the doctors would
call optical infirmity, although it is quite the reverse.
The fact that many of our famous modern poets did not wear glasses is
no proof that for definite seeking they did not require them. Byron,
Shelley or Keates, we may be sure, never would have worn glasses in any
circumstances, as such appurtenances would have been out of character.
There was not in their time the great variety of the pince-nez that we
have at present, rimless and almost invisible; but there was the very
fashionable single eyeglass, rather larger than the monocle in use at
present, and that Beau Brummel himself, and later Count D’Orsay, did
not disdain. The Duke of Wellington used a single eyeglass, tied to a
black ribbon, which hung about his neck, habitually, and through it saw
the Battle of Waterloo, and, before the engagement was over, Blücher’s
columns coming up.
But to enjoy the happiness of being nearsighted the eyeglasses and
spectacles should be dispensed with and life viewed through the
natural organs alone. Then it is, as already remarked, that we get the
impressionist effect, which is the only one worth having. The man with
what are called good eyes perceives all the details, and consequently all
the coarse and ugly particulars of the life, still and in motion, about
him, and all its faults and shortcomings. After all, what we want is
feeling; the thousand intricacies of form we do not need or desire; give
us the general effects and our spirit transfigures them. Give us figures,
incidents and scenes in vague and poetic mass, and the most delightful
and thrilling emotions are aroused.
These are the results obtained by the nearsighted man. To him there is
very little that is ugly in life, and especially is it true that all
women are beautiful. As I go through the streets I meet at every turn
the most exquisite girls, of whose features, indeed, I know little
in detail, but there comes to me a general effect of brilliant eyes,
lovely complexions and entrancing hair. Every figure is elegant and
each walks with the step of a goddess. There are some old women, but
none middle-aged or faded; I know not that most distressing of mortal
wrecks, the woman “well preserved.” I catch a swift glimpse of a face
at a window, or one flashes from a carriage—it is always fair; in the
crowded thoroughfares of the shopping districts the tall and picturesque
hats, covered with flowers; the soft gowns, the ribbons of myriad colors
flit by, giving me but a glimpse, and ravish me. Still more enchanting
are these graceful beings at night by the electric light, or vaguely
disclosed in the wan beams of the moon.
Natural scenery has a charm which the unhappy man who is not nearsighted
can never know. Everything looks uncertain, dim, hazy and very often
mystical; colors affect the eye with a delicious softness; there
are no keen and cruel contrasts; distant woods and skies, with the
multitude of intermingled hues in summer, and the browns and grays of
autumn and winter, fall tenderly upon the vision. The changes of light
upon the mountain side, and, still more vividly, the seashore, early
in the morning or at sunset, stir the deepest sources of sentiment.
The nearsighted eye is never photographic; the lines and colors are
everywhere mingled and confused, and in both rest and action there is a
delicious complexity and indefiniteness.
One can imagine no more interesting scene of movement than that in the
evening at the height of the season on the esplanade at Atlantic City.
I never witness it without thinking of two of the dreams of De Quincey,
which he describes in some detail—the one of the crowd moving by in
endless procession, like the figures on a frieze, on and on forever, the
other of the innumerable faces of his vision revealed in the incessant
convulsions of the ocean. At about half-past eight o’clock in the
evening toward the end of July, when the season is at its climax, this
impressive throng, in two lines, moving to the right and to the left, is
most numerous. There is, so far as I am aware, nothing precisely like it
anywhere else in the world—so variegated, so well-dressed, so lively and
so complicated. To enjoy it perfectly there must be the vagueness of a
veiled vision, and then, in addition to the passing faces, you catch the
soft, dreamy effects of the costumes—whites and pinks, sometimes even
the bold Mephistophelean red; the dim azures, the pale greens subsiding
into yellow. In the two tides goes this strange army, slow in motion,
laughing, volatile, the silvery tinkle of feminine laughter and the
deeper murmur of conversation. To observe this throng has an absorbing
fascination, but if at times you rest, it is to look over the railing of
the esplanade at the darkness of the ocean and watch the waves rushing
in, like sheeted women with outstretched and affrighted arms.
Summing up, if I were asked to define the special enjoyment derived
from nearsightedness, I should say that it arises from two sources—the
serenity of the scenes disclosed by the sight, the absence of harshness
in sky, landscape or environment anywhere; the fusing of mean details
into an agreeable mass. And even stranger and pleasanter than this is the
mystical effect; the softness and dreaminess of atmosphere and distances;
the indolent, abstracted and slightly melancholy tone of mind produced;
the beguiling idealization of existence.
—_Walter Edgar M’Cann._
[Illustration]
[Illustration: “_An XVIII Century Beauty._”
_From the miniature by Hugh Nicholson._]
[Illustration: COMMENT]
We take great pleasure in presenting to our readers this month the
first installment of a serial story by the famous Spanish novelist, D.
Ramon Ortega y Frias. The translation is the work of Mr. L. Solyom, of
Washington, whose ability as a linguist is well known and of a very high
order. “Elena’s Daughters,” a romance full of the charm of movement and
color, depicts, with unusual skill, the life of the Spanish people in the
early part of the Seventeenth Century, when Philip IV was king, and when
love was won by the sword and honor was held to be a priceless thing.
The manners and customs, the superstitions and ignorance, the desperate
bravery and cunning of the times are made to contribute to the absorbing
interest of the story, an interest that is fully maintained to the
concluding sentence of the last chapter.
D. Ramon Ortega y Frias was born in 1825. Long sickness and family
misfortunes compelled him to give up studies and to devote his life to
literary pursuits. He is one of the most popular Spanish novelists—in
fact, he may be considered the father of the Spanish novel, being the
first to replace the numerous French translations which were almost
exclusively read before he wrote his original compositions. His subjects
are drawn from Spanish history and give true pictures of the manners
and customs of the country. He has also translated some works from the
French, and has written poetry and numerous critical literary articles.
* * * * *
Through the courtesy of Mr. Hugh Nicholson, the well-known English
miniaturist, we are enabled to reproduce one of his most important
miniatures. It is called “An Eighteenth Century Beauty,” and was given
the place of honor in the inaugural exhibition of the London Society
of Miniature Painters, held in 1896. Mr. Nicholson has been engaged
in painting little portraits of prominent Baltimoreans for the past
two seasons, and his recent return to Baltimore from abroad proves the
continuance of his well-merited popularity. His work is distinguished by
exquisitely delicate coloring and technique, and never lacks the strength
necessary to the successful portrayal of character.
* * * * *
A most important event in the artistic life of the South, and one whose
ultimate results are likely to be of such a far-reaching nature that is
impossible to even roughly estimate their valve at the present time,
occurred on January 18th., 1899. On that day a group of representative
and influential gentlemen met at the residence of Mr. Theodore Marburg
and founded what is known as The Municipal Art Association of the City
of Baltimore. Although the idea of such an organization is not a new
one,—such associations already exist and are in a flourishing condition
in New York, Boston and other Northern Cities,—no such society can be
found elsewhere in the South. Baltimore can therefore for once be justly
congratulated on having shown a spirit of real enterprise and civic
pride, which, sooner or later, is sure to be followed by all her Southern
sisters.
The main object of this new municipal art association is to receive and
collect funds for the beautifying of the public squares and buildings
of the City. It will also use its utmost endeavors—through experts
and disinterested, broad-minded laymen—to have such funds judiciously
expended. It is proposed to enlarge the membership, which is somewhat
limited at present, as much as possible and at the same time, to form
a woman’s auxiliary branch that will work in harmony with the main
organization, composed exclusively of men. It is estimated that a body
of at least two thousand public-spirited men and women can thus be found
and eventually welded into a powerful association devoted to the very
best artistic interests of the people of Baltimore. If this calculation
is correct, a considerable amount of money will accumulate annually in
the treasury of the society, solely from the collection of the yearly
dues, which have been wisely fixed at the small sum of $5.00. In order to
increase the association’s resources much more rapidly than is otherwise
practicable, it has been resolved that life membership may be procured
by those who are willing to pay the sum of $100.00, and that the title
of “Patron” will be bestowed on all those who are liberal enough to
donate the sum of $1000, or more. The money so collected from dues and
voluntary contributions is to be carefully husbanded until the amount
becomes sufficiently large to justify the directors in opening a worthy
competition for the decoration of some public building, the erection of
a statue, or the building of a monument of real and lasting artistic
merit. It may not be possible to procure enough money to purchase such a
work of art annually, but it will be a question of only a few years at
most before the results of this much needed society will become evident
to the least observant. It is with feelings of the greatest pleasure
that we commend this highly laudable and intelligent movement to the
people of Baltimore, and we hope they will give it their unswerving and
enthusiastic support.
* * * * *
At the first meeting of the organizers of The Municipal Art Association
of the City of Baltimore, it was stated that the articles and by-laws
governing this new society had been taken almost bodily from those
of the New York organization. It was argued that as they had been
thoroughly tested and proved to be of great working value in New York,
therefore they must of necessity be suited to the needs of Baltimore. In
a certain measure this is true, but the reasoning is rather fallacious
and misleading. The artistic conditions that prevail at the present time
in the two cities are by no means the same: New York has a Metropolitan
Museum, filled with the finest specimens of ancient and modern art,
which is always open to the public, besides an Academy of Design, a
Society of American Artists, an Architectural League and any number
of galleries that are constantly instructing the people in what is
being done by native and foreign contemporaneous artists—whether they
be painters, sculptors, or architects. In Baltimore we have only the
Walters’ Gallery,—a wonderfully fine collection of paintings, ceramics,
and bronzes, to be sure, but one that is practically unchanging and that
is open to the public for only a comparatively few days of the year,—and
such small exhibitions of pictures as can be collected from time to time
through the efforts and enterprise of Mr. David Bendann and the Charcoal
Club—an organization that is far from being supported as it should be by
those interested in the artistic development of the City.
General Felix Agnus forcibly voiced the feeling of a great many of the
gentlemen who founded the new society when he suggested that the scope
of The Municipal Art Association of the City of Baltimore be enlarged by
such changes in the articles of incorporation as would eventually empower
it to erect a public Museum, and to receive bequests in the shape of
paintings and other works of art. We would go farther than General Agnus
and suggest to the board of Directors that the New Art Association be
not only empowered to collect funds to build a Museum, but a fire-proof,
well-lighted gallery also, constructed especially for, and devoted solely
to a yearly exhibition of works by modern artists. Until this is done
Baltimore must of necessity remain more or less ignorant and provincial
in all artistic matters. Galleries for such yearly exhibitions exist in
every other large city of the United States, and that one has not been
built here long ago is due, we are sure, not to a dearth of funds or
taste, but solely to a curious lack of co-operation among those who have
the power and the inclination to stimulate the rational development of a
love for things of beauty.
We therefore hope that The Municipal Art Association of the City of
Baltimore will not imitate too closely the objects and the by-laws of
the New York Society, but will add these other two extremely necessary
projects to an already praiseworthy program, and thereby render our
citizens more appreciative of the artistic attractions they propose to
offer them in the near future.
* * * * *
There is no spectacular display, either in the old world or in the new,
to compare with the New Orleans Mardi Gras. But there has been too little
care paid to the development of the floats and of the costumes of the
mummers,—those which are directly under the control of the committee
which is usually placed in charge.
We are always interested in art, and in the artist, and would suggest
that our New Orleans friends might add greatly to the excellence of their
entertainment by consulting men more of an artistic than of a business
temperament in arranging their annual and unique displays.
* * * * *
The movements in the local security markets have shown a somewhat halting
tendency of late. This is not unnatural, following the sustained upward
movement and the broad and active buying which has marked the operations
in stocks and bonds for several months. Operators and dealers are not
disturbed that the market should rest for awhile, and confidence is easy
where it is felt that the rising trend to values will again occur as soon
as investors have been able to scan the field anew and to digest the
conditions which affect the values of securities.
There has been no decline here, as this is essentially an investment and
not a speculative market. Prices are not stimulated or advanced by stock
jobbing operations and false rumors which so seriously affect values in
speculative centres, but rest solely on the merits of the property which
the security represents. There has been a slight shading of values in a
few instances in issues which had been rapidly advanced by the strong
public demand. This was notably the case in the shares of some of the new
trust companies. The Continental Trust stock had an abnormal rise to $285
a share, representing a premium of $85 a share, as $200 a share will be
paid in by the stockholders. Since the Stock Exchange permitted trading
in the receipts of this company the premium has declined 25 points, as at
the close of last week it was reported that the stock had been offered
110, with 100 the best bid. Citizens’ Trust shares have also fallen off
from 57 to 49½, with declines less marked in the shares of the older
institutions, and with many of them showing gains.
The announcement of the entrance into the local trust field of a new
company with large capital and influential backing probably had some
unfavorable effect on the stocks of the companies recently started.
This new concern will be a strong bidder for business, and while it is
expected to work in a field of development, it is not unlikely to receive
some business which would have gone to the other companies.
This field of trust seems to be a favorable and a profitable one,
however, for large combinations of capital.
* * * * *
We spoke in our last issue of the opportunity that was about to be given
to erect a fine and lasting monument to the memory of the Confederate and
Federal soldiers who lost their lives on the battle-field of Antietam.
This opportunity presented itself early in January to the judges in
charge of the competition for a commemorative monument, or statue, for
the erection of which ample funds were voted by the Maryland Legislature.
We had some misgivings as to the artistic merits of the sketch that
would be chosen,—owing to the fact that such awards are usually left
to the taste of artistically incompetent persons, instead of to men
whose training and experience guarantee that the work shall be, if not
great, of at least a fair average quality,—but we had no idea that even
judges selected at random (as these evidently were) would be willing to
put themselves on record as approving a design that, while not out of
place for a summer-house or a soda-water fountain, is altogether so in a
memorial erected to the glory of our dead heroes.
If these gentlemen paid for the monument out of their own pockets and
offered it to the State as a gift, it still ought to be refused as
utterly unworthy the subject, or of public acceptance, but it is nothing
less than outrageous to force the taxpayers of Maryland to accept and
to furnish money for such a travesty on good taste. To make matters even
worse, and that, strange to say, the judges found was entirely possible,
the award was given to a New England contractor, so that we are not only
to have a most inappropriate monument, but an inappropriate one made
in another State for which an important sum of money must be paid by
the people of Maryland. We are not narrow-minded in these matters, and
believe that, to fittingly honor our brave dead, we should have the best
sculptor or architect that can be procured, no matter whence he comes,
but it can hardly be claimed in this case that it was necessary to go
outside the State.
In fact, it seems to us, it would hardly have been possible to find
anything more trivial or unsuitable, even had a prize been especially
offered for that purpose. That such things are accepted with so little
complaint by the press and public almost justifies one in abandoning hope
that we shall ever see any real improvement in our muddled way of looking
at questions of this sort.
* * * * *
No military organization in the United States is better and more
favorably known than the Fifth Maryland, distinctively a Southern
regiment.
For over thirty years it has stood the equal of any militia regiment in
the country. In latter years the only organization, in the popular mind,
that challenged its supremacy was the Seventh New York, and when the
famed Seventh declined to go to the Spanish war and the Fifth, in a body,
volunteered for government service, to go anywhere they were ordered to
go and do anything they were asked to do, there could be no further doubt
that the Fifth Maryland, which has always clung to its gray uniform,
emblematic of other days, was the “real thing,” as far as the militia of
the country was concerned.
It seems a shame that not only the people of Baltimore and of Maryland,
but the people of the South generally, should not take vigorous offence
that at this time, after the regiment has served its country for over
three months, and has returned to its armory in Baltimore, for what are,
apparently, political reasons and reasons of personal gratification, this
splendid body of men should be threatened with dissolution.
In this condition which confronts the command several things enter.
In the first place, there never was any discord, never any disagreement
among the officers until a certain element appeared. This element has
gone now, but other troubles have arisen. Its old commanding officer,
whom all the men loved, was prevented from going to the Spanish war with
his command—questionably prevented,—as subsequent events have shown.
With him, “physically disqualified,” were other officers, quite as well
beloved and respected by the men, and all of these gentlemen still hold
their commissions from the State of Maryland.
The order retiring them was one from the Adjutant-General of the State,
which order, by the way, has very recently been revoked,—and now a board
has been appointed to examine these officers physically and otherwise.
Before the Adjutant-General recalled his retirement order, they had
asked to be returned to the offices to which their commissions lawfully
entitled them.
The make-up of the board appointed to treat the cases of these officers
has been questioned, not only upon the ground that it is partisan, but
because some of its members are not qualified to serve upon it. Before
this number of “DIXIE” goes to press the board will have met. Possibly it
will have reached its decision. It is probable, if it disqualifies these
men, that numbers of Southerners will consider it a case of hanging them
first and trying them afterwards.
The people like the Fifth Maryland. Its officers like it. And if the
“retired” officers are not allowed to go back to their command,—these
officers whom their men love,—there will be no more Fifth Regiment. Its
other officers will resign, its faithful enlisted men will vanish like
smoke, and in the place of the Fifth of fame there will be a hybrid
combination, sustained by that sort of political power that commands no
respect from honest-thinking men.
There is yet time for the “powers that be” to pause. The Fifth Regiment
is not a thing to be ruthlessly slaughtered. Parties come and parties go,
but there are elections yet to come, and the men of Maryland and of the
South will not forget those who killed their cherished Fifth Maryland.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: BOOKS & AUTHORS]
TWO POET-NOVELISTS.
GEORGE MEREDITH.
Art and artists are continually suffering at the hands of “belletristic
triflers.” Phrase-making is the passion of the day; and as a falsity or
a half-truth concerning literary matters is so much easier of utterance
than the awkward whole truth, that demands lengthy qualifications, we
seldom find the latter gaining in the race with glittering mendacities.
It is not, for instance, the saner body of Matthew Arnold’s criticism
that has been generally absorbed; it is his more or less questionable
catch-words and airy brevities of characterization. These seem apt to
the understanding because they fit so well the tongue; their convenience
gives them their fatal persuasion. The world likes a criticism in little,
a nut-shell verdict, something of intellectual color that can readily
be memorized for dinner-table parlance, the vague generalization that
conceals the specific ignorance. Macaulay’s “rough pistolling ways and
stamping emphasis,” Scott’s “bastard epic style,” and the conception
of Shelley as “a beautiful and ineffectual angel beating in the void
his luminous wings in vain” have thus come to be solemn verities with
many who care more to talk literature than to read it. A whilom gaiety
of journalism served to convince the public that Whitman’s voice was
a “barbaric yawp”; and consequently his “Leaves of Grass” is seldom
glimpsed save in a spirit of derision. These are some of the unhappy
results of our latter-day strain after “a pregnant conciseness” of
language.
George Meredith like many of his predecessors has suffered much from
the thumb-nail criticism of the day. His judges are apt to insist upon
his mannerisms and to insist on nothing else. The generality of readers
hearing so much about the “mereditherambic style” rest under the belief
that this writer is a tripod of frenzied incoherence; that he lacks,
especially as a poet, both style and substance. That this is far from
being the truth about Meredith’s verse anyone who has read it with
attention well knows. Not only does much of it fulfil the requisites of
orthodox style, but it contains, even more than his novels, the vital
convictions of his mind. Indeed, it is in his verse we come nearest the
real teacher, as we come nearest the man in his relation to life at
large—to the general scheme of things.
A realization of George Meredith’s poetical virtues by the reader of
real literature is due a writer who has proved his claim to genius in a
monumental series of novels, a writer who, while not acceptable to all,
has yet many admirers that regard him as one of the strongest towers of
modern thought. One can, however, scarcely hope for more than a limited
acceptance of his poems; that he should be popular in the ordinary
meaning of the word, as some poets are taken to heart by the sons of
men, is indeed scarcely conceivable. Such popularity, which is after all
an equivocal tribute for the most part, Mr. Meredith has never aimed to
secure. His has been a life of remoteness from profane ambitions, a life
steadfast to the standard early set for himself—a standard of the highest
kind.
And yet, while Mr. Meredith may not exercise the attraction of many
other poets for the general reader, few will deny that in his fruits of
song one tastes the flavor of an original, deep-seeing mind; that there
is in the character of many of his poems what well rewards the serious
attention necessary to their complete comprehension. Difficult in part
they may seem in the casual reading, owing to combined entanglement of
rhetoric and ideas, but few who press their inquiry past the line of a
first natural discouragement of perusal can fail totally to be affected
by the spell they cast over the mind. Beauty there is unquestionably
lurking beneath what seems often a wilful obscuration of theme. Coming
here and there upon some apparently dry metrical husk of thought, there
falls, as from some frost-bitten flower-pod, a shower of fairy seeds that
lodge as a vital donation within the remembrance. Groping in the midst of
a Meredithian mystery, even the less sensitive ear catches a ritornello
of exquisite, wholly seductive sound. For it is not so infrequently that
like his “The Lark Ascending.”
“He rises and begins to round,
He drops the silver chain of sound,
Of many links without a break,
In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake—”
The lark-note is not, however, the leading characteristic of Mr.
Meredith’s muse, although quite within the scope of it. It is rather
the lark’s joy in nature clothed with the more artificial vocalism of
man. Mr. Meredith is pantheist in large measure when he attunes his
lute-strings to the demands of Mother Earth. For him the gods of Greece
do not live only in the pages of Lempriere, as most modern poets would
have us believe, but they still maintain, albeit in more subtle form,
their old supreme habitation in lawn and sylvan hollow, or mix with the
familiar miracle of grey eve and rose-red dawn. In his verse Mr. Meredith
hastens to undo the harness of that worldly wisdom that binds him in his
novels. He re-baptizes himself to the graces of nature pure, rejoices in
all that belongs to the idealism of primitive life. The poet can pipe as
rustically as a faun when he is so minded. He can pay a moving tribute to
young love and the romance of vernal feeling, as proved by that beautiful
lift of minstrelsy, “Love in the Valley,” with its limpid, ecstatic
meter, its delicious imagery and spiritual sweetness of thought; not to
speak of many other lyrics of the same sort. These lighter pleasures
and profits of George Meredith, together with his more serious efforts,
like “Ode to the Spirit of Earth and Autumn,” a magnificent color-poem,
uniquely accenting the bacchic abandon of October and trumpeting mightily
the note of triumphant manhood, and “The Nuptials of Attila,” full of
a haunting rush of language, ought to afford substantial relish to the
general admirers of high art.
Has George Meredith’s vigorous, almost massive harp a message for
humanity? is the natural inquiry of those who reading Wordsworth or
Tennyson find in their works sure faiths and consolatory teaching. And is
such message so abeyant that only those of his readers who are endowed
with power of subtle divination may find it? Certainly in the case of the
seer the debt of clear utterance is obligatory, just as from the lyricist
we look for delight and tears and mellifluence; it is a responsibility
that falls from heaven with the mantle of inspiration, only a congenital
inceptitude for lucidity excuses it. Too often, it must be confessed, it
is only the ghostly sense of a message that trails through Mr. Meredith’s
work, glimpsing and disappearing in will-o’-wisp fashion. The thirsting
traveller chasing such mirages of meaning over the sands of obscurity may
be pardoned if he conclude that to only the very privileged few does the
Fata Morgana of his muse grant a kindly haven of specific instruction.
But while this is true of passages and poems, it is not true of all his
poems. There is much in his volumes of verse that state distinctly his
philosophical principles. The ground-work of Mr. Meredith’s philosophy
is the worth of nature as distinct from the artificial institutions of
man. In nature pure exists the true temple of wisdom; it is the tribunal
whereat all knowledge and sentiment must finally receive its endorsement
or its condemnation. In nature we open the real book of life. It is,
therefore, that in his verse we find continually a worship of the liberty
of the forest, a recognition of its power to promote the vital growth of
heart and head. Mr. Meredith would not have us forget that the mind and
spirit are integral elements of nature. Particularly in “The Woods of
Westermain,” beginning,
“Enter these enchanted woods,
You who dare—”
is this philosophy stated forcibly and at length. Naturalness in all
things is the keynote of his utterance. It is from his poetry that we
gain the clue to that humorous and seemingly harsh, satirical attitude
towards worldliness which distinguishes his novels and has occasioned
the frequent outcry that Mr. Meredith is a heartless epigrammatist. The
truer criticism is that he derides the artifices, the sham decencies and
mawkish sentimentality of society as the earnest champion of the natural.
Thus we find Sir Willoughby Patterne in “The Egoist” demonstrating the
pursuit of a spurious worldly philosophy, as we find the hero of “Richard
Feverel” proving the mistake of yoking nature to an artificial system,
while his women, such as Clara in “The Egoist,” Nataly in “One of Our
Conquerors,” and Diana in “Diana of the Crossways,” are clear, protesting
voices against masculine prejudices and feminine bondage. This is also
the teaching of his remarkable poem entitled “Modern Love.” George
Meredith has within the last few months added to his poetical works a
work called “Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History” (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons), which while having a Pindarian sublimity
of intent, a plentitude of rapt and fiery passages is too involved and
vague to constitute a real master-work. Whatever be said of Meredith’s
faults, a serious reading of his verse cannot but persuade one that he is
a poet who is distinctly virile and worth while. Though much that he has
written may have the mark of mortality, there is much also that wears the
amaranthine wreath of eternal life, either for beauty of phrase or for
profundity of philosophic truth.
THOMAS HARDY.
Genius proves itself as much by the tenacity of its taste for one
handicraft as by anything else; it evidences itself not so much in
versatility as in volume. It is rather a mark of mediocre mentality when
a man must needs lay his hand to the doing of this and that. Genius, as
a rule, has no such itch; generally speaking, he is content to fulfill
himself in one given direction—to maintain his being in a single sphere
with a passion superior to that of his fellows. Thus it is we seldom find
after leaving the regions of facile talent writers whose inspiration
expresses itself in prose and poetical form with equal seriousness; one
is the vehicle of the divine voice, the other a mere diversion. Goethe,
it is true, has given us “Wilhelm Meister,” Victor Hugo was a great poet
as well as a great romancer, George Meredith, as we have endeavored to
show, is a singer of peculiar force as well as a master novelist, and
among the later literary figures of especial power we have Kipling, whose
prose and poetry about balance the scale of worth; but the exceptions are
few, and the logic of letters tends to show oneness of aim in the case of
genius.
Thomas Hardy undoubtedly belongs to the ranks of great novelists;
his series of romances has been laid on the firm basis of beauty and
knowledge; he has hallowed a part of England peculiarly rich in unique
personality and natural charm; it belongs to him and the heirship of
his memory as validly as though it had been granted him by the Crown.
So well has he filled the office of fictionist that there seems no
need of an attempt on his part to enforce his fame by appearing as a
poet. The publication of “Wessex Poems” (New York: Harper & Bros.) is
indeed no positive declaration of such ambition; it is perhaps put forth
hesitatingly rather in response to public demand than because of a
conviction of its intrinsic merit. It represents the fruit of odd moments
punctuating a long literary career. The character of the volume is what
one might have anticipated, although had it been of a wholly different
sort it could scarcely have created surprise. There are two Hardys—the
man on whose heart weighs the melancholy facts of human existence and the
happier artist in close and peaceful communion with the sweet infinite
spirit of nature. It is the former Hardy that figures in the volume
singularly unsoftened by any intimation of the other phase of the writer.
The character of Hardy himself as existing behind the art-self is one
that inspires a peculiar interest. One would know it not simply to
gratify a curiosity that, indeed, is too much indulged of late in lines
of gross private revelation, but to weigh the justice of the charge
of wilful pessimism so generally made against him. The gloomy brow of
Hardy’s art seems far from being of that impersonal sort which makes much
of the modern melancholy of literature inexcusable as a mere degenerate
seeking.
One feels inclined to say that Hardy’s prose is poetry and his poetry
prose. The present volume reveals little of the genuine lyric gift, but
the singing while labored is not without force and individual color.
Some of the ballads possess considerable spirit, and where character is
outlined it cuts the consciousness with Hardy’s well-known skill of vivid
portraiture; as for instance, “The Dance at the Phœnix,” describing the
passion of an aged dame for the pleasures of her youth how she steals
forth from the bed of her good man to foot it gaily at the inn and
how on her return at morn she dies from over-exertion; “Her Death and
After” where the lover of a dead woman sacrifices her fair fame for the
sake of rescuing her child from the cruelties of a stepmother; and “The
Burghers,” a tale of guilty lovers, and a husband’s unique conduct. In
these, as in other poems of the kind, one can not but feel that Hardy
would have put the matter so much better in prose; which, indeed, is
what in some cases he has done. Some of the contemplative verse has a
quaintness of expression which suggests the sonnets of Shakespeare; the
lines are frequently lame, but every now and then there is a really
virile phrase. In true old English style are some of the lyrics, of which
“The Stranger’s Song” is perhaps the most successful:
O! my trade, it is the rarest one,
Simple shepherds all—
My trade is a sight to see;
For my customers I tie, and take ’em up on high,
And waft ’em to a far countree!
My tools are but common ones,
Simple shepherds all—
My tools are no sight to see;
A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
Are implements enough for me!
To-morrow is my working day,
Simple shepherds all—
For the farmer’s sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta’en,
And on his soul may God ha’ mercy!
That love proves itself at best a pathetic compromise is plainly gleaned
from the pages of the poems. There is sounded no joyous though momentary
content in heart-possession: nothing there we find but a record of
youth, its dreams darkened and blighted by the false promises of time;
bitter retrospect of age beholding a heavy philosophy scrawling on all
fair things of life and faith the epitaph of fragility and decay. The
earth-bound character of the poet’s thought is well illustrated in the
following lines:
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstacy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”
Then would I bear, and clench myself and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased, too, that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan....
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
And again, in “Nature’s Questionings,” we find him conceiving the “field,
flock and lonely tree” as asking:
“Has some Vast Imbecility,
Mighty to build and blend,
But impotent to tend,
Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?
“Or come we of an Automaton
Unconscious of our pains....
Or are we live remains
Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?”
“Or is it that some high Plan Betides,
As yet not understood,
Of Evil stormed by Good;
We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?”
And having no conclusion for his own heart—
“No answerer I....
Meanwhile, the winds, and rains,
And Earth’s old glooms and pains,
Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death
Neighbors nigh.”
One instinctively compares this with Tennyson’s spirit of noble
meditation in “In Memoriam;” and it must be confessed that Hardy suffers
by comparison as lacking the essential attributes of Anglo-Saxon
courageousness. One regrets the publication of “Wessex Poems,” for it
reveals the character of a great writer in an unfortunate and belittling
light; to reconstruct one’s impression of his power and personality one
feels the need of reopening one of his most delightful books, such as
“The Woodlanders,” to breathe its good smells of Mother Earth, and under
its domination as an exquisite pastoral production find there, and not in
“Wessex Poems,” Thomas Hardy, the poet.
—_Edward A. Uffington Valentine._
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*** End of this Doctrine Publishing Corporation Digital Book "Dixie: A monthly magazine, Vol. I, No. 2, February 1899" ***