LIPPINCOTT’S   MAGAZINE

OF

POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE.

AUGUST, 1878.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1878,
by J. B. Lippincott & Co.,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

ALONG THE DANUBE.

SOMENDRIA.

Ada-Kalé is a Turkish fortress which
seems to spring directly from the bosom
of the Danube at a point where three
curious and quarrelsome races come into
contact, and where the Ottoman thought
it necessary to have a foothold even in
times of profound peace. To the traveller
from Western Europe no spectacle
on the way to Constantinople was so impressive
as this ancient and picturesque
fortification, suddenly affronting the vision
with its odd walls, its minarets, its
red-capped sentries, and the yellow sinister
faces peering from balconies suspended
above the current. It was the
first glimpse of the Orient which one obtained;
it appropriately introduced one
to a domain which is governed by sword
and gun; and it was a pretty spot of color
in the midst of the severe and rather solemn
scenery of the Danubian stream.
Ada-Kalé is to be razed to the water’s
edge—so, at least, the treaty between
Russia and Turkey has ordained—and
the Servian mountaineers will no longer
see the Crescent flag flying within rifle-shot
of the crags from which, by their
heroic devotion in unequal battle, they
long ago banished it.

The Turks occupying this fortress during
the recent war evidently relied upon
Fate for their protection, for the walls of[page 138]
Ada-Kalé are within a stone’s throw of
the Roumanian shore, and every Mussulman
in the place could have been
captured in twenty minutes. I passed
by there one morning on the road from
Orsova, on the frontier of Hungary, to
Bucharest, and was somewhat amused
to see an elderly Turk seated in a small
boat near the Roumanian bank fishing.
Behind him were two soldiers, who served
as oarsmen, and rowed him gently
from point to point when he gave the
signal. Scarcely six hundred feet from
him stood a Wallachian sentry, watching
his movements in lazy, indifferent
fashion. And this was at the moment
that the Turks were bombarding Kalafat
in Roumania from Widdin on the Bulgarian
side of the Danube! Such a spectacle
could be witnessed nowhere save
in this land, “where it is always afternoon,”
where people at times seem to
suspend respiration because they are too
idle to breathe, and where even a dog
will protest if you ask him to move
quickly out of your path. The old Turk
doubtless fished in silence and calm until
the end of the war, for I never heard
of the removal of either himself or his
companions.

The journeys by river and by rail from
Lower Roumania to the romantic and
broken country surrounding Orsova are
extremely interesting. The Danube-stretches
of shimmering water among
the reedy lowlands—where the only
sign of life is a quaint craft painted with
gaudy colors becalmed in some nook, or
a guardhouse built on piles driven into
the mud—are perhaps a trifle monotonous,
but one has only to turn from them
to the people who come on board the
steamer to have a rich fund of enjoyment.
Nowhere are types so abundant
and various as on the routes of travel
between Bucharest and Rustchuk, or
Pesth and Belgrade. Every complexion,
an extraordinary piquancy and variety of
costume, and a bewildering array of languages
and dialects, are set before the
careful observer. As for myself, I found
a special enchantment in the scenery of
the lower Danube—in the lonely inlets,
the wildernesses of young shoots in the
marshes, the flights of aquatic birds as
the sound of the steamer was heard, the
long tongues of land on which the water-buffaloes
lay huddled in stupid content,
the tiny hummocks where villages of
wattled hovels were assembled. The
Bulgarian shore stands out in bold relief:
Sistova, from the river, is positively
beautiful, but the now historical Simnitza
seems only a mud-flat. At night
the boats touch upon the Roumanian
side for fuel—the Turks have always
been too lazy and vicious to develop the
splendid mineral resources of Bulgaria—and
the stout peasants and their wives
trundle thousands of barrows of coal
along the swinging planks. Here is raw
life, lusty, full of rude beauty, but utterly
incult. The men and women appear to
be merely animals gifted with speech.
The women wear almost no clothing:
their matted hair drops about their
shapely shoulders as they toil at their
burden, singing meanwhile some merry
chorus. Little tenderness is bestowed
on these creatures, and it was not without
a slight twinge of the nerves that I
saw the huge, burly master of the boat’s
crew now and then bestow a ringing
slap with his open hand upon the neck
or cheek of one of the poor women who
stumbled with her load or who hesitated
for a moment to indulge in abuse of a
comrade. As the boat moved away these
people, dancing about the heaps of coal
in the torchlight, looked not unlike demons
disporting in some gruesome nook
of Enchanted Land. When they were
gypsies they did not need the aid of the
torches: they were sufficiently demoniacal
without artificial aid.

Kalafat and Turnu-Severinu are small
towns which would never have been
much heard of had they not been in the
region visited by the war. Turnu-Severinu
is noted, however, as the point where
Severinus once built a mighty tower;
and not far from the little hamlet may
still be seen the ruins of Trajan’s immemorial
bridge. Where the Danube
is twelve hundred yards wide and nearly
twenty feet deep, Apollodorus of Damascus
did not hesitate, at Trajan’s command,
to undertake the construction of[page 139]
a bridge with twenty stone and wooden arches.
He builded well, for one or two of the stone
piers still remain perfect after a lapse of sixteen
centuries, and eleven of them, more or less ruined,
are yet visible at low water. Apollodorus was
a man of genius, as his other work, the Trajan Column,
proudly standing in Rome, amply testifies.
No doubt he was richly rewarded by Trajan
for constructing a work which, flanked as it was
by noble fortifications, bound the newly-captured
Dacian colony to the Roman empire. What
mighty men were these Romans, who carved their
way along the Danube banks, hewing roads and
levelling mountains at the same time that they
engaged the savages of the locality in daily battle!
There were indeed giants in those days.

RUSTCHUK.

When Ada-Kalé is passed, and pretty
Orsova, lying in slumbrous quiet at the
foot of noble mountains, is reached, the
last trace of Turkish domination is left
behind. In future years, if the treaty
of San Stefano holds, there will be little
evidence of Ottoman lack of civilization
anywhere on the Danube, for the forts
of the Turks will gradually disappear,
and the Mussulman cannot for an instant
hold his own among Christians
where he has no military advantage.[page 140]
But at Orsova, although the red fez and
voluminous trousers are rarely seen, the
influence of Turkey is keenly felt. It is
in these remote regions of Hungary that
the real rage against Russia and the
burning enthusiasm and sympathy for
the Turks is most openly expressed.
Every cottage in the neighborhood is
filled with crude pictures representing
events of the Hungarian revolution; and
the peasants, as they look upon those reminders
of perturbed times, reflect that
the Russians were instrumental in preventing
the accomplishment of their dearest
wishes. Here the Hungarian is eminently
patriotic: he endeavors as much
as possible to forget that he and his are
bound to the empire of Austria, and he
speaks of the German and the Slav who
are his fellow-subjects with a sneer. The
people whom one encounters in that corner
of Hungary profess a dense ignorance
of the German language, but if
pressed can speak it glibly enough. I
won an angry frown and an unpleasant
remark from an innkeeper because I did
not know that Austrian postage-stamps
are not good in Hungary. Such melancholy
ignorance of the simplest details
of existence seemed to my host meet
subject for reproach.

Orsova became an important point as
soon as the Turks and Russians were at
war. The peasants of the Banat stared
as they saw long lines of travellers leaving
the steamers which had come from
Pesth and Bazros, and invading the two
small inns, which are usually more than
half empty. Englishmen, Russians, Austrian
officers sent down to keep careful
watch upon the land, French and Prussian,
Swiss and Belgian military attachés
and couriers, journalists, artists, amateur
army-followers, crowded the two long
streets and exhausted the market. Next
came a hungry and thirsty mob of refugees
from Widdin—Jews, Greeks and
gypsies—and these promenaded their
variegated misery on the river-banks
from sunrise until sunset. Then out from
Roumanian land poured thousands of
wretched peasants, bare-footed, bareheaded,
dying of starvation, fleeing from
Turkish invasion, which, happily, never
assumed large proportions. These poor
people slept on the ground, content with
the shelter of house-walls: they subsisted
on unripe fruits and that unfailing
fund of mild tobacco which every male
being in all those countries invariably
manages to secure. Walking abroad in
Orsova was no easy task, for one was
constantly compelled to step over these
poor fugitives, who packed themselves
into the sand at noonday, and managed
for a few hours before the cool evening
breezes came to forget their miseries.
The vast fleet of river-steamers belonging
to the Austrian company was laid
up at Orsova, and dozens of captains,
conversing in the liquid Slav or the
graceful Italian or guttural German, were
for ever seated about the doors of the little
cafés smoking long cigars and quaffing
beakers of the potent white wine produced
in Austrian vineyards.

Opposite Orsova lie the Servian Mountains,
bold, majestic, inspiring. Their
noble forests and the deep ravines between
them are exquisite in color when
the sun flashes along their sides. A few
miles below the point where the Hungarian
and Roumanian territories meet
the mountainous region declines into
foot-hills, and then to an uninteresting
plain. The Orsovan dell is the culminating
point of all the beauty and
grandeur of the Danubian hills. From
one eminence richly laden with vineyards
I looked out on a fresh April
morning across a delicious valley filled
with pretty farms and white cottages
and ornamented by long rows of shapely
poplars. Turning to the right, I saw
Servia’s barriers, shutting in from the
cold winds the fat lands of the interior;
vast hillsides dotted from point to point
with peaceful villages, in the midst of
which white churches with slender spires
arose; and to the left the irregular line
of the Roumanian peaks stood up, jagged
and broken, against the horizon.
Out from Orsova runs a rude highway
into the rocky and savage back-country.
The celebrated baths of Mehadia, the
“hot springs” of the Austro-Hungarian
empire, are yearly frequented by three
or four thousand sufferers, who come[page 141]
from the European capitals to Temesvar,
and are thence trundled in diligences
to the water-cure. But the railway
is penetrating even this far-off land,
where once brigands delighted to wander,
and Temesvar and Bucharest will
be bound together by a daily “through-service”
as regular as that between Pesth
and Vienna.

SISTOVA.

I sat one evening on the balcony of[page 142]
the diminutive inn known as “The Hungarian
Crown,” watching the sunbeams
on the broad current of the Danube and
listening to the ripple, the plash and the
gurgle of the swollen stream as it rushed
impetuously against the banks. A group
of Servians, in canoes light and swift as
those of Indians, had made their way
across the river, and were struggling
vigorously to prevent the current from
carrying them below a favorable landing-place.
These tall, slender men, with
bronzed faces and gleaming eyes, with
their round skull-caps, their gaudy jackets
and ornamental leggings, bore no
small resemblance at a distance to certain
of our North American red-skins.
Each man had a long knife in his belt,
and from experience I can say that a
Servian knife is in itself a complete tool-chest.
With its one tough and keen
blade one may skin a sheep, file a saw,
split wood, mend a wagon, defend one’s
self vigorously if need be, make a buttonhole
and eat one’s breakfast. No
Servian who adheres to the ancient costume
would consider himself dressed unless
the crooked knife hung from his girdle.
Although the country-side along
the Danube is rough, and travellers are
said to need protection among the Servian
hills, I could not discover that the
inhabitants wore other weapons than
these useful articles of cutlery. Yet they
are daring smugglers, and sometimes
openly defy the Hungarian authorities
when discovered. “Ah!” said Master
Josef, the head-servant of the Hungarian
Crown, “many a good fight have I
seen in mid-stream, the boats grappled
together, knives flashing, and our fellows
drawing their pistols. All that, too,
for a few flasks of Negotin, which is a
musty red, thick wine that Heaven would
forbid me to recommend to your honorable
self and companions so long as I
put in the cellar the pearl dew of yonder
vineyards!” pointing to the vines of
Orsova.

While the Servians were anxiously
endeavoring to land, and seemed to be
in imminent danger of upsetting, the roll
of thunder was heard and a few drops
of rain fell with heavy plash. Master
Josef forthwith began making shutters
fast and tying the curtains; “For now
we shall have a wind!” quoth he. And
it came. As by magic the Servian shore
was blotted out, and before me I could
see little save the river, which seemed
transformed into a roaring and foaming
ocean. The refugees, the gypsies,
the Jews, the Greeks, scampered in all
directions. Then tremendous echoes
awoke among the hills. Peal after peal
echoed and re-echoed, until it seemed
as if the cliffs must crack and crumble.
Sheets of rain were blown by the mischievous
winds now full upon the unhappy
fugitives, or now descended with
seemingly crushing force on the Servians
in their dancing canoes. Then
came vivid lightning, brilliant and instant
glances of electricity, disclosing
the forests and hills for a moment, then
seeming by their quick departure to render
the obscurity more painful than before.
The fiery darts were hurled by
dozens upon the devoted trees, and the
tall and graceful stems were bent like
reeds before the rushing of the blast.
Cold swept through the vale, and shadows
seemed to follow it. Such contrast
with the luminous, lovely semi-tropical
afternoon, in the dreamy restfulness of
which man and beast seemed settling
into lethargy, was crushing. It pained
and disturbed the spirit. Master Josef,
who never lost an occasion to cross himself
and to do a few turns on a little rosary
of amber beads, came and went in
a kind of dazed mood while the storm
was at its height. Just as a blow was
struck among the hills which seemed to
make the earth quiver to its centre, the
varlet approached and modestly inquired
if the “honorable society”—myself and
chance companions—would visit that
very afternoon the famous chapel in
which the crown of Hungary lies buried.
I glanced curiously at him, thinking that
possibly the thunder had addled his brain.
“Oh, the honorable society may walk in
sunshine all the way to the chapel at five
o’clock,” he said with an encouraging
grin. “These Danube storms come and
go as quickly as a Tsigane from a hen-roost.
See! the thunder has stopped its[page 143]
howling, and there is not a wink of lightning. Even
the raindrops are so few that one may almost walk
between them.”

NICOPOLIS.

I returned to the balcony from which the storm
had driven me, and was gratified by the sight of the
mountain-side studded with pearls, which a
faint glow in the sky was gently touching. The
Danube roared and foamed with malicious glee as
the poor Servians were still whirled about on the water.
But presently, through the deep gorges and
along the sombre stream and over the vineyards, the
rocks and the roofs of humble cottages, stole a
warm breeze, followed by dazzling sunlight, which
returned in mad haste to atone for the displeasure of
the wind and rain. In a few moments the refugees were
again afield, spreading their drenched garments
on the wooden railings, and stalking
about in a condition narrowly approaching
nakedness. A gypsy four feet high,[page 144]
clad in a linen shirt and trousers so wide
as to resemble petticoats, strolled thoughtlessly
on the bank singing a plaintive
melody, and now and then turning his
brown face skyward as if to salute the
sun. This child of mysterious ancestry,
this wanderer from the East, this robber
of roosts and cunning worker in metals,
possessed nor hat nor shoes: his naked
breast and his unprotected arms must
suffer cold at night, yet he seemed wonderfully
happy. The Jews and Greeks
gave him scornful glances, which he returned
with quizzical, provoking smiles.
At last he threw himself down on a plank
from which the generous sun was rapidly
drying the rain, and, coiling up as a dog
might have done, he was soon asleep.

With a marine glass I could see distinctly
every movement on the Servian
shore. Close to the water’s edge nestled
a small village of neat white cottages.
Around a little wharf hovered fifty or
sixty stout farmers, mounted on sturdy
ponies, watching the arrival of the Mercur,
the Servian steamer from Belgrade
and the Sava River. The Mercur came
puffing valiantly forward, as unconcerned
as if no whirlwind had swept across her
path, although she must have been in
the narrow and dangerous cañon of the
“Iron Gates” when the blast and the
shower were most furious. On the roads
leading down the mountain-sides I saw
long processions of squealing and grunting
swine, black, white and gray, all active
and self-willed, fighting each other
for the right of way. Before each procession
marched a swineherd playing on
a rustic pipe, the sounds from which primitive
instrument seemed to exercise Circean
enchantment upon the rude flocks.
It was inexpressibly comical to watch the
masses of swine after they had been enclosed
in the “folds”—huge tracts fenced
in and provided with shelters at the corners.
Each herd knew its master, and
as he passed to and fro would salute him
with a delighted squeal, which died away
into a series of disappointed and cynical
groans as soon as the porkers had discovered
that no evening repast was to be
offered them. Good fare do these Servian
swine find in the abundant provision
of acorns in the vast forests. The men
who spend their lives in restraining the
vagabond instincts of these vulgar animals
may perhaps be thought a collection
of brutal hinds; but, on the contrary,
they are fellows of shrewd common
sense and much dignity of feeling.
Kara-George, the terror of the Turk at
the beginning of this century, the majestic
character who won the admiration of
Europe, whose genius as a soldier was
praised by Napoleon the Great, and who
freed his countrymen from bondage,—Kara-George
was a swineherd in the
woods of the Schaumadia until the wind
of the spirit fanned his brow and called
him from his simple toil to immortalize
his homely name.

Master Josef and his fellows in Orsova
did not hate the Servians with the
bitterness manifested toward the Roumanians,
yet they considered them as
aliens and as dangerous conspirators
against the public weal. “Who knows
at what moment they may go over to
the Russians?” was the constant cry.
And in process of time they went, but
although Master Josef had professed
the utmost willingness to take up arms
on such an occasion, it does not appear
that he did it, doubtless preferring, on
reflection, the quiet of his inn and his
flask of white wine in the courtyard rather
than an excursion among the trans-Danubian
hills and the chances of an
untoward fate at the point of a Servian
knife. It is not astonishing that the two
peoples do not understand each other,
although only a strip of water separates
their frontiers for a long stretch; for the
difference in language and in its written
form is a most effectual barrier to intercourse.
The Servians learn something of
the Hungarian dialects, since they come
to till the rich lands of the Banat in the
summer season. Bulgarians and Servians
by thousands find employment in
Hungary in summer, and return home
when autumn sets in. But the dreams
and ambitions of the two peoples have
nothing in common. Servia looks longingly
to Slavic unification, and is anxious
to secure for herself a predominance in
the new nation to be moulded out of[page 145]
the old scattered elements: Hungary believes
that the consolidation of the Slavs
would place her in a dangerous
and humiliating position, and
conspires day and night to compass
exactly the reverse of Servian
wishes. Thus the two countries
are theoretically at peace
and practically at war. While
the conflict of 1877 was in progress
collisions between Servian
and Hungarian were of almost
daily occurrence.

The Hungarian’s intolerance
of the Slav does not proceed from
unworthy jealousy, but rather
from an exaggerated idea of the
importance of his own country,
and of the evils which might befall
it if the old Serb stock began
to renew its ancient glory. In
corners of Hungary, such as Orsova,
the peasant imagines that
his native land is the main world,
and that the rest of Europe is an unnecessary
and troublesome fringe
around the edges of it. There is a
story of a gentleman in Pesth who
went to a dealer in maps and inquired
for a globus of Hungary,
showing that he imagined it to be
the whole round earth.

THE DANUBE AT TRAJAN’S BRIDGE.

So fair were the land and the
stream after the storm that I lingered
until sunset gazing out over
river and on Servian hills, and
did not accept Josef’s invitation
to visit the chapel of the Hungarian
crown that evening. But
next morning, before the sun was
high, I wandered alone in the direction
of the Roumanian frontier,
and by accident came upon
the chapel. It is a modest structure
in a nook surrounded by tall
poplars, and within is a simple
chapel with Latin inscriptions.
Here the historic crown reposes,
now that there is no longer any
use for it at Presburg, the ancient
capital. Here it was brought by
pious hands after the troubles between
Austria and Hungary were settled. During
the revolution the sacred bauble was
hidden by the command of noblemen to
whom it had been confided, and the servitors
who concealed it at the behest of
their masters were slain, lest in an indiscreet
moment they might betray the secret.[page 146]
For thousands of enthusiasts this
tiny chapel is the holiest of shrines, and
should trouble come anew upon Hungary
in the present perturbed times, the crown
would perhaps journey once more.

It seems pitiful that the railway should
ever invade this out-of-the-way corner
of Europe. But it is already crawling
through the mountains: hundreds of
Italian laborers are putting down the
shining rails in woods and glens where
no sounds save the song of birds or the
carol of the infrequent passer-by have
heretofore been heard. For the present,
however, the old-fashioned, comfortless
diligence keeps the roads: the beribboned
postilion winds his merry horn, and
as the afternoon sun is getting low the
dusty, antique vehicle rattles up to the
court of the inn, the guard gets down,
dusts the leather casing of the gun which
now-a-days he is never compelled to use:
then he touches his square hat, ornamented
with a feather, to the maids and men
of the hostelry. When the mails are
claimed, the horses refreshed and the
stage is covered with its leathern hood,
postilion and guard sit down together in
a cool corner under the gallery in the
courtyard and crack various small flasks
of wine. They smoke their porcelain
pipes imported from Vienna with the
air of men of the world who have travelled
and who could tell you a thing or
two if they liked. They are never tired
of talking of Mehadia, which is one of
their principal stations. The sad-faced
nobleman, followed by the decorous old
man-servant in fantastic Magyar livery,
who arrived in the diligence, has been
to the baths. The master is vainly seeking
cure, comes every year, and always
supplies postilion and guard with the
money to buy flasks of wine. This the
postilion tells me and my fellows, and
suggests that the “honorable society”
should follow the worthy nobleman’s example.
No sooner is it done than postilion
and guard kiss our hands; which
is likewise an evidence that they have
travelled, are well met with every stranger
and all customs, and know more than
they say.

The Romans had extensive establishments
at Mehadia, which they called the
“Baths of Hercules,” and it is in memory
of this that a statue of the good giant
stands in the square of the little town.
Scattered through the hills, many inscriptions
to Hercules, to Mercury and
to Venus have been found during the
ages. The villages on the road thither
are few and far between, and are inhabited
by peasants decidedly Dacian
in type. It is estimated that a million
and a half of Roumanians are settled
in Hungary, and in this section they are
exceedingly numerous. Men and women
wear showy costumes, quite barbaric and
uncomfortable. The women seem determined
to wear as few garments as possible,
and to compensate for lack of number
by brightness of coloring. In many
a pretty face traces of gypsy blood may
be seen. This vagabond taint gives an
inexpressible charm to a face for which
the Hungarian strain has already done
much. The coal-black hair and wild,
mutinous eyes set off to perfection the
pale face and exquisitely thin lips, the
delicate nostrils and beautifully moulded
chin. Angel or devil? queries the beholder.
Sometimes he is constrained to
think that the possessor of such a face
has the mingled souls of saint and siren.
The light undertone of melancholy
which pervades gypsy beauty, gypsy music,
gypsy manners, has an extremely
remarkable fascination for all who perceive
it. Even when it is almost buried
beneath ignorance and animal craft, it is
still to be found in the gypsy nature after
diligent search. This strange race
seems overshadowed by the sorrow of
some haunting memory. Each individual
belonging to the Tsiganes whom I
saw impressed me as a fugitive from
Fate. To look back was impossible;
of the present he was careless; the future
tempted him on. In their music
one now and then hears hints of a desire
to return to some far-off and half-forgotten
land. But this is rare.

There are a large number of “civilized
gypsies,” so called, in the neighborhood
of Orsova. I never saw one of
them without a profound compassion for
him, so utterly unhappy did he look in[page 147]
ordinary attire. The musicians who came
nightly to play on the lawn in front of
the Hungarian Crown inn belonged to
these civilized Tsiganes. They had lost
all the freedom of gesture, the proud,
half-savage stateliness of those who remained
nomadic and untrammelled by local law
and custom. The old instinct was in their music, but
sometimes there drifted into it the same mixture of
saint and devil which I had seen
in the “composite” faces.

BOATS ON THE DANUBE.

As soon as supper was set forth, piping hot and
flanked by flagons of beer and wine, on the lawn, and
the guests had assembled to partake of the good
cheer, while yet the afterglow lingered along the
Danube, these dusky musicians appeared and installed
themselves in a corner. The old stream’s murmur
could not drown the piercing and pathetic
notes of the violin, the gentle wail of the guzla
or the soft thrumming of the rude tambourine. Little
poetry as a spectacled and frosty Austrian officer
might have in his soul, that little must have
been awakened by the songs and
the orchestral performances of the Tsiganes
as the sun sank low. The dusk
began to creep athwart the lawn, and a
cool breeze fanned the foreheads of the
listeners. When the light was all gone,
these men, as if inspired by the darkness,[page 148]
sometimes improvised most angelic
melody. There was never any loud or
boisterous note, never any direct appeal
to the attention. I invariably forgot the
singers and players, and the music seemed
a part of the harmony of Nature.
While the pleasant notes echoed in the
twilight, troops of jaunty young Hungarian
soldiers, dressed in red hose, dark-green
doublets and small caps sometimes
adorned with feathers, sauntered up and
down the principal street; the refugees
huddled in corners and listened with delight;
the Austrian officials lumbered by,
pouring clouds of smoke from their long,
strong and inevitable cigars; and the
dogs forgot their perennial quarrel for
a few instants at a time.

The dogs of Orsova and of all the
neighboring country have many of the
characteristics of their fellow-creatures in
Turkey. Orsova is divided into “beats,”
which are thoroughly and carefully patrolled
night and day by bands of dogs
who recognize the limits of their domain
and severely resent intrusion. In front
of the Hungarian Crown a large dog,
aided by a small yellow cur and a black
spaniel mainly made up of ears and tail,
maintained order. The afternoon quiet
was generally disturbed about four o’clock
by the advent of a strange canine, who,
with that expression of extreme innocence
which always characterizes the
animal that knows he is doing wrong,
would venture on to the forbidden
ground. A low growl in chorus from
the three guardians was the inevitable
preliminary warning. The new-comer
usually seemed much surprised at this,
and gave an astonished glance: then,
wagging his tail merrily, as much as to
say, “Nonsense! I must have been mistaken,”
he approached anew. One of
the trio of guardians thereupon sallied
forth to meet him, followed by the others
a little distance behind. If the strange
dog showed his teeth, assumed a defiant
attitude and seemed inclined to make
his way through any number of enemies,
the trio held a consultation, which, I am
bound to say, almost invariably resulted
in a fight. The intruder would either
fly yelping, or would work his way across
the interdicted territory by means of a
series of encounters, accompanied by
the most terrific barking, snapping and
shrieking, and by a very considerable effusion
of blood. The person who should
interfere to prevent a dog-fight in Orsova
would be regarded as a lunatic. Sometimes
a large white dog, accompanied by
two shaggy animals resembling wolves so
closely that it was almost impossible to
believe them guardians of flocks of sheep,
passed by the Hungarian Crown unchallenged,
but these were probably tried
warriors whose valor was so well known
that they were no longer questioned anywhere.

The gypsies have in their wagons or
following in their train small black dogs
of temper unparalleled for ugliness. It
is impossible to approach a Tsigane tent
or wagon without encountering a swarm
of these diminutive creatures, whose rage
is not only amusing, but sometimes rather
appalling to contemplate. Driving
rapidly by a camp one morning in a
farmer’s cart drawn by two stout horses
adorned with jingling bells, I was followed
by a pack of these dark-skinned
animals. The bells awoke such rage
within them that they seemed insane
under its influence. As they leaped and
snapped around me, I felt like some traveller
in a Russian forest pursued by hungry
wolves. A dog scarcely six inches
high, and but twice as long, would spring
from the ground as if a pound of dynamite
had exploded beneath him, and
would make a desperate effort to throw
himself into the wagon. Another, howling
in impotent anger, would jump full
at a horse’s throat, would roll beneath
the feet of the team, but in some miraculous
fashion would escape unhurt, and
would scramble upon a bank to try again.
It was a real relief when the discouraged
pack fell away. Had I shot one of the
animals, the gypsies would have found
a way to avenge the death of their enterprising
though somewhat too zealous
camp-follower. Animals everywhere on
these border-lines of the Orient are treated
with much more tenderness than men
and women are. The grandee who would
scowl furiously in this wild region of the[page 149]
Banat if the peasants did not stand by
the roadside and doff their hats in token
of respect and submission as he whirled
by in his carriage, would not kick a dog
out of his way, and would manifest the
utmost tenderness for his horses.

ORSOVA.

Much as the Hungarian inhabitants
of the Banat hate the Roumanians, they
do not fail to appreciate the commercial
advantages which will follow on the union[page 150]
of the two countries by rail. Pretty Orsova
may in due time become a bustling
town filled with grain- and coal-dépôts
and with small manufactories. The railway
from Verciorova on the frontier runs
through the large towns Pitesti and Craiova
on its way to Bucharest. It is a marvellous
railroad: it climbs hills, descends
into deep gullies, and has as little of
the air-line about it as a great river
has, for the contractors built it on the
principle of “keeping near the surface,”
and they much preferred climbing ten
high mountains to cutting one tunnel.
Craiova takes its name, according to a
somewhat misty legend, from John Assan,
who was one of the Romano-Bulgarian
kings, Craiova being a corruption
of Crai Ivan (“King John”). This John
was the same who drank his wine from a
cup made out of the skull of the unlucky
emperor Baldwin I. The old bans of
Craiova gave their title to the Roumanian
silver pieces now known as bañi.
Slatina, farther down the line, on the
river Altu (the Aluta of the ancients), is
a pretty town, where a proud and brave
community love to recite to the stranger
the valorous deeds of their ancestors. It
is the centre from which have spread out
most of the modern revolutionary movements
in Roumania. “Little Wallachia,”
in which Slatina stands, is rich in well-tilled
fields and uplands covered with
fat cattle: it is as fertile as Kansas, and
its people seemed to me more agreeable
and energetic than those in and around
Bucharest.

He who clings to the steamers plying
up and down the Danube sees much romantic
scenery and many curious types,
but he loses all the real charm of travel
in these regions. The future tourist on
his way to or from Bulgaria and the battle-fields
of the “new crusade” will be
wise if he journeys leisurely by farm-wagon—he
will not be likely to find a
carriage—along the Hungarian bank
of the stream. I made the journey in
April, when in that gentle southward
climate the wayside was already radiant
with flowers and the mellow sunshine
was unbroken by cloud or rain. There
were discomfort and dust, but there was
a rare pleasure in the arrival at a quaint
inn whose exterior front, boldly asserting
itself in the bolder row of house-fronts
in a long village street, was uninviting
enough, but the interior of which was
charming. In such a hostelry I always
found the wharfmaster, in green coat and
cap, asleep in an arm-chair, with the burgomaster
and one or two idle landed proprietors
sitting near him at a card-table,
enveloped in such a cloud of smoke that
one could scarcely see the long-necked
flasks of white wine which they were rapidly
emptying. The host was a massive
man with bulbous nose and sleepy eyes:
he responded to all questions with a stare
and the statement that he did not know,
and seemed anxious to leave everything
in doubt until the latest moment possible.
His daughter, who was brighter and less
dubious in her responses than her father,
was a slight girl with lustrous black eyes,
wistful lips, a perfect form, and black
hair covered with a linen cloth that the
dust might not come near its glossy
threads. When she made her appearance,
flashing out of a huge dark room
which was stone paved and arched overhead,
and in which peasants sat drinking
sour beer, she seemed like a ray of sunshine
in the middle of night. But there
was more dignity about her than is to be
found in most sunbeams: she was modest
and civil in answer, but understood
no compliments. There was something
of the princess-reduced-in-circumstances
in her demeanor. A royal supper could
she serve, and the linen which she spread
on the small wooden table in the back
courtyard smelled of lavender. I took
my dinners, after the long days’ rides, in
inns which commanded delicious views
of the Danube—points where willows
overhung the rushing stream, or where
crags towered above it, or where it flowed
in smooth yet resistless might through
plains in which hundreds of peasants were
toiling, their red-and-white costumes contrasting
sharply with the brilliant blue of
the sky and the tender green of the foliage.

BELGRADE, FROM SEMLIN.

If the inns were uniformly cleanly
and agreeable, as much could not be
said for the villages, which were sometimes
decidedly dirty. The cottages of
the peasants—that is, of the agricultural
laborers—were windowless to a degree which led me to
look for a small- and dull-eyed race, but the eloquent orbs of
youths and maidens in all this Banat land are rarely equalled in
beauty. I found it in my heart to object to the omnipresent
swine. These cheerful animals were sometimes so domesticated
that they followed their masters and mistresses afield in the morning.
In this section of Hungary, as indeed in most parts of Europe,
the farm-houses are all huddled together in compact villages,
and the lands tilled by the dwellers in these communities extend
for miles around them. At dawn the procession of laborers goes
forth, and at sunset it returns. Nothing can give a better idea
of rural simplicity and peace than the return of the peasants of a
hamlet at eventide from their vineyards and meadows. Just as
the sun was deluging the broad Danube with glory before relinquishing
the current to the twilight’s shades I came, in the soft
April evening, into the neighborhood of Drenkova. A tranquil
afterglow was here and there visible near the hills, which warded
off the sun’s passionate farewell glances at the vines and flowers.
Beside the way, on the green banks, sat groups of children,
clad with paradisiacal simplicity, awaiting their fathers and mothers.
At a vineyard’s hedge a sweet girl, tall, stately and melancholy,
was twining a garland in the cap of a stout young fellow
who rested one broad hand lightly upon her shoulder. Old
women, bent and wrinkled, hobbled out from the fields, getting
help from their sons or grandsons. Sometimes I met a shaggy white
horse drawing a cart in which a dozen sonsie lasses, their faces
browned by wind and their tresses[page 152]
blown back from their brows in most bewitching
manner by the libertine breeze,
were jolting homeward, singing as they
went. The young men in their loose linen
garments, with their primitive hoes
and spades on their shoulders, were as
goodly specimens of manly strength and
beauty as one could wish to look upon.
It hurt me to see them stand humbly
ranged in rows as I passed. But it was
pleasant to note the fervor with which
they knelt around the cross rearing its
sainted form amid the waving grasses.
They knew nothing of the outer world,
save that from time to time the emperor
claimed certain of their number for his
service, and that perhaps their lot might
lead them to the great city of Buda-Pesth.
Everywhere as far as the eye could reach
the land was cultivated with greatest care,
and plenty seemed the lot of all. The
peasant lived in an ugly and windowless
house because his father and grandfather
had done so before him, not because it
was necessary. It was odd to see girls
tall as Dian, and as fair, bending their
pretty bodies to come out of the contemptible
little apertures in the peasant-houses
called “doors.”

Drenkova is a long street of low cottages,
with here and there a two-story
mansion to denote that the proprietors
of the land reside there. As I approached
the entrance to this street I saw a most
remarkable train coming to meet me.
One glance told me that it was a large
company of gypsies who had come up
from Roumania, and were going northward
in search of work or plunder. My
driver drew rein, and we allowed the
swart Bohemians to pass on—a courtesy
which was gracefully acknowledged with
a singularly sweet smile from the driver
of the first cart. There were about two
hundred men and women in this wagon-train,
and I verily believe that there were
twice as many children. Each cart, drawn
by a small Roumanian pony, contained
two or three families huddled together,
and seemingly lost in contemplation of
the beautiful sunset, for your real gypsy
is a keen admirer of Nature and her
charms. Some of the women were intensely
hideous: age had made them as
unattractive as in youth they had been
pretty; others were graceful and well-formed.
Many wore but a single garment.
The men were wilder than any
that I had ever before seen: their matted
hair, their thick lips and their dark
eyes gave them almost the appearance
of negroes. One or two of them had
been foraging, and bore sheeps’ heads
and hares which they had purchased or
“taken” in the village. They halted as
soon as they had passed me, and prepared
to go into camp; so I waited a little
to observe them. During the process
of arranging the carts for the night one
of the women became enraged at the
father of her brood because he would
not aid her in the preparation of the
simple tent under which the family was
to repose. The woman ran to him,
clenching her fist and screaming forth
invective which, I am convinced, had I
understood it and had it been directed
at me, I should have found extremely
disagreeable. After thus lashing the culprit
with language for some time, she
broke forth into screams and danced
frantically around him. He arose, visibly
disturbed, and I fancied that his
savage nature would come uppermost,
and that he might be impelled to give
her a brutal beating. But he, on the
contrary, advanced leisurely toward her
and spat upon the ground with an expression
of extreme contempt. She seemed
to feel this much more than she would
have felt a blow, and her fury redoubled.
She likewise spat; he again repeated the
contemptuous act; and after both had
gratified the anger which was consuming
them, they walked off in different
directions. The battle was over, and I
was not sorry to notice a few minutes
later that paterfamilias had thought
better of his conduct, and was himself
spreading the tent and setting forth his
wandering Lares and Penates.

A few hundred yards from the point
where these wanderers had settled for
the night I found some rude huts in
which other gypsies were residing permanently.
These huts were mere shelters
placed against steep banks or hedges,
and within there was no furniture save[page 153]
one or two blankets, a camp-kettle and some wicker baskets.
Young girls twelve or thirteen years of age crouched naked
about a smouldering fire. They did not
seem unhappy or hungry; and none of these strange people paid
any attention to me as I drove on to the inn, which,
oddly enough, was at some distance from
the main village, hard by the Danube
side, in a gully between the mountains,[page 154]
where coal-barges lay moored. The Servian
Mountains, covered from base to summit
with dense forests, cast a deep gloom
over the vale. In a garden on a terrace
behind the inn, by the light of a flickering
candle, I ate a frugal dinner, and went
to bed much impressed by the darkness,
in such striking contrast to the delightful
and picturesque scenes through which I
had wandered all day.

THE IRON GATES.

But I speedily forgot this next morning,
when the landlord informed me that,
instead of toiling over the road along the
crags to Orsova, whither I was returning,
I could embark on a tug-boat bound
for that cheerful spot, and could thus inspect
the grand scenery of the Iron Gates
from the river. The swift express-boats
which in time of peace run from Vienna
to Rustchuk whisk the traveller so rapidly
through these famous defiles that
he sees little else than a panorama of
high rocky walls. But the slow-moving
and clumsy tug, with its train of barges
attached, offers better facilities to the
lover of natural beauty. We had dropped
down only a short distance below
Drenkova before we found the river-path
filled with eddies, miniature whirlpools,
denoting the vicinity of the gorges
into which the great current is compressed.
These whirlpools all have names:
one is called the “Buffalo;” a second,
Kerdaps; a third is known as the “Devourer.”
The Turks have a healthy awe
of this passage, which in old times was
a terrible trial to these stupid and always
inefficient navigators. For three or four
hours we ran in the shade of mighty
walls of porphyry and granite, on whose
tops were forests of oaks and elms. High
up on cliffs around which the eagles circle,
and low in glens where one sometimes
sees a bear swimming, the sun
threw a flood of mellow glory. I could
fancy that the veins of red porphyry running
along the face of the granite were
blood-stains, the tragic memorials of
ancient battles. For, wild and inaccessible
as this region seems, it has been
fought over and through in sternest fashion.
Perched on a little promontory on
the Servian side is the tiny town of Poretch,
where the brave shepherds and
swineherds fought the Turk, against
whose oppression they had risen, until
they were overwhelmed by numbers,
and their leader, Hadji Nikolos, lost his
head. The Austrians point out with pride
the cave on the tremendous flank of
Mount Choukourou where, two centuries
ago, an Austrian general at the
head of seven hundred men, all that was
left to him of a goodly army, sustained a
three months’ siege against large Turkish
forces. This cave is perched high
above the road at a point where it absolutely
commands it, and the government
of to-day, realizing its importance, has
had it fortified and furnished with walls
pierced by loopholes. Trajan fought his
way through these defiles in the very infancy
of the Christian era; and in memory
of his first splendid campaign against
the Dacians he carved in the solid rock
the letters, some of which are still visible,
and which, by their very grandiloquence,
offer a mournful commentary on
the fleeting nature of human greatness.
Little did he think when his eyes rested
lovingly on this inscription, beginning—

IMP. CÆS. D. NERVÆ FILIUS NERVA.
TRAJANUS. GERM. PONT. MAXIMUS.

—that Time with profane hand would
wipe out the memory of many of his
glories and would undo all the work
that he had done.

On we drifted, through huge landlocked
lakes, out of which there seemed no
issue until we chanced upon a miraculous
corner where there was an outlet
frowned upon by angry rocks; on to the
“Caldron,” as the Turks called the most
imposing portion of the gorge; on through
an amphitheatre where densely-wooded
mountains on either side were reflected
in smooth water; on beneath masses
that appeared about to topple, and over
shallows where it looked as if we must
be grounded; on round a bluff which
had hidden the sudden opening of the
valley into a broad sweep, and which
had hindered us from seeing Orsova
the Fair nestling closely to her beloved
mountains.

Edward King.

THE PARIS EXPOSITION OF 1878.

I.—BUILDINGS AND GROUNDS.

THE TROCADÉRO AND GROUNDS.

It is customary to speak of things by
comparison, and the question is constantly
propounded here, as it will be to
returned Americans: “How does the Exposition
compare with the Centennial of
1876?” This is not to be answered by
vague generalities nor by sweeping statements.

It must of course be true that a great
nation could not fail to make interesting
an object upon which it has lavished
money and which has obtained the co-operation
of the principal foreign nations.
So much is true equally of Philadelphia
and Paris, and the merits of each are
such that comparisons may be instituted
which shall be derogatory to neither.

The scale of each is immense, and the
buildings of both well filled and overflowing
into numerous annexes. Fairmount
had the advantage of breadth of
ground for all comers. The Champ de
Mars is but little over one hundred acres
in area, while the portion of Fairmount
Park conceded to the Exposition was two
hundred and sixty acres.

The Champ de Mars is simply crowded
with buildings, and is hemmed in by
houses except at the end where it abuts
upon the Seine. The space between the
river and the main building is the only
breathing-ground on that side of the river,
the only place large enough for a band
to play in the open air with allowance for
a moderate crowd of listeners; and even
this portion has a far larger number of[page 156]
detached houses than elegance or convenience
of view would dictate. It was otherwise
in Philadelphia, where the ample
room gave a sensation of freedom, and
the wide lawns, and even rustic hollows,
permitted rambles, picnic lunches and
parties. Herein consists one of the most
striking features of dissimilarity between
the Philadelphia and Paris expositions.
The former had plenty of room—the latter
has insufficient. The former, with the
exception of the Main and Machinery
Buildings, with a few adjuncts, and the
Art-Gallery, a little retired from the Main
Building, had its structures dotted over a
wide expanse bordering its lakes or along
an encircling drive. For want of any other
sufficient opportunity to display the architecture
of the countries assembled, one
of the interior façades of the Paris building
has a series of characteristic house-fronts
looking upon an allée of but fifty
feet in width, which is dignified by the
title of “The Street of Nations.”

This tight packing has, however, one
compensation: it has permitted a degree
of finish to the grounds far superior to
what was possible at Philadelphia. All
the space inside the enclosure is admirably
laid out in walks and parterres, and
the two open places between the principal
buildings and the Seine display a
truly beautiful and picturesque garden,
with winding walks, ponds, fountains,
artificial mounds with clumps of trees
and evergreens, grottos, statues, trickling
rivulets with ferns and mosses, cozy
dells with little cascades, and the walks
in the more open spots bordered with
charming flowers and plants of rich leafage.
The lawns are something marvellous
in the speed with which they have
been created. Thousands of tons, as it
seems, of rich mould have been deposited
and levelled or laid upon the swelling
tumuli which border the more open
space, and the grass grows with denseness
and vigor under the stimulating
treatment of phosphates, its greenness
mocking the emerald, and forming a
most vivid setting for the darker leaves
of the tree-rhododendrons, whose globular
masses of bloom look like balls of
fire.

After all, it is only justice to mention
two things at Philadelphia which render
it memorable among exhibitions, and
which, I observe in conversation with
foreigners who visited it and are here
now, made a great and lasting impression.
I do not mean that it had but two,
but these are so frequently referred to
that it is fair to cite them specially, even
at the risk of a little repetition as to the
first—namely, the wide area and beautiful
situation, with the views of hill and river;
the means of approach by carriage-drives
through the lovely Park, those so disposed
being able to drive for miles along the
water-side, in the groves and to various
commanding points of view on their way
to such of the remoter entrances as they
might elect; the railway, which enabled
one not only to see the grounds without
fatigue, but while resting from the pedestrian
work of the interiors of the buildings;
the sense of comfort in being able
to retire for a while to sylvan or floral retreats
to digest the thoughts and rest from
seeing. Secondly, the various and ample
accommodations offered to the public—the
postal and telegraph facilities; the
Department of Public Comfort; the lavatories
and retiring-rooms so abundantly
furnished. A Moresque gentleman in
turban who was in Philadelphia fairly
rubbed his hands as he referred to the
lavish opportunities for washing which
were freely given in Philadelphia, and
contrasted them with the state of things
here, where it costs ten cents to wash
your hands, and the supply of water is
but meagre at that. But he is an African,
you know, and had learned to appreciate
water, and plenty of it, in a land where
the washing of the face, hands and feet
is among the first civilities offered to a
stranger.

A few figures, dry enough in themselves
if there were nothing more, will
serve as a means of comparison of the
relative spaces under cover. The building
on the Champ de Mars is stated officially
to be 650 mètres long by 350
mètres broad, which, reduced to our
measurement, will give 2,447,536 square
feet. Deducting 150,000 feet for two enclosed
alleys, the area under roof will be[page 157]
2,297,536 feet. The area of the five principal
buildings at the Centennial Exhibition
was:

So that the difference in favor of Paris
is 327,127 feet. In round numbers, the
Paris Exposition building is one-fifth
larger than the united areas of the five
principal buildings at the Centennial.
Without making a close calculation of
the areas of the annexes and detached
buildings either of Philadelphia or Paris,
I am disposed to think that the 1876 Exhibition
was not in excess of the present
one in this respect. Either exceeds, both
in the main buildings and the swarm of
detached structures, any preceding exhibitions.
The difference between the Paris
exhibitions of 1867 and 1878 is as 153 is
to 240: the London building of 1862 would
bear to both the proportion of 92, without
any important annexes.

The high ground on the right bank of
the Seine is occupied by the Trocadéro
Palace, which faces that on the Champ
de Mars, each building being about five
hundred yards from the bank of the river,
which flows in so deep a depression
that it is visible from neither building,
and the grounds between the two appear
to be continuous, though the bridge suggests
the contrary.

The cascade in front of the Trocadéro
occupies the site of the old steps by which
the steep hill was ascended, but the ground
nearer to the Seine has been so raised
that the river-roads on each side run in
subways spanned by bridges, thus permitting
free use of the great thoroughfares
without impeding communication
between the two portions of the Exposition.
Indeed, they appear as one viewed
in either direction, notwithstanding the
intervening streets and wide and rapid
river.

The change in the shape of the Trocadéro
hill to bring it into a symmetrical
position in front of the Champ de Mars
has required the quarrying of twenty-four
thousand cubic mètres of rock, leaving
a rough scarp on the northern edge
quarried into steps, walks and grottos,
with flowers, ferns and mosses cunningly
planted on the ledge and creepers on
the walls.

The Trocadéro Palace is the most
striking architectural feature of the Exposition.
Standing on a level one hundred
and six feet above the Quai de
Billy and overlooking the city of Paris,
the dome and glittering minarets of the
building are visible from many miles’
distance. It is not easy to describe its
architecture, though it is called “half
Moorish, half Renaissance;” which is
not very definite. It has a large rotunda
capable of accommodating seven
thousand persons, and the river-front
has two spacious corridors on as many
stories. The central building is flanked
by two tall square campaniles, and from
its sides extend long wings which curve
toward the river: these have colonnades
and terraces in front overlooking the garden,
its picturesque and grotesque cottages
and pavilions, its fountains and its
parterres of gay flowers.

The Trocadéro has been purchased by
the town council of Paris, and is to be a
permanent structure, its flanking salons,
forty-two feet wide, being known as
“Galéries de l’Art Rétrospective.” Its
collection is to form a history of civilization,
and will probably include the
Egyptian, Assyrian and similar collections
from the Louvre, as well as the
Ethnological, which is at St. Germain.
It is designed to represent in chronological
order ancient and historic art, both
liberal and mechanical, with the furniture,
arms and tools of the Middle Ages
and Renaissance, arms, implements and
fabrics from the East, Africa and Oceanica,
and a collection of musical instruments
of all ages and countries. This
is an ambitious programme, but will no
doubt be well accomplished. Its general
color is that of the beautiful stone
of this region, a delicate cream. The
uniformity is broken by great boldness
and variety in the structural form of the[page 158]
building, and by its pillars, deep colonnades
and heavy cornices, giving shadows
which prevent monotony of tint.

While artists and architects disagree
like the proverbial doctors, and purists
shudder at the jumble of orders, periods
and nationalities, a tyro may well hesitate.
An opinion of the building will
no more suit everybody than does the
building itself; but one cannot entirely
forfeit one’s reputation for taste, for each
will find some agreeing judgments. All
must acknowledge that it has a gala air.
Its central dome, tall minarets and wings
widespread toward the river crown the
height and seem to foster the beauties
they partly enclose.

The circular corridor of the rotunda is
surmounted by the Muses and other figures
typical of the future purposes of the
building. The rotunda-walls are themselves
castellated, the towers being interplaced
with windows of Saracenic arched
form. The béton pavement of the corridors
and balcony is made of annular
fragments, facets upward, of black, red,
white and slate-colored marbles, feldspar
and other stones. It is as hard as
natural rock and as smooth as half-polished
marble. A tessellated fret pattern
is made along the borders of the corridor
floor, consisting of triple rows of smooth
cubes of marble inserted in the cement.
The square balusters are of red-mottled
marble, with base and entablature of dull
rose. The square corner pillars support
figures allegorizing the six divisions of
the earth.

The vestibules at the sides of the tower
are open east and west for the passage
to and from the garden, and at the sides
have doors which admit to the Grande
Salle and the flanking galleries respectively.
The interior red scagliola columns
of the vestibule are in pairs, with
white bases and capitals, the latter combining
the lotus-leaf with the volute.
The soffits of the ceiling have panels of
yellow with orange border, contrasting
with iron beams painted a chocolate
brown.

The uniformity of the long and curved
colonnades which form the wings of the
building is broken by square porticoes,
which have entrances to the galleries
and small terraces in front, with steps
leading to the garden. The wall back
of the white pillars of this long promenade
is painted of a warm but not glaring
red. The roof is of tile and skylight.
The base of the colonnade beneath the
balustrade and pillars is a rough concrete
wall hidden by a sloping bank of
evergreens, upon which the eye rests
pleasantly amid so much wall-space
and architectural decoration.

In front of the corridor of the rotunda
is a projecting balcony, with six gigantic
female figures on the corners of its balustrade
representing Europe, Asia, North
and South America, Africa and Australia.
These statues are of metal gilt, and
typify by countenance and accompanying
emblems the portions of the globe
they represent. Europe is an armed figure
with sword: at her side are the caduceus,
olive-branch, books and easel.
Asia has a spear and a couch with elephant
heads. Africa is a negress, with
the characteristic grass-rope basket containing
dates. North America is an Indian,
but the civilization of the land is
indicated by an anchor, beehive and cog-wheel.
Australia is a gin, with a waddy,
boomerang and kangaroo. South America
sits on a cotton-bale, has a condor by
her side, and at her feet are tropical fruits—pineapples,
bananas and brazil-nuts.

The balustrade of the balcony is of a
light marble with faint red mottling, and
in front of it is a boiling pool of water at
the level of the hand-rail. A large volume
of water overflows the curved edge
of this pool and falls twenty feet into a
basin beneath, the first of a series of nine
whose overflows in successive steps form
the cascade technically known as a “château
d’eau,” the finest of which description
of ornamental waterworks is at the
Château St. Cloud, one of the mementos
of the fatal luxury which precipitated the
Revolution of 1789. The cascade of St.
Cloud plays once a month for half an hour—that
at the Exposition during the whole
day. From one jet at St. Cloud issue
five thousand gallons per minute: the
supply at the Exposition is twenty-four
thousand cubic feet per hour. Most of
this water runs over the edge of the balcony-pool,
and the fall of fifty-six cubic
feet per second a distance of twenty feet
creates no mean roar and mist in the
archway beneath the balcony, where
visitors walk behind the falls and look
through the sheet of water. It is not
fair to compare at all points the cascades
of the Exposition and St. Cloud.
The amount of water may probably not
be greatly different, but the fantastic profusion
of spiratory objects and long succession
of overflow basins and urns in
the works at the château has no parallel
in those of the Trocadéro. The cascades
of St. Cloud are disappointing: the object
should be to add to landscape effect
by water in motion, and the principle is
entirely missed when the water is made a
mere accessory to a series of stone steps,
jars and monsters. Steps are made to
walk upon, jars to hold water. An interminable
series of either with water
poured over them is not the work of a
genius. If the first suggestion to the
mind be that a thing is a stairway, the
fact that it is made too wet to walk upon
does not constitute it a beautiful cascade.
A row of jars on pedestals around a grass-plat
has a pretty effect, because they do
or may hold flowers, but to set several
rows of them on a hillside and turn on
the water is not art. As an admirable
illustration of fantasy well wrought
out the Fountain of Latona at Versailles
may be cited. There Latona, having
appealed to Jupiter against the inhabitants
of Argos, who had deprived her of
water, is deluged by jets from the unfortunates,
who appear in various degrees
of transformation into frogs.

THE ENGLISH QUARTER, ON INTERNATIONAL AVENUE.

The cascade of the Trocadéro has
nothing meretricious about it. It is, like
the building of which it is the finest ornament,
of Jura marble, while much of
the adjacent work is of artificial stone
so admirably made that one cannot tell
the difference, and is disposed to give[page 160]
the preference to the latter as evincing
greater ingenuity than the mere patient
chiselling of the quarry-stone. The
pools are symmetrical, in conformity to
the style of their surroundings, their
overflows curved, the successive falls
being about two feet after the first dash
nine hundred and twenty feet from the
balcony level. Each side of the cascade
is flanked by six small pools in
which are spouting and spray jets. The
course ends in a pool which may be described
as square, with circular bays on
three of its sides. In this are one large
jet and two smaller ones, which are
themselves beautiful and keep the surface
in a pleasant ripple. The corner
pillars are crowned by colossal gilt figures
of animals, supposed to represent
what we were used to call the “four
quarters of the earth”—Europe, Asia,
Africa and America, as the books had
it before America had attained any
prominence in public estimation. These
are typified by a horse, an elephant, a
rhinoceros and a bull, the latter probably
a tribute to our bison, but not much
like him. These face the four winds, so
to speak, and do indeed more nearly,
as they are set obliquely, than do the
grounds and buildings, the length of
which runs north-west and south-east.
Each animal has his back to the pool,
and with one exception is in a rampant
attitude.

Many thousands of cubic mètres of
stone were quarried away to afford a site
for the cascade, for the system of water-pipes
which supply the various pools and
jets and conduct off the surplus. The
size of the site occupied by these hydraulic
works is 360 by 75 feet.

The balcony of the Trocadéro facing
toward the river and the Champ de Mars
affords the most extensive view obtainable
in the grounds. Beneath is the cascade
with its basins and fountains, and
spreading away on each side is the garden
with its various national buildings,
neat, gaudy or grotesque. Spanning the
invisible roads and river is the broad
Pont d’Iéna, and then comes a repetition
of the garden, the sward dotted with
parterres and buildings. A broad terrace,
crowned with the splendid façade
of the main building, does not quite terminate
the view, for from the height of
the lower corridor of the rotunda the
buildings of Paris are seen to stretch
away in the distance. The hill of Montmartre
on the north and the heights of
Chatillon and Clamart on the south terminate
the view in those directions.

The cascade immediately beneath us
has been already described, but how
shall we give an impression of the appearance
of the buildings collected in
groups on each side of the main avenue?
So great is the variety of objects
to be presented that any very large unbroken
surface of sward is impossible.
The general plan is geometrical, and
the absence of large trees on the newly-made
ground has prevented any attempt
at woodland scenery.

The French make great use of common
flowers in obtaining effects of color.
Some square beds of large size have
centres of purple and white stocks, giving
a mottled appearance, with a border
of the tender blue forget-me-nots and a
fringe of double daisies. Other beds are
full of purple, red and white anemones,
multicolored poppies or yellow marigolds.
The sober mignonette is too great a favorite
to be excluded, though it lends little
to the effect. The gorgeous rhododendron
is here massed in large beds, and
there forms a standard tree with a formal
clump of foliage and gay flowers,
contrasting with the bright green of the
succulent grass. The roses are by thousands
in beds and lining the walks, and
here are especially to be seen the standard
roses for which Europe is so famous,
but which do not seem to prosper with us.

Besides the flowers and flowering
shrubs, a most profuse use is made of
evergreens, which are removed of surprising
size and forwardness of spring
growth. We can form little conception
from our gardens at home of the wealth,
variety and exuberance of the evergreen
foliage in Southern England and Northern
France—the Spanish and Portuguese
laurel, laurustinus, arbutus, occuba, bay,
hollies in variety, tree-box, with scores
of species of pines, firs, arborvitæ and
yews, relieved by the contorted foliage[page 162]
of the auraucarias, the sombre cedar of
Lebanon and the graceful deodar cedar
of the Himalayas. As already remarked,
the tree-growth is small, as the ground
was a blank and rocky hillside two years
ago, and was quarried to make a site for
the garden. The tree which seems best
to bear moving, and is consequently used
in the emergency, is the horse-chestnut,
the red and white flowering varieties being
intermingled. This is perhaps the
most common tree in the streets of Paris,
though the plane and maple are also favorites.

BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE MAIN BUILDING AND ITS SURROUNDINGS.

Against the rocky scarp on the south
of the garden a plantation of aloes, yuccas
and cactus has been made. These
are in great variety, and some of them
in flower. It was especially pleasant to
see the independence which the gardener
has shown in placing a fine clump of
rhubarb in one place where he wanted a
green bunch. Some persons would have
been afraid of injurious criticism in the
use of so common a plant, but we all
know what a vigorous, healthy green it
is, and as such not to be despised by the
artist in color. There are a few specialties
in the way of gardening which are
worth notice: one is the array of tulips
planted by the city of Haarlem, and representing
the municipal coat-of-arms in
tulips of every imaginable color of which
the plant is capable, and around the figures
the words “Haarlem, Holland,” in
scarlet tulips on a ground of white ones.

Another novelty is the Japanese garden
with its bamboo fence, the posts and
door of entrance being carved with remarkable
taste and boldness. The double
gates are surmounted by a cock and
hen in natural attitudes, which is a relief
from the absurdities of their impossible
storks and hideous griffins. Perhaps
it shows that modern and European
ideas are at work there. The flag
of Japan, by the way—a red circle on a
white ground—is a sensible design, and
can be seen at a distance: it contrasts
favorably with the dragon on a yellow
ground of the Chinese pavilion. The Japanese
garden has several large standard
umbrellas for permanent shade, and little
bamboo-fenced yards for the game
chickens and the ducks. Two shrines
are in the garden, and a fountain with a
feeble jet issuing from a stump and falling
into a little fanciful pond with small
bays and promontories. On the miniature
deep a walnut-shell ship might ride,
and on the shoals near the bank aquatic
plants are beginning to sprout, and their
leaves will soon touch the opposite shore
if they are not attended to.

Rather a disparagement, as a matter
of taste, to the somewhat formal grace
but undoubted beauty of this floral scene
are the buildings which are placed here
and there over the surface. However, it
is these that we have come to see, for if
we were in search of landscape or Dutch
gardening we should find it better elsewhere.
This gardening is only a setting, a
frame, in which the various nations have
set up their cottages and villas. The
ground surface between the houses has
been laid off ornamentally to please the
eye and satisfy the sense of order and
beauty, but is not itself the object of
which we are in search. It is impossible
perhaps to harmonize such an incongruous
set of buildings, adapted for different
climates, habits, tastes and needs.
Here on the left is a large white castellated
house of Algiers. It has blank
walls and loopholed towers, and no suggestion
of a tree or flower, but gives an
idea of the land where the sand of the
desert comes up to the doorstep and beggars
and thieves go on horseback. On
the opposite extremity, at the right, is a
Chinese house with its peculiar curved
roof, suggested originally, doubtless, by
the Tartar tent, but having more curves
and points than were ever shown by canvas
or felt. In a district by themselves
the readers of the Koran—or a set of
people passing for such—have their
Persian, Tunisian, Morocco and Turkish
kiosques, and the inhabitants seem
perhaps one shade cleaner than they did
in Philadelphia. They are supposed, at
least, to be the same, and have an exactly
similar lot of rubbish and brass jewelry
for sale, and oil of cassia, which they
sell for the attar of the “gardens of Gul
in their bloom.” Next is a campanile of[page 163]
Sweden, and near it are the Swedish and
Norwegian houses, armed against winter.
Then the Japanese cottage with sides all
open, mats on the floors and no furniture
to speak of. Then comes a Moorish pavilion
of Spain with nondescript ornaments,
the bulbous domes and pinnacles
supporting the flags of yellow and red—of
barbaric taste, color and significance.

We have yet to notice the Italian villa,
the Oriental mosque, the Swiss chalet
and the log hut; also the modern
pavilion with zinc roof, the thatched
houses of Britain and of Normandy, the
Elizabethan cottage and the English
farm-house. What they lack in size
they make up in variety, may be said
of the greenhouses and conservatories
dotted about the place. In and outside
of them the marvellous skill and patience
of the gardener is seen in the rigidly-formal
or abnormally-directed limbs of the
fruit trees. The fish-ponds and fountains
are neither numerous nor large, but the
aquarium may merit more extended description
when completed.

Standing, sensible-looking and tasteful,
in the midst of much that is trumpery,
but good enough for a summer fête, and
placed here not as exhibits of good taste,
but of what their owners think good,
rises the wooden building with skylight
roof of “The Administration of Forests
and Waters.” It is on a beautiful knoll,
and has a wooden frame with tongued
and grooved panels, the whole varnished
to show the natural grain of the timber.
On the panels outside are arranged the
tools and implements of arboriculture
and forestry.

The flags of the different nations displayed
upon these buildings give animation
to the scene, and the glance
might pass at once from this panorama
to the other side of the Seine, where the
scene is repeated, but for the intervention
of long barnlike sheds with tile
roofs which intrude themselves along
the banks of the river, and quench the
poetry of the fanciful and picturesque as
the eye passes from the immediate foreground
and seeks the magnificent façade
of the Salle d’Iéna, the river front of the
main building occupying the Champ de
Mars. The flags of all nations are flying
from the numerous minor pinnacles,
while the six domes on the ends and centres
of the east and west façades display
the tricolor of France.

The best view of the exterior is obtained
from the Trocadéro. The building
itself is so large that some distance
is necessary to take in the whole at a
glance. The approach to it by way of
the Pont d’Iéna has been marred by
raising the bridge to too great a height,
so that the impression in crossing the
Seine is that the building stands upon
low ground. Standing upon the east
end of the bridge, one cannot see the
base on the other side of the river, which
suggests descent and dwarfs the building.
The bridge retains its colossal statuary,
each of the four groups consisting
of an unmounted man and a horse. They
respectively represent a Greek, Roman,
Gaul and Arab. The bridge was erected
to commemorate the victory over the
Prussians in 1806, and Blücher, who had
his head-quarters at St. Cloud in 1815,
threatened to blow it up. After crossing
the bridge we find ourselves reaching
the work-a-day world. On the left
are represented the foundries and workshops
of Creuzot, Chaumont and Serrenorri.
Near by is a model of the observatory
of Mount Jouvis and an annex of
the state tobacco-factory of France.

The building on the Champ de Mars
is 2132 feet by 1148. A wide and lofty
vestibule runs across the full extent of
each end, and these afford the most
imposing interior views of the building.
They are known respectively as the Galérie
d’Iéna and Galérie de l’École Militaire,
from their vicinity to the bridge and
school respectively. Being lofty themselves,
and having central and flanking
domed towers which break the uniformity,
their fronts form the principal façades
of the building, of which, architecturally
speaking, they are the principal entrances;
but in fact, as happens with
buildings of such acreage, the actual
inlets depend upon the predominance
in numbers of the people on one or another
side of the building, the means of
approach by land and water, and the[page 164]
contiguous streets of favorite and convenient
travel. In the present case the
bulk of the people reach the grounds
either by water at the south-east corner
or by land at the intersection of Avenue
Rapp with the Avenue Bourdonnaye,
which latter bounds the Champ de
Mars on its southern side.

The end-vestibules are connected by
five longitudinal galleries on each side
of the open area in the middle of the
building. The five galleries on the
southern side belong to France, and the
five on the northern side are divided by
transverse partitions among the foreign
nations present, in very greatly differing
quantities. England, for instance, occupies
nearly two-sevenths of the whole
space devoted to foreign exhibitors, being
more than the sum of the amounts
allotted to Spain, China, Japan, Italy,
Sweden, Norway and the United States.
The end-vestibules have curved roofs
with highly ornamented ceilings of a
succession of flat domes along the centres,
with three rows of deep soffits on
each side, gayly painted. The walls are
nearly all glass in iron frames, and the
panes of white glass alternate in checkerwork
with those having blue tracery
upon them. The whole building is
principally of iron and glass, the roof
of wood, with zinc plates and numerous
skylights over the interior galleries. The
machinery galleries of each side are much
the largest of the longitudinal ones, and
have high roofs with side windows above
the levels of the roofs on each side of
them; but the four other galleries on
each side of the building have quite
low ceilings, which make one fear for
the quality of the ventilation when the
heat is at its greatest.

In the interior of the quadrangular
building is an open space about two
hundred feet broad and nearly two thousand
feet long, reaching from one vestibule
to the other; and in this space are
two rows of fine-art pavilions and a building
for the exhibition of the municipal
works of the city. This isolated building
is in the central portion of the whole
structure, the fine-art pavilions being arranged
in line with it, four in a group, the
salons of a group connected by lobbies
and also with the large end-vestibules at
the end upon which they abut.

The French and foreign sides of the
Exposition building on the Champ de
Mars have frontages upon the interior
court, and the façades of the foreign
sections are made ornamental and are
intended to be characteristic of the
countries. There is a great discrepancy
in the space assigned to each: that of
Great Britain is the longest, amounting
to five hundred and forty feet in length,
while the little territories of Luxembourg,
Andorra, Monaco and San Marino, which
are clubbed together, have unitedly about
twenty-five feet of frontage. In some
cases the space assigned to a nation does
not run back the full four hundred feet
to the outside of the building, but it is intended
that each shall have some part of
the façade in this allée. Much taste and
more expense have been lavished upon
the architectural construction and embellishment
of the façades, and the row reminds
one of the scenes in a theatre,
where palace, cottage, mosque and jail
stand side by side, giving a particolored
effect as various as the different emotions
which the respective buildings might be
supposed to elicit. The English space being
so large, no single design was adopted,
as it could have but a monotonous
effect, but the frontage was divided into
five portions, each of which illustrates
some style of villa or cottage architecture,
and is separated from the adjoining
one by garden-beds. The first, counting
from the Salle de la Seine, is of the style
of Queen Anne’s reign. It is built of
a patented imitation of red brickwork.
Thin slabs of Portland cement concrete
are faced with smaller slabs of red concrete
of the size of bricks and screwed to
the wooden frame of the building. The
house has tall casements in a bay with
a balcony, and an entablature on top of
the wall. The second house is the pavilion
of the prince of Wales, and is of
the Elizabethan style. It is built of rubble-work
faced with colored plaster in imitation
of red brickwork and Bath-stone
dressings. The front has niches for statuary,
and above the windows are shield-shaped [page 165]
panels for armorial bearings. The
windows are in square clusters, with small
lights in hexagonal leaden cames. The
union jack flies from the staff. The third
house is constructed of red brick and terra-cotta,
and is not specially characteristic
of any period. It is, in fact, a jumble
of the early Gothic with a Moorish entablature
and a balustrade parapet. The
stained-glass casement windows are surmounted
with circular lights in the arches.
The fourth house is built of pitch-pine
framework, enriched with carving and
filled in with plaster panels—a style of
construction known as “half-timbered
work,” much employed in England from
the fifteenth to the seventeenth century.
This house is placed at the disposal of
the Canadian commissioners. It has a
large square two-story bay-window, with
the customary small glass panes in cames
of lozenge and other patterns, and is perhaps
the neatest and most cozy house in
the row. The fifth is of the construction
of an English country-house in the reign
of William III. It is of timber, with stucco
and rough-cast panels, and has a large
bay-window in the second story, surmounted
by a gable to the street and
covering an old-fashioned stoop with
seats on each side. The five houses
have a pretty effect, and each has a
home look. The façades only are on
exhibition, the interiors being private.
They contrast with others in the “street”
in the same way as the habits of the different
peoples. Some build their houses
to retire into, and others to exhibit themselves.
Each nation being asked for the
façade of a house, the Italian has built a
portico where he can lounge, see and be
seen; the Englishman has in all serenity
represented what he deems comfort, and
shuts the front door.

VIEW IN THE PARK OF THE TROCADÉRO, SHOWING THE PAVILIONS OF PERSIA AND SIAM.

The next in order is the United States
house, which is plain and commodious;
the latch-string would be out, but that the
front door is everlastingly open. The[page 166]
style is perhaps to advertise to the world
that we have not yet had time to invent
an order of architecture or devise anything
adapted to our climate, which has
extremes utterly unknown to our ancestors
in Britain. The building is light and
airy, has office-rooms on each floor, and
is described by one English paper as “a
sort of school-building which combines
elegance with usefulness.” Another paper
states that “it exemplifies the utilitarian
notions of our Transatlantic cousins
rather than any artistic intent.” These
comments are as favorable as anything
we ourselves can say: we accept the verdict
with thanks and think we have got
off pretty well. In the squareness of its
general lines, with arched windows on
the second floor and square tower over
the centre, perhaps the architect thought
it was Italian. Sixteen coats-of-arms on
the outside excite admiration.

The building of Norway and Sweden
is a charming cottage of handsome and
ample proportions. It has three sections:
one of two stories with low-pitched roof,
and gable to the street, a middle structure
with colonnade, and one of three
stories with high-pitched roof. The windows
are round-topped, made in an ingenious
way, the upper member being
an arched piece with sloping ends, to
match the springing on the tops of the
posts which divide the openings. The
horizontal and vertical bands are enriched
by carving.

The façade of Italy may be pronounced
pretentious and disappointing. It is constructed
of various kinds of unpolished
marble and terra-cotta panels. A tall
archway is flanked by two wings having
each two smaller arches, the entablatures
of which are enriched, if we must so term
it, with gaudy mosaic figures, portraits
and heraldic bearings, while the spans
of the arches surmount pyramidal groups
of emblems, scientific, medical, lyrical
and so forth. Red curtains with heavy
gilt cords and tassels behind the arches
throw the columns with composition (not
Composite) capitals and the emblems into
high relief. Beneath the centre arch is
the armorial bearing of the country. The
vestibules display statuary.

Japan has a quaint little house with a
very massive gateway of solid timber,
flanked by two characteristic fountains
of terra-cotta. These represent stumps
of trees, with gigantic lily-cups, leaves of
water-lilies, and frogs in grotesque attitudes
in and around the water.

China has a grotesque house, painted
in imitation of octagonal slate-colored
bricks, covered with a pagoda-roof full
of curves and points. The red door has
rows of large knobs and is surmounted
by colored and gilded carvings, representing
genii probably. The pointed flag
has in a yellow field a blue dragon in the
later stages of consumption.

Spain has a Moorish building rich in
gold and color—a central portion with
Italian roof, and two colonnade side-sections
flanked by castellated towers. Five
forms of arches span the doors and windows,
and the artist has contrived to associate
all forms of ornament, running
from an approach to the Greek fret
down through the Arabesque to the
Brussels carpet.

Austro-Hungary has a long colonnade
of white stone ornamented with black filigree-work
and supported by columns in
pairs. The entablature is surmounted by
a row of statues, and the end-towers have
parapets with balustrade. The colonnade,
with a chocolate-brown back wall, affords
shelter and relief for bronze and marble
statuary. At each end of this façade is
a tall flagstaff striped like a barber’s pole,
and so familiar to all who have visited
the Austrian stations, at Trieste, for example.
From it flies the flag of horizontal
stripes of red, white and green, with
the shield of many quarterings and two
angelic supporters.

Russia has a log-and-frame house of
somewhat more than average picturesque
character. The projecting centres and
wing-towers, the outside staircase, and
roofs conical, flat, pyramidal, bulbous and
Oriental, give it a miscellaneous toyshop
appearance, characteristic perhaps of the
mosaic character of the nation. Barge-boards
and brackets of various cheap
patterns are plentifully strewed over the
building.

Passing from the Russian to the Swiss[page 167]
building suggests inevitably Mr. Mantalini’s
description of his former chères
amies: “The two countesses had no
outline at all, and the dowager’s was a
demmed outline.” A semicircular archway,
over which is a high-flying arch
with a roof of six slopes surmounted by
a bell-tower and pinnacle roof; on the
pillars two lions supporting a red shield
with white Greek cross in the field; two
wings with flat arches containing gorgeous
stained-glass windows. But what
avails description? There are twenty-two
armorial bearings on the spandrils
of the arches, beating the United States
by six; but we had only room for the
original thirteen, the United States and
two more. Oh that they had granted
us more space! High up aloft is the
motto Un pour tous, tons pour un, which
was adopted by the French Commune.

Belgium is pre-eminent in the whole
row, if expense determines. This country
has about three times as much space
in the building as the United States,
and has worthily filled it. The Belgian
façade on the “Street of Nations” is reputed
to have cost nearly as much as the
whole appropriation made by Congress
for the United States exhibit. It is of
dark red brick with gray stone quoins
and corners and blue and gray marble
pillars. The centre building is joined
by two colonnades to a flanking tower
at one end and an ornate gable at the
other. The style is one familiar in the
times when the great William of Orange
was alive, and was to some extent introduced
into England soon after another
William took the place of his bigoted
father-in-law. It cannot be denied that
the general effect is gray, sombre and uncomfortable—that
it is too much crowded
with objects, and, though of admirable
and enduring materials, suggests a spasmodic
attempt to assimilate itself to the
gala character of the occasion which called
it forth. It is the saturnine one of the
row. It is said that the pieces are numbered
for re-erection in some other place.

Greece has an Athenian house painfully
crude in color, white picked out with all
the hues of the rainbow and some others,
suggesting muddy coffee and chibouques.

Denmark has about twenty feet of
front, utilized by a gable-end of brick
with facings of imitation stone.

The Central American States have
about sixty feet of yellow front, with
three arched openings into the vestibule,
which is flanked by a tower and
a gable.

Anam, Persia, Siam, Morocco and
Tunis have unitedly a gingerbread affair
of four distinct patterns—we cannot
call them styles. Siam in the centre
has a chocolate-colored tower picked out
with silver, and surmounted by a triple pagoda
roof, whence floats the flag, a white
elephant in a red field. The six feet of
homeliness belonging to Tunis has a balcony
of wood which neither reveals nor
hides the almond-eyed whose supposed
relatives are selling trumpery in booths
on the other side of the Seine.

Luxembourg, Andorra, Monaco and
San Marino unite in a façade representing
the different styles of architecture
which prevail in the several
states: 1. A portion faintly suggesting
the ancient palace of Luxembourg, to-day
the residence of Prince Henry of
Holland; 2. An entrance erected by the
principality of Monaco as the model of
that of the royal palace; 3. A window
contributed by San Marino, and showing
that the prevalent type in the little
republic is more useful than ornamental;
4. A balustrade surmounting the façade,
supplied by the republic of Andorra.

Portugal has an imitation in cream-colored
plaster of a Gothic church-entrance,
and a highly-enriched arch with
flanking towers, whose canopied niches
have figures of warriors and wise men.

Holland shows an architecture of two
hundred years ago, the counterpart of
the houses we see in the old Dutch pictures.
It is of dark red brick with stone
courses, and a tall slate roof behind its
balustered parapet.

We are at the end of the Street of Nations,
somewhat under a third of a mile
in length.

It is evening, and the sun in this latitude—for
we are farther north than Quebec—seems
in no hurry to reach the horizon.
Two hours ago the whistle sounded [page 168]
“No more steam,” and the life of the
building went out. The attendants, tired
of the show and blasés or “used up,” according
to their nationality, with exhibitions,
have shrouded their cases in sack-cloth
and gone to sip ordinaire, absinthe
or bitter ale. I sit on a terrace of the
Champ de Mars, the gorgeous building at
my back, and look riverward. Before me
stretches away the green carpet of sward
one hundred feet wide and six hundred
long, a broad level band of emerald reaching
to the gravel approach to the Pont
d’Iéna, each side of which is guarded by
a colossal figure of a man leading a horse.
The gravel around the tapis vert is black
with the figures of those whom the fineness
of the evening has induced to take
a parting stroll in the ground before retiring.

Flanking the gravel-walks the ground
is more uneven, and Art, in imitation of
the wilder aspects of Nature, has done
what the limited space permitted to enhance
the allied beauties of land and
water, where

On the left is a rockery and waterfall on
no mean scale, with a romantic little lake
in front. On the right a rocky island in
a corresponding lake is crowned with a
thatched pavilion, the reflection of which
shines broken in the water ruffled by
the evening breeze. Groups of detached
buildings hem in the view on each side,
and their flags wave with the sky for a
background. Paris is invisible: at this
point the grounds are isolated from outside
view.

Rising clear beyond the bridge, the
approach to it on the other side hidden
by the lowness of the point of view,
stands the palace of the Trocadéro, a
broad sweep of green covering the hill,
along whose summit are the widespread
wings of the colonnade, uniting at the
central rotunda, of which the domed
roof and square campaniles rise one
hundred feet above all and dominate
the middle of the picture. The traces
of the indefatigable swarms of workmen
are obliterated, except in the magical
and finished work. The spray of the
fountains of the château d’eau drifts to
leeward and hides at times patches of
the velvety grass on the hill. The central
jet plays sturdily, and from where I
sit appears to reach the level of the second
corridor of the rotunda.

The eye fails to detect a single object,
excepting the four statues on the bridge,
which is not the creation of a few months.
The hill beyond has been torn to pieces
and sloped, and the palace built upon it.
Every house in sight is new. The very
ground in front on which I look down
has been raised, and the terrace on which
I sit has been built. The ponds have been
excavated, the mimic rocky hills have
been piled up, and the water led to the
brink of the tiny precipice from the artesian
wells which supply this part of
Paris.

The hum of many voices and the dash
of waters make a deep undertone, and
one comes away with the feeling—not exactly
that the scene is too good to last,
but—of regret that the result of such lavish
care should be ephemeral. In a few
months all on the left side of the river
may again be parade-ground, and the
thirty thousand troops which can be
readily manœuvred upon it be getting
ready for another conflict, while the palace
which the Genius of the Lamp had
builded, as in a night, shall be a thing
of the past, as if whirled away by the
malevolent magician.

Edward H. Knight.

SENIORITY.

“FOR PERCIVAL.”

CHAPTER XXXV.

OF THE LANDLADY’S DAUGHTER.

Early in that December the landlady’s
daughter came home. Percival
could not fix the precise date, but
he knew it was early in the month, because
about the eighth or ninth he was
suddenly aware that he had more than
once encountered a smile, a long curl
and a pair of turquoise earrings on the
stairs. He had noticed the earrings:
he could speak positively as to them.
He had seen turquoises before, and taken
little heed of them, but possibly his
friends had happened to buy rather small
ones. He felt pretty certain about the
long curl. And he thought there was a
smile, but he was not so absolutely sure
of the smile.

By the twelfth he was quite sure of it.
It seemed to him that it was cold work
for any one to be so continually on the
stairs in December. The owner of the
smile had said, “Good-morning, Mr.
Thorne.”

On the thirteenth a question suggested
itself to him: “Was she—could she be—always running up and down stairs? Or
did it happen that just when he went out
and came back—?” He balanced his
pen in his fingers for a minute, and sat
pondering. “Oh, confound it!” he said
to himself, and went on writing.

That evening he left the office to the
minute, and hurried to Bellevue street.
He got halfway up the stairs and met no
one, but he heard a voice on the landing
exclaim, “Go to old Fordham’s caddy,
then, for you sha’n’t—Oh, good gracious!”
and there was a hurried rustle.
He went more slowly the rest of the way,
reflecting. Fordham was another lodger—elderly, as the voice had said. Percival
went to his sitting-room and looked
thoughtfully into his tea-caddy. It was
nearly half full, and he calculated that,
according to the ordinary rate of consumption,
it should have been empty,
and yet he had not been more sparing
than usual. His landlady had told him
where to get his tea: she said she found
it cheap—it was a fine-flavored tea, and
she always drank it. Percival supposed
so, and wondered where old Fordham
got his tea, and whether that was fine-flavored
too.

There was a giggle outside the door,
a knock, and in answer to Percival’s
“Come in,” the landlady’s daughter appeared.
She explained that Emma had
gone out shopping—Emma was the grimy
girl who ordinarily waited on him—so,
with a nervous little laugh, with a toss
of the long curl, which was supposed to
have got in the way somehow, and with
the turquoise earrings quivering in the
candlelight, she brought in the tray. She
conveyed by her manner that it was a
new and amusing experience in her life,
but that the burden was almost more than
her strength could support, and that she
required assistance. Percival, who had
stood up when she came in and thanked
her gravely from his position on the
hearthrug, came forward and swept some
books and papers out of the way to make[page 171]
room for her load. In so doing their
hands touched—his white and beautifully
shaped, hers clumsy and coarsely
colored. (It was not poor Lydia’s fault.
She had written to more than one of
those amiable editors who devote a column
or two in family magazines to settling
questions of etiquette, giving recipes
for pomades and puddings, and telling
you how you may take stains out of
silk, get rid of freckles or know whether
a young man means anything by his attentions.
There had been a little paragraph
beginning, “L.’s hands are not as
white as she could wish, and she asks us
what she is to do. We can only recommend,”
etc. Poor L. had tried every
recommendation in faith and in vain,
and was in a fair way to learn the hopelessness
of her quest.)

The touch thrilled her with pleasure
and Thorne with repugnance. He drew
back, while she busied herself in arranging
his cup, saucer and plate. She dropped
the spoon on the tray, scolded herself
for her own stupidity, looked up at
him with a hurried apology, and laughed.
If she did not blush, she conveyed
by her manner a sort of idea of blushing,
and went out of the room with a final
giggle, being confused by his opening the
door for her.

Percival breathed again, relieved from
an oppression, and wondered what on
earth had made her take an interest in
his tea and him. Yet the reason was
not far to seek. It was that tragic, melancholy,
hero’s face of his—he felt so
little like a hero that it was hard for him
to realize that he looked like one—his
sombre eyes, which might have been
those of an exile thinking of his home,
the air of proud and rather old-fashioned
courtesy which he had inherited from
his grandfather the rector and developed
for himself. Every girl is ready to find
something of the prince in one who treats
her with deference as if she were a princess.
Percival had an unconscious grace
of bearing and attitude, and the considerable
advantage of well-made clothes.
Poverty had not yet reduced him to cheap
coats and advertised trousers. And perhaps
the crowning fascination in poor
Lydia’s eyes was the slight, dark, silky
moustache which emphasized without
hiding his lips.

Another rustling outside, a giggle and
a whisper—Percival would have sworn
that the whisper was Emma’s if it had
been possible that she could have left it
behind her when she went out shopping—an
ejaculation, “Gracious! I’ve blacked
my hand!” a pause, presumably for
the purpose of removing the stain, and
Lydia reappeared with the kettle. She
poured a portion of its contents over the
fender in her anxiety to plant it firmly
on the fire. “Oh dear!” she exclaimed,
“how stupid of me! Oh, Mr. Thorne”—this
half archly, half pensively, fingering
the curl and surveying the steaming
pool—”I’m afraid you’ll wish Emma
hadn’t gone out: such a mess as I’ve
made of it! What will you think of
me?”

“Pray, don’t trouble yourself,” said
Percival. “The fender can’t signify, except
perhaps from Emma’s point of view.
It doesn’t interfere with my comfort, I assure
you.”

She departed, only half convinced.
Percival, with another sigh of relief, proceeded
to make the tea. The water was
boiling and the fire good. Emma was
apt to set a chilly kettle on a glimmering
spark, but Lydia treated him better.
The bit of cold meat on the table looked
bigger than he expected, the butter
wore a cheerful sprig of green. Percival
saw his advantages, but he thought
them dearly bought, especially as he had
to take a turn up and down Bellevue street
while the table was cleared.

After that day it was astonishing how
often Emma went out shopping or was
busy, or had a bad finger or a bad foot,
or was helping ma with something or
other, or hadn’t made herself tidy, so
that Lydia had to wait on Mr. Thorne.
But it was always with the same air of its
being something very droll and amusing
to do, and there were always some artless
mistakes which required giggling
apologies. Nor could he doubt that he
was in her thoughts during his absence.
She had a piano down stairs on which
she accompanied herself as she sang,[page 172]
but she found time for domestic cares.
His buttons were carefully sewn on and
his fire was always bright. One evening
his table was adorned with a bright blue
vase—as blue as Lydia’s earrings—filled
with dried grasses and paper flowers.
He gazed blankly at it in unspeakable
horror, and then paced up and down the
room, wondering how he should endure
life with it continually before his eyes.
Some books lay on a side-table, and as
he passed he looked absently at them
and halted. On his Shelley, slightly
askew, as if to preclude all thought of
care and design, lay a little volume
bound in dingy white and gold. Percival
did not touch it, but he stooped
and read the title, The Language of
Flowers, and saw that—purely by accident
of course—a leaf was doubled down
as if to mark a place. He straightened
himself again, and his proud lip curled
in disgust as he glanced from the tawdry
flowers to the tawdry book. And from
below came suddenly the jingling notes
of Lydia’s piano and Lydia’s voice—not
exactly harsh and only occasionally out
of tune, but with something hopelessly
vulgar in its intonation—singing her favorite
song—

Percival turned his back on the blue
vase and the little book, and flinging
himself into a chair before the fire sickened
at the thought of the life he was
doomed to lead. Lydia, who was just
mounting with a little uncertainty to a
high note, was a good girl in her way,
and good-looking, and had a kind sympathy
for him in his evident loneliness.
But was she to be the highest type of
womanhood that he would meet henceforth?
And was Bellevue street to be
his world? He glided into a mournful
dream of Brackenhill, which would never
be his, and of Sissy, who had loved
him so well, yet failed to love him altogether—Sissy,
who had begged for her
freedom with such tender pain in her
voice while she pierced him so cruelly
with her frightened eyes. Percival looked
very stern in his sadness as he sat
brooding over his fire, while from the
room below came a triumphant burst
of song—

Sometimes he would picture to himself
the future which lay before Horace’s
three-months-old child, whose little life
already played so all—important a part
in his own destiny. He had questioned
Hammond about him, and Hammond
had replied that he heard that Lottie and
the boy were both doing well. “They
say that the child is a regular Blake, just
like Lottie herself,” said Godfrey, “and
doesn’t look like a Thorne at all.” Percival
thought, not unkindly, of Lottie’s
boy, of Lottie’s great clear eyes in an
innocent baby face, and imagined him
growing up slim and tall, to range the
woods of Brackenhill in future years
as Lottie herself had wandered in the
copses about Fordborough. And yet
sometimes he could not but think of the
change that it might make if little James
William Thorne were to die. Horace
was very ill, they said: Brackenhill was
shut up, and they had all gone to winter
abroad. The doctors had declared
that there was not a chance for him in
England.

At this time Percival kept a sort of
rough diary. Here is a leaf from it:
“I am much troubled by a certain little
devil who comes as soon as I am safely
in bed and sits on my pillow. He flattens
it abominably, or else I do it myself
tossing about in my impatience.
He is quite still for a minute or two,
and I try my best to think he isn’t there
at all. Then he stoops down and whispers
in my ear ‘Convulsions!’ and starts
up again like india-rubber. I won’t listen.
I recall some tune or other: it
won’t come, and there is a hitch, a horrible
blank, in the midst of which he is
down again—I knew he would be—suggesting
‘Croup.’ I repeat some bit of a
poem, but it won’t do: what is the next
line? I think of old days with my father,
when I knew nothing of Brackenhill: I
try to remember my mother’s face. I am
getting on very well, but all at once I become
conscious that he has been for some
time murmuring, as to himself, ‘Whooping-cough [page 173]
and scarlet fever—scarlet fever.’
I grow fierce, and say, ‘I pray God
he may escape them all!’ To which he
softly replies, ‘His grandfather died—his
father is dying—of decline.’

“I roll over to the other side, and encounter
him or his twin brother there.
A perfectly silent little devil this time,
with a faculty for calling up pictures.
He shows me the office: I see it, I smell
it, with its flaring gaslights and sickly atmosphere.
Then he shows me the long
drawing-room at Brackenhill, the quaint
old furniture, the pictures on the walls,
the terrace with its balustrade and balls
of mossy stone, and through the windows
come odors of jasmine and roses
and far-off fields, while inside there is the
sweetness of dried blossoms and spices in
the great china jars. A moment more
and it is Bellevue street, with its rows
of hideous whited houses. And then
again it is a river, curving swiftly and
grandly between its castled rocks, or a
bridge of many arches in the twilight,
and the lights coming out one by one
in the old walled town, and the road
and river travelling one knows not
where, into regions just falling asleep
in the quiet dusk. Or there is a holiday
crowd, a moonlit ferry, steep wooded
hills, and songs and laughter which
echo in the streets and float across the
tide. Or the Alps, keenly cut against
the infinite depth of blue, with a whiteness
and a far-off glory no tongue can
utter. Or a solemn cathedral, or a busy
town piled up, with church and castle
high aloft and a still, transparent lake
below. But through it all, and underlying
it all, is Bellevue street, with the
dirty men and women, who scream and
shout at each other and wrangle in its
filthy courts and alleys. Still, God knows
that I don’t repent, and that I wish my
little cousin well.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

WANTED—AN ORGANIST.

In later days Percival looked back to
that Christmas as his worst and darkest
time. His pride had grown morbid, and
he swore to himself that he would never
give in—that Horace should never know
him otherwise than self-sufficient, should
never think that but for Mrs. Middleton’s
or Godfrey Hammond’s charity he
might have had his cousin as a pensioner.
Brooding on thoughts such as these,
he sauntered moodily beneath the lamps
when the new year was but two days old.

His progress was stopped by a little
crowd collected on the pavement. There
was a concert, and a string of carriages
stretched halfway down the street. Just
as Percival came up, a girl in white and
amber, with flowers in her hair, flitted
hurriedly across the path and up the
steps, and stood glancing back while a
fair-haired, faultlessly-dressed young
man helped her mother to alight. The
father came last, sleek, stout and important.
The old people went on in
front, and the girl followed with her
cavalier, looking up at him and making
some bright little speech as they
vanished into the building. Percival
stood and gazed for a moment, then
turned round and hurried out of the
crowd. The grace and freshness and
happy beauty of the girl had roused a
fierce longing in his heart. He wanted
to touch a lady’s hand again, to hear
the delicate accents of a lady’s voice.
He remembered how he used to dress
himself as that fair-haired young man
was dressed, and escort Aunt Harriet
and Sissy to Fordborough entertainments,
where the best places were always
kept for the Brackenhill party. It
was dull enough sometimes, yet how he
longed for one such evening now—to
hand the cups once again at afternoon
tea, to talk just a little with some girl on
the old terms of equality! The longing
was not the less real, and even passionate,
that it seemed to Thorne himself to
be utterly absurd. He mocked at himself
as he walked the streets for a couple
of hours, and then went back when the
concert was just over and the people
coming away. He watched till the girl
appeared. She looked a little tired, he
fancied. As she came out into the chill
night air she drew a soft white cloak
round her, and went by, quite unconscious [page 174]
of the dark young man who stood
near the door and followed her with his
eyes. The sombre apparition might have
startled her had she noticed it, though
Percival was only gazing at the ghost of
his dead life, and, having seen it, disappeared
into the shadows once more.

“The night is darkest before the morn.”
In Percival’s case this was true, for the
next day brought a new interest and hope.
A letter came from Godfrey Hammond,
through which he glanced wearily till he
came to a paragraph about the Lisles:
Hammond had seen a good deal of them
lately. “Their father treated you shamefully,”
he wrote, “but, after all, it is harder
still on his children.” (“Good Heavens!
Does he suppose I have a grudge
against them?” said Percival to himself,
and laughed with mingled irritation and
amazement.) “Young Lisle wants a situation
as organist somewhere where he
might give lessons and make an income
so, but we can’t hear of anything suitable.
People say the boy is a musical genius,
and will do wonders, but, for my part, I
doubt it. He may, however, and in that
case there will be a line in his biography
to the effect that I ‘was one of the first
to discern,’ etc., which may be gratifying
to me in my second childhood.”

Percival laid the letter on the table
and looked up with kindling eyes.

Only a few minutes’ walk from Bellevue
street was St. Sylvester’s, a large
district church. The building was a distinguished
example of cheap ecclesiastical
work, with stripes and other pretty
patterns in different colored bricks, and
varnished deal fittings and patent corrugated
roofing. All that could be done
to stimulate devotion by means of texts
painted in red and blue had been done,
and St. Sylvester’s, within and without,
was one of those nineteenth-century
churches which will doubtless be studied
with interest and wonder by the architect
of a future age if they can only
contrive to stand up till he comes. The
incumbent was High Church, as a matter
of course, and musical, more than as
a matter of course. Percival looked up
from his letter with a sudden remembrance
that Mr. Clifton was advertising
for an organist, and on his way to the
office he stopped to make inquiries at
the High Church bookseller’s and to
post a line to Hammond. How if this
should suit Bertie Lisle? He tried hard
not to think too much about it, but the
mere possibility that the bright young
fellow, with his day-dreams, his unfinished
opera, his pleasant voice and happily
thoughtless talk, might come into
his life gave Percival a new interest in
it. Bertie had been a favorite of his
years before, when he used to go sometimes
to Mr. Lisle’s. He still thought of
him as little more than a boy—the boy
who used to play to him in the twilight—and
he had some trouble to realize
that Bertie must be nearly two and twenty.
If he should come—But most likely
he would not come. It seemed a shame
even to wish to shut up the young musician,
with his love for all that was beautiful
and bright, in that grimy town.
Thorne resolved that he would not wish
it, but he opened Hammond’s next letter
with unusual eagerness. Godfrey said
they thought it sounded well, especially
as when he named Brenthill it appeared
that the Lisles had some sort of acquaintance
living there, an old friend of their
mother’s, he believed, which naturally
gave them an interest in the place. Bertie
had written to Mr. Clifton, who would
very shortly be in town, and had made an
appointment to meet him.

The next news came in a note from
Lisle himself. On the first page there
was a pen-and-ink portrait of the incumbent
of St. Sylvester’s with a nimbus,
and it was elaborately dated “Festival
of St. Hilary.”

“It is all as good as settled,” was his
triumphant announcement, “and we are
in luck’s way, for Judith thinks she has
heard of something for herself too. You
will see from my sketch that I have had
my interview with Mr. Clifton. He is
quite delighted with me. A great judge
of character, that man! He is to write
to one or two references I gave him, but
they are sure to be all right, for my
friends have been so bored with me and
my prospects for the last few weeks that
they would swear to my fitness for heaven [page 175]
if it would only send me there. I rather
think, however, that St. Sylvester’s
will suit me better for a little while. His
Reverence is going to look me up some
pupils, and I have bought a Churchman’s
almanac, and am thinking about
starting an oratorio instead of my opera.
Wasn’t it strange that when your letter
came from Brenthill we should remember
that an old friend of my mother’s
lived there? Judith and she have been
writing to each other ever since. Clifton
is evidently undergoing tortures with the
man he has got now, so I should not wonder
if we are at Brenthill in a few days.
It will be better for my chance of pupils
too. I shall look you up without fail, and
expect you to know everything about
lodgings. How about Bellevue street?
Are you far from St. Sylvester’s?”

Thorne read the letter carefully, and
drew from it two conclusions and a perplexity.
He concluded that Bertie Lisle’s
elastic spirits had quickly recovered the
shock of his father’s failure and flight,
and that he had not the faintest idea
that any property of his—Percival’s—had
gone down in the wreck. So much
the better.

His perplexity was, What was Miss
Lisle going to do? Could the “we” who
were to arrive imply that she meant to
accompany her brother? And what was
the something she had heard of for herself?
The words haunted him. Was the
ruin so complete that she too must face
the world and earn her own living? A
sense of cruel wrong stirred in his inmost
soul.

He made up his mind at last that she
was coming to establish Bertie in his
lodgings before she went on her own
way. He offered any help in his power
when he answered the letter, but he added
a postscript: “Don’t think of Bellevue
street: you wouldn’t like it.” He heard
no more till one day he came back to his
early dinner and found a sealed envelope
on his table. It contained a half
sheet of paper, on which Bertie had
scrawled in pencil, “Why did you abuse
Bellevue street? We think it will do.
And why didn’t you say there were
rooms in this very house? We have
taken them, so there is an end of your
peaceful solitude. I’m going to practise
for ever and ever. If you don’t like it
there’s no reason why you shouldn’t
leave: it’s a free country, they say.”

Percival looked round his room. She
had been there, then?—perhaps had stood
where he was standing. His glance fell
on the turquoise-blue vase and the artificial
flowers, and he colored as if he were
Lydia’s accomplice. Had she seen those
and the Language of Flowers?

As if his thought had summoned her,
Lydia herself appeared to lay the cloth for
his dinner. She looked quickly round:
“Did you see your note, Mr. Thorne?”

“Thank you, yes,” said Percival.

“I supposed it was right to show them
in here to write it—wasn’t it?” she asked
after a pause. “He said he knew you
very well.”

“Quite right, certainly.”

“A very pleasant-spoken young gentleman,
ain’t he?” said Miss Bryant, setting
down a salt-cellar.

“Very,” said Percival.

“Coming to play the High Church organ,
he tells me,” Lydia continued, as if
the instrument in question were somehow
saturated with ritualism.

“Yes—at St. Sylvester’s.”

Lydia looked at him, but he was gazing
into the fire. She went out, came
back with a dish, shook her curl out of
the way, and tried again: “I suppose
we’re to thank you for recommending
the lodgings—ain’t we, Mr. Thorne?
I’m sure ma’s much obliged to you.
And I’m glad”—this with a bashful
glance—”that you felt you could. It
seems as if we’d given satisfaction.”

“Certainly,” said Percival. “But you
mustn’t thank me in this case, Miss Bryant.
I really didn’t know what sort of
lodgings my friend wanted. But of
course I’m glad Mr. Lisle is coming
here.”

“And ain’t you glad Miss Lisle is
coming too, Mr. Thorne?” said Lydia
very archly. But she watched him,
lynx-eyed.

He uttered no word of surprise, but he
could not quite control the muscles of his
face, and a momentary light leapt into[page 176]
his eyes. “I wasn’t aware Miss Lisle
was coming,” he said.

Lydia believed him. “That’s true,”
she thought, “but you’re precious glad.”
And she added aloud, “Then the pleasure
comes all the more unexpected, don’t
it?” She looked sideways at Percival
and lowered her voice: “P’r’aps Miss
Lisle meant a little surprise.”

Percival returned her glance with a
grave scorn which she hardly understood.
“My dinner is ready?” he said.
“Thank you, Miss Bryant.” And Lydia
flounced out of the room, half indignant,
half sorrowful: “He didn’t know—that’s
true. But she knows what she’s
after, very well. Don’t tell me!” To
Lydia, at this moment, it seemed as if
every girl must be seeking what she
sought. “And I call it very bold of her
to come poking herself where she isn’t
wanted—running after a young man.
I’d be ashamed.” A longing to scratch
Miss Lisle’s face was mixed with a longing
to have a good cry, for she was honestly
suffering the pangs of unrequited
love. It is true that it was not for the
first time. The curl, the earrings, the
songs, the Language of Flowers, had
done duty more than once before. But
wounds may be painful without being
deep, although the fact of these former
healings might prevent all fear of any
fatal ending to this later love. Lydia
was very unhappy as she went down
stairs, though if another hero could be
found she was perhaps half conscious
that the melancholy part of her present
love-story might be somewhat abridged.

The streets seemed changed to Percival
as he went back to his work. Their
ugliness was as bare and as repulsive as
ever, but he understood now that the
houses might hold human beings, his
brothers and his sisters, since some one
roof among them sheltered Judith Lisle.
Thus he emerged from the alien swarm
amid which he had walked in solitude so
many days. Above the dull and miry
ways were the beauty of her gray-blue
eyes and the glory of her golden hair.
He felt as if a white dove had lighted
on the town, yet he laughed at his own
feelings; for what did he know of her?
He had seen her twice, and her father
had swindled him out of his money.

Never had his work seemed so tedious,
and never had he hurried so quickly to
Bellevue street as he did when it was
over. The door of No. 13 stood open,
and young Lisle stood on the threshold.
There was no mistaking him. His face
had changed from the beautiful chorister
type of two or three years earlier, but
Percival thought him handsomer than
ever. He ceased his soft whistling and
held out his hand: “Thorne! At last! I
was looking out for you the other way.”

Thorne could hardly find time to greet
him before he questioned eagerly, “You
have really taken the rooms here?”

“Really and truly. What’s wrong?
Anything against the landlady?”

“No,” said Percival. “She’s honest
enough, and fairly obliging, and all the
rest of it. But then your sister is not
coming here to live with you, as they
told me? That was a mistake?”

“Not a bit of it. She’s coming: in
fact, she’s here.”

“In Bellevue street?” Percival looked
up and down the dreary thoroughfare.
“But, Lisle, what a place to bring
her to!”

“Beggars mustn’t be choosers,” said
Bertie. “We are not exactly what you
would call rolling in riches just now.
And Bellevue street happens to be about
midway between St. Sylvester’s and Standon
Square, so it will suit us both.”

“Standon Square?” Percival repeated.

“Yes. Oh, didn’t I tell you? My mother
came to school at Brenthill. It was her
old schoolmistress we remembered lived
here when we had your letter. So we
wrote to her, and the old dear not only
promised me some pupils, but it is settled
that Judith is to go and teach there
every day. Judith thinks we ought to
stick to one another, we two.”

“You’re a lucky fellow,” said Percival.
“You don’t know, and won’t know,
what loneliness is here.”

“But how do you come to know anything
about it? That’s what I can’t understand.
I thought your grandfather
died last summer?”

“So he did.”

“But I thought you were to come in
for no end of money?”

“SHE DREW A SOFT WHITE CLOAK ROUND HER, AND WENT BY.”—Page 173.

“I didn’t, you see.”

“But surely he always allowed you a
lot,” said Lisle, still unsatisfied. “You
never used to talk of doing anything.”

“No, but I found I must. The fact is,
I’m not on the best terms with my cousin [page 178]
at Brackenhill, and I made up my
mind to be independent. Consequently,
I’m a clerk—a copying-clerk, you understand—in
a lawyer’s office here—Ferguson’s
in Fisher street—and I lodge
accordingly.”

“I’m very sorry,” said Bertie.

“Hammond knows all about it,” the
other went on, “but nobody else does.”

“I was afraid there was something
wrong,” said Bertie—”wrong for you, I
mean. From our point of view it is
very lucky that circumstances have sent
you here. But I hope your prospects
may brighten; not directly—I can’t
manage to hope that—but soon.”

Percival smiled. “Meanwhile,” he
said with a quiet earnestness of tone,
“if there is anything I can do to help
you or Miss Lisle, you will let me do it.”

“Certainly,” said Bertie. “We are going
out now to look for a grocer. Suppose
you come and show us one.”

“I’m very much at your service. What
are you looking at?”

“Why—you’ll pardon my mentioning
it—you have got the biggest smut on
your left cheek that I’ve seen since I
came here. They attain to a remarkable
size in Brenthill, have you noticed?”
Bertie spoke with eager interest, as if he
had become quite a connoisseur in smuts.
“Yes, that’s it. I’ll look Judith up, and
tell her you are going with us.”

Percival fled up stairs, more discomposed
by that unlucky black than he
would have thought possible. When
he had made sure that he was tolerably
presentable he waited by his open door
till his fellow-lodgers appeared, and then
stepped out on the landing to meet them.
Miss Lisle, dressed very simply in black,
stood drawing on her glove. A smile
dawned on her face when her eyes met
Percival’s, and, greeting him in her low
distinct tones, she held out her white
right hand, still ungloved. He took it
with grave reverence, for Judith Lisle
had once touched his faint dream of a
woman who should be brave with sweet
heroism, tender and true. They had
scarcely exchanged a dozen words in
their lives, but he had said to himself,
“If I were an artist I would paint my
ideal with a face like that;” and the
memory, with its underlying poetry,
sprang to life again as his glance encountered
hers. Percival felt the vague
poem, though Bertie was at his elbow
chattering about shops, and though he
himself had hardly got over the intolerable
remembrance of that smut.

When they were in the street Miss
Lisle looked eagerly about her, and asked
as they turned a corner, “Will this be
our way to St. Sylvester’s?”

“Yes. I suppose Bertie will make his
début next Sunday? I must come and
hear him.”

“Of course you must,” said Lisle.
“Where do you generally go?”

“Well, for a walk generally. Sometimes
it ends in some outlying church,
sometimes not.”

“Oh, but it’s your duty to attend your
parish church when I play there. I
suppose St. Sylvester’s is your parish
church?”

“Not a bit of it. St. Andrew’s occupies
that proud position. I’ve been there
three times, I think.”

“And what sort of a place is that?”
said Miss Lisle.

“The dreariest, dustiest, emptiest place
imaginable,” Percival answered, turning
quickly toward her. “There’s an old
clergyman, without a tooth in his head,
who mumbles something which the congregation
seem to take for granted is the
service. Perhaps he means it for that:
I don’t know. He’s the curate, I think,
come to help the rector, who is getting
just a little past his work. I don’t remember
that I ever saw the rector.”

“But does any one go?”

“Well, there’s the clerk,” said Percival
thoughtfully; “and there’s a weekly
dole of bread left to fourteen poor men
and fourteen poor women of the parish.
They must be of good character and
above the age of sixty-five. It is given
away after the afternoon service. When
I have been there, there has always been
a congregation of thirty, without reckoning
the clergyman.” He paused in his
walk. “Didn’t you want a grocer, Miss
Lisle? I don’t do much of my shopping,
but I believe this place is as good as any.”

Judith went in, and the two young
men waited outside. In something less
than half a minute Lisle showed signs
of impatience. He inspected the grocer’s
stock of goods through the window,
and extended his examination to a toyshop
beyond, where he seemed particularly
interested in a small and curly
lamb which stood in a pasture of green
paint and possessed an underground
squeak or baa. Finally, he returned to
Thorne. “You like waiting, don’t you?”
he said.

“I don’t mind it.”

“And I do: that’s just the difference.
Is there a stationer’s handy?”

“At the end of the street, the first turning
to the left.”

“I want some music-paper: I can get
it before Judith has done ordering in her
supplies if I go at once.”

“Go, then: you can’t miss it. I’ll wait
here for Miss Lisle, and we’ll come and
meet you if you are not back.”

When Judith came out she looked
round in some surprise: “What has become
of Bertie, Mr. Thorne?”

“Gone to the bookseller’s,” said Percival:
“shall we walk on and meet him?”

They went together down the gray,
slushy street. The wayfarers seemed
unusually coarse and jostling that evening,
Percival thought, the pavement peculiarly
miry, the flaring gaslights very
cruel to the unloveliness of the scene.

“Mr. Thorne,” Judith began, “I am
glad of this opportunity. We haven’t
met many times before to-day.”

“Twice,” said Percival.

She looked at him, a faint light of
surprise in her eyes. “Ah! twice,” she
repeated. “But you know Bertie well.
You used often to come at one time,
when I was away?”

“Oh yes, I saw a good deal of Bertie,”
he replied, remembering how he had
taken a fancy to the boy.

“And he used to talk to me about you.
I don’t feel as if we were quite strangers,
Mr. Thorne.”

“Indeed, I hope not,” said Percival,
eluding a baker’s boy and reappearing
at her side.

“I’ve another reason for the feeling,
too, besides Bertie’s talk,” she went on.
“Once, six or seven years ago, I saw
your father. He came in one evening,
about some business I think, and I still
remember the very tone in which he
talked of you. I was only a school-girl
then, but I could not help understanding
something of what you were to him.”

“He was too good to me,” said Percival,
and his heart was very full. Those
bygone days with his father, which had
drifted so far into the past, seemed suddenly
brought near by Judith’s words,
and he felt the warmth of the old tenderness
once more.

“So I was very glad to find you here,”
she said. “For Bertie’s sake, not for
yours. I am so grieved that you should
have been so unfortunate!” She looked
up at him with eyes which questioned
and wondered and doubted all at once.

But a small girl, staring at the shop-windows,
drove a perambulator straight
at Percival’s legs. With a laugh he
stepped into the roadway to escape the
peril, and came back: “Don’t grieve
about me, Miss Lisle. It couldn’t be
helped, and I have no right to complain.”
These were his spoken words:
his unspoken thought was that it served
him right for being such a fool as to trust
her father. “It’s worse for you, I think,
and harder,” he went on; “and if you
are so brave—”

“It’s for Bertie if I am,” she said quickly:
“it is very hard on him. We have
spoilt him, I’m afraid, and now he will
feel it so terribly. For people cannot be
the same to us: how should they, Mr.
Thorne? Some of our friends have been
very good—no one could be kinder than
Miss Crawford—but it is a dreadful change
for Bertie. And I have been afraid of
what he would do if he went where he
had no companions. A sister is so helpless!
So I was very thankful when your
letter came. But I am sorry for you, Mr.
Thorne. He told me just now—”

“But, as that can’t be helped,” said
Percival, “be glad for my sake too. I
have been very lonely.”

She looked up at him and smiled. “He
insisted on going to Bellevue street the
first thing this morning,” she said. “I[page 180]
don’t think any other lodgings would
have suited him.”

“But they are not good enough for
you.”

“Oh yes, they are, and near Standon
Square, too: I shall only have seven or
eight minutes’ walk to my work. I should
not have liked—Oh, here he is!—Bertie,
this is cool of you, deserting me in
this fashion!”

“Why, of course you were all right
with Thorne, and he asked me to let
him help me in any way he could. I
like to take a man at his word.”

“By all means take me at mine,” said
Percival.

“Help you?” said Judith to her brother.
“Am I such a terrible burden, then?”

“No,” Thorne exclaimed. “Bertie is
a clever fellow: he lets me share his
privileges first, that I mayn’t back out
of sharing any troubles later.”

“Are you going to save him trouble
by making his pretty speeches for him,
too?” Judith inquired with a smile. “You
are indeed a friend in need.”

They had turned back, and were walking
toward Bellevue street. As they went
into No. 13 they encountered Miss Bryant
in the passage. She glanced loftily
at Miss Lisle as she swept by, but she
turned and fixed a look of reproachful
tenderness on Percival Thorne. He
knew that he was guiltless in the matter,
and yet in Judith’s presence he felt
guilty and humiliated beneath Lydia’s
ostentatiously mournful gaze. The idea
that she would probably be jealous of
Miss Lisle flashed into his mind, to his
utter disgust and dismay. He turned
into his own room and flung himself
into a chair, only to find, a few minutes
later, that he was staring blankly at
Lydia’s blue vase. But for the Lisles,
he might almost have been driven from
Bellevue street by its mere presence on
the table. It was beginning to haunt
him: it mingled in his dreams, and he
had drawn its hideous shape absently on
the edge of his blotting-paper. Let him be
where he might, it lay, a light-blue burden,
on his mind. It was not the vase only, but
he felt that it implied Lydia herself, curl,
turquoise earrings, smile and all, and on
the evening of his meeting with Judith
Lisle the thought was doubly hateful.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

LYDIA REARRANGES HER CAP.

Thus, as the days lengthened, and the
winter, bitter though it was, began to give
faint promise of sunlight to come, Percival
entered on his new life and felt the
gladness of returning spring. At the beginning
of winter our glances are backward:
we are like spendthrifts who have
wasted all in days of bygone splendor.
We sit, pinched and poverty-stricken, by
our little light of fire and candle, remembering
how the whole land was full of
warmth and golden gladness in our
lavish prime. But our feelings change as
the days grow clear and keen and long.
This very year has yet to wear its crown
of blossom. Its inheritance is to come,
and all is fresh and wonderful. We
would not ask the bygone summer for
one day more, for we have the beauty
of promise, instead of that beauty of
long triumph which is heavy and over-ripe,
and with March at hand we cannot
desire September.

Percival’s new life was cold and stern
as the February weather, but it had its
flitting gleams of grace and beauty in
brief words or passing looks exchanged
with Judith Lisle. He was no lover, to
pine for more than Fate vouchsafed. It
seemed to him that the knowledge that
he might see her was almost enough;
and it was well it should be so, for he
met her very seldom. She went regularly
to Standon Square, and came home
late and tired. She had one half-holiday
in the week, but Miss Crawford had
recommended her to a lady whose eldest
girl was dull and backward at her
music, and she spent a great part of that
afternoon in teaching Janie Barton. Bertie
was indignant: “Why should you,
who have an ear and a soul for music,
be tortured by such an incapable as
that? Let them find some one else to
teach her.”

“And some one else to take the money!
Besides, Mrs. Barton is so kind—”

Bertie, who was lying on three chairs
in front of the fire, sat up directly and
looked resigned: “That’s it! now for it!
No one is so good as Mrs. Barton, except
Miss Crawford; and no one is anything
like Miss Crawford, except Mrs. Barton.
Oh, I know! And old Clifton is the first
and best of men. And so you lavish
your gratitude on them—Judith, why
are all our benefactors such awful guys?—while they ought to be thanking their
stars they’ve got us!”

“Nonsense, Bertie!”

“‘Tisn’t nonsense. Aren’t you better
than I am? And old Clifton is very lucky
to get such an organist. I think he is
thankful, but I wish he wouldn’t show
it by asking me to tea again.”

“Don’t complain of Mr. Clifton,” said
Judith. “You are very fortunate, if you
only knew it.”

“Am I? Then suppose you go to tea
with him if you are so fond of him. I
rather think I shall have a severe cold
coming on next Tuesday.”

Judith said no more, being tolerably
sure that when Tuesday came Bertie
would go. But she was not quite happy
about him. She lived as if she idolized
the spoilt boy, but the blindness
which makes idolatry joyful was denied
to her. So that, though he was her first
thought every day of her life, the thought
was an anxious one. She was very grateful
to Miss Crawford for having given
him a chance, so young and untried as
he was, but she could only hope that
Bertie would not repay her kindness by
some thoughtless neglect. At present
all had gone well: there could be no
question about his abilities, Miss Crawford
was satisfied, and the young master
got on capitally with his pupils. Neither
was Judith happy when he was with Mr.
Clifton. Bertie came home to mimic the
clergyman with boyish recklessness, and
she feared that the same kind of thing
went on with some of the choir behind
Mr. Clifton’s back. (“Behind his back?”
Bertie said one day. “Under his nose, if
you like: it would be all one to Clifton.”)
He frightened her with his carelessness
in money-matters and his scarcely concealed
contempt for the means by which
he lived. “Thank Heaven! this hasn’t
got to last for ever,” he said once when
she remonstrated.

“Don’t reckon on anything else,” she
pleaded. “I know what you are thinking
of. Oh, Bertie, I don’t like you to
count on that.”

He threw back his head, and laughed:
“Well, if that fails, wait and see
what I can do for myself.”

He looked so bright and daring as
he spoke that she could hardly help
sharing his confidence. “Ah! the opera!”
she said. “But, Bertie, you must
work.”

“The opera—Yes, of course I will
work,” Bertie answered. “Now you mention
it, it strikes me I may as well have
a pipe and think about it a bit. No time
like the present, is there?” So Bertie
had his pipe and a little quiet meditation.
There was a lingering smile on his face
as if something had amused him. He
always felt particularly virtuous when he
smoked his pipe, because it was so much
more economical than the cigars of his
prosperous days. “A penny saved is a
penny gained.” Bertie felt as if he must
be gradually making his fortune as he
leant back and watched the smoke curl
upward.

And yet, with it all, how could Judith
complain? He was the very life of the
house as he ran up and down stairs, filling
the dingy passages with melodious
singing. He had a bright word for every
one. The grimy little maid-servant
would have died for him at a moment’s
notice. Bertie was always sweet-tempered:
in very truth, there was not a touch
of bitterness in his nature. And he was
so fond of Judith, so proud of her, so
thoroughly convinced of her goodness,
so sure that he should do great things
for her some day! What could she say
against him?

Percival, too, was fascinated. His
room smelt of Bertie’s tobacco and was
littered with blotted manuscripts. He
went so regularly to hear Bertie play
that Mr. Clifton noticed the olive-skinned,
foreign-looking young man, and
thought of asking him to join the Guild
of St. Sylvester and take a class in the[page 182]
Sunday-school. Yet Percival also had
doubts about the young organist’s future.
He knew that letters came now
and then from New York which saddened
Judith and brightened Bertie. If Mr.
Lisle prospered in America and summoned
his son to share his success,
would he have strength to cling to poverty
and honor in England? There were
times when Percival doubted it. There
were times, too, when he doubted whether
the boy’s musical promise would ever
ripen to worthy fruit, though he was angry
with himself for his doubts. “If he
triumphs, it will be her doing,” he thought.
Little as he saw of Judith, they were yet
becoming friends. You may meet a man
every day, and if you only talk to him
about the weather and the leading articles
in the Times, you may die of old age
before you reach friendship. But these
two talked of more than the weather.
Once, emboldened by her remembrance
of old days, he spoke of his father. He
hardly noticed at the time that Judith
took keen note of something he said of
the old squire’s utter separation from his
son. “I was more Percival than Thorne
till I was twenty,” said he.

“And are you not more Percival than
Thorne still?”

He liked to hear her say “Percival”
even thus. “Perhaps,” he said. “But
it is strange how I’ve learned to care
about Brackenhill—or, rather, it wasn’t
learning, it came by instinct—and now
no place on earth seems like home to
me except that old house.”

Judith, fair and clear-eyed, leaned
against the window and looked out into
the twilight. After a pause she spoke:
“You are fortunate, Mr. Thorne. You
can look back happily to your life with
your father.”

The intention of her speech was evident:
so was a weariness which he had
sometimes suspected in her voice. He
answered her: “And you cannot?”

“No,” she said. “I was wondering
just now how many people had reason
to hate the name of Lisle.”

Percival was not unconscious of the
humorous side of such a remark when
addressed to himself. But Judith looked
at him almost as if she would surprise
his thought.

“Don’t dwell on such things,” he said.
“Men in your father’s position speculate,
and perhaps hardly know how deeply
they are involved, till nothing but a
lucky chance will save them, and it
seems impossible to do anything but go
on. At last the end comes, and it is
very terrible. But you can’t mend it.”

“No,” said Judith, “I can’t.”

“Then don’t take up a useless burden
when you need all your strength. You
were not to blame in any way.”

“No,” she said again, “I hope not.
But it is hard to be so helpless. I do
not even know their names. I can only
feel as if I ought to be more gentle and
more patient with every one, since any
one may be—”

“Ah, Miss Lisle,” said Percival, “you
will pay some of the debts unawares in
something better than coin.”

She shook her head, but when she
looked up at him there was a half smile
on her lips. As she moved away Percival
thought of Sissy’s old talk about
heroic women—”Jael, and Judith, and
Charlotte Corday.” He felt that this
girl would have gone to her death with
quiet dignity had there been need. Godfrey
Hammond had called her a plain
likeness of her brother, but Percival had
seen at the first glance that her face was
worth infinitely more than Bertie’s, even
in his boyish promise; and an artist
would have turned from the brother to
the sister, justifying Percival.

It was well for Percival that Judith’s
friendly smile and occasional greeting
made bright moments in his life, since
he had no more of Lydia’s attentions.
Poor grimy little Emma waited on him
wearily, and always neglected him if the
Lisles wanted her. She had apparently
laid in an immense stock of goods, for
she never went shopping now, but stayed
at home and let his fire go out, and
was late and slovenly with his meals.
There was no great dishonesty, but his
tea-caddy was no longer guarded and
provisions ceased to be mysteriously preserved.
Miss Bryant seldom met him on
the stairs, and when she did she flounced[page 183]
past him in lofty scorn. Her slighted
love had turned to gall. She was bitter
in her very desire to convince herself
that she had never thought of Mr. Thorne.
She neglected to send up his letters; she
would not lift a finger to help in getting
his dinner ready; and if Emma happened
to be out of the way she would let his
bell ring and take no notice. Yet she
would have been very true to him, in
her own fashion, if he would have had
it so: she would have taken him for better,
for worse—would have slaved for him
and fought for him, and never suffered
any one else to find fault with him in
any way whatever. But he had not chosen
that it should be so, and Lydia had
reclaimed her heart and her pocket edition
of the Language of Flowers, and
now watched Percival and Miss Lisle
with spiteful curiosity.

“I shall be late at Standon Square this
evening: Miss Crawford wants me,” said
Judith one morning to her brother.

“I’ll come and meet you,” was his
prompt reply. “What time? Don’t let
that old woman work you into an early
grave.”

“There’s no fear of that. I’m strong,
and it won’t hurt me. Suppose you come
at half-past nine: you must have your tea
by yourself, I’m afraid.”

“That’s all right,” he answered cheerfully.

“‘That’s all right?’ What do you
mean by that, sir?”

“I mean that I don’t at all mind
when you don’t come back to tea. I
think I rather prefer it. There, Miss
Lisle!”

“You rude boy!” She felt herself
quite justified in boxing his ears.

“Oh, I say, hold hard! Mind my violets!”
he exclaimed.

“Your violets? Oh, how sweet they
are!” And bending forward, Judith
smelt them daintily. “Where did you
get them, Bertie?”

“Ah! where?” And Bertie stood before
the glass and surveyed himself. The
cheap lodging-house mirror cast a greenish
shade over his features, but the little
bouquet in his buttonhole came out very
well. “Where did I get them? I didn’t
buy them, if you mean that. They were
given to me.”

“Who gave them to you?”

“And then women say it isn’t fair to
call them curious!” Bertie put his head
on one side, dropped his eyelids, looked
out of the corners of his eyes, and smiled,
fingering an imaginary curl.

“Not that nasty Miss Bryant? She
didn’t!”

“She did, though.”

“The wretch! Then you sha’n’t wear
them one moment more.” Bertie eluded
her attack, and stood laughing on the
other side of the table. “Oh, Bertie!”
suddenly growing very plaintive, “why
did you let me smell the nasty things?”

“They are very nice,” said Lisle, looking
down at the poor little violets. “Oh,
we are great friends, Lydia and I. I
shall have buttered toast for tea to-night.”

“Buttered toast? What do you mean?”

“Why, it’s a curious thing, but Emma—isn’t
her name Emma?—always has to
work like a slave when you go out. I
don’t know why there should be so much
more to do: you don’t help her to clean
the kettles or the steps in the general
way, do you? It’s a mystery. Anyhow,
Lydia has to see after my tea, and
then I have buttered toast or muffins
and rashers of bacon. Lydia’s attentions
are just a trifle greasy perhaps,
now I come to think of it. But she
toasts muffins very well, does that young
woman, and makes very good tea too.”

“Bertie! I thought you made tea for
yourself when I was away.”

“Oh! did you? Not I: why should
I? I had some of Mrs. Bryant’s raspberry
jam one night: that wasn’t bad
for a change. And once I had some
prawns.”

“Oh, Bertie! How could you?”

“Bless you, my child!” said Bertie,
“how serious you look! Where’s the
harm? Do you think I shall make myself
ill? By the way, I wonder if Lydia
ever made buttered toast for Thorne? I
suspect she did, and that he turned up
his nose at it: she always holds her
head so uncommonly high if his name
is mentioned.”

“Do throw those violets on the fire,”
said Judith.

“Indeed, I shall do nothing of the kind.
I’m coming to Standon Square to give
my lessons this morning, with my violets.
See if I don’t.”

The name of Standon Square startled
Judith into looking at the time. “I must
be off,” she said. “Don’t be late for the
lessons, and oh, Bertie, don’t be foolish!”

“All right,” he answered gayly. Judith
ran down stairs. At the door she
encountered Lydia and eyed her with
lofty disapproval. It did not seem to
trouble Miss Bryant much. She knew
Miss Lisle disliked her, and took it as
an inevitable fact, if not an indirect compliment
to her conquering charms. So
she smiled and wished Judith good-morning.
But she had a sweeter smile for
Bertie when, a little later, carefully dressed,
radiant, handsome, with her violets in
his coat, he too went on his way to Standon
Square.

If Judith had been in Bellevue street
when he came back, she might have
noticed that the little bouquet was gone.
Had it dropped out by accident? Or
had Bertie merely defended his violets
for fun, and thrown them away as soon
as her back was turned? Or what had
happened to them? There was no one
to inquire.

Young Lisle strolled into Percival’s
room, and found him just come in and
waiting for his dinner. “I’m going to
practise at St. Sylvester’s this afternoon,”
said the young fellow. “What
do you say to a walk as soon as you
get away?”

Percival assented, and began to move
some of the books and papers which
were strewn on the table. Lisle sat on
the end of the horsehair sofa and watched
him. “I can’t think how you can
endure that blue thing and those awful
flowers continually before your eyes,”
he said at last.

Percival shrugged his shoulders. He
could not explain to Lisle that to request
that Lydia’s love-token might be removed
would have seemed to him to be like going
down to her level and rejecting what
he preferred to ignore. “What am I to
do?” he said. “I believe they think it
very beautiful, and I fancy the flowers
are home-made. People have different
ideas of art, but shall I therefore wound
Miss Bryant’s feelings?”

“Heaven forbid!” said Bertie. “Did
Lydia Bryant make those flowers? How
interesting!” He pulled the vase toward
him for a closer inspection. There was
a crash, and light-blue fragments strewed
the floor, Percival, piling his books
on the side-table, looked round with an
exclamation.

“Hullo!” said Lisle, “I’ve done it!
Here’s a pretty piece of work! And you
so fond of it, too!” He was picking up
the flowers as he spoke.—”Here, Emma,”
as the girl opened the door, “I’ve
upset Mr. Thorne’s flower-vase. Tell
Miss Bryant it was my doing, and I’m
afraid it won’t mend. Better take up the
pieces carefully, though, on the chance.”
This was thoughtful of Bertie, as the bits
were remarkably small. “And here are
the flowers—all right, I think. Have
you got everything?” He held the door
open while she went out with her load,
and then he came back rubbing his
hands: “Well, are you grateful? You’ll
never see that again.”

Percival surveyed him with a grave
smile. “I’m grateful,” he said. “But
I’d rather you didn’t treat all the things
which offend my eye in the same way.”

Bertie glanced round at the furniture,
cheap, mean and shabby: “You think
I should have too much smashing to
do?”

“I fear it might end in my sitting cross-legged
on the floor,” said Thorne. “And
my successor might cavil at Mrs. Bryant’s
idea of furnished lodgings.”

“Well, I know I’ve done you a good
turn to-day,” Bertie rejoined: “my conscience
approves of my conduct.” And
he went off whistling.

Percival, on his way out, met Lydia
on the landing. “Miss Bryant, have
you a moment to spare?” he said as she
went rustling past.

She stopped ungraciously.

“The flower-vase on my table is broken.
If you can tell me what it cost I
will pay for it.”

“Mr. Lisle broke it, didn’t he? Emma
said—”

“No matter,” said Thorne: “it was
done in my room. It is no concern of
Mr. Lisle’s. Can you tell me?”

Lydia hesitated. Should she let him
pay for it? Some faint touch of refinement
told her that she should not take
money for what she had meant as a love-gift.
She looked up and met the utter indifference
of his eyes as he stood, purse
in hand, before her. She was ashamed
of the remembrance that she had tried
to attract his attention, and burned to
deny it. “Well, then, it was three-and-six,”
she said.

Percival put the money in her hand.
She eyed it discontentedly.

“That’s right, isn’t it?” he asked in
some surprise.

The touch of the coins recalled to her
the pleasure with which she had spent
her own three-and-sixpence to brighten
his room, and she half repented. “Oh,
it’s right enough,” she said. “But I
don’t know why you should pay for it.
Things will get knocked over—”

“I beg your pardon: of course I ought
to pay for it,” he replied, drawing himself
up. He spoke the more decidedly
that he knew how it was broken. “But,
Miss Bryant, it will not be necessary to
replace it. I don’t think anything of the
kind would be very safe in the middle
of my table.” And with a bow he went
on his way.

Lydia stood where he had left her,
fingering his half-crown and shilling
with an uneasy sense that there was
something very mean about the transaction.
Now that she had taken his
money she disliked him much more,
but, as she had taken it, she went away
and bought herself a pair of grass-green
gloves. From that time forward she always
openly declared that she despised
Mr. Thorne.

That evening, when they came back
from their walk, Lisle asked his companion
to lend him a couple of sovereigns.
“You shall have them back
to-morrow,” he said airily. Percival assented
as a matter of course. He hardly
thought about it at all, and if he had
he would have supposed that there was
something to be paid in Miss Lisle’s absence.
He had still something left of the
small fortune with which he had started.
It was very little, but he could manage
Bertie’s two sovereigns with that and the
money he had laid aside for Mrs. Bryant’s
weekly bill.

Percival Thorne, always exact in his
accounts, supposed that a time was fixed
for the repayment of the loan. He did
not understand that his debtor was one
of those people who when they say “I
will pay you to-morrow,” merely mean
“I will not pay you to-day.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

CONCERNING SISSY.

Percival had announced the fact of
the Lisles’ presence in Bellevue street
to Sissy in a carefully careless sentence.
Sissy read it, and shivered sadly. Then
she answered in a peculiarly bright and
cheerful letter. “I’m not fit for him,”
she thought as she wrote it. “I don’t
understand him, and I’m always afraid.
Even when he loved me best I felt as if
he loved some dream-girl and took me
for her in his dream, and would be angry
with me when he woke. Miss Lisle
would not be afraid. It is the least I can
do for Percival, not to stand in the way
of his happiness—the least I can do, and
oh, how much the hardest!” So she gave
Thorne to understand that she was getting
on remarkably well.

It was not altogether false. She had
fallen from a dizzy height, but she had
found something of rest and security in
the valley below. And as prisoners cut
off from all the larger interests of their
lives pet the plants and creatures which
chance to lighten their captivity, so did Sissy
begin to take pleasure in little gayeties
for which she had not cared in old days.
She could sleep now at night without
apprehension, and she woke refreshed.
There was a great blank in her existence
where the thunderbolt fell, but the
cloud which hung so blackly overhead
was gone. The lonely life was sad, but
it held nothing quite so dreadful as the[page 186]
fear that a day might come when Percival
and his wife would know that they
stood on different levels—that she could
not see with his eyes nor understand his
thoughts—when he would look at her
with sorrowful patience, and she would
die slowly of his terrible kindness. The
lonely life was sad, but, after all, Sissy
Langton would not be twenty-one till
April.

Percival read her letter, and asked
Godfrey Hammond how she really was.
“Tell me the truth,” he said: “you know
all is over between us. She writes cheerfully.
Is she better than she was last
year?”

Hammond replied that Sissy was certainly
better. “She has begun to go out
again, and Fordborough gossip says that
there is something between her and young
Hardwicke. He is a good fellow, and I
fancy the old man will leave him very
well off. But she might do better, and
there are two people, at any rate, who
do not think anything will come of it—myself
and young Hardwicke.”

Percival hoped not, indeed.

A month later Hammond wrote that
there was no need for Percival to excite
himself about Henry Hardwicke. Mrs.
Falconer had taken Sissy and Laura to
a dance at Latimer’s Court, and Sissy’s
conquests were innumerable. Young
Walter Latimer and a Captain Fothergill
were the most conspicuous victims.
“I believe Latimer rides into Fordborough
every day, and the captain, being
stationed there, is on the spot. Our St.
Cecilia looks more charming than ever,
but what she thinks of all this no one
knows. Of course Latimer would be the
better match, as far as money goes—he
is decidedly better-looking, and, I should
say, better-tempered—but Fothergill has
an air about him which makes his rival
look countrified, so I suppose they are
tolerably even. Neither is overweighted
with brains. What do you think? Young
Garnett cannot say a civil word to either
of them, and wants to give Sissy a dog.
He is not heart-whole either, I take it.”

Hammond was trying to probe his
correspondent’s heart. He flattered himself
that he should learn something from
Percival, let him answer how he would.
But Percival did not answer at all. The
fact was, he did not know what to say.
It seemed to him that he would give
anything to hear that Sissy was happy,
and yet—

Nor did Sissy understand herself very
well. Her grace and sweetness attracted
Latimer and Fothergill, and a certain
gentle indifference piqued them.
She was not sad, lest sadness should be
a reproach to Percival. In truth, she
hardly knew what she wished. One day
she came into the room and overheard
the fag-end of a conversation between
Mrs. Middleton and a maiden aunt of
Godfrey Hammond’s who had come to
spend the day. “You know,” said the
visitor, “I never could like Mr. Percival
Thorne as much as—”

Sissy paused on the threshold, and
Miss Hammond stopped short. The
color mounted to her wintry cheek, and
she contrived to find an opportunity to
apologize a little later: “I beg your pardon,
my dear, for my thoughtless remark
just as you came in. I know so little
that my opinion was worthless. I really
beg your pardon.”

“What for?” said Sissy. “For what
you said about Percival Thorne? My
dear Miss Hammond, people can’t be
expected to remember that. Why, we
agreed that it should be all over and
done with at least a hundred years ago.”
She spoke with hurried bravery.

The old lady looked at her and held
out her hands: “My dear, is the time
always so long since you parted?”

Sissy put the proffered hands airily
aside and scoffed at the idea. They
had a crowd of callers that afternoon,
but the girl lingered more than once by
Miss Hammond’s side and paid her delicate
little attentions. This perplexed
young Garnett very much when he had
ascertained from one of the company that
the old woman had nothing but an annuity
of three hundred a year. He hoped
that Sissy Langton wasn’t a little queer,
but, upon his word, it looked like it.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

A WELSH WATERING-PLACE.

On the eastern shore of that stretch
of land which forms the extreme
south-western point of Wales stands the
stony little seaport town of Tenby. It is
an old, old town, rich in historical legends,
an important place in the twelfth century
and down to Queen Elizabeth’s reign.
Soon after her time it fell into woeful
decay, and for years of whose number
there is no record Tenby existed as a
poor fishing-village and mourned its departed
glories. That it would ever again
be a place of interest to anybody but people
of fishy pursuits was an idea Tenby
did not entertain concerning itself; but,
lo! in the present century there arose
a custom among genteel folk of going
down to the sea in bathing-machines.
It was discovered that Tenby was a spot
favored of Neptune (or whatever god or
goddess regulates the matter of surf-bathing),
and Tenby was taken down from the
shelf, as it were, dusted, mended and
set on its legs again. The fashionables
smiled on it. Away off in the depths of
wild Wales the knowing few set up their
select and choice summer abode, and
vaunted its being so far away from home;
for Tenby was farther from London in
those old coaching days than New York
is in these days of steamships. Even
years after railroads found their way into
Wales, Tenby remained remote and was
approachable only by coach; but now
you can step into your railway-carriage
in London and trundle to Tenby without
change between your late breakfast and
your late dinner.

Probably no seaside watering-place
known to the polite world contrasts so
strongly with the typical American watering-place
as does this Welsh resort.
Not at Brighton, not at Biarritz, not at
any German spa, will the tourist find so
complete a contrast in every respect to
Long Branch or Newport. Tenby is almost
sui generis. A watering-place without
a wooden building in it would of itself
be a novelty to an American. Our
summer cities consist wholly of wooden
buildings, but Tenby, from the point of
its ponderous pier, where the waves break
as on a rock, to the tip of its church-spire,
which the clouds kiss, is every
inch of stone. Welshmen will not build
even so insignificant a structure as a pig-sty
out of boards if there are stones to be
had. I have seen stone pig-sties in Glamorganshire
with walls a foot thick and
six hundred years old. There is not a
wooden building in Tenby. The station-buildings
are “green” (as the Welsh say
of a new house), but they are solid stone.

Alighting from the railway-carriage in
which you have come down from London,
you are greeted with no clamor of
bawling hack-drivers and hotel-omnibus
men roaring in stentorian tones the
names of their various houses. Three
or four quiet serving-men in corduroy
small-clothes and natty coats touch their
hats to you and look in your face inquiringly.
They represent the various hotels
in Tenby, and at a gesture of assent from
you one of them takes your bags, your
wraps, whatever you are burdened with,
and conducts you to a somewhat antiquated
vehicle which bears you to your
chosen inn through some gray stony
streets, under an ivy-green archway of
the ancient town-wall; and as the vehicle
draws up at the inn-door the beauty
of Tenby lies spread suddenly before you—the
lovely bay, the cliffs, the sands, the
ruined castle on the hill, the restless sea
beyond. A handsome young person in
an elaborate toilet as regards her back
hair, but not otherwise impressive in attire,
comes to the door of the hotel to
meet you, and gently inquires concerning
your wishes: that you have come to
stay in the house is a presumption which
no properly constituted young person in
Tenby would venture upon without express
warrant in words. Receiving information
on this point from you, the
probability is that she imparts to you in
return the information that the house is[page 188]
full. Such, indeed, is the chronic condition
of the hotels at Tenby in the season;
and unless you have written beforehand
and secured accommodations,
you are not likely to find them. In the
life of a Welsh watering-place hotels do
not fill the important place they do in
American summer resorts. Nobody lives
at an hotel in Tenby. If their stay be longer
than a day or two (and very few indeed
are they who come to-day and are off to-morrow),
visitors inevitably go into lodgings.
Such is the custom of the country,
and there is no provision for any other,
no encouragement to a prolonged stay
at an hotel. The result is, that the hotels
are in an incessant state of bustle and
change: there is a never-intermitting
stream of arrivals, who only ask to be
made comfortable for a night or two
while they are looking for lodgings, and
then make way for the next squad. Tenby
abounds in lodging-houses, the expenses
of which are smaller than hotel
expenses, while their comforts are greater,
their cares actually less and their good
tone unquestionable. The various lodging-house
quarters vie with each other in
genteel cognomens and aristocratic flavor.
The Esplanade is but a row of
lodging-houses. The various Terraces,
each with a prenomen more graceful than
the other, are the same. The windows of
Tudor Square and Victoria street, Paragon
Place and Glendower Crescent, bloom
with invitations to “inquire within.” A
handsome parlor and bedroom may be
had for two pounds a week, and the cost
of food and sundries need not exceed two
pounds more for two persons moderately
fond of good living; which means, at
Tenby, the fattest and whitest of fowls,
the freshest and daintiest salmon and
john dories, the reddest and sweetest of
lobsters and prawns. Those who prefer
to take a house have every encouragement
to do so. A bijou of a furnished
cottage, all overrun with vines and flowers,
may be had for three pounds a
month, the use of plate and linen included.
These things are fatal to hotel
ambition, for although the hotels are not
expensive, from an American point of
view, they cannot compete with such figures
as these. Hence there is nothing to
induce a change in the customs of Tenby,
which have prevailed ever since it became
a watering-place. Britons do not change
their habits without good and valid cause
therefor, and no Americans ever come to
Tenby, so far as I can learn.

We are Americans ourselves, of course,
and we are going to do as Americans do—viz.
make a very brief stay, and that in
an hotel. We obtain accommodations at
last through a happy fortune, and presently
find ourselves installed in the grandest
suite of hotel-apartments at Tenby—a
large parlor, handsomely furnished, with
a piano, books, objets d’art, etc., and a
bedroom off it. At Long Branch, were
there such an apartment there—which
there is not—twenty dollars a day would
be charged for it, without board and without
compunction. Here we pay nineteen
shillings. There is a magnificent
view from our front windows. The hotel
stands close to the cliff, with only a
narrow street between its doorstep and
the edge of the precipice. The night is
falling, and the scene is like Fairy Land.
We look from our windows straight down
upon the sands, a dizzy distance below
(but to which it were easy to toss a
pebble), and out over the glassy waters,
where small craft float silently, with the
gray old stone pier and the dark ivy-hung
ruin on Castle Hill, the one reflected
in the waves, the other outlined
against the sky—a lovely picture. Tenby
covers the ridge of a long and narrow
promontory rising abruptly out of the sea,
its stone streets running along the dizzy
limestone cliffs. From the highest point
eastward—where is presented toward the
sea a front of rugged precipices which
would not shame a mountain-range—the
promontory slopes gradually lower
and lower till the streets of the town run
stonily down sidewise through an ancient
gate and debouch upon the south beach.
Then, as if repenting its condescension,
the promontory takes a fresh start, and
for a brief spurt climbs again, but quickly
plunges into the sea. This spurt, however,
creates the picturesque hill on which
of old stood a powerful Norman fortress,
whose ruins we see. Local enterprise[page 189]
has now laid out the hill as a public
pleasure-ground, with gravelled paths
and rustic seats, and glorified it with a
really superb statue of the late Prince
Albert, who, the Welsh inscription asserts,
was Albert Dda, Priod Ein Gorhoffus
Frenhines Victoria.

We find upon inquiry that our hotel so
far infringes upon primitive Welsh manners
as to provide a table-d’hôte dinner
at six. This is most welcome news, and
we become at once part of the company
which sits down to the table d’hôte.
There are ten people besides ourselves,
and not a commonplace or colorless
character among them. My left-hand
neighbor is a somewhat slangy young
gentleman in a suit of chequered clothes,
who carves the meats, being at the head
of the table; and my happy propinquity
secures me the honor of selection by the
young gentleman as the recipient of his
observations: a toughish round of beef
which he is called upon to carve evokes
from him an aside to the effect that it is
“rather a dose.” The foot of the table
is held by an old gentleman in a black
stock, with a tuft of wiry hair on the front
part of his head, and none whatever on
any other part, who carves a fowl, and
in asking the diners which part they severally
prefer accompanies the question
with a brisk sharpening of his knife on
his fork, but without making the least
noise in doing it. My chequered neighbor
having advertised the toughness of
the beef, everybody murmurs a purpose
of indulging in fowl, at which my neighbor
observes aside to me that he is “rather
jolly glad,” and the butler takes the
beef away. The dish next set before
him proving a matter of spoons merely,
his relief at not being obliged to carve
finds vent in a whispered “Hooray!” for
my exclusive amusement. One unfortunate
individual has accepted a helping
of beef, however—a bald-headed man
in spectacles, not hitherto unaccustomed
to good living, if one might judge by his
rounded proportions. It is painful to witness
his struggles with the beef, which
he maintains with the earnestness of a
man who means to conquer or perish
in the endeavor. Opposite sits as fair a
type of a ripe British beauty of the middle
class as I have anywhere seen—with
a complexion of snow, a mouth like a
red bud and eyes as beautiful and expressive
as those of a splendid large wax
doll, her hair drawn tensely back and
rolled into billowy puffs, with a rose
atop. It is sad, in looking on a picture
like this—superb in its suggestions of
pure rich blood and abounding health—to
reflect that such a rose will develop
into a red peony in ten years. I do not
say the peony will not have her own
strong recommendings to the eye: we
may not despise a peony, but it is impossible
not to regret that a rose should
turn into one. There is a very good example
of the peony sort near the foot of
the table—quite a magnificent creature
in her way. Her husband, who sits next
her, is a fiercely-bearded man, but has a
strange air of being in his wife’s custody
nevertheless. The lady is apparently
forty-five, red to a fault, full in the neck,
and with a figure which necessitates a
somewhat haughty pose of the head unless
one would appear gross and piggish.
There is much to admire in this lady,
peony though she be. The fiercely-bearded
husband is smaller than his
wife, and, in spite of her commanding
air and his subdued aspect, I have not
a doubt he rules her with a rod of iron.
Appearances are very deceptive in this
direction. I have known so many large
ladies married to little men who (the
ladies) carried themselves in public like
grenadiers or drum-majors, and in private
doted on their little lords’ shoe-strings!
Next the fiercely-bearded husband
sits a very pretty girl, whom he
finds his entertainment in constantly
observing with the air of a connoisseur.
She is modesty itself; her eyes are never
off her plate; and from the at-ease manner
in which he contemplates her it is
clear he no more expects her to return
his gaze than he expects a torpedo to
go off under his chair.

The dinner proceeds most decorously.
If it were a funeral, indeed, it could hardly
be less given to anything approaching
hilarity. There is now and then a little
conversation, but the gaps are frightful[page 190]
—yawning chasms of silence of the sort
in which you are moved to wild thoughts
of running away, for fear you may suddenly
commit some act of horrible impropriety,
like whistling in church. In
one of these gaps—during which the
whole company, having finished the
course, is waiting gloomily for the victim
of tough beef (who is still struggling)
to have done—my chequered neighbor
remarks, in an aside which makes every
one start as if a pistol had been fired off,
“Goodish-sized pause, eh?”

But with the dessert we begin to unbend.
We are still exceedingly decorous,
but our tongues are loosened a little,
and we exchange amiable remarks,
under whose genial influence we begin
to feel that the worst is over. Unfortunately,
however, with the spread of sunshine
among us there is the muttering of
a storm at our backs: the butler pushes
his female assistant aside with deep rumbling
growls, and presently explodes with
open rage at her stupidity. The diners
turn and stare incredulous and amazed.
The butler rushes madly from the room.
The female assistant, agitated but obstinate,
seizes the blanc-mange and the
cream and proceeds to serve them. I
shall not be believed, I fear, but I am
relating simple truth: in her agitation
this incredible female spills the cream
in a copious shower-bath over me and
my chequered neighbor, and excitedly
falls to mopping it off us with her napkin,
like a pantomime clown. Fortunately,
we are in our travelling suits,
and come out of this baptism unharmed.
The incident nearly suffocates the
company, for there is not a soul among
them who would not sooner suffer the
pangs of dissolution than laugh outright.
As for me, I am nearly expiring with the
merriment that consumes me and my
efforts to prevent indecorous explosion.
The young woman, after having wiped
me dry, once more presents the cream-jug,
this time with both hands, but I
can only murmur faintly in my trouble,
“Thanks, no—no more cream.” This
appears to be quite too much for the
young person, who throws up her arms
in despair and rushes after the butler.
What tragic encounter there may have
been in the servants’ hall I know not.
Another servant comes and carries the
dinner through.

It is entertainment enough for the first
morning of your stay at Tenby just to sit
at the windows and observe what is there
before you—the street with its passers,
the beach with its strange rock-formations,
the ocean thickly dotted with fishing-craft.
The tide is out, and the huge
black block of compact limestone called
God’s Rock, with its almost perpendicular
strata, lies all uncovered in the morning
sun—a vast curiosity-shop where children
clamber about and search for strange
creatures of the sea. In the pools left
here and there by the receding tide are
found not only crabs and periwinkles in
great number, but polyps, sea-anemones,
star-fishes, medusæ and the like in almost
endless variety. Naturalists—who
are but children older grown, with all a
child’s capacity for being amused by Nature—get
rages of enthusiasm on them
as they search the crevices of this and
other like rocks at Tenby. A floor of
hard yellow sand stretches away into the
distance, visible for miles, owing to the
circular sweep of the beach and the
height from which we are looking out,
and it is dotted with strollers appearing
like black mice moving slowly about.
The long stretch of the cliff, from its
crescent shape, is clearly seen—sometimes
a sheer, bare stone precipice, sometimes
a steep slope covered with woods
and hanging gardens and zigzag, descending
walled paths.

Among those who make up the human
panorama of the street under your window
are types of character peculiar to
Wales. One such is the peddling fisher-woman
who strolls by with a basketful
of bright pink prawns, which she holds
out to you temptingly, looking up. The
fisher-women of Tenby wear a costume
differing in some respects from that of
all other Welsh peasants. Instead of the
glossy and expensive “beaver” worn in
other parts, the Tenby women sport a
tall hat of straw or badly-battered felt.
Another favorite with them is a soft black
slouch hat like a man’s, but with a knot[page 191]
of ribbon in front. One of the neatest
of the fisher-women is an old girl of fifty
or so, who haunts your windows incessantly,
and greets you with a quick-dropped
courtesy whenever you walk
out. She is never seen to stand still,
except for the purpose of talking to a
customer, but trots incessantly about;
and either for this reason, or from her
constant journeys to and fro between
her home and the town, is given the
nickname of Dame Trudge. She usually
has on her back a coarse oyster-basket
called a “creel,” and in her
hands another basket containing cooked
prawns, lobsters or other temptation
to the gourmand. Her dress, though it
is midsummer, is warm and snug, particularly
about the head and neck, as a
protection against the winds of ocean;
and her stout legs are encased in jet-black
woollen stockings (visible below
her short check petticoat), while her feet
are shod with huge brogans whose inch-thick
soles are heavily plated with iron.
She lives ten miles from Tenby, walks
to and fro always, and sleeps under her
own roof every night, yet you never fail
to see her there in the street when you
get up in the morning. There are many
other oyster-women to be seen at Tenby,
but none so trim as good Dame Trudge.
Here and hereabout grow the largest, if
not the sweetest, oysters in Great Britain,
and their cultivation is chiefly the work
of the gentler sex. They do not look
very gentle—or at least very frail—as
you come upon a group of oyster-women
in their masculine hats and boots munching
their bread and cheese under a wall,
but they are a good-natured race, and
most respectful to their betters. Anything
less suggestive of Billingsgate than
the language of these Welsh fisher-women
could hardly be, considering their trade.

The tide of passers is setting toward
the south sands. Foreigners are almost
unrepresented in this throng. There is
one Frenchman, who would be recognizable
as far off as he could be seen
by his contrast to the prevailing British
tone. It is a mystery why he should be
here instead of at Trouville, Boulogne,
Dieppe or Étretat, where the habits of
the gay world are all his own. Nobody
seems to know him at Tenby. Behind
him walks quite as pronounced a type
of the Welsh country gentleman—a character
not to be mistaken for an Englishman,
in spite of the family resemblance.
A shrewd simplicity characterizes this
face—an open, guileless sharpness, so
to speak, peculiarly Welsh. An indifferent
judge of human nature might venture
to attempt heathen games with this
old gentleman, but no astute rogue would
think of such a thing. A man of this
stamp, however green and rural, is not
gullible. This Welsh simplicity of character
is very deceptive to the unwary,
and many besides Ancient Pistol have
eaten leeks against their will because
of their ignorance concerning it.

We join the throng in the street and
stroll leisurely down the long incline.
The whole town tips that way. A variety
of more or less quaint vehicles
move about—cabriolets drawn by donkeys
and ponies; sedan chairs; a species
of easy-chair on wheels, with a wooden
apron, and propelled by a boy or a decayed
footman in seedy livery with bibulous
habits written on his face. Something
of a similar sort was seen at the
Centennial, yet utterly unlike this, notwithstanding
a resemblance in principle.
These invalid go-carts are very convenient
at Tenby, as they may be trundled
everywhere, even on the sands, which
are hard and flat. A peculiarity of all
the vehicles, even those drawn by two
animals, is that they go slower, as a
rule, than on-foot people do. Briskly-walking
couples and groups of English
and Welsh ladies pass us, carrying over
their arms bathing-dresses or towels, with
the business-like alacrity of movement
characteristic of most Britons on their
feet. No one saunters except ourselves.
All are hastening to the south sands,
looking neither to the right nor the left;
but for us there are eye-lures in every
direction. The town abounds with antiquities
calculated to awaken the liveliest
interest in a stranger: every street is
rich with romantic story; every hill and
rock for miles around has its legend, its
ruin of castle, abbey or palace, or its[page 192]
mysterious cromlech,—all that can most
charm the soul of the antiquary; and
Shakespeare has honored this corner of
Wales beyond others by putting it in
one of his tragedies. Considerable portions
of the ancient town-wall are standing,
with the mural towers and gateways.
In the parish church, which we
pass, are some most interesting monuments
of the early half of the fourteenth
century, but the Tenbyites look upon
their church as rather a modern structure,
as churches go in Wales. They
point out the place where John Wesley
preached in the street in 1763, when the
mayor threatened to read the riot act.
There is still a law in Wales against
street-preaching, but it is not often enforced,
unless the preacher happens to
be drunk—an incident not altogether
unknown.

The old stone pier abounds with seafaring
characters in holiday rig, very
picturesque to American eyes. They
knuckle their foreheads and remove
their pipes as we pass, and by attitudes
and gestures which would inform a deaf-mute
invite us to take a sail on the bay.
They do not audibly offer their services,
for the municipal laws forbid them to,
but their figureheads are mutely eloquent.
Here is one who might be put
right on the stage as he stands as the
typical jolly Jack Tar of the nautical
drama. He wears a red liberty-cap,
and a nose which matches it to a shade.
His jersey is blue and low in the neck,
and his trousers are of that roominess
supposed to be necessary for nautical
purposes. Other mariners about him
are quite as interesting. Occasionally
one is seen whose rig is so neat he might
have stepped out of a bandbox, but,
though he is an ornamental mariner, he
is not a Brummagem one. These fellows
all know storm and danger and
severe toil as common acquaintances.
The neatest of them are understood to
be residents here, with wives or mothers
who strive hard to keep them looking
nice in the fashionable season; and in
blue flannel shirt with immense broad
collar, another broad collar of white
turned over that, hat of neat straw or
tarpaulin with upturned rim and bright
blue ribbon, they form a feature of attractiveness
which has no counterpart at
American seaside resorts. The rougher
mariners, if not so handsome, are still
most picturesque: they are chiefly fishermen
from the Devonshire coast, who
sail over here to take the salmon, mackerel,
herrings, turbots, soles, etc. which
so abound at Tenby. The spot still bears
out, in spite of its modern glories as a
watering-place, its ancient renown as a
fishing-point, which was so great that the
old-time Britons called it Denbych y Piscoed
(“the hill by the place of fishes”).

On the Castle Hill we find a great company
gathered, looking down on the still
greater company which is gathered on the
yellow sands. Children are climbing and
rolling on the soft greensward of the terraces,
and adults are sprawling at full
length, completely at their ease. Men
and women lounge to and fro on the
sea-wall promenade, a miniature of the
Hyde Park throng at mid-season. Others
sit reading or chatting or looking out
over the sparkling sea. The grass and
crags are dotted with azure and purple
flowers, and cushions of pink and white
stone-crop abound. Higher up the hill
stand the ivied ruins of the Norman castle,
and the white memorial monument
to Prince Albert, with its sculptured panels
bearing the arms of Llewellyn the
Great, the red dragon of Cadwalader, the
symbolical leek and the motto, Anorchfygol
Ddraig Cymru (“The dragon of
Wales is invincible”). The air is very
cool and bracing on this hill. But the
greatest crowd is on the sands and on
the rocks of the cliff immediately backing
the beach. It is difficult for one who
is familiar only with the beach at Long
Branch or Cape May to comprehend such
a scene as this which I am trying to picture.
In the first place, the field is so
entirely different from that at home; and
in the second place, the bathing population
of the town is not broken up into
a number of hotel communities and cottage
communities, but is all gathered at
one spot. It is true some residents on
the north cliff bathe on the north sands,
but they come to the south sands after[page 193]
they have had their dip, to meet le monde.
There is room here for le monde too; and
the groups not only sprinkle the wide
yellow plain, but they are perched about
on the face of the cliff in grottos and on
jutting crags; they are grouped in the
cool shade of rocky caverns at the precipice’s
base; they are leaning on the
battlemented walls that crown its summit.
The water is a considerable distance
from where the people sit, and
minute by minute, as the time passes, it
recedes farther and farther, until at last
it is a long walk away. The gay hues
of red-coated soldiers assist feminine
attire in enlivening the scene with color.
Children in great numbers are scampering
about, and busying themselves, much
as they do at home, with toy pails and
spades; but if you take notice you will
find that their sand-structures differ widely
from those of children in America:
you may even see a perfect model of a
feudal castle grow into shape, with barbacan,
gate, moat, drawbridge, towers,
bastions, donjon-keep and banqueting-hall
complete. A brass band—the members
in full uniform of bright colors, with
little rimless red-and-gold caps—is playing
under the battlemented garden-wall
which backs the sands in one place.
Listen to the tunes! Heard you ever
these peculiar airs before? The “Bells
of Aberdovey” jangle their sweet chime
over the wind-blown scene. The “March
of the Men of Harlech” fills all the air
with its stirring scarlet strain. The quaint
melody of “Hob y deri dando” moves
the feet of youth to restlessness: not that
it is a jig, in spite of the jiggy look of the
words to English eyes, but because it has
been twisted into the service of Terpsichore
by a famous band-master in his
“Welsh Lancers.” “Hob y deri dando”
is a love-song:

* This phrase is sometimes supposed to be the original
of the English “Hey down, derry, derry down!”
but the old Druidic song-burden, “Come, let us hasten
to the oaken grove,” is in Welsh “Hai down ir
deri dando,” which is nearer the English phrase.

A hand-organ with monkey attachment
is delighting a group of children on another
part of the sands. Yonder, too, is
a balladist with a guitar, bawling at the
top of his lungs,

Nobody pays much attention to this wandering
minstrel: he is happy if at the close
of his song a penny finds its way into
the battered hat he extends for largess.
He is clearly a stranger to this part of
the world, and has probably tramped
down here from London by easy stages,
and will have to tramp back again as he
came, without much profit from his provincial
tour.

The fashionable world which is sunning
itself on the sands is made up, for
the most part, of the usual types of a
British watering-place—the pea-jacketed
swell with blasé manner and one-eyed
quizzing-glass; the occasional London
cad in clothes of painful newness
and exaggeration of style, such as no
gentleman by any chance ever wears in
Britain; the young sprig of nobility with
effeminate face and “fast” inclinations,
who smokes a cigarette and ogles the
girls, and utters sentiments of profound
ennui in a light boyish tenor voice. He
is the son of an English nobleman who
has a Welsh estate, upon which he passes
a portion of his time, and can trace his
lineage back to one of the Norman adventurers
who came over with William
the Conqueror. For an example of an
older aristocracy than this, however, observe
the ancient couple sitting near us
in the shadow of a cliff-rock, the wife
with a high-bridged nose and puffs of
gray hair on her temples, the husband
with an easy-fitting hat and a coat-collar
which rolls so high as to give the impression
he has no neck. These are aristocrats
who, although untitled and owners
only of a few modest acres back in Carmarthenshire,
descend from ancestors
that looked down on William the Conqueror
as a plebeian upstart.

There are bathers in the surf, but they
are so far away from the throngs on this
vast plain of beach that they are as unindividual
as if they were puppets. One’s
most intimate friend could not be recognized
without the aid of a glass. The
bathing-machines, which serve in lieu
of the huts common at American seaside
resorts, are merely huts on wheels
instead of huts in stationary rows. They
are cared for by women, who escort you
to the door of an untenanted hut, collect
sixpence and retire. You enter, and disrobe
at your leisure. The machine proves
to be a snug box lighted by one little unglazed
window not large enough for you
to put your head through, and having a
solid shutter. If you close this shutter the
box is as dark as night, for it is well built,
with hardly a crevice in wall or roof or
floor. A small and very bad looking-glass
hangs on the wall, and there is
a bench to sit on: that is the extent of
the furniture. You have been provided
with towels and with the regulation
bathing-dress for men—linen breeches,
to wit. While you are contemplating this
garment and questioning of your modesty
as to the propriety of donning it,
there is a sound of rattling iron outside,
and a tap on your door as a warning
that your machine is about to start. The
machine is dragged in lumbering fashion
out into the sea by an antediluvian horse
with a small boy astride, and there the boy
unhitches the traces from the machine
and goes ashore, leaving you with the
waves breaking on the steps before your
door. You peep out dubiously. A shoal
of naked-shouldered men are swimming
and splashing in the surf. Some fifty
yards away is another school of bathers,
whose back hair betrays their sex, and
who are clad in garments made like
those worn by feminine bathers at Long
Branch, etc. There is no commingling
of the sexes in the water, as our American
custom is, but on the score of modesty
I must confess to a prejudice in favor
of the American plan, nevertheless.
The British theory evidently presumes
that men have no modesty among themselves.
Custom regulates these matters,
I suppose. I have never felt disposed
to blush for my naked feet and arms
while conversing with a lady on the
beach at Long Branch, being snugly
clad from head to foot in a flannel costume.
But I confess to a shrinking sense
of the incompleteness of the prescribed
fig-leaves as I stand in the door of the
bathing-machine at Tenby. To cover
myself with the water as quickly as possible
appears to be the only remedy,
however, and I take a header from the
doorsill. Ugh! The water is like ice!
To one accustomed to the warm American
bathing-suit the linen substitute
of Tenby is a most insufficient protection.
At home I have on occasion extended
the revels of the surf for a full
hour, being a pretty strong swimmer and
exceedingly fond of the exercise. I get
enough at Tenby in precisely two minutes,
and hasten to don my customary
clothing. Nevertheless, it is contended
that the surf at Tenby is pleasant for
bathers as late as Christmas, and I am
told there really are Britons who bathe
daily in the sea here quite up to the
first snow. It is certain that the fashionable
season does not end till November,
and some stay straight on through
the winter.

Among the lions of Tenby none is
more interesting than St. Catharine’s
Island, a great rugged hill of solid limestone
almost devoid of verdure and rent
into innumerable fissures, with a succession
of dark romantic coves and caverns
and jagged projecting crags fringing its
sides completely round. At high tide this
islet is separated from the mainland by a
deep rolling sea. At low tide its shores
are left dry by the receding waters. It
is a curious sight to watch this daily advance
and retreat of the sea. To see the
tides of ocean come and go is no novelty,
but it becomes a novelty under circumstances
like these, where every day
a dry bridge of yellow sand is stretched
forth from the islet to the mainland,
across which a stream of humanity pours
the moment the path is clear. At first
only one person at a time can pass.
Ten minutes later the sand-bridge is a
broad road. Ten later, and all Tenby
might cross in a crowd. There is an iron[page 195]
staircase built up the rocky face of the
islet, winding about among its crags and
fissures, and the isle is overrun with people
during the time the tide is out. It
has many attractions. The view is grand
from those heights. Yawning gulfs fascinate
you to look dizzily down into the
secret heart of the isle. On the highest
point of rock stood, a few years ago,
an ancient chapel which had in Roman
Catholic days been dedicated to St. Catharine.
Within the past six years this chapel
has given way to a fortress, its walls
partly embedded in the solid rock. The
people who throng to the islet between
tides roam about, loiter with breeze-blown
garments on the stairs and landings, peer
into the fortress, or, perching themselves
in the sheltered nooks which are innumerable
among the crags, sit and sew,
read, chat, make love and watch the
pygmy bathers in the sea far down below.
As long as the tide is low the
tenants of the islet are safe to remain,
but as soon as it turns those who are
wise begin to gather up their things and
clear out. Now and then incautious ones
get caught; and then there are screaming,
hurrying and a terrible fright, especially
if the trapped ones are of the
gentler sex, and still more especially if
their proportions are ample. Such women
are, as a rule, the cowardliest.
Probably, they feel their amplitude a
disadvantage in moments of peril, and
know emotions which their scrawnier
sisters escape. A case in point greets
us this morning as we stand watching
the rising of the tide. A roly-poly woman
of forty or so is caught on the islet
by the closing of old Ocean’s drawbridge.
She is a fair being with dark hair and
eyes, a sweet smile, a clear complexion,
and some two hundred and fifty pounds
avoirdupois, richly dressed, pleasant-mannered,
and in all respects no doubt
a lady to be admired and loved, as well
as respected, in the social circle. But at
present she is at a sad disadvantage. I
noticed her a few minutes ago at the top
of the iron staircase, and said to myself
that she would have just time enough to
come down, for there was an isthmus of
sand some twenty feet wide as yet to be
obliterated by the crawling tide. A quickly-tripping
foot would have accomplished
it, but the fair-fat-and-forty lady occupied
one whole minute in coming down.
Now that she has reached the bottom
step there is a wide wash of sea between
her and the mainland, and she
raises her hands in horror. How is she
to get over? There is no boat in sight.
Shall she wade? There is a nervous
motion of her fat white hands in the
direction of her gaiters, but she hesitates.
The woman who hesitates is lost:
the water grows deeper and deeper every
instant; in ten minutes it will be
over her head. A bathing-machine boy
comes trotting his horse through the water,
and, backing up by the rock on which
the distressed lady stands, bids her get
on. Get on the back of a horrid bathing-horse!
behind the back of a horrid
boy! Had she been a sylph the prospect
would have been most untempting,
but a two-hundred-and-fifty-pounder!
Nevertheless, the unhappy fair one begins
to prepare for the sacrifice with grief
and consternation in her face. “How
can I do it?” her trembling lips whisper,
and she looks about her on the rocks as
if to say, “Oh, is there no other way out
of this wretched predicament?” The
boy, as he sits astride, is getting his feet
wet by this time: the horse will have to
swim for it presently. Still she hesitates,
and throws a shrinking glance over the
vast audience gathered on the sands silently
attentive—the band, the organ-grinder
and the balladist all breathlessly
awaiting the issue, no doubt feeling
that it would be mockery to indulge in
music at such a moment. Suddenly a
bare-headed and shirt-sleeved man is
seen to dash through the water, regardless
of danger and of wet trousers, who,
seizing the fat lady round the knees in
spite of her screams, dumps her on the
horse’s back all in a heap. Saved!
saved! Such a giggling (for joy) has
seldom been seen to shake a large assemblage.
The emotion caused by the
spectacle of beauty in distress is no doubt
a pain to every masculine mind not hopelessly
vitiated by the cynical tendencies
of the age; but the pain produced by the[page 196]
emotion of mirth at seeing a fellow-creature
at a ridiculous disadvantage is greater
when you feel bound not to laugh.

There are four strange caves piercing
St. Catharine’s Island completely through
from side to side. In rough weather the
storming of the sea through these extraordinary
tunnels creates a prodigious uproar.
When the weather is still it is possible
to take boat and sail quite through
one of them: at low tide you may walk
through. Marine zoological riches abound
in these caverns, which have been for
many years a real treasure-house for
naturalists. The walls are studded with
innumerable barnacles, dogwinkles and
other shells—not dead and empty, but
full of living creatures, requiring only
the return of the tide to awaken them
to an active existence. There are simply
myriads of them: a random stone
thrown against a wall will smash a whole
colony; and there are besides polyps and
sea-anemones and other strange animals
of eccentric habits in unusual abundance.
The visitors to Tenby find great diversion
in these and the other caves on the coast:
in fact, the whole coast as far as Milford
Haven is one succession of natural curiosities
and antiquities. One cavern
bears the name of Merlin’s Cave, and
is hallowed by a legend of the enchanter,
who was born at Carmarthen in the
next county.

Wirt Sikes.

NOCTURNE.

THROUGH WINDING WAYS.

CHAPTER IV.

It was soon decided that I was to
set out for The Headlands the first
week in October. I had studied too
hard, and was growing so tall and slight
that Harry Dart used to draw caricatures
of me, taking me in sections, he declared,
since no ordinary piece of paper would
suffice for a full-length. I was glad of
a change, yet felt some sorrow about it
too. I knew nothing of what it was to
miss the warm home-life and the constant
companionship which had filled every
idle hour with ever-recurring pleasures.
I hated to part from my mother,
who had grown of late so inestimably
dear to me; I should miss the boys;
what could make up to me for Georgy?
I did not know that I was never again
to enjoy the old Belfield routine, with
all my untamed impulses making the
wild, free physical life full of deep and
passionate delight—never again to stand
the peer of all my mates, running the familiar
races, playing the familiar games.
I did not know what a changed life
awaited me, and I looked forward to
my opening vistas of a bright future
with longings inconceivably sweet.

I reached The Headlands one fine
day in October a little past noon. Mr.
Raymond’s carriage met me at the station,
and a grave elderly servant, who
told me his name was Mills, put me inside
and assumed all responsibilities concerning
my luggage. I had plenty of
time to remember with regret our homely,
pleasant life at Belfield, and recall
Thorpe’s words when he heard that I
had been invited to The Headlands. “It
will be a glimpse of another life,” he had
remarked with his usual air of consummate
knowledge of the world. “Even I,
who am used to living on terms of intimacy
with men of all ranks and positions,
find it difficult to adjust the balance
in that quiet, stately house, where everything
goes on oiled wheels.”

“But what makes it hard to get along?”
I had inquired with a sort of awe.

“Oh, I can’t describe it,” he had returned
with a wave of his white hand,
“but you’ll soon experience it for yourself.”

But as I went on and the great sea
opened before my eyes, I quite forgot my
fears in the pleasure of such wide horizons,
such magnificent scenery. The
ocean was here in all its grandeur, yet
there was no bleakness or bareness in
these rock-bound shores, softly veiled in
the haze of the October afternoon. The
voices of the breakers greeted me as
something vaguely familiar: I seemed
to have been listening for them all my
life. In such joys as I felt that day eyes
and ears do but little—imagination works
most wonders.

I had not noticed, so raptly was I
watching the fleeting tints of opal, steel
and blue which chased each other along
the smooth slow waves, that we had entered
enclosed grounds, and when the
carriage stopped suddenly before a wide,
pillared portico I was wholly taken by surprise.
Mills opened the carriage-door,
and I got down with a blank, dreamy
feeling, and followed him up the steps
through the wide portal and along the
hall. He ushered me into the library,
and left me while he went to announce
my arrival.

I sat perfectly still in the lofty Gothic
room. It was lined with books except
on the west side, where were long oriel
windows of stained glass, with figures
of saints glorious in blue and gold and
crimson and purple, with aureoles of
wonderful splendor above their beautiful
heads. The floor was of inlaid woods
polished until it shone, and over it was
laid a Persian carpet thick and soft as
moss. The chimney-piece was of wonderful
beauty, and extended into the
room, leaving a sort of alcove on each
side, and a low fire was burning in a[page 198]
quaintly-designed grate. Over the mantel
hung a large picture which I did not
know, but which made my heart beat as
I looked: it was a copy of the Sistine
Madonna. In front of the fire was an
easy-chair piled with cushions, and beside
it a low stool, while on either hand
were painted screens: on one the field of
brilliant azure was strewn with flowers of
dazzling hues; the other was crossed by
a flight of birds of gorgeous plumage.

I had looked at everything, had taken
in every surprise of beautiful form and
color: then my eyes were lifted again
to the windows, and I was gazing at the
meek saints with their shining raiment
and radiant hair when I was suddenly
recalled to a recollection of where I was
and why I was there. A hand pushed
aside the velvet curtain which hung
across the doorway—a child’s hand—and
then a little girl entered, followed
by a greyhound as tall as herself. I rose
and stood waiting while she advanced,
the same sunshine which transfigured
the saints in the windows playing over
her white dress in brilliant rainbow tints.

She was a very little girl, yet her large,
serious dark eyes and her lithe way of
carrying her slim height impressed me
with a sort of awe which I might not
have felt for a grown woman. When
she neared me she stood perfectly still,
regarding me silently with a deliberate
glance. She was very pale, with a complexion
like the inner leaves of a white
rose, but her eyes lent fire to a face otherwise
proud and cold. Her hair had
evidently been cut short, and curled
close to her head in loose brown curls.
When she had fairly taken me in she
held out her hand. “How do you do?”
she asked in a clear, deliberate voice.
“I am very glad to see you.”

“Did you expect me?” I inquired
shyly.

“Of course we did,” she answered
with some imperiousness, “or we should
not have sent the carriage and servants
to meet you.”

Then we were both silent again, and
went on mentally making up our minds
concerning each other.

“Yes,” she said presently, putting her
hand into mine again, “you look just as
I thought you did. I asked papa: he
said you had brown hair and gray eyes,
and that you were good-looking when
you smiled. And am I like what you
expected to see?”

I did not know, I told her. In fact,
although I had heard much and thought
some about Helen, she had hitherto possessed
no personality for me except as
Mr. Floyd’s little girl. And now she impressed
me differently from any person I
had ever seen before, and if I had formed
any previous conceptions, they all fled.
She seemed, I will confess, a haughty,
aristocratic little creature, with her slight
form and somewhat imperious look, her
deliberate, commanding voice and intense
eyes: still, I liked her at once.
Mr. Floyd had begged me to be kind
to her, and it seemed easy for me to
cherish and protect her: she appeared
to need being taken care of with both
strength and tenderness, for it was such
a fragile little hand I held, and, with all
its beauty, such a wan little face I looked
upon.

“I hope you will like me, Helen,” said
I bluntly, “for your father wants you to
enjoy my visit.”

She smiled for the first time. “I like
you very much already,” she said in the
same distinct, melancholy voice; and
without more words she put up her little
face to mine and kissed me softly on my
lips. I was unused to caresses, and my
cheeks burned; but I followed her, at
her request, to the back lawn, where Mr.
Raymond was waiting to see me.

“Grandfather is not strong,” she explained,
“and we save him all the steps
we can. It is so sad to be old! Have
you a grandfather?”

“No,” I returned: “there is nobody
in our family but mother and me.”

“And I have got grandpa and papa
too,” said she thoughtfully. “Only papa
is so busy: he is never here but a week
at a time.”

We had passed through the hall, crossed
the rear piazza and descended the
steps, and were advancing along the
grassplat toward a summer-house which
faced the sea. I could now for the first[page 199]
time gain an idea of the extent and
grandeur of the place. The house towered
above us solemnly with its towers,
pillared arches, cornices and pediments,
while, beyond, the glass roofs of numberless
greenhouses lifted their domes
to the warm afternoon sun. All around
the lawn stood lofty trees, their foliage
glorious with crimson, russet and gold,
and their shadows crept stealthily toward
us as if they were alive. And beyond
house, lawns, gardens and tree-lined avenues
was a pine wood which extended
its solemn verdure all round the place,
enclosing it almost to the edge of the
bluff. All this on the right hand: on
the left the mysterious sea, whose music
filled the fair sunshiny world we two
children were traversing hand in hand.

“There is grandpa,” exclaimed Helen
as we neared the summer-house; and I
saw an old man sitting in an arm-chair
in the sunshine, looking eagerly toward
us as if in anxious expectation.

“You were gone a long time, Helen,”
he called out peevishly.

“Oh no, dear,” she replied soothingly.
“Here is Floyd, grandpa.”

He had looked, when I first saw him
from a distance, like a very old man,
but when I was shaking hands with him
I was surprised to discover that his face
had little appearance of age. Even his
thin dark hair was but sprinkled with
gray at the curly ends on the temples:
his eyebrows were a black silky thread,
his eyes dark and full of a peculiar glitter.
His features were finely formed and
feminine in their delicacy, but the expression
of his face was marred by the restlessness
of his eyes, and made almost pathetic
by the dejected, melancholy lines
about his thin scarlet lips.

He shook hands with me gracefully,
and made inquiries about my journey,
then sank back into his chair listlessly,
and allowed Helen to pull the tiger-skin
which formed his lap-robe over his knees.
There was a peculiar feebleness about his
whole attitude as he sat—something almost
abased in the sinking of his chin
upon his breast. It was hard for me to
realize that he was the owner of all this
magnificence, and, dressed although he
was with faultless elegance, and although
luxurious appurtenances filled the summer-house,
waiting for his momentary
convenience, I was certain that his great
wealth brought him no pleasure, and that,
except for his little grandchild, he was
comfortless in the world. He was full
of complaints toward her. He was sure,
he said, that now when I had come she
would have no thought of him; that taking
care of an old man was a dreary and
thankless task; that only the young could
be beloved by the young. And her way
of listening and answering made me suspect
that she was but too used to such
querulousness. I was perhaps too young
to understand mainsprings of action, yet
nevertheless I seemed to know at once
that her calm, mature manner and precocious
imperiousness were the result of
his weakness and wavering, of his selfish
and morbid doubts.

“You are older than I thought,” Mr.
Raymond said to me, regarding me for
the first time with languid curiosity. “I
expected to see a velvet-coated little fellow
of Helen’s size. What is your age,
my boy?”

I told him I should be fifteen the next
spring, counting, as most young people
do, by the milestone ahead of me, instead
of the one I had passed.

“Oh, that is quite an age,” said he with
an air of relief. “Do not expect to make
a playmate of Mr. Floyd Randolph, Helen:
he is quite too old to care for a mere
child like yourself.”

“He is not nearly as old as papa.”
returned Helen quickly, “and papa will
play with me all day long.”

“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Raymond, sinking
back among his cushions and tiger-skins,
“all the world can play but me.
I must be content to sit outside the joy
and the sunshine. I have lived too
long. Only the young, bright people
of the world are welcome even to my
own little grandchild.”

Helen threw her arm about his neck
and stroked his cheek with her slim
hand. “You know, grandpa,” she said
simply, “that I do not care for play, and
I love our quiet times together; but you
forget what Dr. Sharpe says—that I must[page 200]
run about out of doors and be as merry
as I can, or else—”

He stopped her with a quick, shuddering
gesture. “Oh no,” said he, “I do not
forget. Do not make me out worse than
I am to Floyd, Helen.” He rang a hand-bell
on the table by his side, and began
feebly to adjust the wrappings about his
shoulders.—”I will go in, Frederick,” he
murmured to the servant, who advanced
at once as if he had been waiting close
by—”I will go in and sit by the fire.—Helen,
you must show Floyd the place.—There
are greenhouses, and the stables
are worth seeing too,” he added to
me apologetically. “I hear that Robinson
has some rare fowls, and Helen has
dogs of all kinds, and a few deer. It
will do her good to go about, you know.”
He broke off suddenly, a spasm crossing
his face, and without more words he turned
abruptly to his valet, took his arm and
walked feebly toward the house.

We stood together looking after him—I
a little shy and perplexed in my new position,
Helen thoughtful and melancholy.

“Poor grandpa!” she said presently
with a sigh: “he has only me, you know,
Floyd. He has nothing else in the whole
wide world, and it worries him to think
that he cannot be with me always, that
he cannot—”

She broke off, and the small face twitched
as if she were about to cry, but she controlled
herself.

The splendid house, with its gleaming
windows and stately pillars, the wide
grounds, the air of quiet magnificence
which reigned over the whole place,
had so much impressed me that I could
not resist uttering an exclamation at her
words. She spoke of Mr. Raymond as
having nothing in the wide world but
herself, yet he was rich enough to be
master of what appeared to me the
pomp of kings; and I told her so.

She regarded me curiously. “Is grandpa
rich?” she asked. “He says sometimes
that the greenhouses cost so much
money that they will send him to the
poorhouse. I do not think grandpa can
be rich. But if he were rich,” she cried
out indignantly, “that makes no difference:
he has nothing but me—nothing
to care about. There was poor grandmamma:
she died—oh so long ago!—and
my uncles died when they were little
boys not so old as I. And mamma—she
stayed the longest: then she died.
No, grandpa has nothing left but me.”

“Your father too: he has only you. I
wonder you do not live with your father,
Helen.”

She shook her head. “Oh, you don’t
know,” she returned. “I couldn’t leave
grandpa. Oh, Floyd, if you knew how
it hurts me to tell papa that I must stay
here! He does not understand. He
will say, ‘I want my little girl: you can’t
guess how badly I want my little girl.'”
She finished with a great sob which shook
her from head to foot. I pitied her very
much, and I could easily comprehend
that she was too delicate still to be allowed
to have any sort of trouble. So
I asked her to go down to the shore with
me, and while we went I told her all the
funny things I could remember until I
made her laugh. She was quick and
sympathetic; and her spirit was so strong,
yet so repressed, that the moment she was
really glad it seemed to have the exuberance
of a bird’s joy at freedom after imprisonment.

I have reason, beyond that of mere admiration
for its admirable picturesqueness,
to remember and note down the
form of the shore at The Headlands.
The house stood on the highest part of
the promontory, and there was a gradual
descent to the end of the bluff, which
terminated in a line of black rocks, some
of which were firmly embedded in the
soil, while others lay piled above each
other as they had been tossed by some
horrible convulsion of the sea. In one
place there was a perpendicular precipice
of eighty feet, washed by the waves
at its base; but the beach was easily accessible
from every other point, although
in some places the descent needed sure
feet and agile limbs. But I had always
been the best climber in Belfield, and I
ran up and down the rocks now with the
ease of a monkey, until Helen begged
me not to terrify her by any new exploits.
Under the frowning citadel of
rocks the beach was particularly fine,[page 201]
well pebbled below watermark and above
a strip of shining sand. The tide was
coming in with a strong dull roar, and
every wave broke on the shore with curling
cataracts of foam and a voice like
thunder. It was hard for me to realize
that above us on the headland the mild
October sunshine was gilding and reddening
the trees, for here we were in
shadow, and the cry of storm and the
din of tempest were in our ears. Yet beyond
the bar opaline tints were playing
along the sunlit sea, and the luminous,
shifting-hued swell of crested waves
merged into the iridescent sky. There
was a secret and a mystery about the
scene to me. I could not understand
its influence upon me, and felt under a
spell as I gazed at the distant white sails
and listened to the roar of the waves as
if I could never hear it enough.

After Helen had shown me all the
strange, beautiful places of the beach,
I helped her up the precipitous bank,
where steps had been carefully cut in
the rock or laid upon the crumbling
sods. She took me to the stables, and
I saw the horses, her pony and the blooded
colt in training for her: her dogs had
followed us about, leaping and fawning
upon her and smelling suspiciously at
me. Mr. Raymond disliked animals,
and it was to the stables or the gardener’s
cottage that the child came to
pet her hounds, her sheep-dog and her
snowy Pomeranian: not even Beppo, the
Italian greyhound, was domesticated at
the house. Some shy deer peered out
at us from their paddock, and a doe,
less timid than the rest, approached us
and gave me a good look out of her
meek, beautiful eyes. Gold and silver
pheasants lurked in the shrubberies,
and peacocks spread their tails and
paraded before us on the greensward.
Everything seemed to be Helen’s, and
not a flower that bloomed or a bird that
flew but she gave it an ample tenderness.

We did not talk much, but stood together
hand in hand, I gazing with ardent
delight and curiosity at all these
beautiful expressions of life which filled
the place.

“Do you like it?” she inquired anxiously
from time to time, and when I
answered her gravely that I liked it,
she would smile a contented little smile.
She asked me if I rode, and carefully selected
the horse she considered suitable
for me, and gave the groom orders about
exercising him regularly. The man took
her instructions with a respectful air: she
was evidently mistress of the place, and
the centurion in the Gospel had not his
servants better under his command than
had she. It was a quaint sight to see the
child knitting her brows over some complaint
of Robinson’s against McGill the
gardener: she settled it promptly with
but half a dozen words. She had energy
enough and to spare for her duties, but
she had nothing of that eager bubbling
up of light thoughts and bright hopes
which other children know and use in
endless chatter and playful gambollings,
like puppies and kittens and other happy
young things. There was always shrewd
purpose behind her few words, and she
seemed always on her guard, always ready
to act promptly and with decision.

“Why don’t you send those men to
Mr. Raymond?” I burst out finally.
“You ought not to be bothered. What
do you know about such things?”

“I know all about them,” she returned
gravely. “I never let anybody trouble
poor grandpapa.”

“My mother would not let anything
trouble me if she could help it, yet I am
a boy and almost fifteen years old.”

She looked at me wistfully and smiled
her peculiar indefinable smile, then put
her hand in mine, and we went toward
the house together. Just as night fell
dinner-time came. I had gone to my
room to dress at five o’clock, but finding
that all my windows looked out upon the
water, I had forgotten everything else in
watching the sea, which took hue after
hue as the sun sank, growing black and
turbid as it settled into a bank of gray
cloud, then, when the last beams reddened
every rift, lighting up into a brief
splendor of crimson and gold, absorbing
all the glory of the firmament. I felt rather
homesick and dreary. I knew that
in the dusky streets of Belfield the boys[page 202]
were walking up and down beneath the
russet elms, wondering about me while
they talked. I knew that my mother
was sitting in the bay-window with the
light of the sunset in her face, and that
she was longing to have me with her
again. When, finally, I roused myself
to dress, and went along the dim halls
and down the great staircase lined with
niches where calm-faced statues stood
regarding me with a fixed and solemn
air, I was quite dull and dreary, and
needed all the cheerful influences of the
warmed and lighted rooms to brighten
me up.

At dinner Mr. Raymond seemed more
what I had expected him to be than I
had found him at first sight. He was
dressed with scrupulous propriety, and
wore a ceremonious and precise air which
better accorded with his position as master
of the house. He talked well, and
asked me many questions about our life
in Belfield, made inquiries about George
Lenox, and was interested when I told him
about Georgina. And about Georgina I
found myself presently talking with a
freedom which amazed myself, for my
habits were reserved, and of all that I
felt and thought about Georgy I had
never yet said anything except to my
mother. But in this beautiful house,
which seemed so fitting a place for my
lovely princess, and which was of late the
object of her dreams, I felt moved to be
her ambassador and to plead her cause
as well as I might. I spoke not only of
her beauty and her cleverness, but of
the drawbacks to her success in life. I
anticipated criticism, and disarmed it.
“Oh, Helen!” I burst out at length, “you
would love her so dearly—I am sure you
would!”

Helen’s eyes were shining, and her
color came and went. “Oh, grandpa,”
said she softly, “why may I not ask her
to come here? Floyd will like it, and
I—”

She could not finish, she was so glad
and excited, and she ran around the
table and laid her cheek against Mr.
Raymond’s shoulder in mute entreaty.

“Oh, do whatever you please,” rejoined
the old gentleman impatiently:
“you know very well that you must have
your own way in everything.”

The glad little face fell at once, and she
went back to her chair slowly and climbed
into it. It was a high-backed, crimson
velvet chair, with a footstool for the
child’s feet to rest upon. She looked very
slight and young as she sat there, her
baby face thrown into clear outline and
startling pallor by the ruby-colored cushions.
She filled the place well, however,
helping to the soup and fish, and even
the meats after Mills had carved them at
the sideboard. I noticed too, with some
surprise, that the decanter of sherry stood
at her elbow, and was not passed, but
that she herself poured out Mr. Raymond’s
glass of wine, and once replenished
it. He sent it to her to be filled
for the third time, but she shook her
head.

“No, no, grandpa,” she said with a
queer little smile: “you have had two
already.”

He looked angry, and affirmed that
she had given him but one glass, appealing
to Mills, who corroborated the
words of his young mistress. Helen
said no more, but gave the decanter
to the butler, who took it away, and I
heard him lock the door of the wine-closet
and saw him drop the key in his
pocket. Then, presently, when coffee
came on, Helen and I went into the
library, and left Mr. Raymond alone,
with his easy-chair turned toward the
fire. I knew that something in the house
was wrong, and experienced a vague humiliation
out of sympathy for Helen, but
what my fears were I did not name to
myself.

“Promise me,” said she, clasping my
hand suddenly—”promise me to say nothing
to papa. Remember that grandpa
is very old, and that he has nothing in
the world but me.”

I gave the promise eagerly, more to
avoid the subject than because I understood
as to what I was to be silent and
why the subject should be interdicted.

“You see,” said she, her clear eyes
meeting mine with their peculiarly wistful,
melancholy gaze, “this is why I cannot
go away. Papa thinks I do not love[page 203]
him: he does not know that it would not
be safe for me to leave grandpa all alone.
If papa did know—”

“You ought to tell your papa everything,”
I said gravely.

“I wish I could,” she cried in a trembling
voice. “But I can’t. He would
not let me stay here, and I could not go
away. You must never tell papa, Floyd—never!”

I said I would not tell with the air of
one who never discloses a secret; and
she believed in me, and we were soon
bright and happy again, and wrote a
letter to Georgy Lenox inviting her to
The Headlands on a visit.

With all his faults and weaknesses, I
soon found there were good and lovable
traits in Mr. Raymond. He had been in
early life a successful merchant, and the
habit of controlling widespread interests
had given him a broad and sympathetic
insight into men and their ideas. He
possessed a graceful and comprehensive
culture, and had embodied his conceptions
of the fitness of things in the arrangement
of his home, making it beautiful
in all ways. He was an old man
now, yet had not lost the thirst for knowledge,
and could talk, when inspiration
was upon him, generously and eloquently.
He had been a part of the busy great
world; he understood society and social
ways: all these talents and acquirements
made him a pleasant old gentleman when
at his best, but it needed only a touch of
suspicion or jealousy to put him at his
worst. It was easy enough to see that
Helen did not exaggerate when she told
me he had nothing to care for but herself;
and his care for her was so mixed
with morbid fears that he was not first
in her heart, so embittered by a distrust
of her love for her father, that she could
gain small comfort from all his overweening
devotion and pride.

The child and I were constantly together
in those October days. I do not
think it would have been so but for the
fact that Mr. Floyd wrote daily concise
and peremptory orders that Helen was
to be out of doors from morning till night,
and that Dr. Sharpe, a brisk, keen-eyed
old gentleman, came every morning at
breakfast-time to feel the little girl’s
pulse, order her meals and command
Mr. Raymond to let her have all the
play she could get before the cold weather
came.

“You see,” Helen would explain to
me as we tramped the meadows and
the uplands gorgeous with every mellow
hue of autumn’s glorious time—”you
see, Floyd, I was going to die in
September when papa came. Oh, I felt
so tired I wanted just to go to sleep. But
papa came, took me in his arms and held
me there. Whenever I woke up, there
he was, his strong arms holding me tight.
He wouldn’t let me go, you know, so I
couldn’t die. I couldn’t have lived for
grandpa: I knew that he would die too,
and that perhaps it would all be best.”

“But now you are getting strong,” I
said: “your cheeks are quite rosy now.”

“Oh yes,” she answered. “I like to live
now. I love you so dearly, Floyd, and I
have such good times.”

I loved her dearly too, after a boy’s
fashion. It was easy for me to talk to
her, and I told her many things that lay
near my heart and far from my tongue—much
about my mother and my worship
of her—about our home and its
surroundings—about my father and my
brother Frank, and my grief when they
died. I had never expected to tell any
one these memories, but I told them all
to Helen.

One day we came in a little later than
usual. We had carried our luncheon
down to the beach, and had eaten it
there: we had never been quite so happy
together before, for everything had
conspired to make our enjoyment perfect.
We had made up stories about the
people on board the ships that went up
and down in the offing; strange and
beautiful things had looked at us from
out the sea; a fisherman had offered us
some oysters as he coasted about the bar
in his boat, and I had bought some and
opened them for Helen with my knife,
every blade of which I broke in the effort.
Altogether, we had had a blissful
experience.

But as, upon returning, we neared the
house, Mills met us on the terrace with[page 204]
a grave face. “You’d better go to your
grandfather, Miss Floyd,” said he—”you
had, indeed, or it will be all over with
him. You must not blame me, miss—it
was none of my fault—but some gentlemen
came here for lunch, and he’s been
a-drinking and a-drinking ever since they
went away, and will not let either decanter
go out of his hand.”

Helen’s little face had been warm with
color, but it froze into pallor while I looked
at her. We entered the door, and she
took off her things slowly and gave them
to Mills, smoothing her hair mechanically
with her little trembling hands.

“What shall I do?” I whispered, quaking
as much as she. “Let me help you
somehow, Helen.”

“You can’t,” she returned quietly: “nobody
can help me.”

She bade Mills go about his work: then
went into the dining-room and shut the
door.

The man had tears in his eyes as he
turned to me as soon as we were alone.
“I declare, Mr. Randolph,” said he, “it’s
enough to break anybody’s heart to see
that child a-bowed down at her age with
the care of an old man who can’t be kept
from drunkenness unless her eye is on
him every minute.”

“Is he violent when he’s—” I tried to
ask the question, but could not form the
horrible word upon my tongue.

Mills did not flinch from facts. “When
he’s drunk?” he said. “He is ready to
break my head, but he’s never anything
but tender with her. She’s naught but a
baby, but I have seen him, in a regular
fury, just fall a-whimpering when she
came in and said, ‘Oh, grandpa! oh,
grandpa! I’m so sorry!’ Oh, it is a burning
shame! And to think that that splendid
gentleman, her father, does not know
it!”

“He ought to know it,” I cried.

“And if he did, sir,” said Mills solemnly,
“he would take Miss Floyd away, and
the old gentleman would drink himself
to death, and that would kill the little girl
too. It’s hard to see the right of it, Mr.
Randolph. But,” he added with a complete
change of manner, “she would be
vexed to see me stand gossiping here.”

He went up stairs with the cloak and
hat, smoothing them with his big hand
as if to comfort somebody in need of
comfort. I stole across the hall and
stood at the dining-room door, wishing
to go in, yet fearing to vex Helen by
my intrusiveness. She opened the door
presently, as if she knew I was there, and
beckoned me, and I entered. The old
man sat at the table in his usual place,
looking half defiant and half ashamed.
She had removed both decanters and
glasses to the sideboard, and stood by
him with her arm about his neck, urging
him to go into the library, kissing him
now and then softly on the forehead.

“What do you think, Floyd,” he said
to me in a thick, unnatural voice—”what
do you think of the way my only grandchild
treats me? She despises me.”

“No, no, grandpa! I love you dearly.”

He went on with vehemence: “A few
years ago I was living among the finest
ladies and gentlemen in the world: I was
admired and sought. I have been called
the most accomplished of hosts, the most
perfect of gentlemen. Look about this
house. Where in this entire country will
you find a more liberal patron of the arts
than I? Yet this little girl treats me like
a servant. For a year she has not permitted
me to have even a few friends to
dine with me. Because to-day I extended
hospitality to half a dozen gentlemen
who drove over from the Point, she fumes
at me: she treats me as if I had committed
a deadly sin.—By and by, Miss Floyd,
you can have it all your own way here:
I shall be dead.”

She never flinched, nor did her face
change as he glared at her, but she went
on smoothing his hair and softly putting
her lips to his temples. “Dear grandpa,”
said she, “come into the library now. It
is getting late, and Mills wants to set the
table for dinner.”

“Very well,” he exclaimed with a sort
of petulant dignity, and, pushing back his
chair, half rose. Helen gave me a swift
glance, and with our united strength we
barely kept him from falling on his face.
He staggered to his feet, looking at us
angrily, and not releasing our hold we
steadied him into the library and seated[page 205]
him in the great chair before the fire.
He sank down with some inaudible exclamation
not unlike a groan, and in five
minutes he had fallen asleep with loud
breathings. Helen rang the bell and told
Mills to send for Dr. Sharpe, then came
back and drew two low seats opposite
the sleeper, and we sat down together
hand in hand. She was as pale as death,
and her great eyes dilated as she gazed
steadily at her grandfather. From time
to time she felt his pulse and looked with
painful scrutiny at the temples and forehead,
which grew every moment more
and more crimson. The half hour before
the doctor came appeared to me
endless. Inside it was almost dark but
for the firelight, and outside the twilight
glooms slowly gathered: a storm was
coming on, and the waves bellowed
against the rocks. Mills lit the candles
and drew the curtains, but could
not shut out the roar of the angry sea.
I could see that Helen was miserably
anxious, but she said nothing, only sighed
and set her lips tight against each
other, and seemed to listen. Presently
we could hear the gravel crunched under
a horse’s hoofs outside, then the
sound of wheels, and in another moment
Dr. Sharpe came in.

“How is this?” said he without any
salutation. “Somebody to lunch, eh?
—— luncheons! Where were you, Miss
Chicken?”

“I am so sorry!” she faltered painfully.
“But I was playing down on the
beach, and I did not know. You told
me to play about out of doors, doctor—you
know you did,” she added deprecatingly.

“Of course I told you to play about out
of doors. You need it bad enough, God
knows! Now run away, both of you.”

“Is there any danger?” she whispered.

“Not a bit,” said Dr. Sharpe, adding,
under his breath, “A good thing for her
if there were.—Run away, I say,” he said,
hustling us both out of the door, “and
send Mills and Frederick here.”

We were shut away from the dim luxurious
library with its blazing fire, and the
old man asleep before it, but we did not
feel free to move, and stood awed and
speechless outside, listening and waiting.
Helen, who had been so brave,
gave way now: her face was piteously
convulsed and the tears streamed down
her cheeks. I made clumsy attempts to
soothe her, and finally took her in my
arms and carried her into the great lighted
drawing-room and laid her on the sofa.
She uttered nothing of her impotent childish
despair, but I could read well enough
her humiliation and her shame. Mills
came in presently and whispered to me
that dinner was ready. She heard him
and sprang up with the air of a baby
princess. “I will come to dinner in five
minutes, Mills,” said she imperiously:
then, when she met the honest sympathy
of his glance, she ran up to him and
thrust her little slim hand into his. “I
trust you, Mills,” she murmured, her
lips quivering again, “but you must never
let papa know and never let the servants
suspect.” And presently, with the
outward indifference of a woman of the
world, the child took her place at table
and entertained me through dinner with
an account of what we should do for
Georgy Lenox.

CHAPTER V.

For Georgy was coming next day, and
in spite of my unhappiness on Helen’s
account I woke up the following morning
with my pulses all astir with joy.
It would be something for me to have
her here, away from her mother, who always
frowned upon me—away from Jack,
whose claim upon her time and attention
made mine appear presumptuous and intrusive—away
from Harry Dart, with his
teasing jokes, his wholesale contempt for
any weakness or romantic feeling. I had
never declared to myself that I was in
love with Georgina, nor had I formed
my wishes to my own heart in distinct
thoughts. Still, young although I was,
I should hardly dare to write down here
how far above every other idea and object
on earth Georgina appeared to me.
I never thought of her then, I never looked
upon her, without the blood thickening
around my heart as if I stood face to[page 206]
face with Fate: my every impulse toward
the future was blended with my
desire to be something to her. I had
not dared to dream then that she could
be anything to me.

Before I was out of bed that morning,
Frederick, Mr. Raymond’s valet,
came to me with the request that I should
go to his master’s room before I went
down stairs. It was in the wing, and
the third chamber of a handsome suite
comprising study, dressing-room and
bedroom. It was hung and curtained
with red; a wood-fire was burning on
the hearth; the chairs were covered with
red; even the silken coverlet of the bed
was red, and the only place where living,
brilliant color was not seemed to be the
pale shrunken face on the pillow, a little
paler and more delicate than usual:
the hands, too, clutching each other on
the red blanket, had a look of languor
and waste.

“Good-morning, Floyd,” Mr. Raymond
said, and then dismissed Frederick.

“But you ought not to talk, sir,” expostulated
the valet, “until you have had
your breakfast.”

The sick man made a gesture for him
to leave the room, watched him go out,
and then fastened his piercing black
eyes on me and looked at me long and
fixedly. “You saw me yesterday?” said
he at last, breaking the silence.

I nodded, finding it a difficult task to
speak.

“Are you a babbling child?” said he
with considerable force and earnestness,
“or have you enough of a man’s knowledge
to have learned to respect the infirmities
of other men?”

“I tell no one’s secrets, sir: they are
not mine to tell.”

He quite broke down, and lay there
before me strangling with sobs and cries.
“Should Mr. Floyd know,” he murmured,
“should Mr. Floyd even guess, that
I am the wretched wreck of a man
that I am, he would not let Helen stay
with me another moment. He would
extenuate, he would pity, nothing: he
does not know what it is for a man like
me, once proud, witty, gay, to bear seclusion
and depression and decay. I
long at times for some of the inspiration
of my youth: it comes with a terrible
penalty.”

I could believe it, for his face expressed
such abasement and despair as I had
never dreamed of.

“I know,” he continued, his voice
broken and husky, “that I shadow Helen’s
life. I know that if I had died last
night she would be a luckier girl to-day
than she is now. But I sha’n’t last long,
Floyd. Put your finger on my pulse.”

I did so, and was obliged to grope for
the uncertain, slow beating at his wrist.
It seemed as if so little life was there
it might easily flicker and go out at any
moment.

“I may die at any time,” said he, putting
my unspoken thought into words.
“Dr. Sharpe tells me not to count on the
morrow. What cruelty it would be, then,
to deprive me of my grandchild! What
could I do without her? What would become
of me, living alone, with no company
but the gibbering shapes mocking
at me out of the corners?” He cowered
all in a heap and looked up at me with
clasped hands. “Let her stay,” he went
on imploringly. “It is only for a little
while, and then everything will be hers—this
house and these grounds, my
house in New York and blocks of stores,
all my pictures, my statues, my books.
Why, I tell you, Floyd, I am worth more
than a million of dollars in invested
property that brings me in a return of
ten per cent. It is all for her. I save half
my income every year to buy new mortgages
and stocks, that she may be the
richer. I think,” he exclaimed with a
sudden burst of feeling, “that such wealth
as I shall give her might atone for a great
deal. Remember, Floyd, it is only a little
while that I shall burden her: let her
stay.”

He was pleading with me as if I were
the arbiter of his fate. He had grasped
my arm, and his glittering eyes were fastened
on me with the intensity of despair
in their expression.

“Why, Mr. Raymond,” said I gently,
“I have nothing to do with Helen’s going
or staying. If you fear that I shall
inform Mr. Floyd about what—what[page 207]
happened yesterday, you do me injustice.
I shall tell him nothing. I have
no right to say a word about anything
that takes place in your house.”

“You are a good boy,” said Mr. Raymond,
with an expression of relief relaxing
his convulsed features. “I do not
wonder that James loves you as his own
son—that it is the wish of his heart that
you should grow up with Helen, learn to
love her, and marry her at last.”

I listened doubtfully: it did not occur
to me that his words had any foundation
in fact; yet, all the same, the newly-suggested
idea burdened me. “I think you
are mistaken,” said I gently. “Nothing
of that kind could ever possibly happen.”

“Not for years—not until I am dead,”
returned Mr. Raymond peevishly. “It
was nothing—nothing at all. All that
occurred I will tell you, since I was foolish
enough to speak of it in the first
instance. James said he wanted Helen
to be much with you. ‘You know how
those childish intimacies end,’ I replied
to him—’in deep attachment and desire
for marriage.’—’I ask nothing better for
Helen,’ James exclaimed. ‘She will grow
up like other girls, and love, and finally
become a wife; and if she became
Floyd’s wife I should have no fears for
her.'” Mr. Raymond’s eyes met mine.
“You will never tell Mr. Floyd I spoke
of this to you,” he said under his breath.
“I am not quite myself this morning, or
I should not have suggested a thought of
it to you.”

I was very sure that I should never
mention it, for I found the idea of my
marrying Helen so painfully irksome
that it went with me all the day, casting
a shadow across our intercourse. I
told myself over and over that the idea
was absurd—that such a thing could
never, never come to pass. She was so
mere a child. I studied her face with its
baby contours, where nothing showed
the dawn of womanhood yet except the
great melancholy eyes; I took her hand
in mine, where it lay like a snowflake on
my brown palm; and I laughed aloud
at the grotesqueness of the fancy that I
should ever put a ring on that childish
finger.

“Why do you laugh?” she asked me
wonderingly.

“To think,” I rejoined, “how funny
it is to remember one day you will be
grown up and have rings upon your
fingers.”

“Is that funny?” she asked. “Of
course, if I live I shall grow up and
be a woman. My mamma was married
when she was only seventeen, and
in seven years I shall be seventeen.” I
dropped her hand as if it had stung me.
“I have all mamma’s rings,” she went
on: “I have a drawerful of trinkets that
mamma used to wear. When Georgy
Lenox comes I shall give her a locket
and a chain that are so very, very pretty
they will be just right for her. Tell
me more about her, Floyd.”

It was easy enough for me to grow
eloquent in talking of Georgina, and
Helen was as anxious to hear as I to
tell. The little girl had had few friends
of her own sex and age: every summer
had brought the New York and Boston
Raymonds to The Headlands, and when
the neighboring watering-place was in its
season numerous flounced and gloved little
misses had been introduced to the shy,
quaint child, who felt strange and dreary
among them all. In fact, the little heiress’s
position, so unique in every respect,
had isolated her from the joys of commonplace
childhood, and she found more
companionship in her dumb pets, in the
sumptuous silence of the blossoming gardens,
in the voices of the shore, than
among girls of her own age with their
chatter about their teachers or governesses,
their dancing-steps and their
games. Nevertheless, she was both ardent
and affectionate, and ready to love
all the world; and no sooner had Georgy
appeared than she lavished upon her
all the passion of girlish fondness for
her own sex which had hitherto lain
dormant within her. Georgy had always
been used to adulation and to lead others
by her capricious will and her radiant
smile, and within a day after her coming
had established almost a dangerous supremacy
over the child. It was at once
fascinating and disappointing to be under
the same roof with Georgy: every[page 208]
morning when I awoke it seemed a miracle
of happiness that I had but to dress
and go out of my room to have a chance
of meeting her, of perpetually recurring
smiles and conversation such as I had
never enjoyed before at Belfield. But
the reality never bore out the promise
of my vague but delicious reveries. Mr.
Raymond at once took an active, almost
virulent, dislike to his young guest, and
pointed out her faults to me with clear
and concise words, each one of which
pierced me like a rapier; and the certainty
of his condemnation gave me a
keen, and at times almost inspired, vision
for her weaknesses.

Nothing could exceed her rapture at
being in the beautiful house which she
had so long wished to see, and which
she loudly asserted a thousand times
surpassed all her expectations. And
she fitted admirably into her costly surroundings:
the sheen of her golden hair
made the dark velvet cushionings and
hangings a more beautiful background
than before; she gave expression to the
stately, silent rooms; and what had at
first been almost, despite its luxury, a
desert to me, became a fairy land. Little
Helen was so burdened with possessions
that it was a pleasure for her to give
them away. Still, I wished that Georgy
had not been so willing to accept all
that the lavish generosity of the child
prompted her to offer. But Georgy was
no Spartan: she wanted everything that
could minister to her comfort. She was
a natural gourmand, hungry for sweets
and fruits all day long: she coveted ornaments,
and found Helen’s drawer of
trinkets almost too small for her; she liked
velvets and furs, silks and plushes, and
wore the child’s clothes until Mr. Raymond
sent his housekeeper to Boston to
purchase her a complete outfit of her
own. But all these faults I could have
pardoned in Georgy, and ascribed them
to her faulty education and false influences
at home, had she been grateful to
little Helen.

“She hates Helen for being luckier
than herself,” Mr. Raymond affirmed:
“she would do her a mischief if she
could.”

I could not believe that, yet I could
see that she loved to torture the child,
whose acute sensibilities made her suffer
from the slightest coldness or suspicion.

“If you really loved me, Helen,”
Georgy would say, “you would do this
for me;” and sometimes the task would
be to slight or openly disobey Mr. Raymond,
to outrage me or to make one of
the dumb, loving pets which filled the
place suffer. And if at sight of the
child’s tears I remonstrated, I was punished
as it was easy enough for Georgy
Lenox to punish me.

She would melt Helen too by drawing
a picture of her own poverty and state
of dreary unhappiness beside the good
fortune of the heiress, until the little girl
would search through the house to find
another present for her, which she besought
her beautiful goddess almost on
her knees to accept. All these traits,
which showed that Georgina was far
from perfect, caused me a misery proportionate
to my longing to have her all
that was lovely and excellent. It is indeed
unfair to write of faults which are
so easy to portray, and to say nothing
of the beauty of feature and charm of
manner, which might have been enough
to persuade any one who looked into her
face that she was one of God’s own angels.
What does beauty mean if it be
not the blossoming of inner perfection
into outward loveliness? And Georgina
Lenox was beautiful to every eye. Let
every one who reads my story know and
feel that she had the beauty which can
stir the coldest blood—the eyes whose
look of entreaty could melt the most
implacable resolution—the smile which
could lure, the voice which could make
every man follow.

CHAPTER VI.

Mr. Floyd had again entered upon
active life in Washington, and his duties
were so absorbing that it was almost impossible
for him to find any opportunity
of joining me at The Headlands, as he
had promised. But just as my visit was[page 209]
drawing to an end he came, and kept
me on for the week of his stay. I had
become used to the routine of life at Mr.
Raymond’s, and had again and again
wondered if Mr. Floyd’s presence there
would make any difference; but the
change in the entire aspect of the household
after the advent of my guardian absolutely
startled me. Mr. Raymond was
again master of the house, and little Helen
was left free of all care and responsibility.
There seemed a tacit understanding
between Mills and the child and her
grandfather that Mr. Floyd was to gain
not the faintest idea of the usual state
of things. Mr. Raymond wore a dignity
which was not without its pathetic
side: he no longer touched wine, although
a different vintage was offered
with every course, and his selfish, peevish
ways seemed entirely forgotten. Helen
had grown steadily stronger every
week of my stay, and now that her father
was with her she rallied at once into
a happy, careless state of mind which
made her almost as light-hearted a
child as one could wish. She had none
of Georgy’s gay boisterousness, but her
blitheness of heart seemed like a lambent
fire playing over profound depths
of gladness and security.

Mr. Floyd was scarcely well pleased
to find Georgy at The Headlands, and
at once observed with solicitude the influence
she had gained over his little
girl. Georgy’s idea of power was to put
her foot on the neck of her subjects and
hold them at her mercy; and Mr. Floyd
showed his displeasure at her course by
at once withdrawing Helen almost entirely
from her society. Georgy rebelled
defiantly at this; and I too felt keenly
the injustice of leaving her so utterly
alone as we did day after day when Mr.
Floyd, Helen and I went riding through
the woods together. Directly after breakfast
my guardian and I mounted our
horses, and Helen her pony, and off we
started for the hills, where the keen autumn
winds would put color into the little
girl’s pale cheeks. Far below us we
could see the curving reaches of beach
and promontory, the sparkling fall of
the low surf, and in the offing the white-winged
ships bringing all the wonders of
the East and the richness of the tropics
to our barren New England shores. What
wonder if I have never forgotten a single
incident of those too swiftly succeeding
days? The glow, the enthusiasm,
the wild gush of free, untrammelled enjoyment,
were to go from me presently,
and to return no more.

When Mr. Floyd first came he had
shaken me roughly by the shoulder,
laughing in my face as he told me he
had just come from Belfield, where he
had spent six hours with my mother. I
felt ashamed to look him in the eyes
when I remembered my interference,
and I began to debate the question in
my own mind whether I had not better
yield my boyish whim of pride and exclusive,
domineering affection to this noble,
splendid gentleman, whom I loved
better and better every day.

The week appointed for his visit at
The Headlands had almost passed. It
was a Thursday morning, and we were
to set out early the ensuing day, when
he asked me to walk with him an hour on
the bluff, as he had something to speak
to me about. It was a lovely day: the
fogs were rolling off the water, and disclosed
a sea of chrysoprase beneath.

“In my old courting-days,” began Mr.
Floyd at once, “I used to walk here with
Alice. We were engaged six weeks, and
looking back now eleven years the days
seem all like this. It was the Indian
summer-time.”

I was dumb, but stared into his face,
which showed emotion, and pressed his
arm bashfully.

“I was thirty-four when I first met
her,” he went on, “and she was just
half my age. She was an heiress and
I was poor, yet the world called me no
bad match for her. Still, I felt as if I
could not marry a rich woman: I went
away, and tried to forget her, but stole
back to the Point, hoping to get one
glimpse of her sweet face by stealth.
Then when I saw her I could not go
away again, nor did she want me to go.
Mr. Raymond hated me in those days,
yet we were so strong against him that
he gave his consent, and we were married on [page 210]
just such a November day as
this. It seems like a dream, Floyd, that
I, so long a lonely man, without a private
joy, could ever have been so happy
as I was then. I loved her—the light
of her eyes and the white lids that covered
them when I looked at her; the
smile on her parted lips; the way her
hair curled away from her temples; the
little dimples all over her hands; her
voice, her little ways. And while I loved
her like that, before the first year of my
happiness had passed she was dead. I
hope you will never know what that
means. That she had left me a child
was nothing to me: I was only a rapturous
lover, and had not begun to long
for baby voices and upturned children’s
faces. When, finally, I did turn to Helen,
it was as you see now: to part her
from her grandfather would be to wrench
body from soul.”

“Mr. Raymond is a very old man,” I
suggested.

“He has a surer life than mine: I
doubt if anybody would insure mine at
any price.”

We were silent. I felt awkward and
ashamed: I knew what was in his
thoughts.

“You wise young people!” said he
presently, throwing his arm over my
shoulder—”oh, you wise young people!”
Then turning me square about,
he looked into my face: “Oh, you foolish,
foolish young people!”

I felt foolish indeed—so foolish I
could not meet his eyes.

“Why begrudge us a few years of
happiness together?” he asked in his
deliberate gentle voice. “Your mother
is still young, and so beautiful that she
deserves to shine in a sphere worthy of
her. I will say nothing of my profound
and respectful love for her. My love for
Alice was my passionate worship of a
singularly charming child: your mother
commands a different feeling. But of
that I will say nothing. Think, Floyd,
what a life I can offer her! It seems to
me that in marrying me she will gain
much: what can she lose?”

What, indeed, could she lose? My
doubt and dread shrank into insignificant
and petty proportions: it seemed
to me the noblest fate for any woman
alive to gain the love of this man into
whose face I was looking earnestly. Yet
I could find no words to utter, and he
went on as if trying to convince me
against my will.

“You do not appear to entertain any
aversion for me,” he pursued, smiling,
“and in our new relation I will take care
that you do not like me less. You are
dear to me now, yet when your mother
is my wife you will be much dearer.”

My self-control vanished: my lip trembled.
“What does mother say?” I asked
almost in a whisper.

He put his hands on my shoulders,
laughing softly: “She says she has a
son whose love and respect she so highly
prizes she will do nothing to forfeit them.”

“Does she love you, Mr. Floyd?” I
questioned bluntly.

“I think she does—a little,” he answered,
dropping his eyes. “But,” he
went on more hurriedly, “in such a
marriage love is not everything, Floyd,
although it is much. There is sympathy,
constant close companionship: of
these both your mother and I have bitterly
felt the need.”

“Don’t say any more, sir,” I cried,
humbled to the dust. “When I first saw
what was coming I suppose I thought
only of myself: now—”

“Now you think of two other people,
and withdraw your opposition. I confess
I can’t see how you will be worse
off. Come now, give me your hand,
you young rascal! I shall go home
with you to-morrow, and—”

“Will it take place at once?” I asked
with a pang at my heart.

“What? our marriage? You are hurrying
matters charmingly. Mrs. Randolph
has not yet accepted me. But I
will confess to you, my boy, that I shall
be more than happy, more than proud,
if I can persuade her to allow me to introduce
her to my friends in Washington
in December.”

We walked about for more than an
hour after, but said no more about the
matter, although it was stirring below
every thought and word of each of us.[page 211]
I felt the weariness of soul which succeeds
a struggle, and my guardian tried,
but unsuccessfully, to conceal the elation
which follows victory. Yet subdued and
unhappy though I was, haunted by a
sense of terrible loss, I was proud and
glad to have contented him. He talked
to me intimately, and discussed my plans
for the future. I was to enter college the
next year, and he pointed out the fact, to
which I was not insensible, that our old
life at home would necessarily have been
broken up when I left Belfield. He spoke
of my pecuniary means, and frankly informed
me that his property amounted to
three hundred thousand dollars, and that
this amount he had divided into thirds—one
for my mother, one for Helen and
one for me.

“Oh, sir,” I burst out, “you must not
be so generous to me.”

“And why not? My little girl has too
much already: it has always been one of
the discomforts of my life that she is so
rich, so raised above all human wants,
that I have had it in my power to do
nothing for her. I have seen poor men
buying clothes and shoes for their little
sunburned children, and envied them.”

We had been lounging toward the
house, and now had reached the terrace,
where we found Mr. Raymond
pacing feebly up and down in the mild
sunshine leaning on Frederick’s arm.
Mr. Floyd stepped forward and took
the valet’s place, investing the slight
courtesy with the charm of his grand
manner.

“Where is Helen?” asked Mr. Raymond.
“I supposed that she was with
you, James.”

“I have not seen her since breakfast.—Suppose
you look her up, Floyd? I
am afraid she is with Miss Georgy, and
in mischief, no doubt.—I object, sir,”
Mr. Floyd added to his father-in-law,
“to Helen’s having too much of the
society of Miss Lenox. She is a pretty
little devil enough, but then I don’t like
pretty little devils.”

“I have written to Mrs. Lenox to recall
her,” returned Mr. Raymond stiffly.
“She is no favorite of mine. There is a
look in her eyes at times that makes me
shudder at the thought of the harm she
is pretty sure to do. Floyd here is her
only partisan.”

I had already sprung along the terrace,
and quickly crossed the lawn and
garden to the rocks. I remembered having
seen a blue and a scarlet jacket going
toward the shore during my talk
with Mr. Floyd; and, sure enough, on
the rocks I found traces of the girls—a
ribbon, the rind of Georgy’s oranges
which she was always nibbling, and Helen’s
book. Supposing they were on the
beach, I descended the stone steps leading
to the sands. There was a faint plashing
and lisping of the waves, but otherwise
no sound and no sight but the great
rocks and the smooth sea lustrous and
glittering like steel. I had no doubt but
that Helen and Georgy were somewhere
near me, and sat down to wait. My mind
was full of thoughts that came and went,
bringing clear but swiftly-shifting pictures
of our old life and the new, which rose
suddenly fresh and vivid before me. I
could see my mother’s face, the color
coming and going like a young girl’s,
and the movement of her little hands
clasping and unclasping in her lap. I
could see her, too, by the side of Mr.
Floyd in a bright, wonderful world of
which I knew nothing. For a moment
I felt already parted from her, and the
pang of separation wrenched body from
soul. I threw myself face downward on
the sand and declared myself profoundly
miserable.

Suddenly I started to my feet. I was
vaguely terrified, yet could not tell what
had aroused me from my brooding
thoughts. I seemed conscious of having
heard a cry, but so faint and inarticulate
as hardly to differ from the
distant note of a sea-bird. But as I ran
frantically along the sands I distinctly
heard my name, and knew that the entreaty
was for help.

“I am coming!” I screamed at the top
of my voice—”I am coming as fast as I
can.” The rocks gave back so many deceitful
echoes that I was not certain from
what point the imploring cry came; but
I knew every inch of the beach for a mile
up and down, and knew, too, that there[page 212]
was but one place in which with ordinary
prudence there could be the slightest
danger. So with unerring instinct I flew
along the wet shingle to “Raymond’s
Cliff.” At this point the beetling line of
rocks which coiled and frowned along
the coast terminated abruptly in precipitous
crags. On one side it was sheer
precipice, but on the other the cliff, exposed
both to wind and wave, washed
by the rains and gnawed at its base by
ever-advancing and receding tides, had
gradually been worn away in the centre
by the constant crumbling of the sandy
soil, so as to form a sort of ravine. It
was a dangerous and gloomy place, and
I had received many a warning from Mr.
Raymond never to take Helen there.

“Helen!” I cried—”Helen! if you are
here, answer me. I cannot see you.” A
gull flew away from the cliff with a scream,
and I could hear no other sound. “Tell
me, Helen, if you are here.”

I heard a cry from above—almost inaudible
it was so spiritless and faint—yet,
gaze as I might toward the top, I
could see nothing. I skirted the main
rock and climbed as far as I easily could
up the ravine. Here my attention was
arrested by a dot of scarlet against the
grim, bare face of the basalt. Yes, there
she was, about forty feet above me, hanging
on to a shelving rock with her little
Italian greyhound in her arms. She was
peering down, disclosing a pallid face. I
saw at once that she had hung there until
her strength was almost gone.

“Listen to me, Helen,” said I, calmly
and very gently, for I had a ghastly
dread that she would fall before my
very eyes. “Don’t look down: just keep
your eyes fixed on the rock, and hold on
tight until I reach you.” She obeyed me.
“Now,” I went on authoritatively, “drop
the dog—drop him, I say!—Here, Beppo!
here!”

She again obeyed me, and the dog
scrambled down and fell—scratched and
bruised, no doubt, yet otherwise unhurt—at
my feet. “Helen, answer me one
question,” said I. “Can you wait until I
go round up to the top and get a rope?”

She gave a little scream of pitiful anguish:
I saw her slight figure sway, and
some loose stones came rattling down.
“I feel so sick, so dizzy!” she cried.

“I will climb up, then. Hold on tight
for a few minutes more. Keep perfectly
still, and don’t look down: you know how
well I can climb.”

I was a capital climber, and could hold
on like a cat where there was a crevice
to fasten my feet or my hands. Still, I
was anything but certain about these hollow,
worn sides, which in places were as
smooth as glass. But it had to be done,
and done quickly. If the child fell she
was dead or maimed to a certainty. She
had crawled in some unheard-of way
down from the top, and must go back
the way she had come; and since I had
no time to help her from above, I must
go up to her. A spar had been washed
up among the débris upon which I had
mounted, and this helped me up a little
way. Then I managed to creep a
trifle farther, hand over hand: whenever
I could take breath I called out to
her that it was all right and I should be
up in another minute. The necessity
of keeping up her courage endowed me
with miraculous strength, and in a little
while I stood beside Helen on the narrow
shelf, and waited for a moment to breathe
freely and see what was yet beyond me.
I smiled at her, and she looked steadily
into my face, but said not a word.

“How in the world did you get here,
Helen?” I asked.

“I came after Beppo,” she returned,
her lip trembling.

“How did Beppo get here?”

“Georgy flung him down,” cried the
child, bursting into tears. “Perhaps she
did not mean to, but she was angry that
he would not go by himself after the
stone she flung.”

I had looked to the top by this time,
and saw at once that the worst part of
the ascent was before me. It had been
sheer rock beneath: here the strata were
crumbled, and the interstices filled with
earth and dried vegetation. The angle
was much greater than it had been below,
and it was easy to see that even
Helen’s light footstep had loosened every
fragment it had touched. I gained
a foothold above her; stretched out my[page 213]
hand and drew her up; then another
and another. Once she lost her footing,
but I caught the slim figure in my
arms and went on, with her half fainting
against my shoulder, her puny strength
quite worn out.

When we were within a few feet of
the top I told her to look up. “You see
that we are almost there,” I said gently.
“Can you do what I tell you to do?
When I raise you place one foot on my
shoulder: … now, then, take hold of
something firmly and clamber up.”

My footing was precarious, and in order
to lift her up I was obliged to unfasten
my hold of the few scant wisps of
withered grass. If she could but reach
the top, I believed I could make a supreme
effort to save myself; and I risked
everything.

In an instant she was on the brow of
the cliff. She gave a convulsive cry of joy
and relief, and reached out her little hand
to me. I almost stretched out to grasp
it; then, remembering that with her slight
weight I might easily drag her back into
danger, I took hold of a little bush: it
was dried to the roots, and came out in
my hand. My footing gave way: I slipped
down, with nothing to break my fall—not
a shrub, not a fissure in the rocks.
The blue sky had been above me, but
that blessed glimpse of azure vanished,
and I could see nothing but the frowning
sides of the precipice as I went down,
my pace accelerating every moment. I
believed I could gain a hold or footing on
the shelving rock where I had found
Helen, but it gave way as I touched it
and slid suddenly down the ravine. I
was dizzy and bruised, but was wondering
if Helen would give the alarm—if
Georgy would be sorry. I thought with
pity of my mother, who would surely
weep for me. Then I heard Beppo barking
joyfully, and I knew that I was at the
bottom of the abyss. I suffered a few
seconds of such terrible pain that I was
glad when a sickening sort of quietude
settled over me, and I felt that I must
be dying.

Ellen W. Olney.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

A SEA-SOUND.

THE BRITISH SOLDIER.

I allude to the British soldier, more
especially, as I lately observed and admired
him at Aldershot, where, just now,
he appears to particular advantage; but
at any time during the past twelvemonth—since
England and Russia have stood
glaring at each other across the prostrate
body of the expiring yet reviving Turk—this
actually ornamental and potentially
useful personage has been picturesquely,
agreeably conspicuous. I
say “agreeably,” speaking from my own
humble point of view, because I confess
to a lively admiration of the military
class. I exclaim, cordially, with
Offenbach’s Grand Duchess, “Ah, oui,
j’aime les militaires!” Mr. Ruskin has
said somewhere, very naturally, that he
could never resign himself to living in a
country in which, as in the United States,
there should be no old castles. Putting
aside the old castles, I should say, like
Mr. Ruskin, that life loses a certain indispensable
charm in a country destitute
of an apparent standing army. Certainly,
the army may be too apparent, too
importunate, too terrible a burden to the
state and to the conscience of the philosophic
observer. This is the case, without
a doubt, just now in the bristling
empires of the Continent. In Germany
and France, in Russia and Italy, there
are many more soldiers than are needed
to make the taxpayer thrifty or the
lover of the picturesque happy. The
huge armaments of continental Europe
are an oppressive and sinister spectacle,
and I have rarely derived a high order of
entertainment from the sight of even the
largest masses of homesick conscripts.
The chair à canon—the cannon-meat—as
they aptly term it in French, has always
seemed to me dumbly, appealingly
conscious of its destiny. I have seen it
in course of preparation—seen it salted
and dressed and packed and labelled,
as it were, for consumption. In that
marvellous France, indeed, which bears
all burdens lightly, and whose good spirits
and absence of the tragic pose alone prevent
us from calling her constantly heroic,
the army scarcely seems to be the
heavy charge that it must be in fact.
The little red-legged soldiers, always
present and always moving, are as thick
as the field-flowers in an abundant harvest,
and amid the general brightness
and mobility of French life they strike
one at times simply as cheerful tokens
of the national exuberance and fecundity.
But in Germany and Italy the national
levies impart a lopsided aspect to society:
they seem to drag it under water.
They hang like a millstone round its
neck, so that it can’t move: it has to sit
still, looking wistfully at the long, forward
road which it is unable to measure.

England, which is fortunate in so
many things, is fortunate in her well-fed
mercenaries, who suggest none of
the dismal reflections provoked by the
great foreign armies. It is true, of course,
that they fail to suggest some of the inspiring
ones. If Germany and France
are burdened, at least they are defended—at
least they are armed for conflict and
victory. There seems to be a good deal
of doubt as to how far this is true of the
nation which has hitherto been known as
the pre-eminently pugnacious one. Where
France and Germany and Russia count
by hundreds, England counts by tens;
and it is only, strictly speaking, on the
good old principle that one Englishman
can buffet a dozen foreigners that a very
hopeful view of an Anglo-continental collision
can be maintained. This good old
principle is far from having gone out of
fashion: you may hear it proclaimed to
an inspiring tune any night in the week
in the London music-halls. One summer
evening, in the country, an English
gentleman was telling me about his little
boy, a rosy, sturdy, manly child whom I
had already admired, and whom he depicted
as an infant Hercules. The surrounding
influences at the moment were
picturesque. An ancient lamp was suspended [page 215]
from the ceiling of the hall; the
large door stood open upon a terrace;
and outside the big, dense treetops were
faintly stirring in the starlight. My companion
dilated upon the pluck and muscle,
the latent pugnacity, of his dear little
son, and told me how bravely already he
doubled his infant fist. There was a kind
of Homeric simplicity about it. From
this he proceeded to wider considerations,
and observed that the English
child was of necessity the bravest and
sturdiest in the world, for the plain reason
that he was the germ of the English man.
What the English man was we of course
both knew, but, as I was a stranger, my
friend explained the matter in detail. He
was a person whom, in the ordinary course
of human irritation, every one else was
afraid of. Nowhere but in England
were such men made—men who could
hit out as soon as think, and knock over
persons of inferior race as you would
brush away flies. They were afraid of
nothing: the sentiment of hesitation to
inflict a blow under rigidly proper circumstances
was unknown to them. English
soldiers and sailors in a row carried
everything before them: foreigners didn’t
know what to make of such fellows, and
were afraid to touch them. A couple of
Englishmen were a match for a foreign
mob. My friend’s little boy was made
like a statue: his little arms and legs
were quite of the right sort. This was
the greatness of England, and of this
there was an infinite supply. The light,
as I say, was dim in the great hall, and
the rustle of the oaks in the park was
almost audible. Their murmur seemed
to offer a sympathetic undertone to the
honest conversation of my companion,
and I sat there as humble a ministrant to
the simple and beautiful idea of British
valor as the occasion could require. I
made the reflection—by which I must
justify my anecdote—that the ancient
tradition as to the personal fighting-value
of the individual Englishman flourishes
in high as well as in low life, and forms
a common ground of contact between
them; with the simple difference that
at the music-halls it is more poetically
expressed than in the country-houses.

I am grossly ignorant of military matters,
and hardly know the names of regiments
or the designations of their officers;
yet, as I said at the beginning of
these remarks, I am always very much
struck by the sight of a uniform. War is
a detestable thing, and I would willingly
see the sword dropped into its scabbard
for ever. Only I should plead that in
its sheathed condition the sword should
still be allowed to play a certain part.
Actual war is detestable, but there is
something agreeable in possible war;
and I have been thankful that I should
have found myself on British soil at a
moment when it was resounding to the
tread of regiments. If the British army
is small, it has during the last six months
been making the most of itself. The rather
dusky spectacle of British life has
been lighted up by the presence in the
foreground of considerable masses of
that vivid color which is more particularly
associated with the protection of
British interests. The sunshine has appeared
to rest upon scattered clusters
of red-coats, while the background has
been enveloped in a sort of chaotic and
fuliginous dimness. The red-coats, according
to their number, have been palpable
and definite, though a great many
other things have been inconveniently
vague. At the beginning of the year,
when Parliament was opened in the
queen’s name, the royal speech contained
a phrase which that boisterous
organ of the war-party, the Pall Mall
Gazette, pronounced “sickening” in its
pusillanimity. Her Majesty alluded to
the necessity, in view of the complications
in the East, of the government
taking into consideration the making of
“preparations for precaution.” This was
certainly an ineffective way of expressing
a thirst for Russian blood, but the
royal phraseology is never very felicitous;
and the “preparations for precaution”
have been extremely interesting.
Indeed, for a person conscious of a desire
to look into what may be called the
psychology of politics, I can imagine
nothing more interesting than the general
spectacle of the public conduct of
England during the last two years. I[page 216]
have watched it with a good deal of the
same sort of entertainment with which
one watches a five-act drama from a
comfortable place in the stalls. There
are moments of discomfort in the course
of such a performance: the theatre is hot
and crowded, the situations are too prolonged,
the play seems to drag, some of
the actors have no great talent. But the
piece, as a whole, is intensely dramatic,
the argument is striking, and you would
not for the world leave your place before
the dénouement is reached. My own
pleasure all winter, I confess, has been
partly marred by a bad conscience: I
have felt a kind of shame at my inability
to profit by a brilliant opportunity to
make up my mind. This inability, however,
was extreme, and my regret was
not lightened by seeing every one about
me set an admirable example of decision,
and even of precision. Every one about
me was either a Russian or a Turk, the
Turks, however, being greatly the more
numerous. It appeared necessary to one’s
self-respect to assume some foreign personality,
and I felt keenly, for a while, the
embarrassment of choice. At last it occurred
to me simply that as an American
I might be an Englishman; and the reflection
became afterward very profitable.

When once I had undertaken the
part, I played it with what the French
call conviction. There are many obvious
reasons why the rôle, at such a time as
this, should accommodate itself to the
American capacity. The feeling of race
is strong, and a good American could
not but desire that, with the eyes of
Europe fixed upon it, the English race
should make a passable figure. There
would be much fatuity in his saying that
at such a moment he deemed it of importance
to give it the support of his
own striking attitude, but there is at least
a kind of filial piety in this feeling moved
to draw closer to it. To see how the English
race would behave, and to hope devoutly
it would behave well,—this was the
occupation of my thoughts. Old England
was in a difficult pass, and all the world
was watching her. The good American
feels in all sorts of ways about Old England:
the better American he is, the more
acute are his moods, the more lively his
variations. He can be, I think, everything
but indifferent; and, for myself, I
never hesitated to let my emotions play
all along the scale. In the morning, over
the Times, it was extremely difficult to
make up one’s mind. The Times seemed
very mealy-mouthed—that impression,
indeed, it took no great cleverness
to gather—but the dilemma lay between
one’s sense of the brutality and cynicism
of the usual utterances of the Turkish
party and one’s perception of the direful
ills which Russian conquest was so
liberally scattering abroad. The brutality
of the Turkish tone, as I sometimes
caught an echo of it in the talk of chance
interlocutors, was not such as to quicken
that race-feeling to which I just now alluded.
English society is a tremendously
comfortable affair, and the crudity of
the sarcasm that I frequently heard levelled
by its fortunate members at the victims
of the fashionable Turk was such as
to produce a good deal of resentful meditation.
It was provoking to hear a rosy
English gentleman, who had just been
into Leicestershire for a week’s hunting,
deliver the opinion that the vulgar Bulgarians
had really not been massacred
half enough; and this in spite of the fact
that one had long since made the observation
that for a good plain absence of
mawkish sentimentality a certain type of
rosy English gentleman is nowhere to be
matched. On the other hand, it was not
very comfortable to think of the measureless
misery in which these interesting
populations were actually steeped, and
one had to admit that the deliberate invasion
of a country which professed the
strongest desire to live in peace with its
invaders was at least a rather striking
anomaly. Such a course could only be
justified by the most gratifying results,
and brilliant consequences as yet had
not begun to bloom upon the blood-drenched
fields of Bulgaria.

To see this heavy-burdened, slow-moving
Old England making up her
mind was an edifying spectacle. It was
not over-fanciful to say to one’s self, in
spite of the difficulties of the problem
and the (in a certain sense) evenly-balanced [page 217]
scales, that this was a great crisis
in her history, that she stood at the crossing
of the ways, and that according as
she put forth her right hand or her left
would her greatness stand or wane. It
was possible to imagine that in her huge,
dim, collective consciousness she felt an
oppressive sense of moral responsibility,
that she too murmured to herself that
she was on trial, and that, through the
mists of bewilderment and the tumult of
party cries, she begged to be enlightened.
The sympathetic American to whom I
have alluded may be represented at such
an hour as making a hundred irresponsible
reflections and indulging in all sorts
of fantastic visions. If I had not already
wandered so far from my theme, I should
like to offer a few instances here. Very
often it seemed natural to care very little
whether England went to war with Russia
or not: the interest lay in the moral
struggle that was going on within her
own limits. Awkward as this moral
struggle made her appear, perilously as
it seemed to have exposed her to the sarcasm
of some of her neighbors—of that
compact, cohesive France, for instance,
which even yet cannot easily imagine a
great country sacrificing the substance
of “glory” to the shadow of wisdom—this
was the most striking element in the
drama into which, as I said just now, the
situation had resolved itself. The Liberal
party at the present hour is broken,
disfigured, demoralized, the mere ghost
of its former self. The opposition to the
government has been, in many ways, factious
and hypercritical: it has been opposition
for opposition’s sake, and it has
met, in part, the fate of such immoralities.
But a good part of the cause that it represented
appeared at times to be the highest
conscience of a civilized country. The
aversion to war, the absence of defiance,
the disposition to treat the emperor of
Russia like a gentleman and a man of
his word, the readiness to make concessions,
to be conciliatory, even credulous,
to try a great many expedients before
resorting to the showy argument of the
sword,—these various attributes of the
peace party offered, of course, ample
opportunity to those scoffers at home
and abroad who are always prepared to
cry out that England has sold herself,
body and soul, to “Manchester.” It was
interesting to attempt to feel what there
might be of justice in such cries, and at
the same time feel that this looking at
war in the face and pronouncing it very
vile was the mark of a high civilization.
It is but fair to add, though it takes some
courage, that I found myself very frequently
of the opinion of the last speaker.
If British interests were in fact endangered
by Russian aggression—though,
on the whole, I did not at all believe it—it
would be a fine thing to see the ancient
might of this great country reaffirm itself.
I did not at all believe it, as I say; yet at
times, I confess, I tried to believe it, pretended
I believed it, for the sake of this
inspiring idea of England’s making, like
the lady in Dombey & Son, “an effort.”
There were those who, if one would listen
to them, would persuade one that
that sort of thing was quite out of the
question; that England was no longer a
fighting power; that her day was over;
and that she was quite incapable of striking
a blow for the great empire she had
built up—with a good deal less fighting,
really, than had been given out—by
taking happy advantage of weaker states.
(These hollow reasoners were of course
invidious foreigners.) To such talk as
this I paid little attention—only just
enough to feel it quicken my desire that
this fine nation, so full of private pugnacity
and of public deliberation, might
find in circumstances a sudden pretext for
doing something gallant and striking.