| ••• • → ****** ſº ... * * *** * *. * * º ~ 2 or MARJORIE DAW AND OTHER PEOPLE. (o) ••• ~*： * • • ſae ， （* * = BY THE SAME AUTHOR, CLOTH OF GOLD AND OTHER POEMS. Revised Edition, printed from entirely new electrotype plates. 1 vol. 12mo. Price, $1.50. “It is some years since we have met with an American poet so rich, in achievement and promise as Mr. Aldrich... . . . The author, of this volume is an addition to that small band of American poets which is so slowly reinforced.”— The Athenaeum (London). THE STORY OF A BAD BOY, With numerous Illustrations by S. EYTINGE, JR. Sixth Edition. 1 vol. 12mo. Price, $1.50. “One of the best books *}} the many which we have noticed this season.” – The Spectator (London). “‘The Story of a Bad Boy' is decidedly the best book for boys we have ever read.” — Toledo Blade. “We should have to search back into forgotten limits to recall another work that contains so much entertainment.”— Phila. North American. “Tom Bailey has captivated all his acquaintances. He must be added hereafter to the boys' gallery of favorite characters, side by side with Robinson Crusoe and the Swiss Family Robinson and Tom Brown at Rugby.”— New York Tribune. IN PRESS. THE FLIGHT OF THE GODDESS AND OTHER POEMS. JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, PUBLISHERS. Cº- THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH M A R J ORIE DAW AND OTHER PEOPLE Marjorie Daw Miss Mehetabel's son The Friend of my Youth Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski Père Antoine etc. BOSTON JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co. 1873 FT3 Twº.T pupiſc 1 ERARY 251764B Astok, LEN9x AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS r 1943. L. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, BY T. B. ALD RICH, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. UNIVERSITY PREss: WELCH, BIGELow, & Co., CAMBRIDGE. C O N T E N T S. PAGE MARJoRIE DAW . . . . . . . 7 A RIVERMoUTH ROMANCE . - - - - 55 QUITE So . - - - - - - - . 108 A. YoUNG DESPERADo . - - - - - 134 Miss MEHETABEL's SoN . - - - - . 148 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. - - - - - 188 THE FRIEND OF MY YoUTH . - - - . 209 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. - - - 238 PERE ANTOINE’s DATE-PALM . - - - . 262 43 X 7 5.9 MARJ ORIE DAW. I. DR. DILLON To EdwarD DELANEY, Esq., AT THE PINES, NEAR RYE, N. H. August 8, 187—. Y DEAR SIR: I am happy to assure you that your anxiety is without reason. Flem- ming will be confined to the sofa for three or four weeks, and will have to be careful at first how he uses his leg. A fracture of this kind is always a tedious affair. Fortunately, the bone was very skilfully set by the surgeon who chanced to be in the drug-store where Flemming was brought after his fall, and I apprehend no permanent inconvenience from the accident. Flemming is doing perfectly well physically; but I must confess that the irritable and morbid state of mind into which he has 8 MARJORIE DAW. fallen causes me a great deal of uneasiness. He is the last man in the world who ought to break his leg. You know how impetuous our friend is ordinarily, what a soul of restlessness and energy, never content unless he is rushing at some object, like a sportive bull at a red shawl; but amiable withal. He is no longer amiable. His temper has become something frightful. Miss Fanny Flemming came up from Newport, where the family are staying for the summer, to nurse him; but he packed her off the next morning in tears. He has a complete set of Balzac's works, twenty-seven volumes, piled up near his sofa, to throw at Watkins whenever that exemplary serving-man appears with his meals. Yesterday I very innocently brought Flemming a small basket of lemons. You know it was a strip of lemon-peel on the curbstone that caused our friend’s mischance. Well, he no sooner set his eyes upon these lem- ons than he fell into such a rage as I cannot adequately describe. This is only one of his moods, and the least distressing. At other times he sits with bowed head regarding his splintered limb, silent, sullen, despairing. When MARJORIE DAW. 9 | this fit is on him—and it sometimes lasts all day—nothing can distract his melancholy. He refuses to eat, does not even read the news- papers; books, except as projectiles for Wat- kins, have no charms for him. His state is truly pitiable. - Now, if he were a poor man, with a family depending on his daily labor, this irritability and despondency would be natural enough. But in a young fellow of twenty-four, with plenty of money and seemingly not a care in the world, the thing is monstrous. If he continues to give way to his vagaries in this manner, he will end by bringing on an inflammation of the fibula. It was the fibula he broke. I am at my wits' end to know what to prescribe for him. I have anaesthetics and lotions, to make people sleep and to soothe pain; but I’ve no medicine that will make a man have a little common-sense. That is beyond my skill, but maybe it is not beyond yours. You are Flemming's intimate friend, his fidus Achates. Write to him, write to him fre- quently, distract his mind, cheer him up, and prevent him from becoming a confirmed case of melancholia. Perhaps he has some impor- 1 * 10 MARJORIE DAW. tant plans disarranged by his present confine- ment. If he has you will know, and will know how to advise him judiciously. I trust your father finds the change beneficial 2 I am, my dear sir, with great respect, etc. - 12 MARJORIE DAW. element; but he still needs my arm to lean upon - in his walks, and requires some one more care- ful than a servant to look after him. I cannot come to you, dear Jack, but I have hours of unemployed time on hand, and I will write you a whole post-office full of letters if that will divert you. Heaven knows, I have n’t any- thing to write about. It is n’t as if we were living at one of the beach houses; then I could do you some character studies, and fill your imagination with groups of sea-goddesses, with their (or somebody else's) raven and blond manes hanging down their shoulders. You should have Aphrodite in morning wrapper, in evening costume, and in her prettiest bathing suit. But we are far from all that here. We have rooms in a farm-house, on a cross-road, two miles from the hotels, and lead the quietest of lives. I wish I were a novelist. This old house, with its sanded floors and high wainscots, and its narrow windows looking out upon a cluster of pines that turn themselves into aeolian-harps every time the wind blows, would be the place in which to write a summer romance. It should be MARJoRIE DAw. 13 a story with the odors of the forest and the breath of the sea in it. It should be a novel like one of that Russian fellow’s, – what 's his name 2 — Tourguénieff, Turguenef, Turgenif, Toorgu- niff, Turgénjew, - nobody knows how to spell him. Yet I wonder if even a Liza or an Alex- andra Paulovna could stir the heart of a man who has constant twinges in his leg. I wonder if one of our own Yankee girls of the best type, haughty and spirituelle, would be of any comfort to you in your present deplorable condition. If I thought so, I would hasten down to the Surf House and catch one for you; or, better still, I would find you one over the way. Picture to yourself a large white house just across the road, nearly opposite our cottage. It is not a house, but a mansion, built, perhaps, in the colonial period, with rambling extensions, and gambrel roof, and a wide piazza on three sides, – a self-possessed, high-bred piece of architecture, with its nose in the air. It stands back from the road, and has an obsequious retinue of fringed elms and oaks and weeping willows. Sometimes in the morning, and oftener in the afternoon, when the sun has withdrawn from that part of 14 MARJORIE DAW. the mansion, a young woman appears on the piazza with some mysterious Penelope web of embroidery in her hand, or a book. There is a hammock over there, — of pineapple fibre, it looks from here. A hammock is very becoming when one is eighteen, and has golden hair, and dark eyes, and an emerald-colored illusion dress looped up after the fashion of a Dresden china shepherdess, and is chaussée like a belle of the time of Louis Quatorze. All this splendor goes into that hammock, and sways there like a pond- lily in the golden afternoon. The window of my bedroom looks down on that piazza, – and so do I. But enough of this nonsense, which ill be- comes a sedate young attorney taking his vaca- tion with an invalid father. Drop me a line, dear Jack, and tell me how you really are. State your case. Write me a long, quiet letter. If you are violent or abusive, I’ll take the law to you. l MARJORIE DAW. 15 III. - John FLEMMING TO EDWARD DELANEY. August 11,-. YoUR letter, dear Ned, was a godsend. Fancy what a fix I am in, – I, who never had a day's sickness since I was born. My left leg weighs three tons. It is embalmed in spices and smoth- ered in layers of fine linen, like a mummy. I can't move. I have n’t moved for five thousand years. I’m of the time of Pharaoh. Ilie from morning till night on a lounge, star- ing into the hot street. Everybody is out of town enjoying himself. The brown-stone-front houses across the street resemble a row of par- ticularly ugly coffins set up on end. A green mould is settling on the names of the deceased, carved on the silver door-plates. Sardonic spi- ders have sewed up the key-holes. All is silence and dust and desolation. —I interrupt this a moment, to take a shy at Watkins with the second volume of César Birotteau. Missed him 16 MARJORIE DAW. I think I could bring him down with a copy of Sainte-Beuve or the Dictionnaire Universel, if I had it. These small Balzac books somehow don’t quite fit my hand; but I shall fetch him yet. I’ve an idea Watkins is tapping the old gentleman's Château Yauem. Duplicate key of the wine-cellar. Hibernian swarries in the front basement. Young Cheops up stairs, snug in his cerements. Watkins glides into my chamber, with that colorless, hypocritical face of his drawn out long like an accordion; but I know he grins all the way down stairs, and is glad I have broken my leg. Was not my evil star in the very zenith when I ran up to town to attend that dinner at Delmonico's 7 I did n’t come up altogether for that. It was partly to buy Frank Livingstone's roan mare Margot. And now I shall not be able to sit in the saddle these two months. I’ll send the mare down to you at The Pines, – is that the name of the place 2 Old Dillon fancies that I have something on my mind. He drives me wild with lemons. Lemons for a mind diseased Nonsense. I am only as restless as the devil under this con- finement, — a thing I’m not used to. Take a MARJORIE DAW. 17 man who has never had so much as a headache or a toothacho in his life, strap one of his legs in a section of water-spout, keep him in a room in the city for weeks, with the hot weather turned on, and then expect him to smile and purr and be happy! It is preposterous. I can’t be cheer- ful or calm. Your letter is the first consoling thing I have had since my disaster, ten days ago. It really cheered me up for half an hour. Send me a screed, Ned, as often as you can, if you love me. Anything will do. Write me more about that little girl in the hammock. That was very pretty, all that about the Dresden china shep- herdess and the pond-lily; the imagery a little mixed, perhaps, but very pretty. I did n’t sup- pose you had so much sentimental furniture in your upper story. It shows how one may be familiar for years with the reception-room of his neighbor, and never suspect what is directly un- der his mansard. I supposed your loft stuffed with dry legal parchments, mortgages and affi- davits; you take down a package of manuscript, and lo! there are lyrics and sonnets and canzo- nettas. You really have a graphic descriptive B 18 MARJORIE DAW. touch, Edward Delaney, and I suspect you of anonymous love-tales in the magazines. I shall be a bear until I hear from you again. Tell me all about your pretty inconnue across the road. What is her name 7 Who is she 7 Who’s her father ? Where's her mother ? Who’s her lover ? You cannot imagine how this will oc- cupy me. The more trifling the better. My imprisonment has weakened me intellectually to such a degree that I find your epistolary gifts quite considerable. I am passing into my second childhood. In a week or two I shall take to India-rubber rings and prongs of coral. A silver cup, with an appropriate inscription, would be a delicate attention on your part. In the mean time, write 20 MARJORIE DAW. eight months of the twelve; the rest of the year in Baltimore and Washington. The New England winter too many for the old gentleman. The daughter is called Marjorie, – Marjorie Daw. Sounds odd at first, does n’t it ! But after you say it over to yourself half a dozen times, you like it. There’s a pleasing quaintness to it, something prim and violet-like. Must be a nice sort of girl to be called Marjorie Daw. I had mine host of The Pines in the witness- box last night, and drew the foregoing testimony from him. He has charge of Mr. Daw’s vege- table-garden, and has known the family these thirty years. Of course I shall make the ac- quaintance of my neighbors before many days. It will be next to impossible for me not to meet Mr. Daw or Miss Daw in some of my walks. The young lady has a favorite path to the sea- beach. I shall intercept her some morning, and touch my hat to her. Then the princess will bend her fair head to me with courteous sur- prise not unmixed with haughtiness. Will snub me, in fact. All this for thy sake, O Pasha of the Snapt Axle-tree! . . . . How oddly things fall out! Ten minutes ago I was called down to the MARJORIE DAW. 21 parlor, – you know the kind of parlors in farm- houses on the coast, a sort of amphibious parlor, with sea-shells on the mantel-piece and spruce branches in the chimney-place, — where I found my father and Mr. Daw doing the antique polite to each other. He had come to pay his respects to his new neighbors. Mr. Daw is a tall, slim gentleman of about fifty-five, with a florid face and snow-white mustache and side-whiskers. Looks like Mr. Dombey, or as Mr. Dombey would have looked if he had served a few years in the British Army. Mr. Daw was a colonel in the late war, commanding the regiment in which his son was a lieutenant. Plucky old boy, back- bone of New Hampshire granite. Before taking his leave, the colonel delivered himself of an in- vitation as if he were issuing a general order. Miss Daw has a few friends coming, at 4 P. M., to play croquet on the lawn (parade-ground) and have tea (cold rations) on the piazza. Will we honor them with our company? (or be sent to the guard-house.) My father declines on the plea of ill-health. My father's son bows with as much suavity as he knows, and accepts. In my next I shall have something to tell you. 22 MARJORIE DAW. I shall have seen the little beauty face to face. I have a presentiment, Jack, that this Daw is a rara avis J. Keep up your spirits, my boy, until I write you another letter, Hand send me along word how 's your leg. MARJORIE DAW. - 23 W. EDWARD DELANEY To John FLEMMING. August 13, -. THE party, my dear Jack, was as dreary as possible. A lieutenant of the navy, the rector of the Episcopal church at Stillwater, and a so- ciety swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked as if he had swallowed a couple of his buttons, and found the bullion rather indigestible; the rector was a pensive youth, of the daffydowndilly sort; and the swell from Nahant was a very weak tidal wave indeed. The women were much better, as they always are; the two Miss Kings- burys of Philadelphia, staying at the Sea-shell House, two bright and engaging girls. But Marjorie Daw! The company broke up soon after tea, and I remained to smoke a cigar with the colonel on the piazza. It was like seeing a picture to see Miss Marjorie hovering around the old soldier, and doing a hundred gracious little things for 24 MARJORIE DAW. him. She brought the cigars and lighted the tapers with her own delicate fingers, in the most enchanting fashion. As we sat there, she came and went in the summer twilight, and seemed, with her white dress and pale gold hair, like some lovely phantom that had sprung into exist- ence out of the smoke-wreaths. If she had melted into air, like the statue of Galatea in the play, I should have been more sorry than surprised. It was easy to perceive that the old colonel worshipped her, and she him. I think the rela- tion between an elderly father and a daughter just blooming into womanhood the most beau- tiful possible. There is in it a subtile sentiment that cannot exist in the case of mother and daughter, or that of son and mother. But this is getting into deep water. I sat with the Daws until half past ten, and saw the moon rise on the sea. The ocean, that had stretched motionless and black against the horizon, was changed by magic into a broken field of glittering ice, interspersed with marvel- lous silvery fjords. In the far distance the Isles of Shoals loomed up like a group of huge bergs drifting down on us. The Polar Regions in a MARJORIE DAW. 25 June thaw It was exceedingly fine. What did we talk about 2 We talked about the weather — and you ! The weather has been disagreeable for several days past, — and so have you. I glided from one topic to the other very natu- rally. I told my friends of your accident; how it had frustrated all our summer plans, and what our plans were. I played quite a spirited solo on the fibula. Then I described you; or, rather, I did n’t. I spoke of your amiability, of your patience under this severe affliction; of your touching gratitude when Dillon brings you lit- tle presents of fruit; of your tenderness to your sister Fanny, whom you would not allow to stay in town to nurse you, and how you hero- ically sent her back to Newport, preferring to remain alone with Mary, the cook, and your man Watkins, to whom, by the way, you were devotedly attached. If you had been there, Jack, you would n’t have known yourself. I should have excelled as a criminal lawyer, if I had not turned my attention to a different branch of jurisprudence. Miss Marjorie asked all manner of leading ques- tions concerning you. It did not occur to me 2 26 MARJORIE DAW. then, but it struck me forcibly afterwards, that she evinced a singular interest in the conversa- tion. When I got back to my room, I recalled how eagerly she leaned forward, with her full, snowy throat in strong moonlight, listening to what I said. Positively, I think I made her like you ! Miss Daw is a girl whom you would like im- mensely, I can tell you that. A beauty without affectation, a high and tender nature, — if one can read the soul in the face. And the old colo- nel is a noble character, too. I am glad the Daws are such pleasant people. The Pines is an isolated spot, and my resources are few. I fear I should have found life here somewhat monotonous before long, with no other society than that of my excellent sire. It is true, I might have made a target of the defenceless invalid; but I have n’t a taste for artillery, moi. MARJORIE DAW. 27 WI. John FLEMMING To Edward DELANEY. August 17,-. FoR a man who has n’t a taste for artillery, it occurs to me, my friend, you are keeping up a pretty lively fire on my inner works. But go on. Cynicism is a small brass field-piece that eventu- ally bursts and kills the artilleryman. You may abuse me as much as you like, and I’ll not complain; for I don’t know what I should do without your letters. They are curing me. I have n’t hurled anything at Watkins since last Sunday, partly because I have grown more amiable under your teaching, and partly because Watkins captured my ammunition one night, and carried it off to the library. He is rapidly losing the habit he had acquired of dodging whenever I rub my ear, or make any slight motion with my right arm. He is still suggestive of the wine- cellar, however. You may break, you may shat- MARJORIE DAW. 29 - smell in the air. I picture the colonel smoking his cheroot on the piazza. I send you and Miss Daw off on afternoon rambles along the beach. Sometimes I let you stroll with her under the elms in the moonlight, for you are great friends by this time, I take it, and see each other every day. I know your ways and your manners' Then I fall into a truculent mood, and would like to destroy somebody. Have you noticed anything in the shape of a lover hanging around the colonial Lares and Penates ? Does that lieu- tenant of the horse-marines or that young Still- water parson visit the house much Not that I am pining for news of them, but any gossip of the kind would be in order. I wonder, Ned, you don’t fall in love with Miss Daw. I am ripe to do it myself. Speaking of photographs, could n’t you manage to slip one of her cartes-de-visite from her album, - she must have an album, you know, - and send it to me? I will return it before it could be missed. That’s a good fellow ! Did the mare arrive safe and sound Ž It will be a capital animal this autumn for Central Park. O—my leg 7 I forgot about my leg. It 's better. 30 MARJORIE DAW. VII. EDWARD DELANEY To John FLEMMING, August 20, −. YoU are correct in your surmises. I am on the most friendly terms with our neighbors. The colonel and my father smoke their afternoon ci- gar together in our sitting-room or on the piazza opposite, and I pass an hour or two of the day or the evening with the daughter. I am more and more struck by the beauty, modesty, and intelli- gence of Miss Daw. - You ask me why I do not fall in love with her. I will be frank, Jack: I have thought of that. She is young, rich, accomplished, uniting in her- self more attractions, mental and personal, than I can recall in any girl of my acquaintance; but she lacks the something that would be necessary to inspire in me that kind of interest. Possess- ing this unknown quantity, a woman neither beautiful nor wealthy nor very young could bring me to her feet. But not Miss Daw. If we were MARJORIE DAW. 31 shipwrecked together on an uninhabited island, —let me suggest a tropical island, for it costs no more to be picturesque, – I would build her a bamboo hut, I would fetch her bread-fruit and cocoanuts, I would fry yams for her, I would lure the ingenuous turtle and make her nour- ishing soups, but I would n’t make love to her, — not under eighteen months. I would like to have her for a sister, that I might shield her and counsel her, and spend half my income on thread- laces and camel's-hair shawls. (We are off the island now.) If such were not my feeling, there would still be an obstacle to my loving Miss Daw. A greater misfortune could scarcely be- fall me than to love her. Flemming, I am about to make a revelation that will astonish you. I may be all wrong in my premises and consequently in my conclusions; but you shall judge. That night when I returned to my room after the croquet party at the Daws', and was think- ing over the trivial events of the evening, I was suddenly impressed by the air of eager attention with which Miss Daw had followed my account of your accident. I think I mentioned this to you. Well, the next morning, as I went to mail MARJORIE DAW. 33 certainly as strange. You can conjecture how that passage in your letter of Friday startled me. Is it possible, then, that two people who have never met, and who are hundreds of miles apart, can exert a magnetic influence on each other? I have read of such psychological phenomena, but never credited them. I leave the solution of the problem to you. As for myself, all other things being favorable, it would be impossible for me to fall in love with a woman who listens to me only when I am talking of my friend! I am not aware that any one is paying marked attention to my fair neighbor. The lieutenant of the navy — he is stationed at Rivermouth — sometimes drops in of an evening, and some- times the rector from Stillwater; the lieutenant the oftener. He was there last night. I would not be surprised if he had an eye to the heiress; but he is not formidable. Mistress Daw carries a neat little spear of irony, and the honest lieu- tenant seems to have a particular facility for impaling himself on the point of it. He is not dangerous, I should say; though I have known a woman to satirize a man for years, and marry him after all. Decidedly, the lowly rector is not 2 * c 34 MARJORIE DAW. dangerous; yet, again, who has not seen Cloth of Frieze victorious in the lists where Cloth of Gold went down 2 As to the photograph. There is an exquisite ivorytype of Marjorie, in passe-partout, on the drawing-room mantel-piece. It would be missed at once, if taken. I would do anything reason- able for you, Jack; but I’ve no burning desire to be hauled up before the local justice of the peace, on a charge of petty larceny. P. S.–Enclosed is a spray of mignonette, which I advise you to treat tenderly. Yes, we talked of you again last night, as usual. It is becoming a little dreary for me. MARJORIE DAW. 35 VIII. EDWARD DELANEY To John FLEMMING. August 22, —. YoUR letter in reply to my last has occupied my thoughts all the morning. I do not know what to think. Do you mean to say that you are seriously half in love with a woman whom you have never seen, - with a shadow, a chi- mera 7 for what else can Miss Daw be to you? I do not understand it at all. I understand neither you nor her. You are a couple of ethe- real beings moving in finer air than I can breathe with my commonplace lungs. Such delicacy of sentiment is something I admire without com- prehending. I am bewildered. I am of the earth earthy, and I find myself in the incongru- OuS position of having to do with mere souls, with natures so finely tempered that I run some risk of shattering them in my awkwardness. I am as Caliban among the spirits! Reflecting on your letter, I am not sure it is MARJORIE DAW. 37 cence. Then a silence fell upon her; and then she became suddenly gay. That keenness which I enjoyed so much when it was exercised on the lieutenant was not so satisfactory directed against myself. Miss Daw has great sweetness of disposition, but she can be disagreeable. She is like the young lady in the rhyme, with the curl on her forehead, “When she is good, - She is very, very good, And when she is bad, she is horrid . " I kept to my resolution, however; but on the return home I relented, and talked of your marel Miss Daw is going to try a side-saddle on Margot some morning. The animal is a trifle too light for my weight. By the by, I nearly forgot to say Miss Daw sat for a picture yesterday to a Rivermouth artist. If the negative turns out well, I am to have a copy. So our ends will be accomplished without crime. I wish, though, I could send you the ivorytype in the drawing- room; it is cleverly colored, and would give you an idea of her hair and eyes, which of course the other will not. No, Jack, the spray of mignonette did not 38 MARJORIE DAW. come from me. A man of twenty-eight does n’t enclose flowers in his letters—to another man. But don't attach too much significance to the circumstance. She gives sprays of mignonette to the rector, sprays to the lieutenant. She has even given a rose from her bosom to your slave. It is her jocund nature to scatter flowers, like Spring. If my letters sometimes read disjointedly, you must understand that I never finish one at a sitting, but write at intervals, when the mood is On Ime. The mood is not on me now. MARJORIE DAW. 39 IX. EDWARD DELANEY To John FLEMMING. August 23, -. I HAVE just returned from the strangest in- terview with Marjorie. She has all but con- fessed to me her interest in you. But with what modesty and dignity | Her words elude my pen as I attempt to put them on paper; and, indeed, it was not so much what she said as her manner; and that I cannot reproduce. Perhaps it was of a piece with the strangeness of this whole business, that she should tacitly acknowl- edge to a third party the love she feels for a man she has never beheld ! But I have lost, through your aid, the faculty of being surprised. I ac- cept things as people do in dreams. Now that I am again in my room, it all appears like an illusion, — the black masses of Rembrandtish shadow under the trees, the fire-flies whirling in Pyrrhic dances among. the shrubbery, the sea over there, Marjorie sitting on the hammock! 40 - MARJORIE DAW. It is past midnight, and I am too sleepy to write more. Thursday Morning. My father has suddenly taken it into his head to spend a few days at the Shoals. In the mean while you will not hear from me. I see Marjorie walking in the garden with the colonel. I wish I could speak to her alone, but shall probably not have an opportunity before we leave. MARJORIE DAW. 41 X. EDWARD TELANEY To John FLEMMING. August 28, -. YoU were passing into your second childhood, were you? Your intellect was so reduced that . my epistolary gifts seemed quite considerable to you, did they 2 I rise superior to the sarcasm in your favor of the 11th instant, when I notice that five days’ silence on my part is sufficient to throw you into the depths of despondency. We returned only this morning from Apple- dore, that enchanted island, - at four dollars per day. I find on my desk three letters from you! Evidently there is no lingering doubt in gour mind as to the pleasure I derive from your correspondence. These letters are undated, but in what I take to be the latest are two passages that require my consideration. You will pardon my candor, dear Flemming, but the conviction forces itself upon me that as your leg grows stronger your head becomes weaker. You ask MARJORIE DAW. 43 > way. She stopped at the door a moment, this afternoon, in the carriage; she had been over to Rivermouth for her pictures. Unluckily the photographer had spilt some acid on the plate, and she was obliged to give him another sitting. I have an intuition that something is troubling Marjorie. She had an abstracted air not usual with her. However, it may be only my fancy. . . . . I end this, leaving several things unsaid, to accompany my father on one of those long walks which are now his chief medicine, – and mine ! z 44 MARJORIE DAW. XI. EDWARD DELANEY To JoHN FLEMMING. August 29, -. I write in great haste to tell you what has taken place here since my letter of last night. I am in the utmost perplexity. Only one thing is plain, – you must not dream of coming to The Pines. Marjorie has told her father every- thing! I saw her for a few minutes, an hour ago, in the garden ; and, as near as I could gather from her confused statement, the facts are these: Lieutenant Bradly—that’s the naval officer stationed at Rivermouth — has been pay- ing court to Miss Daw for some time past, but not so much to her liking as to that of the col- onel, who it seems is an old friend of the young gentleman's father. Yesterday (I knew she was in some trouble when she drove up to our gate) the colonel spoke to Marjorie of Bradly,– urged his suit, I infer. Marjorie expressed her dislike for the lieutenant --" "aracteristic frankness, MLARJORIE DAW. 45 y and finally confessed to her father — well, I really do not know what she confessed. It must have been the vaguest of confessions, and must have sufficiently puzzled the colonel. At any rate, it exasperated him. I suppose I am im- plicated in the matter, and that the colonel feels bitterly towards me. I do not see why: I have carried no messages between you and Miss Daw; I have behaved with the greatest discretion. I can find no flaw anywhere in my proceeding. I do not see that anybody has done anything, - except the colonel himself. It is probable, nevertheless, that the friendly relations between the two houses will be broken off. “A plague o, both your houses,” say you. I will keep you informed, as well as I can: of what occurs over the Way. We shall remain here until the second Week in September. Stay where you are, or, at all events, do not dream of joining me. . . . . Colonel Daw is sitting on the piazza looking rather wicked. ' have not seen Marjorie since I parted with her in the garden. — — 46 MARJORIE DAW. XII. EDWARD DELANEY To THoMAs DILLON, M. D., MADI- soN SQUARE, NEW YORK. August 30, −. MY DEAR DoCTOR: If you have any influence over Flemming, I beg of you to exert it to pre- vent his coming to this place at present. There are circumstances, which I will explain to you before long, that make it of the first importance that he should not come into this neighborhood. His appearance here, I speak advisedly, would be disastrous to him. In urging him to remain in New York, or to go to some inland resort, you will be doing him and me a real service. Of course you will not mention my name in this connection. You know me well enough, my dear doctor, to be assured that, in begging your secret co-operation, I have reasons that will meet your entire approval when they are made plain to you. We shall return to town on the 15th of next month, and my first duty will be to MARJORIE DAW. 47 present myself at your hospitable door and sat- isfy your curiosity, if I have excited it. My father, I am glad to state, has so greatly im- proved that he can no longer be regarded as an invalid. With great esteem, I am, etc., etc. MARJORIE DAW. 49 2 no condition to take so long a journey. He thinks the air of the coast would be the worst thing possible for you; that you ought to go inland, if anywhere. Be advised by me. Be advised by Dillon. 52 MARJORIE DAW. XV. THE ARRIVAL. ON the second of September, 187—, as the down express due at 3.40 left the station at Hampton, a young man, leaning on the shoulder of a ser- vant, whom he addressed as Watkins, stepped from the platform into a hack, and requested to be driven to “The Pines.” On arriving at the gate of a modest farm-house, a few miles from the station, the young man descended with diffi- culty from the carriage, and, casting a hasty glance across the road, seemed much impressed by some peculiarity in the landscape. Again leaning on the shoulder of the person Watkins, he walked to the door of the farm-house and in- quired for Mr. Edward Delaney. He was in- formed by the aged man who answered his knock, that Mr. Edward Delaney had gone to Boston the day before, but that Mr. Jonas Delaney was with- in. This information did not appear satisfactory MARJORIE DAW. 53 to the stranger, who inquired if Mr. Edward De- laney had left any message for Mr. John Flem- ming. There was a letter for Mr. Flemming, if he were that person. After a brief absence the aged man reappeared with a Letter. 54 MARJORIE DAW. XVI. EDWARD DELANEY To John FLEMMING. September 1, -. I am horror-stricken at what I have done ! When I began this correspondence I had no other purpose than to relieve the tedium of your sick- chamber. Dillon told me to cheer you up. I tried to. I thought you entered into the spirit of the thing. I had no idea, until within a few days, that you were taking matters au sérieuz. What can I say? I am in sackcloth and ashes. I am a pariah, a dog of an outcast. I tried to make a little romance to interest you, something soothing and idyllic, and, by Jovel I have done it only too well ! My father does n’t know a word of this, so don’t jar the old gentleman any more than you can help. I fly from the wrath to come —when you arrive! For O, dear Jack, there is n’t any colonial mansion on the other side of the road, there is n’t any piazza, there is n’t any hammock,-there is n’t any Marjorie Daw!! • A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. I. T five o'clock on the morning of the tenth of July, 1860, the front door of a certain house on Anchor Street, in the ancient seaport town of Rivermouth, might have been observed to open with great caution. This door, as the least imaginative reader may easily conjecture, did not open itself. It was opened by Miss Mar- garet Callaghan, who immediately closed it softly behind her, paused for a few seconds with an embarrassed air on the stone step, and then, throwing a furtive glance up at the second-story windows, passed hastily down the street towards the river, keeping close to the fences and garden walls on her left. There was a ghostlike stealthiness to Miss Mar- garet's movements, though there was nothing 56* A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. whatever of the ghost about Miss Margaret her- self. She was a plump, short person, no longer young, with coal-black hair growing low on the forehead, and a round face that would have been nearly meaningless if the features had not been emphasized—italicized, so to speak — by the smallpox. Moreover, the brilliancy of her toilet would have rendered any ghostly hypoth- esis untenable. Mrs. Solomon — we refer to the dressiest Mrs. Solomon, which ever one that was —in all her glory was not arrayed like Miss Margaret on that eventful summer morning. She wore a light-green, shot-silk frock, a blaz- ing red shawl, and a yellow crape bonnet pro- fusely decorated with azure, orange, and magenta artificial flowers. In her hand she carried a white parasol. The newly risen sun, ricocheting from the bosom of the river and striking point- blank on the top-knot of Miss Margaret's gor- geousness, made her an imposing spectacle in the quiet street of that Puritan village. But, in spite of the bravery of her apparel, she stole guiltily along by garden walls and fences until she reached a small, dingy framehouse near the wharves, in the darkened doorway of which she A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 57 quenched her burning splendor, if so bold a figure is permissible. Three quarters of an hour passed. The sun- shine moved slowly up Anchor Street, fingered noiselessly the well-kept brass knockers on either side, and drained the heeltaps of dew which had been left from the revels of the fairies overnight in the cups of the morning-glories. Not a soul was stirring yet in this part of the town, though the Rivermouthians are such early birds that not a worm may be said to escape them. By and by one of the brown Holland shades at one of the upper windows of the Bilkins mansion — the house from which Miss Margaret had emerged— was drawn up, and old Mr. Bilkins in spiral nightcap looked out on the sunny street. Not a living creature was to be seen, save the dissi- pated family cat, — a very Lovelace of a cat that was not allowed a night-key, — who was sitting on the curbstone opposite, waiting for the hall door to be opened. Three quarters of an hour, we repeat, had passed, when Mrs. Margaret O'Rouke, née Callaghan, issued from the small, dingy house by the river, and regained the door- step of the Bilkins mansion in the same stealthy fashion in which she had left it. 58. A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. Not to prolong a mystery that must already oppress the reader, Mr. Bilkins's cook had, after the manner of her kind, stolen out of the prem- ises before the family were up, and got herself married, - surreptitiously and artfully married, as if matrimony were an indictable offence. And something of an offence it was in this instance. In the first place, Margaret Callaghan had lived nearly twenty years with the Bilkins family, and the old people — there were no chil- dren now — had rewarded this long service by taking Margaret into their affections. It was a piece of subtile ingratitude for her to marry without admitting the worthy couple to her con- fidence. In the next place, Margaret had mar- ried a man some eighteen years younger than herself. That was the young man's lookout, you say. We hold it was Margaret that was to blame. What does a young blade of twenty-two know? Not half so much as he thinks he does. His exhaustless ignorance at that age is a dis- covery which is left for him to make in his prime. “Curly gold locks cover foolish brains, Billing and cooing is all your cheer; 3 * . A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 59 Sighing and singing of midnight strains, Under Bonnybell's window panes, – Wait till you come to Forty Year !” In one sense Margaret's husband had come to forty year, – she was forty to a day. Mrs. Margaret O'Rouke, with the baddish cat following closely at her heels, entered the Bilkins mansion, reached her chamber in the attic with- out being intercepted, and there laid aside her finery. Two or three times, while arranging her more humble attire, she paused to take a look at the marriage certificate, which she had deposited between the leaves of her Prayer-Book, and on each occasion held that potent document upside down; for Margaret's literary culture was of the severest order, and excluded the art of reading. The breakfast was late that morning. As Mrs. O'Rouke set the coffee-urn in front of Mrs. Bilkins and flanked Mr. Bilkins with the broiled mackerel and the buttered toast, Mrs. O'Rouke's conscience smote her. She afterwards declared that when she saw the two sitting there so inno- cent-like, not dreaming of the comether she had put upon them, she secretly and unbeknownt let a few tears fall into the cream-pitcher. Whether or 60 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. not it was this material expression of Margaret's penitence that spoiled the coffee, does not admit of inquiry; but the coffee was bad. In fact, the whole breakfast was a comedy of errors. It was a blessed relief to Margaret when the meal was ended. She retired in a cold perspira- tion to the penetralia of the kitchen, and it was remarked by both Mr. and Mrs. Bilkins that those short flights of vocalism, - apropos of the personal charms of one Kate Kearney who lived on the banks of Killarney, - which ordinarily issued from the direction of the scullery, were unheard that forenoon. The town clock was striking eleven, and the antiquated timepiece on the staircase (which never spoke but it dropped pearls and crystals, like the fairy in the story) was lisping the hour, when there came three tremendous knocks at the street door. Mrs. Bilkins, who was dusting the brass-mounted chronometer in the hall, stood transfixed with arm uplifted. The admirable old lady had for years been carrying on a guerilla warfare with itinerant vendors of furniture pol- ish, and pain-killer, and crockery cement, and the like. The effrontery of the triple knock con- A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 61 vinced her the enemy was at her gates, – pos- sibly that dissolute creature with twenty-four sheets of note-paper and twenty-four envelopes for fifteen cents. Mrs. Bilkins swept across the hall, and opened the door with a jerk. The suddenness of the movement was apparently not anticipated by the person outside, who, with one arm stretched fee- bly towards the receding knocker, tilted gently forward, and rested both hands on the threshold in an attitude which was probably common enough with our ancestors of the Simian period, but could never have been considered graceful. By an effort that testified to the excellent con- dition of his muscles, the person instantly righted himself, and stood swaying unsteadily on his toes and heels, and smiling rather vaguely on Mrs. Bilkins. It was a slightly built, but well-knitted young fellow in the not unpicturesque garb of our marine service. His woollen cap, pitched for- ward at an acute angle with his nose, showed the back part of a head thatched with short, yellow hair, which had broken into innumerable curls of painful tightness. On his ruddy cheeks A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 63 fascinations for all seafaring folk; and when there was a man-of-war in port the rat-tat-tat of that knocker would frequently startle the quiet neighborhood long after midnight. There ap- peared to be an occult understanding between it and the blue-jackets. Years ago there was a young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins, – a sad losel, we fear, – who ran away to try his for- tunes before the mast, and fell overboard in a gale off Hatteras. “Lost at sea,” says the chubby marble slab in the Old South Burying-Ground, “ attat 18.” Perhaps that is why no blue-jacket, sober or drunk, was ever repulsed from the door of the Bilkins mansion. Of course Mrs. Bilkins had her taste in the matter, and preferred them sober. But as this could not always be, she tempered her wind, so to speak, to the shorn lamb. The flushed, pre- maturely old face that now looked up at her moved the good lady’s pity. - “What do you want?” she asked kindly. “Me Wife.” “There 's no wife for you here,” said Mrs. Bilkins, somewhat taken aback. “His wife ” she thought; “it’s a mother the poor boy stands in need of.” A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 67 “Misther Donnehugh,” said Mr. O'Rouke with great dignity, “ye ’re dhrunk agin.” Mr. Donnehugh, who had not taken more than thirteen ladles of rum-punch, disdained to reply directly. “He’s a dacent lad enough,”—this to Mrs. Bilkins, –“but his head is wake. Whin he 's had two sups o' whiskey he belaves he's dhrank a bar’l full. A gill o' wather out of a jimmy- john 'd fuddle him, mum.” “Is n’t there anybody to look after him 7” “No, mum, he 's an orphan; his father and mother live in the owld counthry, an’ a fine hale owld couple they are.” “Has n’t he any family in the town —” “Sure, mum, he has a family; was n’t lie married this blessed mornin’?” “He said so.” “Indade, thin, he was, – the pore divil l’” “And the – the person ?” inquired Mrs. Bilkins. “Is it the wife ye mane?” “Yes, the wife: where is she’” “Well thin, mum,” said Mr. Donnehugh, “it’s yerself that can answer that.” 68 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. “I?” exclaimed Mrs. Bilkins. “Good heav- ens ! this man 's as crazy as the other ” “Begorra, if anybody’s crazy it’s Larry, for it 's Larry has married Margaret.” “What Margaret : * cried Mrs. Bilkins with a start. “Margaret Callaghan, sure.” “Our Margaret? Do you mean to say that oUR Margaret has married that—that good-for- nothing, inebriated wretch ” “It’s a civil tongue the owld lady has, any- way,” remarked Mr. O'Rouke, critically, from the scraper. - - Mrs. Bilkins's voice during the latter part of the colloquy had been pitched in a high key: it rung through the hall and penetrated to the kitchen, where Margaret was thoughtfully wiping the breakfast things. She paused with a half- dried saucer in her hand, and listened. In a moment more she stood, with bloodless face and limp figure, leaning against the banister, behind Mrs. Bilkins. “Is it there ye are, me jew'11" cries Mr. O'Rouke, discovering her. Mrs. Bilkins wheeled upon Margaret. A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 69 “Margaret Callaghan, is that thing your husband 2 ” “Ye-yes, mum,” faltered Mrs. O'Rouke, with a woful lack of spirit. “Then take it away !” cried Mrs. Bilkins. Margaret, with a slight flush on either cheek, glided past Mrs. Bilkins, and the heavy oak door closed with a bang, as the gates of Paradise must have closed of old upon Adam and Eve. “Come !” said Margaret, taking Mr. O'Rouke by the hand; and the two wandered forth upon their wedding-journey down Anchor Street, with all the world before them where to choose. They chose to halt at the small, shabby tenement-house by the river, through the doorway of which the bridal pair disappeared with a reeling, eccentric gait; for Mr. O'Rouke's intoxication seemed to have run down his elbow, and communicated itself to Margaret. O Hymen who burnest precious gums and Scented woods in thy torch at the melting of aristocratic hearts, with what a pitiful penny-dip thou hast lighted up our matter-of-fact romance! A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 71 cancel that clause supposed to exist in his will bequeathing two first-mortgage bonds of the Squedunk R. R. Co. to a certain faithful servant. In the mean while she would add each month to her store in the coffers of the Rivermouth Sav- ings Bank; for Calypso had a neat sum to her credit on the books of that provident institution. But this could not be now. The volatile bride- groom had upset the wisely conceived plan, and “all the fat was in the fire,” as Margaret philo- sophically put it. Mr. O'Rouke had been fully instructed in the part he was to play, and, to do him justice, had honestly intended to play it; but destiny was against him. It may be observed that destiny and Mr. O'Rouke were not on very friendly terms. After the ceremony had been performed and Margaret had stolen back to the Bilkins mansion, as related, Mr. O'Rouke with his own skilful hands had brewed a noble punch for the wedding guests. Standing at the head of the table and stirring the pungent mixture in a small wash-tub purchased for the occasion, Mr. O'Rouke came out in full flower. His flow of wit, as he replen- ished the glasses, was as racy and seemingly as 72 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. inexhaustible as the punch itself. When Mrs. McLaughlin held out her glass, inadvertently up- side down, for her sixth ladleful, Mr. O'Rouke gallantly declared it should be filled if he had to stand on his head to do it. The elder Miss O'Leary whispered to Mrs. Connally that Mr. O'Rouke was “a perfic gintleman,” and the men in a body pronounced him a bit of the raal sham- rock. If Mr. O'Rouke was happy in brewing a punch, he was happier in dispensing it, and hap- piest of all in drinking a great deal of it himself. He toasted Mrs. Finnigan, the landlady, and the late lamented Finnigan, the father, whom he had never seen, and Miss Biddy Finnigan, the daugh- ter, and a young toddling Finnigan, who was at large in shockingly scant raiment. He drank to the company individually and collectively, drank to the absent, drank to a tin-pedler who chanced to pass the window, and indeed was in that pro- pitiatory mood when he would have drunk to the health of each separate animal that came out of the Ark. It was in the midst of the confusion and applause which followed his song, “The Wearing of the Grane,” that Mr. O'Rouke, the punch being all gone, withdrew unobserved and 76 A RIVERMoUTH Rom ANCE. “Divil a sthroke o’ work I’ll do,” said Mr. O'Rouke, “whin we can live at aise on our earnin's. Who'd be afther frettin' hisself, wid money in the bank How much is it, Peggy darlint * * And divil a stroke more of work did he do. He lounged down on the wharves, and, with his short clay pipe stuck between his lips and his hands in his pockets, stared off at the sail-boats on the river. He sat on the doorstep of the Finnigan domicile, and plentifully chaffed the passers-by. Now and then, when he could whee- dle some fractional currency out of Margaret, he spent it like a crown-prince at The Wee Drop around the corner. With that fine magnetism which draws together birds of a feather, he shortly drew about him all the ne'er-do-weels of Rivermouth. It was really wonderful what an unsuspected lot of them there was. From all the frowzy purlieus of the town they crept forth into the sunlight to array themselves under the ban- ner of the prince of scallawags. It was edifying of a summer afternoon to see a dozen of them sitting in a row, like turtles, on the string-piece of Jedediah Rand's wharf, with their twenty- A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 77 four feet dangling over the water, assisting Mr. O'Rouke in contemplating the islands in the harbor, and upholding the scenery, as it were. The rascal had one accomplishment, he had a heavenly voice, quite in the rough, to be sure, and he played on the violin like an angel. He did not know one note from another, but he played in a sweet natural way, just as Orpheus must have played, by ear. The drunker he was the more pathos and humor he wrung from the old violin, his sole piece of personal property. He had a singular fancy for getting up at two or three o’clock in the morning, and playing by an open casement. All the dogs in the immediate neighborhood and innumerable dogs in the dis- tance would join to swell the chorus on a scale that would have satisfied Mr. Gilmore himself. Unfortunately Mr. O'Rouke's bétises were not always of so innocent a complexion. On one or two occasions, through an excess of animal and other spirits, he took to breaking windows in the town. Among his nocturnal feats he accom- plished the demolition of the glass in the door of The Wee Drop. Now, breaking windows in Rivermouth is an amusement not wholly discon- A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 79 comforts which are necessities to the old, and wished in his soul that he had her back again. Who could make a gruel, when he was ill, or cook a steak, when he was well, like Margaret? So, meeting her one morning at the fish-market, —for Mr. O'Rouke had long since given over the onerous labor of catching cunners, – he spoke to her kindly, and asked her how she liked the change in her life, and if Mr. O'Rouke was good to her. “Troth, thin, sur,” said Margaret, with a short dry laugh, “he 's the divil’s own l’” Margaret was thin and careworn, and her laugh had the mild gayety of champagne not properly corked. These things were apparent even to Mr. Bilkins, who was not a shrewd ob- server. With a duplicity quite foreign to his nature, he gradually drew from her the true state of affairs. Mr. O'Rouke was a very bad case indeed; he did nothing towards her sup- port; he was almost constantly drunk; the little money she had laid by was melting away, and would not last until winter. Mr. O'Rouke was perpetually coming home with a sprained ankle, or a bruised shoulder, or a broken head. He 80 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. had broken most of the furniture in his festive hours, including the cooking-stove. “In short,” as Mr. Bilkins said in relating the matter after- wards to Mrs. Bilkins, “he had broken all those things which he should n’t have broken, and failed to break the one thing he ought to have broken long ago, - his neck, namely.” The revelation which startled Mr. Bilkins most was this: in spite of all, Margaret loved Larry with the whole of her warm Irish heart. Further than keeping the poor creature up wait- ing for him until ever so much o'clock at night, it did not appear that he treated her with per- sonal cruelty. If he had beaten her, she would have worshipped him ; as it was, she merely loved the ground he trod upon. Revolving Margaret's troubles in his thoughts as he walked homeward, Mr. Bilkins struck upon a plan by which he could help her. When this plan was laid before Mrs. Bilkins, she opposed it with a vehemence that convinced him she had made up her mind to adopt it. “Never, never will I have that ungrateful Woman under this roof l’’ cried Mrs. Bilkins; and accordingly the next day Mr. and Mrs. A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 81 O'Rouke took up their abode in the Bilkins mansion, — Margaret as cook, and Larry as gardener. “I’m convanient if the owld gintleman is,” had been Mr. O'Rouke's remark, when the prop- osition was submitted to him. Not that Mr. O'Rouke had the faintest idea of gardening. He did n’t know a tulip from a tomato. He was one of those sanguine people who never hesitate to undertake anything, and are never abashed by their herculean inability. Mr. Bilkins did not look to Margaret's hus- band for any great botanical knowledge; but he was rather surprised one day when Mr. O'Rouke pointed to the triangular bed of lilies-of-the-val- ley, then out of flower, and remarked, “Thim's a nate lot o' purtaties ye ’ve got there, sur.” Mr. Bilkins, we repeat, did not expect much from Mr. O'Rouke's skill in gardening; his pur- pose was to reform the fellow if possible, and in any case to make Margaret's lot easier. Re-established in her old home, Margaret broke into song again, and Mr. O'Rouke himself promised to do very well; morally, we mean, not agriculturally. His ignorance of the simplest 4 * F. 82 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. laws of nature, if nature has any simple laws, and his dense stupidity on every other subject were heavy trials to Mr. Bilkins. Happily Mr. Bilkins was not without a sense of humor, else he would have found Mr. O'Rouke insupportable. Just when the old gentleman's patience was about exhausted, the gardener would commit some atrocity so perfectly comical that his master all but loved him for the moment. “Larry,” said Mr. Bilkins, one breathless af- ternoon in the middle of September, “just see how the thermometer on the back porch stands.” Mr. O'Rouke disappeared, and after a pro- longed absence returned with the monstrous an- nouncement that the thermometer stood at 820 ! Mr. Bilkins looked at the man closely. He was unmistakably sober. “Eight hundred and twenty what?” cried Mr. Bilkins, feeling very warm, as he naturally would in so high a temperature. “Eight hundthred an' twinty degrays, I sup- pose, sur.” “Larry, you’re an idiot.” This was obviously not to Mr. O'Rouke's taste; for he went out and brought the thermometer, A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 83 and, pointing triumphantly to the line of numer- als running parallel with the glass tube, ex- claimed, “Add 'em up yerself, thin ” Perhaps this would not have been amusing if Mr. Bilkins had not spent the greater part of the previous forenoon in initiating Mr. O'Rouke in- to the mysteries of the thermometer. Nothing could make amusing Mr. O'Rouke's method of setting out crocus bulbs. Mr. Bilkins had re- ceived a lot of a very choice variety from Boston, and having a headache that morning, turned over to Mr. O'Rouke the duty of planting them. Though he had never seen a bulb in his life, Larry unblushingly asserted that he had set out thousands for Sir Lucius O'Grady, of O’Grady Castle, “an illegant place intirely, wid tin miles o' garden-walks,” added Mr. O'Rouke, crushing Mr. Bilkins, who boasted only of a few humble flower-beds. The following day he stepped into the garden to see how Larry had done his work. There stood the parched bulbs, carefully arranged in circles and squares on top of the soil. “Did n’t I tell you to set out these bulbs 3 ° cried Mr. Bilkins, wrathfully. 84 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. “An' did n’t I set ’em out 7” expostulated Mr. O'Rouke. “An' ain’t they a settin' there beautiful ?” “But you should have put them into the ground, stupid ” “Is it bury 'em, ye mane : Be jabbers! how could they iver git out agin º Give the little jokers a fair show, Misther Bilkins !” For two weeks Mr. O'Rouke conducted him- self with comparative propriety; that is to say, he rendered himself useless about the place, ap- peared regularly at his meals, and kept sober. Perhaps the hilarious strains of music which sometimes issued at midnight from the upper window of the north gable were not just what a quiet, unostentatious family would desire; but on the whole there was not much to complain of. The third week witnessed a falling off. Though always promptly on hand at the serving out of rations, Mr. O'Rouke did not even make a pre- tence of working in the garden. He would disap- pear mysteriously immediately after breakfast and reappear with supernatural abruptness at dinner. Nobody knew what he did with himself in the interval, until one day he was observed to fall A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 85 out of an apple-tree near the stable. His retreat discovered, he took to the wharves and the alleys in the distant part of the town. It soon became evident that his ways were not the ways of tem- perance, and that all his paths led to The Wee Drop. - - Of course, Margaret tried to keep this from the family. Being a woman, she made excuses for him in her heart. It was a dull life for the lad anyway, and it was worse than him that was leading Larry astray. Hours and hours after the old people had gone to bed, she would sit without a light in the lonely kitchen, listening for that shuffling step along the gravel-walk. Night after night she never closed her eyes, and went about the house the next day with that smooth, impenetrable face behind which women hide their care. One morning found Margaret sitting pale and anxious by the kitchen stove. O'Rouke had not come home at all. Noon came and night, but not Larry. Whenever Mrs. Bilkins approached her that day, Margaret was humming “Kate Kearney” quite merrily. But when her work was done, she stole out at the back gate and 86 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. * went in search of him. She scoured the neigh- borhood like a madwoman. O'Rouke had not been at the Finnigans’. He had not been at The Wee Drop since Monday, and this was Wednesday night. Her heart sunk within her when she failed to find him in the police station. Some dreadful thing had happened to him. She came back to the house with one hand pressed wearily against her cheek. The dawn struggled through the kitchen windows, and fell upon Mar- garet crouched by the stove. She could no longer wear her mask. When Mr. Bilkins came down she confessed that Larry had taken to drinking again, and had not been home for two nights. “Mayhap he ’s drownded hisself,” suggested Margaret, wringing her hands. “Not he,” said Mr. Bilkins; “he does n’t like the taste of water well enough.” “Troth, thin, he does n’t,” reflected Margaret; and the reflection comforted her. “At any rate, I’ll go and look him up after breakfast,” said Mr. Bilkins. And after break- fast, accordingly, Mr. Bilkins sallied forth with the depressing expectation of finding Mr. O'Rouke A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 87 without much difficulty. “Come to think of it,” said the old gentleman to himself, drawing on his white cotton gloves as he walked up Anchor Street, “I don’t want to find him.” 88 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. III. BUT Mr. O'Rouke was not to be found. With amiable cynicism Mr. Bilkins directed his steps in the first instance to the police station, quite confident that a bird of Mr. O'Rouke's plumage would be brought to perch in such a cage. But not so much as a feather of him was discover- able. The Wee Drop was not the only baccha- nalian resort in Rivermouth ; there were five or six other low drinking-shops scattered about town, and through these Mr. Bilkins went con- scientiously. He then explored various blind alleys, known haunts of the missing man, and took a careful survey of the wharves along the river on his way home. He even shook the ap- ple-tree near the stable with a vague hope of bringing down Mr. O'Rouke, but brought down nothing except a few winter apples, which, being both unripe and unsound, were not perhaps bad representatives of the object of his search. That evening a small boy stopped at the door A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 89 of the Bilkins mansion with a straw hat, at once identified as Mr. O'Rouke's, which had been found on Neal’s Wharf. This would have told against another man; but O'Rouke was always leaving his hat on a wharf. Margaret's distress is not to be pictured. She fell back upon and clung to the idea that Larry had drowned him- self, not intentionally, maybe; possibly he had fallen overboard while intoxicated. The late Mr. Buckle has informed us that death by drowning is regulated by laws as invio- lable and beautiful as those of the solar system; that a certain percentage of the earth's popula- tion is bound to drown itself annually, whether it wants to or not. It may be presumed, then, that Rivermouth's proper quota of dead bodies was washed ashore during the ensuing two months. There had been gales off the coast and pleasure parties on the river, and between them they had managed to do a ghastly business. But Mr. O'Rouke failed to appear among the flotsam and jetsam which the receding tides left tangled in the piles of the Rivermouth wharves. This convinced Margaret that Larry had proved a too tempting morsel to some buccaneering shark, or 90 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. had fallen a victim to one of those immense schools of fish which seem to have a yearly appointment with the fishermen on this coast. From that day Margaret never saw a cod or a mackerel brought into the house without an in- voluntary shudder. She averted her head in making up the fish-balls, as if she half dreaded to detect a faint aroma of whiskey about them. And, indeed, why might not a man fall into the sea, be eaten, say, by a halibut, and reappear on the scene of his earthly triumphs and defeats in the non-committal form of hashed fish? “Imperial Caesar, dead, and turn'd to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.” But, perhaps, as the conservative Horatio sug- gests, ’t were to consider too curiously to con- sider so. - Mr. Bilkins had come to adopt Margaret's ex- planation of O’Rouke's disappearance. He was undoubtedly drowned, had most likely drowned himself. The hat picked up on the wharf was strong circumstantial evidence in that direction. But one feature of the case staggered Mr. Bil- kins. O'Rouke's violin had also disappeared. Now, it required no great effort to imagine a man 92 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. Margaret's heart, and filled up its fissures, and smoothed off the sharp angles of its grief; and there was peace upon it. - Not but she sorrowed for Larry at times. But life had a relish to it again; she was free, though she did not look at it in that light; she was hap- pier in a quiet fashion than she had ever been, though she would not have acknowledged it to herself. She wondered that she had the heart to laugh when the ice-man made love to her. Per- "haps she was conscious of something comically incongruous in the warmth of a gentleman who spent all winter in cutting ice, and all summer in dealing it out to his customers. She had not the same excuse for laughing at the baker; yet she laughed still more merrily at him when he pressed her hand over the steaming loaf of brown- bread, delivered every Saturday morning at the scullery door. Both these gentlemen had known Margaret many years,"yet neither of them had valued her very highly until another man came along and married her. A widow, it would ap- pear, is esteemed in some sort as a warranted article, being stamped with the maker's name. There was even a third lover in prospect; for A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 93 according to the gossip of the town, Mr. Donne- hugh was frequently to be seen of a Sunday afternoon standing in the cemetery and regard- ing Mr. O'Rouke's headstone with unrestrained satisfaction. A year had passed away, and certain bits of color blossoming among Margaret's weeds in- dicated that the winter of her mourning was over. The ice-man and the baker were hating each other cordially, and Mrs. Bilkins was daily expecting it would be discovered before night. that Margaret had married one or both of them. But to do Margaret justice, she was faithful in thought and deed to the memory of O’Rouke, — not the O’Rouke who disappeared so strange- ly, but the O’Rouke who never existed. “D’ye think, mum.” she said one day to Mrs. Bilkins, as that lady was adroitly sounding her - on the ice question, —“d’ ye think I’d conde- scind to take up wid the likes o' him, or the baker either, afther sich a man as Larry 7” The rectified and clarified O'Rouke was a per- manent wonder to Mr. Bilkins, who bore up under the bereavement with remarkable resig- nation. 96 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. fast, the constraint and consternation of the Bil- kins family could not have been greater. How was the astounding intelligence to be broken to Margaret? Her explosive Irish nature made the task one of extreme delicacy. Mrs. Bilkins flatly declared herself incapable of undertaking it. Mr. Bilkins, with many misgivings as to his fitness, assumed the duty; for it would never do to have the news sprung upon Margaret suddenly by people outside. As Mrs. O'Rouke was clearing away the break- fast things, Mr. Bilkins, who had lingered near the window with the newspaper in his hand, coughed once or twice in an unnatural way to show that he was not embarrassed, and began to think that maybe it would be best to tell Mar- garet after dinner. Mrs. Bilkins fathomed his thought with that intuition which renders women terrible, and sent across the room an eye-tele- gram to this effect, “Now is your time.” “There 's been another battle down South, Margaret,” said the old gentleman presently, folding up the paper and putting it in his pocket. - “A sea-fight this time.” “Sure, an’ they’re allus fightin’ down there.” . A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 95 His lips opened, and moved inarticulately; then he pointed a rigid finger, in the manner of a guide-board, at a paragraph in the paper, which he held up for Mrs. Bilkins to read over his shoulder. When she had read it she sunk back into her chair without a word, and the two sat contemplating each other as if they had never met before in this world, and were not over- pleased at meeting. The paragraph which produced this singular effect on the aged couple occurred at the end of a column of telegraph despatches giving the de- tails of an unimportant engagement that had just taken place between one of the blockading squad- ron and a Confederate cruiser. The engagement itself does not concern us, but this item from the list of casualties on the Union side has a direct bearing on our marative : — “Larry O’Rouke, seaman, splinter wound in the leg. Not serious.” That splinter flew far. It glanced from Mr. O'Rouke's leg, went plumb through the Bilkins mansion, and knocked over a small marble slab in the Old South Burying-Ground. If a ghost had dropped in familiarly to break- 96 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. fast, the constraint and consternation of the Bil- kins family could not have been greater. How was the astounding intelligence to be broken to Margaret? Her explosive Irish nature made the task one of extreme delicacy. Mrs. Bilkins flatly declared herself incapable of undertaking it. Mr. Bilkins, with many misgivings as to his fitness, assumed the duty; for it would never do to have the news sprung upon Margaret suddenly by people outside. As Mrs. O'Rouke was clearing away the break- fast things, Mr. Bilkins, who had lingered near the window with the newspaper in his hand, coughed once or twice in an unnatural way to show that he was not embarrassed, and began to think that maybe it would be best to tell Mar- garet after dinner. Mrs. Bilkins fathomed his thought with that intuition which renders women terrible, and sent across the room an eye-tele- gram to this effect, “Now is your time.” “There 's been another battle down South, Margaret,” said the old gentleman presently, folding up the paper and putting it in his pocket. - “A sea-fight this time.” “Sure, an’ they’re allus fightin’ down there.” A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 97 “But not always with so little damage. There was only one man wounded on our side.” “Pore man! It’s sorry we oughter be for his wife an’ childer, if he’s got any.” - “Not badly wounded, you will understand, Margaret; not at all seriously wounded; only a splinter in the leg.” “Faith, thin, a splinter in the leg is no pleas- ant thing in itself.” “A mere scratch,” said Mr. Bilkins lightly, as if he were constantly in the habit of going about with a splinter in his own leg, and found it rather agreeable. “The odd part of the matter is the man’s first name. His first name was Larry.” Margaret nodded, as one should say, There 's a many Larrys in the world. “But the oddest part of it,” continued Mr. Bilkins, in a carelessly sepulchral voice, “is the man’s last name.” - Something in the tone of his voice made Mar- garet look at him, and something in the expres- sion of his face caused the blood to fly from Mar- garet’s cheek. “The man's last name,” she repeated, won- deringly. 98 A River MOUTH ROMANCE. “Yes, his last name, – O'Rouke.” “D’ ye mane it?” shrieked Margaret, —“d’ ye mane it? Glory to God! O worra! worra!” “ Well, Ezra,” said Mrs. Bilkins, in one of those spasms of base ingratitude to which even the most perfect women are liable, “you've made nice work of it. You might as well have knocked her down with an axel ” “But, my dear—” “O bother' — my smelling-bottle, quick!— second bureau drawer, — left-hand side.” Joy never kills; it is a celestial kind of hy- drogen of which it seems impossible to get too much at one inhalation. In an hour Margaret was able to converse with comparative calmness on the resuscitation of Larry O'Rouke, whom the firing of a cannon had brought to the sur- face as if he had been in reality a drowned body. Now that the whole town was aware of Mr. O'Rouke's fate, his friend Mr. Donnehugh came forward with a statement that would have been of some interest at an earlier period, but was of no service as matters stood, except so far as it assisted in removing from Mr. Bilkins's mind a A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 99 passing doubt as to whether the Larry O'Rouke of the telegraphic reports was Margaret's scape- grace of a husband. Mr. Donnehugh had known all along that O'Rouke had absconded to Boston by a night train and enlisted in the navy. It was the possession of this knowledge that had made it impossible for Mr. Donnehugh to look at Mr. O'Rouke's gravestone without grinning. At Margaret's request, and in Margaret's name, Mr. Bilkins wrote three or four letters to O'Rouke, and finally succeeded in extorting an epistle from that gentleman, in which he told Margaret to cheer up, that his fortune was as good as made, and that the day would come when she should ride through the town in her own coach, and no thanks to old flint-head, who pretended to be so fond of her. Mr. Bilkins tried to conjecture who was meant by old flint-head, but was obliged to give it up. Mr. O'Rouke furthermore informed Margaret that he had three hundred dollars prize-money coming to him, and broadly intimated that when he got home he intended to have one of the most extensive blow- outs ever witnessed in Rivermouth. “Oche!” laughed Margaret, “that's jist Larry qo) 251764B 100 A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. over agin. The pore lad was allus full of his nonsense an’ spirits.” “That he was,” said Mr. Bilkins, dryly. Content with the fact that her husband was in the land of the living, Margaret gave herself no trouble over the separation. O'Rouke had shipped for three years; one third of his term of service was past, and two years more, God will- ing, would see him home again. This was Mar- garet's view of it. Mr. Bilkins's view of it was not so cheerful. The prospect of Mr. O'Rouke's ultimate return was anything but enchanting. Mr. Bilkins was by no means disposed to kill the fatted calf. He would much rather have killed the Prodigal Son. However, there was always this chance: he might never come back. The tides rose and fell at the Rivermouth wharves; the summer moonlight and the winter snow, in turn, bleached its quiet streets; and the two years had nearly gone by. In the mean time nothing had been heard of O’Rouke. If he ever received the five or six letters sent to him, he did not fatigue himself by answering them. “Larry 's all right,” said hopeful Margaret. º A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 101 “If any harum had come to the gossoon, we’d have knowed it. It’s the bad news that travels fast.” Mr. Bilkins was not so positive about that. It had taken a whole year to find out that O'Rouke had not drowned himself. The period of Mr. O'Rouke's enlistment had come to an end. Two months slipped by, and he had neglected to brighten Rivermouth with his presence. There were many things that might have detained him, difficulties in getting his prize-papers or in drawing his pay; but there was no reason why he might not have written. The days were beginning to grow long to Mar- garet, and vague forebodings of misfortune pos- sessed her. Perhaps we had better look up Mr. O'Rouke. He had seen some rough times, during those three years, and some harder work than catching cunners at the foot of Anchor Street, or setting out crocuses in Mr. Bilkins's back garden. He had seen battles and shipwreck, and death in many guises; but they had taught him nothing, as the sequel will show. With his active career in the navy we shall not trouble ourselves; we A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 103 quiet household in Anchor Street, listening daily for the sound of Larry O'Rouke's footstep on the threshold. It was a heavy load for Margaret to bear, after all those years of patient vigil. But the load was to be lightened for her. In consid- eration of O'Rouke's long service, and in view of the fact that his desertion so near the expira- tion of his time was an absurdity, the Good Pres- ident commuted his sentence to imprisonment for life, with loss of prize-money and back pay. Mr. O'Rouke was despatched North, and placed in Moyamensing Prison. If joy could kill, Margaret would have been a dead woman the day these tidings reached River- mouth; and Mr. Bilkins himself would have been in a critical condition, for, though he did not want O'Rouke shot or hanged, he was delighted to have him permanently shelved. After the excitement was over, and this is always the trying time, Margaret accepted the situation philosophically. “The pore lad 's out o' harum's rache, any way,” she reflected. “He can’t be gittin' into hot wather now, and that's a fact. And may- be after awhiles they 'll let him go agin. They 104 A RIVERMouTH from ANCE. let out murtherers and thaves and sich like, and Larry's done no hurt to nobody but hisself.” Margaret was inclined to be rather severe on President Lincoln for taking away Larry's prize- money. The impression was strong on her mind that the money went into Mr. Lincoln’s private exchequer. “I would n’t wonder if Misthress Lincoln had a new silk gownd or two this fall,” Margaret would remark, sarcastically. The prison rules permitted Mr. O'Rouke to re- ceive periodical communications from his friends outside. Once every quarter Mr. Bilkins wrote him a letter, and in the interim Margaret kept him supplied with those doleful popular ballads, printed on broadsides, which one sees pinned up for sale on the iron railings of city churchyards, and seldom anywhere else. They seem the nat- ural exhalations of the mould and pathos of such places, but we have a suspicion that they are written by sentimental young undertakers. Though these songs must have been a solace to Mr. O'Rouke in his captivity, he never so far forgot himself as to acknowledge their receipt. It was only through the kindly chaplain of the * A RIVERMOUTH . ROMANCE. 105 prison that Margaret was now and then advised of the well-being of her husband. Towards the close of that year the great O'Rouke himself did condescend to write one letter. As this letter has never been printed, and as it is the only specimen extant of Mr. O'Rouke's epistolary manner, we lay it before the reader verbatim et literatim : — febuary, 1864 mi belovid wife fur the luv of God sind mee pop gose the wezel. yours till deth larry O rouke “Pop goes the Weasel” was sent to him, and Mr. Bilkins ingeniously slipped into the same envelope “Beware of the Bowl,” and “The Drunkard’s Death,” two spirited compositions well calculated to exert a salutary influence over a man imprisoned for life. There is nothing in this earthly existence so uncertain as what seems to be a certainty. To all appearances, the world outside of Moyamen- sing Prison was forever a closed book to O'Rouke. But the Southern Confederacy collapsed, the Gen- eral Amnesty Proclamation was issued, cell doors were thrown open; and one afternoon Mr. Larry 5 * 106 A River Mouth ROMANCE. O'Rouke, with his head neatly shaved, walked into the Bilkins kitchen and frightened Margaret nearly out of her skin. Mr. O'Rouke's summing up of his case was characteristic : “I’ve bin kilt in battle, hanged by the coort-martial, put into the lock-up for life, and here I am, bedad, not a ha'p'orth the worse for it.” None the worse for it, certainly, and none the better. By no stretch of magical fiction can we make an angel of him. He is not at all the material for an apotheosis. It was not for him to reform and settle down, and become a respect- able, oppressed tax-payer. His conduct in River- mouth, after his return, was a repetition of his old ways. Margaret all but broke down under the tests to which he put her affections, and came at last to wish that Larry had never got out of Moyamensing Prison. If any change had taken place in Mr. O'Rouke, it showed itself in occasional fits of sullenness towards Margaret. It was in one of these moods that he slouched his hat over his brows, and told her she need n’t wait dinner for him. It will be a cold dinner, if Margaret has kept A RIVERMOUTH ROMANCE. 107 it waiting; for two years have gone by since that day, and O’Rouke has not come home. Possibly he is off on a whaling voyage; pos- sibly the swift maelstrom has dragged him down; perhaps he is lifting his hand to knock at the door of the Bilkins mansion as we pen these words. But Margaret does not watch for him impatiently any more. There are strands of gray in her black hair. She has had her romance. QUITE S0. F course that was not his name. Even in the State of Maine, where it is still a cus- tom to maim a child for life by christening him Arioch or Shadrach or Ephraim, nobody would dream of calling a boy “Quite So.” It was merely a nickname which we gave him in camp; but it stuck to him with such bur-like tenacity, and is so inseparable from my memory of him, that I do not think I could write definitely of John Bladburn if I were to call him anything but “Quite So.” It was one night shortly after the first battle of Bull Run. The Army of the Potomac, shat- tered, stunned, and forlorn, was back in its old quarters behind the earth-works. The melan- choly line of ambulances bearing our wounded QUITE so. 109 * to Washington was not done creeping over Long Bridge; the blue smocks and the gray still lay in windrows on the field of Manassas; and the gloom that weighed down our hearts was like the fog that stretched along the bosom of the Potomac, and infolded the valley of the Shenan- doah. A drizzling rain had set in at twilight, and, growing bolder with the darkness, was beat- ing a dismal tattoo on the tent, -the tent of Mess 6, Company A, -th Regiment N. Y. Wol- unteers. Our mess, consisting originally of eight men, was reduced to four. Little Billy, as one of the boys grimly remarked, had concluded to remain at Manassas; Corporal Steele we had to leave at Fairfax Court-House, shot through the hip; Hunter and Suydam we had said good by to that afternoon. “Tell Johnny Reb,” says Hunter, lifting up the leather side-piece of the ambulance, “that I’ll be back again as soon as I get a new leg.” But Suydam said nothing; he only unclosed his eyes languidly and smiled farewell to us. The four of us who were left alive and unhurt that shameful July day sat gloomily smoking our brier-wood pipes, thinking our thoughts, and lis- 110 QUITE so. tening to the rain pattering against the canvas. That, and the occasional whine of a hungry cur, foraging on the outskirts of the camp for a stray bone, alone broke the silence, save when a vi- cious drop of rain detached itself meditatively from the ridge-pole of the tent, and fell upon the wick of our tallow candle, making it “cuss,” as Ned Strong described it. The candle was in the midst of one of its most profane fits when Blakely, knocking the ashes from his pipe and ad- dressing no one in particular, but giving breath, unconsciously as it were, to the result of his cogi- tations, observed that “it was considerable of a fizzle.” “The ‘on to Richmond’ business?” “Yes.” - “I wonder what they’ll do about it over yon- der,” said Curtis, pointing over his right shoul- der. By “over yonder” he meant the North in general and Massachusetts especially. Curtis was a Boston boy, and his sense of locality was So strong that, during all his wanderings in Wir- ginia, I do not believe there was a moment, day or night, when he could not have made a bee-line for Faneuil Hall. - 4 . QUITE so. - 111 “Do about it?” cried Strong. “They ‘Il make about two hundred thousand blue flannel trousers and send them along, each pair with a man in it, — all the short men in the long trous- ers, and all the tall men in the short ones,” he added, ruefully contemplating his own leg-gear, which scarcely reached to his ankles. “That's so,” said Blakely. “Just now, when I was tackling the commissary for an extra candle, I saw a crowd of new fellows drawing blankets.” “I say there, drop that!” cried Strong. “All right, sir, did n’t know it was you,” he added : hastily, seeing it was Lieutenant Haines who had thrown back the flap of the tent, and let in a gust of wind and rain that threatened the most serious bronchial consequences to our discon- tented tallow dip. “You’re to bunk in here,” said the lieuten- ant, speaking to some one outside. The some one stepped in, and Haines vanished in the dark- IneSS. When Strong had succeeded in restoring the candle to consciousness, the light fell upon a tall, shy-looking man of about thirty-five, with long, 112 QUITE so. hay-colored beard and mustache, upon which the rain-drops stood in clusters, like the night-dew on patches of cobweb in a meadow. It was an honest face, with unworldly sort of blue eyes, that looked out from under the broad visor of the infantry cap. With a deferential glance towards us, the new-comer unstrapped his knapsack, spread: his blanket over it, and sat down un- obtrusively. - “Rather damp night out,” remarked Blakely, whose strong hand was supposed to be conver- sation. “Quite so,” replied the stranger, not curtly, but pleasantly, and with an air as if he had said all there was to be said about it. “Come from the North recently 3° inquired Blakely, after a pause. “Yes.” “From any place in particular ’’’ “Maine.” “People considerably stirred up down there?” continued Blakely, determined not to give up. “Quite so.” Blakely threw a puzzled look over the tent, and seeing Ned Strong on the broad grin, frowned x 2 QUITE so. 113 severely. Strong instantly assumed an abstracted air, and began humming softly, “I wish I was in Dixie.” “The State of Maine,” observed Blakely, with a certain defiance of manner not at all necessary in discussing a geographical question, “is a pleasant State.” “In summer,” suggested the stranger. “In summer, I mean,” returned Blakely with animation, thinking he had broken the ice. “Cold as blazes in winter, though, – is n’t it?” The new recruit merely nodded. Blakely eyed the man homicidally for a mo- ment, and then, smiling one of those smiles of simulated gayety which the novelists inform us are more tragic than tears, turned upon him with withering irony. “Trust you left the old folks pretty comfort- able 2 ” “ Dead.” “The old folks dead l’” “Quite so.” Blakely made a sudden dive for his blanket, tucked it around him with painful precision, and was heard no more. 114 QUITE so. Just then the bugle sounded “lights out,” — bugle answering bugle in far-off camps. When our not elaborate night-toilets were complete, Strong threw somebody else's old boot at the candle with infallible aim, and darkness took possession of the tent. Ned, who lay on my left, presently reached over to me, and whis- pered, “I say, our friend ‘quite so is a garru- lous old boy! He'll talk himself to death some of these odd times, if he is n’t careful. How he did run on | * The next morning, when I opened my eyes, the new member of Mess 6 was sitting on his knap- sack, combing his blond beard with a horn comb. He nodded pleasantly to me, and to each of the boys as they woke up, one by one. Blakely did not appear disposed to renew the animated con- versation of the previous night; but while he was gone to make a requisition for what was in pure sarcasm called coffee, Curtis ventured to ask the man his name. “Bladburn, John,” was the reply. “That's rather an unwieldy name for every- day use,” put in Strong. “If it would nºt hurt your feelings, I’d like to call you Quite So, - QUITE so. 115 for short. Don't say no, if you don't like it. Is it agreeable?” Bladburn gave a little laugh, all to himself, seemingly, and was about to say, “Quite so.” when he caught at the words, blushed like a girl, and nodded a sunny assent to Strong. From that day until the end, the sobriquet clung to him. The disaster at Bull Run was followed, as the reader knows, by a long period of masterly in- activity, so far as the Army of the Potomac was concerned. McDowell, a good soldier but un- lucky, retired to Arlington Heights, and Mc- Clellan, who had distinguished hims; fin Western Virginia, took command of the forces in front of Washington, and bent his energies to reorganiz- ing the demoralized troops. It was a dreary time to the people of the North, who looked fatuously from week to week for “the fall of Richmond’’; and it was a dreary time to the denizens of that vast city of tents and forts which stretched in a semicircle before the be- leaguered Capitol, - so tedious and soul-wearing a time that the hardships of forced marches and the horrors of battle became desirable things to them. QUITE so. . 117 shyness, he impressed every one as a man of singular pluck and nerve. “Do you know,” said Curtis to me one day, “that that fellow Quite So is clear grit, and when we come to close quarters with our Pal- metto brethren over yonder, he'll do something devilish 2 ” “What makes you think so?” “Well, nothing quite explainable; the exas- perating coolness of the man, as much as any- thing. This morning the boys were teasing Muffin Fan” [a small mulatto girl who used to bring muffins into camp three times a week, -at the peril of her life!] “and Jemmy Blunt of Company K— you know him—was rather rough on the girl, when Quite So, who had been reading under a tree, shut one finger in his book, walked over to where the boys were skylarking, and with the smile of a juvenile angel on his face lifted Jemmy out of that and set him down gently in front of his own tent. There Blunt sat speech- less, staring at Quite So, who was back again under the tree, pegging away at his little Latin grammar.” That Latin grammar ! He always had it about 118 - QUITE so. him, reading it or turning over its dog's-eared pages at odd intervals and in out-of-the-way places. Half a dozen times a day he would draw it out from the bosom of his blouse, which had taken the shape of the book just over the left breast, look at it as if to assure himself it was all right, and then put the thing back. At night the volume lay beneath his pillow. The first thing in the morning, before he was well awake, his hand would go groping instinctively under his knapsack in search of it. A devastating curiosity seized upon us boys concerning that Latin grammar, for we had dis- covered the nature of the book. Strong wanted to steal it one night, but concluded not to. “In the first place,” reflected Strong, “I have n’t the heart to do it, and in the next place I have n’t the moral courage. Quite So would placidly break every bone in my body.” And I believe Strong was not far out of the way. Sometimes I was vexed with myself for allow- ing this tall, simple-hearted country fellow to puzzle me so much. And yet, was he a simple- hearted country fellow : City bred he certainly was not; but his manner, in spite of his awkward- QUITE so. 119 ness, had an indescribable air of refinement. Now and then, too, he dropped a word or a phrase that showed his familiarity with unexpected lines of reading. “The other day,” said Curtis, with the slightest elevation of eyebrow, “he had the cheek to correct my Latin for me.” In short, Quite So was a daily problem to the members of Mess 6. Whenever he was absent, and Blakely and Curtis and Strong and I got together in the tent, we discussed him, evolving various theories to explain why he never wrote to anybody and why nobody ever wrote to him. Had the man committed some terrible crime, and fled to the army to hide his guilt 2 Blakely suggested that he must have murdered “the old folks.” What did he mean by eternally conning that tattered Latin gram- mar 7 And was his name Bladburn, anyhow 7 Even his imperturbable amiability became suspi- cious. And then his frightful reticence ! If he was the victim of any deep grief or crushing calamity, why did n’t he seem unhappy? What business had he to be cheerful ? “It’s my opinion,” said Strong, “ that he's a rival Wandering Jew; the original Jacobs, you” know, was a dark fellow.” 120 QUITE so. Blakely inferred from something Bladburn had said, or something he had not said, – which was more likely,– that he had been a schoolmaster at some period of his life. “Schoolmaster be hanged l’’ was Strong's comment. “Can you fancy a schoolmaster going about conjugating baby verbs out of a dratted little spelling-book? No, Quite So has evidently been a – a – Blest if I can imagine what he’s been l’” - Whatever John Bladburn had been, he was a lonely man. Whenever I want a type of perfect human isolation, I shall think of him, as he was in those days, moving remote, self-contained, and alone in the midst of two hundred thousand Incil. 122 QUITE so. but somehow it was always in the same place the next morning. One day, at length, orders came down for our brigade to move. “We’re going to Richmond, boys!” shouted Strong, thrusting his head in at the tent; and we all cheered and waved our caps like mad. You see, Big Bethel and Bull Run and Ball's Bluff (the bloody B's, as we used to call them,) had n’t taught us any better sense. Rising abruptly from the plateau, to the left of our encampment, was a tall hill covered with a stunted growth of red-oak, persimmon, and chestnut. The night before we struck tents I climbed up to the crest to take a parting look at a spectacle which custom had not been able to rob of its enchantment. There, at my feet, and extending miles and miles away, lay the camps of the Grand Army, with its camp-fires reflected luridly against the sky. Thousands of lights were twinkling in every direction, some nestling in the valley, some like fire-flies beating their wings and palpitating among the trees, and others stretching in parallel lines and curves, like the street-lamps of a city. Somewhere, far off, a band was playing, at intervals it seemed ; and QUITE so. - 123 now and then, nearer to, a silvery strain from a bugle shot sharply up through the night, and seemed to lose itself like a rocket among the stars, – the patient, untroubled stars. Suddenly a hand was laid upon my arm. “I’d like to say a word to you,” said Blad- burn. With a little start of surprise, I made room for him on the fallen tree where I was seated. “I may n’t get another chance,” he said. “You and the boys have been very kind to me, kinder than I deserve ; but sometimes I ºve fancied that my not saying anything about my- self had given you the idea that all was not right in my past. I want to say that I came down to Virginia with a clean record.” “We never really doubted it, Bladburn.” “If I did n't write home,” he continued, “it was because I had nºt any home, neither kith nor kin. When I said the old folks were dead, I said it. Am I boring you ? If I thought I was — ” “No, Bladburn. I have often wanted you to talk to me about yourself, not from idle curiosity, I trust, but because I liked you that rainy night 124 QUITE so. when you came to camp, and have gone on liking you ever since. This is n’t too much to say, when IIeaven only knows how soon I may be past saying it or you listening to it.” “That’s it,” said Bladburn, hurriedly, “that’s why I want to talk with you. I’ve a fancy that I sha’n’t come out of our first battle.” The words gave me a queer start, for I had been trying several days to throw off a similar presentiment concerning him, - a foolish pre- sentiment that grew out of a dream. “In case anything of that kind turns up,” he continued, “I’d like you to have my Latin gram- mar here, — you've seen me reading it. You might stick it away in a bookcase, for the sake of old times. It goes against me to think of it falling into rough hands or being kicked about camp and trampled under foot.” He was drumming softly with his fingers on the volume in the bosom of his blouse. “I did n't intend to speak of this to a living soul,” he went on, motioning me not to answer him; “but something took hold of me to-night and made me follow you up here. Perhaps if I told you all, you would be the more willing to QUITE so. 125 look after the little book in case it goes ill with me. When the war broke out I was teaching school down in Maine, in the same village where my father was schoolmaster before me. The old man when he died left me quite alone. I lived pretty much by myself, having no interests out- side of the district school, which seemed in a manner my personal property. Eight years ago last spring a new pupil was brought to the school, a slight slip of a girl, with a sad kind of face and quiet ways. Perhaps it was because she was n’t very strong, and perhaps because she was n’t used over well by those who had charge of her, or perhaps it was because my life was lonely, that my heart warmed to the child. It all seems like a dream now, since that April morning when little Mary stood in front of my desk with her pretty eyes looking down bashfully and her soft hair falling over her face. One day I look up, and six years have gone by, - as they go by in dreams, – and among the scholars is a tall girl of sixteen, with serious, womanly eyes which I cannot trust myself to look upon. The old life has come to an end. The child has be- come a woman and can teach the master now. 126 QUITE so. So help me Heaven, I did n’t know that I loved her until that day ! “Long after the children had gone home I sat in the school-room with my face resting on my hands. There was her desk, the afternoon shad- ows falling across it. It never looked empty and cheerless before. I went and stood by the low chair, as I had stood hundreds of times. On the desk was a pile of books, ready to be taken away, and among the rest a small Latin grammar which we had studied together. What little despairs and triumphs and happy hours were associated with it ! I took it up curiously, as if it were some gentle dead thing, and turned over the pages, and could hardly see them. Turning the pages, idly so, I came to a leaf on which some- thing was written with ink, in the familiar girl- ish hand. It was only the words ‘Dear John,” through which she had drawn two hasty pencil lines—I wish she had nºt-drawn those lines | * added Bladburn, under his breath. He was silent for a minute or two, looking off towards the camps, where the lights were fading out one by one. - “I had no right to go and love Mary. I was QUITE SO. 127 twice her age, an awkward, unsocial man, that would have blighted her youth. I was as wrong as wrong can be. But I never meant to tell her. I locked the grammar in my desk and the secret in my heart for a year. I could n’t bear to meet her in the village, and kept away from every place where she was likely to be. Then she came to me, and sat down at my feet penitently, just as she used to do when she was a child, and asked what she had done to anger me; and then, Heaven forgive me! I told her all, and asked her if she could say with her lips the words she had written, and she nestled in my arms all a trem- bling like a bird, and said them over and over again. “When Mary's family heard of our engage- ment, there was trouble. They looked higher for Mary than a middle-aged schoolmaster. No blame to them. They forbade me the house, her uncles; but we met in the village and at the neighbors’ houses, and I was happy, knowing she loved me. Matters were in this state when the war came on. I had a strong call to look after the old flag, and I hung my head that day when the company raised in our village marched by 128 QUITE so. the school-house to the railroad station; but I could n’t tear myself away. About this time the minister's son, who had been away to college, came to the village. He met Mary here and there, and they became great friends. He was a likely fellow, near her own age, and it was natural they should like one another. Sometimes I winced at seeing him made free of the home from which I was shut out; then I would open the grammar at the leaf where “Dear John’ was written up in the corner, and my trouble was gone. Mary was sorrowful and pale these days, and I think her people were worrying her. “It was one evening two or three days before we got the news of Bull Run. I had gone down to the burying-ground to trim the spruce hedge set round the old man’s lot, and was just step- ping into the enclosure, when I heard voices from the opposite side. One was Mary’s, and the other I knew to be young Marston’s, the minister's son. I did nºt mean to listen, but what Mary was saying struck me dumb. We must never meet again, she was saying in a wild Way. We must say good by here, forever, — good by, good by J. And I could hear her sob- s QUITE so. 129 bing. Then, presently, she said, hurriedly, No, no; my hand, not my lips ' Then it seemed he kissed her hands, and the two parted, one going towards the parsonage, and the other out by the gate near where I stood. “I don’t know how long I stood there, but the night-dews had wet me to the bone when I stole out of the graveyard and across the road to the school-house. I unlocked the door, and took the Latin grammar from the desk and hid it in my bosom. There was not a sound or a light any- where as I walked out of the village. And now,” said Bladburn, rising suddenly from the tree- trunk, “if the little book ever falls in your way, won’t you see that it comes to no harm, for my sake, and for the sake of the little woman who was true to me and did n’t love me 7 Wher- ever she is to-night, God bless her l’’ As we descended to camp with our arms rest- ing on each other's shoulder, the watch-fires were burning low in the valleys and along the hill- sides, and as far as the eye could reach the silent tents lay bleaching in the moonlight. 6 # I 130 QUITE so. III. WE imagined that the throwing forward of our brigade was the initial movement of a general advance of the army; but that, as the reader will remember, did not take place until the follow- ing March. The Confederates had fallen back to Centreville without firing a shot, and the National troops were in possession of Lewinsville, Vienna, and Fairfax Court-House. Our new position was nearly identical with that which we had occupied on the night previous to the battle of Bull Run, — on the old turnpike road to Manassas, where the enemy was supposed to be in great force. With a field-glass we could see the Rebel pickets moving in a belt of woodland on our right, and morning and evening we heard the spiteful roll of their snare-drums. Those pickets soon became a nuisance to us. Hardly a night passed but they fired upon our outposts, so far with no harmful result ; but after a while it grew to be a serious matter. The QUITE so. 131 Rebels would crawl out on all-fours from the wood into a field covered with underbrush, and lie there in the dark for hours, waiting for a shot. Then our men took to the rifle-pits, – pits ten or twelve feet long by four or five deep, with the loose earth banked up a few inches high on the exposed sides. All the pits bore names, more or less felicitous, by which they were known to their transient tenants. One was called “The Pepper- Box,” another “Uncle Sam's Well,” another “The Reb-Trap,” and another, I am constrained to say, was named after a not to be mentioned tropical locality. Though this rude sort of nomenclature predominated, there was no lack of softer titles, such as “Fortress Matilda” and “Castle Mary,” and one had, though unintention- ally, a literary flavor to it, “Blair's Grave,” which was not popularly considered as reflecting unpleasantly on Nat Blair, who had assisted in making the excavation. Some of the regiment had discovered a field of late corn in the neighborhood, and used to boil a few ears every day, while it lasted, for the boys detailed on the night-picket. The corn-cobs were always scrupulously preserved and mounted on QUITE so. 133 “Badly hurt?” “Badly hurt.” I knew he was ; I need not have asked the question. He never meant to go back to New England Bladburn was lying on the stretcher in the hospital-tent. The surgeon had knelt down by him, and was carefully cutting away the bosom of his blouse. The Latin grammar, stained and torn, slipped, and fell to the floor. Bladburn gave me a quick glance. I picked up the book, and as I placed it in his hand, the icy fingers closed softly over mine. He was sinking fast. In a few minutes the surgeon finished his exami- nation. When he rose to his feet there were tears on the weather-beaten cheeks. He was a rough outside, but a tender heart. “My poor lad,” he blurted out, “it’s no use. If you’ve anything to say, say it now, for you’ve nearly done with this world.” Then Bladburn lifted his eyes slowly to the surgeon, and the old smile flitted over his face as he murmured, “Quite so.” A YOUNG DESPERAD 0. HEN Johnny is all snugly curled up in bed, with his rosy cheek resting on one of his scratched and grimy little hands, forming altogether a faultless picture of peace and inno- cence, it is hard to realize what a busy, restive, pugnacious, badly ingenious little wretch he is There is something so comical in those pygmy shoes and stockings sprawling on the floor, they look as if they could jump up and run off, if they wanted to, - there is something so laugh- able about those little trousers, which appear to be making futile attempts to climb up into the easy-chair, – the said trousers still retaining the shape of Johnny's active legs, and refusing to go to sleep, — there is something, I say, about these things, and about Johnny himself, which makes it difficult for me to remember that, when Johnny is awake, he possesses the cunning of Machiavel and the sang-froid of the Capitaine Fracasse. 136 A YOUNG DESPERADO. ticularly quiet, look out for squalls.” He was sure to be in some mischief. And I must say there was a novelty, an unexpectedness, an in- genuity, in his badness that constantly astonished me. The crimes he committed could be arranged alphabetically. He never repeated himself. His evil resources were inexhaustible. He never did the thing I expected he would. He never failed to do the thing I was unprepared for. I am not thinking so much of the time when he painted my writing-desk with raspberry jam as of the occasion when he perpetrated an act of original cruelty on Mopsey, a favorite kitten in the house- hold. We were sitting in the library. Johnny was playing in the front hall. In view of the supernatural stillness that reigned, I remarked, suspiciously, “Johnny is very quiet, my dear.” At that moment a series of pathetic mews was heard in the entry, followed by a violent scratch- ing on the oil-cloth. Then Mopsey bounded into the room with three empty spools strung upon her tail. The spools were removed with great difficulty, especially the last one, which fitted remarkably tight. After that, Mopsey never saw a work-basket without arching her tortoise-shell A YOUNG DESPERADO. 137 back, and distending her tail to three times its natural thickness. Another child would have squeezed the kitten, or stuck a pin in her, or twisted the tail; it was reserved for the superior genius of Johnny to string rather small spools upon it. He heightened expectation by never doing the obvious thing. It was this fertility and happiness, if I may say so, of invention that prevented me from being entirely dejected over my son's behavior at this period. Sometimes the temptation to seize him and shake him was too strong for poor human nature. But I always regretted it afterwards. When I saw him asleep in his tiny bed, with one tear dried on his plump, velvety cheek and two little mice-teeth visible through the parted lips, I could not help thinking what a little bit of a fellow he was, with his funny little fingers and his funny little nails; and it did not seem to me that he was the sort of person to be pitched into by a great strong man like me. “When Johnny grows older,” I used to say to his mother, “I’ll reason with him.” Now I do not know when Johnny will grow old enough to be reasoned with. When I reflect. 138 A Young DESPERADo. how hard it is to reason with wise grown-up people, if they happen to be unwilling to accept your view of matters, I am inclined to be very patient with Johnny, whose experience is rather limited, after all, though he is six years and a half old, and naturally wants to know why and wherefore. Somebody says something about the duty of “blind obedience.” I cannot expect Johnny to have more wisdom than Solomon, and to be more philosophic than the philosophers. At times, indeed, I have been led to expect this from him. He has shown a depth of mind that warranted me in looking for anything. At times he seems as if he were a hundred years old. He has a quaint, bird-like way of cocking his head on one side, and asking a question that appears to be the result of years of study. If I could answer some of those questions, I should solve the darkest mysteries of life and death. His inquiries, however, generally have a grotesque flavor. One night, when the mosquitoes were making sprightly raids on his person, he appealed to me, suddenly : “How does the moon feel when a skeeter bites it 7” To his meditative mind, the broad, smooth surface of the moon A YOUNG DESPERADO. 141 listen politely to any crude suggestions that you may have to throw out, Johnny crossed his legs, and thrust his hands into those wonderful trousers-pockets. I turned my face aside, for I felt a certain weakness creeping into the corners of my mouth. I was lost. In an instant the little head, covered all over with brown curls, was laid upon my knee, and Johnny was crying, “I’m so very, very sorry!” I have said that Johnny is the terror of the neighborhood. I think I have not done the young gentleman an injustice. If there is a window broken within the radius of two miles from our house, Johnny's ball, or a stone known to have come from his dexterous hand, is almost certain to be found in the battered premises. I never hear the musical jingling of splintered glass but my porte-monnaie gives a convulsive throb in my breast-pocket. There is not a doorstep in our street that has not borne evidences in red chalk of his artistic ability; there is not a bell that he has n’t rung and run away from at least three hundred times. Scarcely a day passes but he falls out of something, or over something, or into something. A ladder running up to the 142 A YouNG DESPERADo. dizzy roof of an unfinished building is no more to be resisted by him than the back platform of a horse-car, when the conductor is collecting his fare in front. I should not like to enumerate the battles that Johnny has fought during the past eight months. It is a physical impossibility, I should judge, for him to refuse a challenge. He picks his enemies impartially out of all ranks of society. He has fought the ash-man's boy, the grocer's boy, the plumber's boy, (I was glad of that y the rich boys over the way, and any number of miscella- neous boys who chanced to stray into our street. I cannot say that this young desperado is al- ways victorious. I have known the tip of his nose to be in a state of unpleasant redness for weeks together. I have known him to come home frequently with no brim to his hat; once he presented himself with only one shoe, on which occasion his jacket was split up the back in a manner that gave him the appearance of an over-ripe chestnut bursting out of its bur. How he will fight! But this I can say, - if Johnny is as cruel as Caligula, he is every inch as brave as Agamemnon. - A YOUNG DESPERADO. 143 At present the General, as I sometimes call him, is in hospital. He was seriously wounded at the battle of The Little Go-Cart, on the 9th instant. On returning from my office yesterday evening, I found that scarred veteran stretched upon a sofa in the sitting-room, with a patch of brown paper stuck over his left eye, and a con- victing smell of vinegar about him. “Yes,” said his mother, dolefully, “Johnny's been fighting again. That horrid Barnabee boy (who is eight years old, if he is a day) won’t let the child alone.” “Well,” said I, “I hope Johnny gave that Barnabee boy a thrashing.” “Did n’t I, though 7 ° cries Johnny, from the sofa. “You bet !” “O Johnny!” remonstrates his mother. Now, several days previous to this, I had ad- dressed the General in the following terms : — “Johnny, if I ever catch you in another fight of your own seeking, I shall cane you.” In consequence of this declaration, it became my duty to look into the circumstances of the present affair, which will be known in history as the battle of The Little Go-Cart. After going 144 A YOUNG DESPERADO. over the ground very carefully, I found the fol- lowing to be the state of the case. It seems that the Barnabee Boy—I speak of him as if he were the Benicia Boy—is the oldest pupil in the Primary Military School (I think it must be a military school) of which Johnny is a recent member. This Barnabee, having whipped every one of his companions, was sighing for new boys to conquer, when Johnny joined the institution. He at once made friendly overtures of battle to Johnny, who, oddly enough, seemed indisposed to encourage his advances. Then Barnabee began a series of petty persecutions, which had continued up to the day of the fight. On the morning of that eventful day the Bar- nabee Boy appeared in the school-yard with a small go-cart. After running down on Johnny several times with this useful vehicle, he captured Johnny's cap, filled it with sand, and dragged it up and down the yard triumphantly in the go-cart. This made the General very indignant, of course, and he took an early opportunity of kicking over the triumphal car, in doing which he kicked one of the wheels so far into space that it has not been seen since. A YOUNG DESPERADO. 145 This brought matters to a crisis. Thé battle would have taken place then and there; but at that moment the school-bell rang, and the gladia- tors were obliged to give their attention to Smith's Speller. But a gloom hung over the morning's exercises, – a gloom that was not dispelled in the back row, when the Barnabee Boy stealthily held up to Johnny's vision a slate, whereon was inscribed this fearful message : — Johnny got it “put down in writin’” that time ! After a hasty glance at the slate, the General went on with his studies composedly enough. Eleven o’clock came, and with it came recess, and with recess the inevitable battle. Now I do not intend to describe the details of this brilliant action, for the sufficient reason that, though there were seven young gentlemen (con- 7 J 146 A YOUNG DESPERADO. nected with the Primary School) on the field as war correspondents, their accounts of the engage- ment are so contradictory as to be utterly worth- less. On one point they all agree, – that the contest was sharp, short, and decisive. The truth is, the General is a quick, wiry, experienced old hero; and it did not take him long to rout the Barnabee Boy, who is in reality a coward, as all bullies and tyrants have ever been, and al- ways will be. I do not approve of boys fighting; I do not defend Johnny; but if the General wants an extra ration or two of preserved pear, he shall have it ! I am thoroughly aware that, socially speaking, Johnny is a Black Sheep. I know that I have brought him up badly, and that there is not an unmarried man or woman in the United States who would n’t have brought him up “very dif- ferently.” It is a great pity that the only peo- ple who know how to manage children never have any. At the same time, Johnny is not a black sheep all over. He has some white spots. His sins — if wiser folks had no greater — are A YOUNG DESPERADO. 147 the result of too much animal life. They belong to his evanescent youth, and will pass away; but his honesty, his generosity, his bravery, belong to his character, and are enduring qualities. The quickly crowding years will tame him. An ex- pensive pane of glass, or a protrusive bell-knob, ceases in time to have attractions for the most susceptible temperament. And I am confident that Johnny will be a great statesman, or a val- orous soldier, or, at all events, a good citizen, after he has got over being A Young Desperado. MISS MEHETABEL’S SON. I. THE old TAVERN AT BAYLEY’s Four-CoRNERs. OU will not find Greenton, or Bayley’s Four- Corners as it is more usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is not a town; it is not even a village ; it is merely an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of four roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest settlement of note, and ten miles from any railway station. A good location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely; but there has always been a hotel there, and for the last dozen years it has been pretty well pat- ronized — by one boarder. Not to trifle with an intelligent public, I will state at once that, in the early part of this century, Greenton was a point at which the mail-coach, on the Great Northern Miss MEHETABEL's son. 149 Route, stopped to change horses and allow the passengers to dine. People in the county, wish- ing to take the early mail Portsmouth-ward, put up overnight at the old tavern, famous for its irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds. The tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bay- ley, who rivalled his wallet in growing corpulent, and in due time passed away. At his death the establishment, which included a farm, fell into the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley left his son-in-law a hotel, - which sounds hand- some, – he left him no guests; for at about the period of the old man's death the old stage-coach died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and steam the other, Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide of progress, the tavern at the Corners found itself high and dry, like a wreck on a sand-bank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contempora- neously, there was some attempt to build a town at Greenton; but it apparently failed, if eleven cellars choked up with débris and overgrown with burdocks are any indication of failure. The farm, however, was a good farm, as things go in New Hampshire; and Tobias Sewell, the son-in- law, could afford to snap his fingers at the trav- 150 MIss MEHETABEL's son. elling public if they came near enough, – which they never did. The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same as when Jonathan Bayley handed in his accounts in 1840, except that Sewell has from time to time sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers to bridal couples in the neighborhood. The bar is still open, and the parlor door says PARLOUR in tall black letters. Now and then a passing drover looks in at that lonely bar-room, where a high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum ogles with a peculiarly knowing air a shrivelled lemon on a shelf; now and then a farmer comes across country to talk crops and stock and take a friendly glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie With a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign, on which there is a dim mail-coach with four phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman whose head has been washed off by the rain. Other customers there are none, except that one regular boarder whom I have mentioned. If misery makes a man acquainted with strange bedfellows, it is equally certain that the profession of Surveyor and civil engineer often takes one A Miss MEHETABEL's son. 151 into undreamed-of localities. I had never heard of Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the year. I do not think I would, of my own voli- tion, have selected Greenton for a fortnight's sojourn at any time; but now the business is over, I shall never regret the circumstances that . made me the guest of Tobias Sewell and brought me into intimate relations with Miss Mehetabel's Son. It was a black October night in the year of grace 1872, that discovered me standing in front of the old tavern at the Corners. Though the ten miles’ ride from K– had been depressing, especially the last five miles, on account of the cold autumnal rain that had set in, I felt a pang of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn round in the road and roll off in the darkness. There were no lights visible anywhere, and only for the big, shapeless mass of something in front of me, which the driver had said was the hotel, I should have fancied that I had been set down by the roadside. I was wet to the skin and in no amiable humor; and not being able to find bell-pull or knocker, or even a door, I belabored the side 152 MIss MEHETABEL's son. of the house with my heavy walking-stick. In a minute or two I saw a light flickering somewhere aloft, then I heard the sound of a window open- ing, followed by an exclamation of disgust as a blast of wind extinguished the candle which had given me an instantaneous picture en silhouette of a man leaning out of a casement. “I say, what do you want, down there?” said an unprepossessing voice. “I want to come in, I want a supper, and a bed, and numberless things.” “This is n’t no time of night to go rousing honest folks out of their sleep. Who are you, anyway?” The question, superficially considered, was a very simple one, and I, of all people in the world, ought to have been able to answer it off-hand; but it staggered me. Strangely enough, there came drifting across my memory the lettering on the back of a metaphysical work which I had seen years before on a shelf in the Astor Library. Owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collection of title and author, the lettering read as follows: “Who Am I? Jones.” Evidently it had puz- zled Jones to know who he was, or he would n't : . 156 MIss MEHETABEL's son. rogation. I replied to his mute inquiry by tak- ing out my pocket-book and handing him my business-card, which he held up to the candle and perused with great deliberation. - “You’re a civil engineer, are you ?” he said, displaying his gums, which gave his countenance an expression of almost infantile innocence. He made no further audible remark, but mumbled between his thin lips something which an imagi- native person might have construed into, “If you’re a civil engineer, I’ll be blessed if I would n’t like to see an uncivil one !” Mr. Sewell's growl, however, was worse than his bite, – owing to his lack of teeth probably, —for he very good-naturedly set himself to work preparing supper for me. After a slice of cold ham, and a warm punch, to which my chilled condition gave a grateful flavor, I went to bed in a distant chamber in a most amiable mood, feel- ing satisfied that Jones was a donkey to bother himself about his identity. When I awoke the sun was several hours high. My bed faced a window, and by raising myself on one elbow I could look out on what I ex- pected would be the main street. To my astonish- : MISs MEHETABEL's son. 157 ment I beheld a lonely country road winding up a sterile hill and disappearing over the ridge. In a cornfield at the right of the road was a small private graveyard enclosed by a crumbling stone-wall with a red gate. The only thing sug- gestive of life was this little corner lot occupied by death. I got out of bed and went to the other window. There I had an uninterrupted view of twelve miles of open landscape, with Mount Agamenticus in the purple distance. Not a house or a spire in sight. “Well,” I exclaimed, “Greenton does n’t appear to be a very closely packed metropolis' " That rival hotel with which I had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was not a deadly weapon, looking at it by daylight. “By Jove!” I reflected, “maybe I’m in the wrong place.” But there, tacked against a panel of the bedroom door, was a faded time-table dated Greenton, August 1, 1839. I smiled all the time I was dressing, and went Smiling down stairs, where I found Mr. Sewell, assisted by one of the fair sex in the first bloom of her eightieth year, serving breakfast for me On a small table—in the bar-room “I overslept myself this morning,” I re- 158 Miss MEHETABEL's son. marked apologetically, “and I see that I am put- ting you to some trouble. In future, if you will have me called, I will take my meals at the usual table-d'hôte.” “At the what?” said Mr. Sewell. “I mean with the other boarders.” Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop from the fire, and, resting the point of his fork against the woodwork of the mantel-piece, grinned from ear to ear. “Bless you ! there is n’t any other boarders. There has n’t been anybody put up here sence— let me see—sence father-in-law died, and that was in the fall of '40. To be sure, there’s Silas; he's a regular boarder; but I don’t count him.” Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had lost its custom when the old stage line was broken up by the railroad. The introduction of steam was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal error. “Jest killed local business. Carried it off I’m darned if I know where. The whole country has been sort o' retrograding ever sence steam was invented.” “You spoke of having one boarder,” I said. “Silas ! Yes; he came here the summer Miss MEHETABEL's son. 159 'Tilda died, – she that was 'Tilda Bayley, — and he's here yet, going on thirteen year. He could n’t live any longer with the old man. Be- tween you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's father, was a hard nut. Yes,” said Mr. Sewell, crook- ing his elbow in inimitable pantomime, “alto- gether too often. Found dead in the road hug- ging a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus in the barn,” added Mr. Sewell, intending, I presume, to intimate that a post-mortem exami- nation had been deemed necessary. “Silas,” he resumed, in that respectful tone which one should always adopt when speaking of capital, “is a man of considerable property; lives on his in- terest, and keeps a hoss and shay. He's a great scholar, too, Silas; takes all the pe-ri-odicals and the Police Gazette regular.” Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop, when the door opened and a stoutish, middle- aged little gentleman, clad in deep black, stepped into the room. - “Silas Jaffrey,” said Mr. Sewell, with a com- prehensive sweep of his arm, picking up me and the new-comer on one fork, so to speak. “Be acquainted l’” 160 Miss MEHETABEL's son. Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly, and gave me his hand with unlooked-for cordiality. He was a dapper little man, with a head as round and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He re- minded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker eating an omelet. “Silas will take care of you,” said Mr. Sewell, taking down his hat from a peg behind the door. “I’ve got the cattle to look after. Tell him, if you want anything.” While I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped up and down the narrow bar-room and chirped away as blithely as a bird on a cherry-bough, occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight fringe of auburn hair which stood up pertly round his head and seemed to possess a luminous quality of its own. - “Don’t I find it a little slow up here at the Corners? Not at all, my dear sir. I am in the thick of life up here. So many interest- | MIss MEHETABEL's son. 161 ing things going on all over the world,—in- ventions, discoveries, spirits, railroad disasters, mysterious homicides. Poets, murderers, musi- cians, statesmen, distinguished travellers, prodi- gies of all kinds turning up everywhere. Very few events or persons escape me. I take six daily city papers, thirteen weekly journals, all the monthly magazines, and two quarterlies. I could not get along with less. I could n’t if you asked me. I never feel lonely. How can I, being on intimate terms, as it were, with thou- sands and thousands of people : There's that young woman out West. What an entertaining creature she is — now in Missouri, now in In- diana, and now in Minnesota, always on the go, and all the time shedding needles from various parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it ! Then there's that versatile patriarch who walks hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs of giving out. Then there’s that remarkable, one may say that historical colored woman who knew Benjamin Franklin, and fought at the battle of Bunk — no, it is the old negro man who fought at Bunker Hill, a mere infant, of course, at that R 162 Miss MEHETABEL's son. period. Really, now, it is quite curious to ob- serve how that venerable female slave — for- merly an African princess—is repeatedly dying in her hundred and eleventh year, and coming to life again punctually every six months in the small-type paragraphs. Are you aware, sir, that within the last twelve years no fewer than two hundred and eighty-seven of General Washing- ton’s colored coachmen have died ?” For the soul of me I could n't tell whether this quaint little gentleman was chaffing me or not. I laid down my knife and fork, and stared at him. “Then there are the mathematicians !” he cried vivaciously, without waiting for a reply. “I take great interest in them. Hear this ” and Mr. Jaffrey drew a newspaper from a pocket in the tail of his coat, and read as follows: “It has been estimated that if all the candles manu- factured by this eminent firm (Stearine & Co.) were placed end to end, they would reach 2 and § times around the globe. Of course,” continued Mr. Jaffrey, folding up the journal reflectively, “abstruse calculations of this kind are not, per- haps, of vital importance, but they indicate the Miss MEHETABEL's son. 163 intellectual activity of the age. Seriously, now,” he said, halting in front of the table, “what with books and papers and drives about the country, I do not find the days too long, though I seldom see any one, except when I go over to K for my mail. Existence may be very full to a man who stands a little aside from the tumult and watches it with philosophic eye. Possibly he may see more of the battle than those who are in the midst of the action. Once I was strug- gling with the crowd, as eager and undaunted as the best ; perhaps I should have been struggling still. Indeed, I know my life would have been very different now if I had married Mehetabel,- if I had married Mehetabel.” His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had come over his bright face, his figure seemed to have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded out of his hair. With a shuffling step, the very antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned to the door and passed into the road. “Well,” I said to myself, “if Greenton had forty thousand inhabitants, it could n’t turn out a more astonishing old party than that l” 164 MIss MEHETABEL's son. º II. THE CASE of SILAs JAFFREY. A MAN with a passion for bric-d-brac is always stumbling over antique bronzes, intaglios, mo– saics, and daggers of the time of Benvenuto Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins drop into it. My own weakness is odd people, and I am constantly encountering them. It was plain I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at Bayley’s Four-Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too brief an opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, in- stinctively recognizing in him an unfamiliar species. My professional work in the vicinity of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally an afternoon unoccupied ; these intervals I pur- MISS MEHETABEL’s son. 165 posed to employ in studying and classifying my fellow-boarder. It was necessary, as a prelimi- nary step, to learn something of his previous history, and to this end I addressed myself to Mr. Sewell that same night. “I do not want to seem inquisitive,” I said to the landlord, as he was fastening up the bar, which, by the way, was the salle d manger and general sitting-room, - “I do not want to seem inquisitive, but your friend Mr. Jaffrey dropped a remark this morning at breakfast which — which was not altogether clear to me.” “About Mehetabel?” asked Mr. Sewell, un- easily. “Yes.” “Well, I wish he would n’t l” “He was friendly enough in the course of conversation to hint to me that he had not married the young woman, and seemed to re- gret it.” “No, he did n’t marry Mehetabel.” “May I inquire why he did n’t marry Me- hetabel ?” “Never asked her. Might have married the - MISS MEHETABEL's son. . 167 elling in the intricacies of the unmentionable deed. “You come up to my room to-night,” he cried, with horrid glee, “and I’ll give you my theory of the murder. I’ll make it as clear as day to you that it was the detective himself who fired the three pistol-shots.” It was not so much the desire to have this point elucidated as to make a closer study of Mr. Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation. Mr. Jaffrey’s bedroom was in an L of the building, and was in no way noticeable except for the numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge pile of old magazines which stood in one corner, reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and threaten- ing to topple over each instant, like the Leaning Tower at Pisa. There were green paper shades at the windows, some faded chintz valances about the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered with chintz. On a black-walnut shelf between the windows lay a choice collection of meer- Schaum and brierwood pipes. Filling one of the chocolate-colored bowls for me and another for himself, Mr. Jaffrey began 168 Miss MEHETABEL's son. prattling; but not about the murder, which ap- peared to have flown out of his mind. In fact, I do not remember that the topic was even touched upon, either then or afterwards. “Cosey nest this,” said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing complacently over the apartment. “What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open wood-fire 2 Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last spring. In summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit- trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round. I take it very easy here, I can tell you, summer and winter. Not much society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would term a great intellectual force, but he means well. He's a realist, — believes in coming down to what he calls ‘the hard pan’; but his heart is in the right place, and he 's very kind to me. The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell out my grain business over at K , thirteen years ago, and settle down at the Corners. When a man has made a competency, what does he MISS MEHETABEL's son. 169 want more ? Besides, at that time an event oc- curred which destroyed any ambition I may have had. Mehetabel died.” “The lady you were engaged to ?” “N-o, not precisely engaged. I think it was quite understood between us, though nothing had been said on the subject. Typhoid,” added Mr. Jaffrey, in a low voice. For several minutes he smoked in silence, a vague, troubled look playing over his counte- nance. Presently this passed away, and he fixed his gray eyes speculatively upon my face. “If I had married Mehetabel,” said Mr. Jaf- frey, slowly, and then he hesitated. I blew a ring of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my knee, dropped into an attitude of attention. “If I had married Mehetabel, you know, we should have had — ahem' – a family.” “Very likely,” I assented, vastly amused at this unexpected turn. “A Boy!” exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey, explosively. “By all means, certainly, a son.” “Great trouble about naming the boy. Mehet- abel's family want him named Elkanah Elkins, after her grandfather; I want him named An- 8 MIss MEHETABEL's son. 171 brow. Wicked little boys, over at K–, have now and then derisively advised me to follow my nose. It would be an interesting thing to do. I should find my nose flying about the world, turn- ing up unexpectedly here and there, dodging this branch of the family and reappearing in that, now jumping over one great-grandchild to fasten itself upon another, and never losing its indi- viduality. Look at Andy. There's Elkanah El- kins's chin to the life. Andy's chin is probably older than the Pyramids. Poor little thing,” he cried, with sudden indescribable tenderness, “to , Tose his mother so early 1° And Mr. Jaffrey's head sunk upon his breast, and his shoulders slanted forward, as if he were actually bending over the cradle of the child. The whole gesture and attitude was so natural that it startled me. The pipe slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor. - “Hush ' " whispered Mr. Jaffrey, with a deprecating motion of his hand. “Andy 's asleep !” - He rose softly from the chair and, walking across the room on tiptoe, drew down the shade at the window through which the moonlight was 172 MISS MEHETABEL’s son. streaming. Then he returned to his seat, and remained gazing with half-closed eyes into the dropping embers. I refilled my pipe and smoked in profound silence, wondering what would come next. But nothing came next. Mr. Jaffrey had fallen in- to So brown a study that, a quarter of an hour afterwards, when I wished him good night and withdrew, I do not think he noticed my departure. *- I am not what is called a man of imagination; it is my habit to exclude most things not capable of mathematical demonstration ; but I am not without a certain psychological insight, and I think I understood Mr. Jaffrey’s case. I could easily understand how a man with an unhealthy, sensitive nature, overwhelmed by sudden calam- ity, might take refuge in some forlorn place like this old tavern, and dream his life away. To such a man — brooding forever on what might have been and dwelling wholly in the realm of his fancies — the actual world might indeed be- come as a dream, and nothing seem real but his illusions. I dare say that thirteen years of Bay- ley’s Four-Corners would have its effect upon ad Miss MEHETABEL’s son. 173 me; though instead of conjuring up golden-haired children of the Madonna, I should probably see gnomes and kobolds, and goblins engaged in hoisting false signals and misplacing switches for midnight express trains. “No doubt,” I said to myself that night, as I lay in bed, thinking over the matter, “this once possible but now impossible child is a great com- fort to the old gentleman, – a greater comfort, perhaps, than a real son would be. May be Andy will vanish with the shades and mists of night, he's such an unsubstantial infant; but if he does n’t, and Mr. Jaffrey finds pleasure in talking to me about his son, I shall humor the old fellow. It would n’t be a Christian act to knock over his harmless fancy.” I was very impatient to see if Mr. Jaffrey's illusion would stand the test of daylight. It did. Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey was, so to speak, alive and kicking the next morning. On taking his seat at the breakfast-table, Mr. Jaffrey whispered to me that Andy had had a comfortable night. -- “Silas !” said Mr. Sewell, sharply, “what are you whispering about 7” Miss MEHETABEL's son. 175 “Andy's had a hard six months of it,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with the well-known narrative air of fathers. “We’ve brought him up by hand. His grandfather, by the way, was brought up by the bottle "—and brought down by it, too, I added mentally, recalling Mr. Sewell's account of the old gentleman's tragic end. Mr. Jaffrey then went on to give me a history of Andy’s first six months, omitting no detail however insignificant or irrelevant. This history I would, in turn, inflict upon the reader, if I were only certain that he is one of those dreadful parents who, under the aegis of friendship, bore you at a street-corner with that remarkable thing which Freddy said the other day, and insist on singing to you, at an evening party, the Iliad of Tommy's woes. But to inflict this enfantillage upon the un- married reader would be an act of wanton cru- elty. So I pass over that part of Andy's biog- raphy, and, for the same reason, make no record of the next four or five interviews I had with Mr. Jaffrey. It will be sufficient to state that Andy glided from extreme infancy to early youth with astonishing celerity, - at the rate of one 176 Miss MEHETABEL's son. - - year per night, if I remember correctly; and — must I confess it : — before the week came to an end, this invisible hobgoblin of a boy was only little less of a reality to me than to Mr. Jaffrey. At first I had lent myself to the old dreamer's whim with a keen perception of the humor of the thing; but by and by I found I was talking and thinking of Miss Mehetabel's son as though he were a veritable personage. Mr. Jaffrey spoke of the child with such an air of conviction' — as if Andy were playing among his toys in the next room, or making mud-pies down in the yard. In these conversations, it should be observed, the child was never supposed to be present, except on that single occasion when Mr. Jaffrey leaned over the cradle. After one of our séances I would lie awake until the small hours, thinking of the boy, and then fall asleep only to have in- digestible dreams about him. Through the day, and sometimes in the midst of complicated calcu- lations, I would catch myself wondering what Andy was up to now ! There was no shaking him off; he became an inseparable nightmare to me; and I felt that if I remained much longer 178 MIss MEHETABEL’s son. Miss Mchetabel's son, who, after all, was less unearthly than Mr. Jaffrey himself, and seemed more properly an inhabitant of this globe than the toothless ogre who kept the inn, not to men- tion the silent Witch of Endor that cooked our meals for us over the bar-room fire. In spite of the scowls and winks bestowed upon me by Mr. Sewell, who let slip no oppor- tunity to testify his disapprobation of the intima- cy, Mr. Jaffrey and I spent all our evenings to- gether, - those long autumnal evenings, through the length of which he talked about the boy, lay- ing out his path in life and hedging the path with roses. He should be sent to the High School at Portsmouth, and then to college; he should be educated like a gentleman, Andy. “When the old man dies,” said Mr. Jaffrey, rubbing his hands gleefully, as if it were a great joke, “Andy will find that the old man has left him a pretty plum.” - “What do you think of having Andy enter West Point, when he 's old enough 7 ° said Mr. Jaffrey on another occasion. “He need n’t neces- sarily go into the army when he graduates; he can become a civil engineer.” MIss MEHETABEL’s son. . 179 This was a stroke of flattery so delicate and indirect that I could accept it without immod- esty. There had lately sprung up on the corner of Mr. Jaffrey’s bureau a small tin house, Gothic in architecture, and pink in color, with a slit in the roof, and the word BANK painted on one façade. Several times in the course of an evening Mr. Jaffrey would rise from his chair without inter- rupting the conversation, and gravely drop a nickel into the scuttle of the bank. It was pleas- ant to observe the solemnity of his countenance as he approached the edifice, and the air of triumph with which he resumed his seat by the fireplace. One night I missed the tin bank. It had disappeared, deposits and all. Evidently there had been a defalcation on rather a large scale. I strongly suspected that Mr. Sewell was at the bottom of it; but my suspicion was not shared by Mr. Jaffrey, who, remarking my glance at the bureau, became suddenly depressed. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that I have failed to instil into Andrew those principles of integrity which — which —” and the old gentleman quite broke down. MISS MEHETABEL’s son. 181 and was afraid the boy was n’t going to turn out well. * On the Saturday previous to my departure, which had been fixed for Monday, it rained heav- ily all the afternoon, and that night Mr. Jaffrey was in an unusually excitable and unhappy frame of mind. His mercury was very low indeed. “That boy is going to the dogs just as fast as he can go,” said Mr. Jaffrey, with a woful face. “I can’t do anything with him.” “He ‘ll come out all right, Mr. Jaffrey. Boys will be boys. I would not give a snap for a lad without animal spirits.” “But animal spirits,” said Mr. Jaffrey senten- tiously, “should n’t saw off the legs of the piano in Tobias’s best parlor. I don’t know what To- bias will say when he finds it out.” “What has Andy sawed off the legs of the old spinet 7” I returned, laughing. “Worse than that.” “Played upon it, then l’” “No, Šir. He has lied to me!” “I can’t believe that of Andy.” “Lied to me, sir,” repeated Mr. Jaffrey, severe- ly. “He pledged me his word of honor that he 182 Miss MEHETABEL's son. would give over his climbing. The way that boy climbs sends a chill down my spine. This morn- ing, notwithstanding his solemn promise, he shinned up the lightning-rod attached to the extension and sat astride the ridge-pole. I saw him, and he denied it! When a boy you have caressed and indulged, and lavished pocket-money on, lies to you and will climb, then there 's nothing more to be said. He 's a lost child.” “You take too dark a view of it, Mr. Jaffrey. Training and education are bound to tell in the end, and he has been well brought up.” “But I did n’t bring him up on a lightning- rod, did I? If he is ever going to know how to behave, he ought to know now. To-morrow he will be eleven years old.” The reflection came to me that if Andy had not been brought up by the rod, he had certainly been brought up by the lightning. He was cleven years old in two weeks l I essayed, with that perspicacious wisdom which seems to be the peculiar property of bachelors and elderly maiden ladies, to tran- quillize Mr. Jaffrey's mind, and to give him some practical hints on the management of youth. MIss MEHETABEL’s son. 183 “Spank him,” I suggested at length. “I will !” said the old gentleman. “And you ’d better do it at once!” I added, as it flashed upon me that in six months Andy would be a hundred and forty-three years old !— an age at which parental discipline would have to be relaxed. The next morning, Sunday, the rain came down as if determined to drive the quicksilver entirely out of my poor friend. Mr. Jaffrey sat bolt upright at the breakfast-table, looking as woe-begone as a bust of Dante, and retired to his chamber the moment the meal was finished. As the day advanced, the wind veered round to the northeast, and settled itself down to work. It was not pleasant to think, and I tried not to think, what Mr. Jaffrey's condition would be if the weather did not mend its manners by noon; but so far from clearing off at noon, the storm increased in violence, and as night set in, the wind whistled in a spiteful falsetto key, and the rain lashed the old tavern as if it were a balky horse that refused to move on. The windows rattled in the worm-eaten frames, and the doors of remote rooms, where nobody ever went, 184 Miss MEHETABEL's son. slammed to in the maddest way. Now and then the tornado, sweeping down the side of Mount Agamenticus, bowled across the open country, and struck the ancient hostelry point-blank. Mr. Jaffrey did not appear at supper. I knew he was expecting me to come to his room as usual, and I turned over in my mind a dozen plans to evade seeing him that night. The land- lord sat at the opposite side of the chimney-place, with his eye upon me. I fancy he was aware of the effect of this storm on his other boarder, for at intervals, as the wind hurled itself against the exposed gable, threatening to burst in the windows, Mr. Sewell tipped me an atrocious wink, and displayed his gums in a way he had not done since the morning after my arrival at Greenton. I wondered if he suspected anything about Andy. There had been odd times during the past week when I felt convinced that the existence of Miss Mehetabel’s son was no secret to Mr. Sewell. In deference to the gale, the landlord sat up half an hour later than was his custom. At half- past eight he went to bed, remarking that he thought the old pile would stand till morning. He had been absent only a few minutes when MISS MEHETABEL’s SoN. 185 I heard a rustling at the door. I looked up, and beheld Mr. Jaffrey standing on the threshold, with his dress in disorder, his scant hair flying, and the wildest expression on his face. “He’s gone !” cried Mr. Jaffrey. “Who? Sewell? Yes, he just went to bed.” “No, not Tobias, – the boy!” “What, run away ?” “No, - he is dead! He has fallen off of a step-ladder in the red chamber and broken his neck!” Mr. Jaffrey threw up his hands with a gesture of despair, and disappeared. I followed him through the hall, saw him go into his own apart- ment, and heard the bolt of the door drawn to. Then I returned to the bar-room, and sat for an hour or two in the ruddy glow of the fire, brood- ing over the strange experience of the last fort- night. - On my way to bed I paused at Mr. Jaffrey's door, and, in a lull of the storm, the measured respiration within told me that the old gentleman was sleeping peacefully. Slumber was coy with me that night. I lay listening to the soughing of the wind, and think- 186 Miss MEHETABEL's son. ing of Mr. Jaffrey's illusion. 'it had amused me at first with its grotesqueness; but now the poor little phantom was dead, I was conscious that there had been something pathetic in it all along. Shortly after midnight the wind sunk down, com- ing and going fainter and fainter, floating around the caves of the tavern with a gentle, murmurous sound, as if it were turning itself into soft wings to bear away the spirit of a little child. Perhaps nothing that happened during my stay at Bayley’s Four-Corners took me so completely by surprise as Mr. Jaffrey's radiant countenance the next morning. The morning itself was not fresher or sunnier. His round face literally shone with geniality and happiness. His eyes twinkled like diamonds, and the magnetic light of his hair was turned on full. He came into my room while I was packing my valise. He chirped, and prattled, and carolled, and was sorry I was going away, - but never a. word about Andy. However, the boy had probably been dead several years then The open wagon that was to carry me to the station stood at the door; Mr. Sewell was placing A STRU GGLE FOR LIFE. 189 of him was concerned,—the New England cut of countenance is unmistakable, – evidently a man who had seen something of the world, but strangely young and old. Before reaching the Park Street gate, I had taken up the thread of thought which he had un- consciously broken ; yet throughout the day this old young man, with his unwrinkled brow and silvered locks, glided in like a phantom between me and my duties. - The next morning I again encountered him on The Mall. He was resting lazily on the green rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which two ragged ship-owners had consigned to the mimic perils of the Pond. The vessels lay be- calmed in the middle of the ocean, displaying a tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic helplessness of the owners on shore. As the gentleman observed their dilemma, a light came into his faded eyes, then died out, leaving them drearier than before. I wondered if he, too, in his time, had sent out ships that drifted and drifted and never came to port; and if these poor toys were to him types of his own losses. “That man has a story, and I should like to 190 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. know it,” I said, half aloud, halting in one of those winding paths which branch off from the pastoral quietness of the Pond, and end in the rush and tumult of Tremont Street. “Would you?” exclaimed a voice at my side. I turned and faced Mr. H mine, who laughed heartily at finding me talking to myself. “Well,” he added, reflectingly, “I can tell you this man's story; and if you will , a neighbor of match the narrative with anything as curious, I shall be glad to hear it.” “You know him then * * “Yes and no. That is to say, I do not know him personally; but I know a singular passage in his life. I happened to be in Paris when he was buried.” “Buried 1 '' - “Well, strictly speaking, not buried; but some- thing quite like it. 'If you’ve a spare half-hour,” continued my friend H-, “we’ll sit on this bench, and I will tell you all I know of an affair that made some noise in Paris a couple of years ago. The gentleman himself, standing yonder, will serve as a sort of frontispiece to the romance, —a full-page illustration, as it were.” A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 191 The following pages contain the story which Mr. H– related to me. While he was telling it, a gentle wind arose; the miniature sloops drifted feebly about the ocean; the wretched owners flew from point to point, as the deceptive breeze promised to waft the barks to either shore; the early robins trilled now and then from the newly fringed elms; and the old young man leaned on the rail in the sunshine, little dream- ing that two gossips were discussing his affairs within twenty yards of him. Three people were sitting in a chamber whose one large window overlooked the Place Vendôme. M. Dorine, with his back half turned on the other two occupants of the apartment, was read- ing the Journal des Débats in an alcove, pausing from time to time to wipe his glasses, and taking scrupulous pains not to glance towards the lounge at his right, on which were seated Mlle. Dorine and a young American gentleman, whose hand- some face rather frankly told his position in the family. There was not a happier man in Paris that afternoon than Philip Wentworth. Life had become so delicious to him that he shrunk 192 a struggle for LIFE. from looking beyond to-day. What could the future add to his full heart? what might it not take away ? The deepest joy has always some- thing of melancholy in it, a presentiment, a fleeting sadness, a feeling without a name. Went- worth was conscious of this subtile shadow that night, when he rose from the lounge and thought- fully held Julie's hand to his lip for a moment before parting. A careless observer would not have thought him, as he was, the happiest man in Paris. M. Dorine laid down his paper, and came for- ward. “If the house,” he said, “is such as M. Cherbonneau describes it, I advise you to close with him at once. I would accompany you, Philip, but the truth is, I am too sad at losing this little bird to assist you in selecting a cage for her. Remember, the last train for town leaves at five. Be sure not to miss it ; for we have seats for Sardou's new comedy to-morrow night. By to-morrow night,” he added laughingly, “little Julie here will be an old lady, -’t is such an age from now until then.” - The next morning the train bore Philip to one A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 193 of the loveliest spots within thirty miles of Paris. An hour's walk through green lanes brought him to M. Cherbonneau's estate. In a kind of dream the young man wanderal from room to room, in- spected the conservatory; the stables, the lawns, the strip of woodland through which a merry brook sang to itself continually; and, after din- ing with M. Cherbonneau, completed the pur- chase, and turned his steps towards the station just in time to catch the express train. As Paris stretched out before him, with its lights twinkling in the early dusk, and its spires and domes melting into the evening air, it seemed to Philip as if years had elapsed since he left the city. On reaching Paris he drove to his hôtel, where he found several letters lying on the table. He did not trouble himself even to glance at their superscriptions as he threw aside his travelling surtout for a more appropriate dress. If, in his impatience to return to Mlle. Dorine, the cars had appeared to walk, the fiacre which he had secured at the station appeared to creep. At last it turned into the Place Vendôme, and drew up before M. Dorine's hôtel. The door 9 M 196 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. Philip, one to the station at G–, the other to his hôtel. The first missed him on the road, the second he had neglected to open. On his ar- rival at M. Dorine's house, the valet, under the supposition that Wentworth had been advised of Mlle. Dorine's death, broke the intelligence with awkward cruelty, by showing him directly to the salon. Mlle. Dorine's wealth, her beauty, the sudden- ness of her death, and the romance that had in some way attached itself to her love for the young American, drew crowds to witness the funeral ceremonies, which took place in the church in the rue d'Aguesseau. The body was to be laid in M. Dorine's tomb, in the cemetery of Montmartre. This tomb requires a few words of description. First there was a grating of filigraned iron; through this you looked into a small vestibule or hall, at the end of which was a massive door of oak opening upon a short flight of stone steps descending into the tomb. The vault was fifteen or twenty feet square, ingeniously ventilated from the ceiling, but unlighted. It contained two sar- cophagi: the first held the remains of Madame A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 197 Dorine, long since dead; the other was new, and bore on one side the letters J. D., in monogram, interwoven with fleurs-de-lis. The funeral train stopped at the gate of the small garden that enclosed the place of burial, only the immediate relatives following the bearers into the tomb. A slender wax candle, such as is used in Catholic churches, burnt at the foot of the uncovered sarcophagus, casting a dim glow over the centre of the apartment, and deepening the shadows which seemed to huddle together in the corners. By this flickering light the coffin was placed in its granite shell, the heavy slab laid over it reverently, and the oaken door re- volved on its rusty hinges, shutting out the uncertain ray of sunshine that had ventured to peep in on the darkness. M. Dorine, muffled in his cloak, threw himself on the back seat of the landau, too abstracted in his grief to observe that he was the only occu- pant of the vehicle. There was a sound of wheels grating on the gravelled avenue, and then all was silence again in the cemetery of Mont- martre. At the main entrance the carriages parted company, dashing off into various streets A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 199 gle the life which he should guard for her sake? Was it not his duty to the living and the dead to face the difficulties of his position, and overcome them if it were within human power ? With an organization as delicate as a woman's, he had that spirit which, however sluggish in repose, leaps with a kind of exultation to meas- ure its strength with disaster. The vague fear of the supernatural, that would affect most men in a similar situation, found no room in his heart. He was simply shut in a chamber from which it was necessary that he should obtain release within a given period. That this chamber contained the body of the woman he loved, so far from adding to the terror of the case, was a circumstance from which he drew consolation. She was a beautiful white statue now. Her soul was far hence; and if that pure spirit could return, would it not be to shield him with her love? It was impossible that the place should not engender some thought of the kind. He.did not put the thought entirely from him as he rose to his feet and stretched out his hands in the darkness; but his mind was too healthy and practical to indulge long in such speculations. \º 200 A struggle FOR LIFE. Philip, being a smoker, chanced to have in his pocket a box of allumettes. After several in- effectual essays, he succeeded in igniting one against the dank wall, and by its momentary glare perceived that the candle had been left in the tomb. This would serve him in examining the fastenings of the vault. If he could force the inner door by any means, and reach the grating, of which he had an indistinct recollection, he might hope to make himself heard. But the oaken door was immovable, as solid as the wall itself, into which it fitted air-tight. Even if he had had the requisite tools, there were no fasten- ings to be removed ; the hinges were set on the outside. Having ascertained this, Philip replaced the candle on the floor, and leaned against the wall thoughtfully, watching the blue fan of flame that wavered to and fro, threatening to detach itself from the wick. “At all events,” he thought, “the place is ventilated.” Suddenly he sprang forward and extinguished the light. His existence depended on that candle! He had read somewhere, in some account of shipwreck, how the survivors had lived for 202 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. over at the Morgue; a minute description of him would be in every detective's pocket; and he – in M. Dorine's family tomb : Yet, on the other hand, it was here he was last seen ; from this point a keen detective would naturally work up the case. Then might not the undertaker return for the candlestick, probably not left by design : Or, again, might not M. Dorine send fresh wreaths of flowers, to take the place of those which now diffused a pungent, aromatic odor throughout the chamber 2 Ah! what unlikely chances ! But if one of these things did not happen speedily, it had better never happen. How long could he keep life in himself Ż - With his pocket-knife Wentworth cut the half-burned candle into four equal parts. “To- night,” he meditated, “I will eat the first of these pieces; to-morrow, the second ; to-morrow evening, the third; the next day, the fourth ; and then — then I'll wait !” He had taken no breakfast that morning, un- less a cup of coffee can be called a breakfast. He had never been very hungry before. He was ravenously hungry now. But he postponed the 204 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. It must be near morning now, he mused ; per- haps the sun is just gilding the pinnacles and domes of the city; or, may be, a dull, drizzling rain is beating on Paris, sobbing on these mounds above me. Paris it seems like a dream. Did I ever walk in its gay boulevards in the golden air º O the delight and pain and passion of that sweet human life Philip became conscious that the gloom, the silence, and the cold were gradually conquering him. The feverish activity of his brain brought on a reaction. He grew lethargic, he sunk down on the steps, and thought of nothing. His hand fell by chance on one of the pieces of candle; he grasped it and devoured it mechanically. This revived him. “How strange,” he thought, “that I am not thirsty. Is it possible that the damp- ness of the walls, which I must inhale with every breath, has supplied the need of water ? Not a drop has passed my lips for two days, and still I experience no thirst. That drowsiness, thank Heaven, has gone. I think I was never wide awake until this hour. It would be an anodyne like poison that could weigh down my eyelids. No doubt the dread of sleep has something to do with this.” A STRU GGLE FOR LIFE. 205 The minutes were like hours. Now he walked as briskly as he dared up and down the tomb; now he rested against the door. More than once he was tempted to throw himself upon the stone coffin that held Julie, and make no further strug- gle for his life. Only one piece of candle remained. He had eaten the third portion, not to satisfy hunger, but from a precautionary motive. He had taken it as a man takes some disagreeable drug upon the result of which hangs safety. The time was rapidly approaching when even this poor substi- tute for nourishment would be exhausted. He delayed that moment. He gave himself a long fast this time. The half-inch of candle which he held in his hand was a sacred thing to him. It was his last defence against death. At length, with such a sinking at heart as he had not known before, he raised it to his lips. Then he paused, then he hurled the fragment across the tomb, then the oaken door was flung open, and Philip, with dazzled eyes, saw M. Dorine's form sharply defined against the blue sky. When they led him out, half blinded, into the 206 A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. broad daylight, M. Dorine noticed that Philip's hair, which a short time since was as black as a crow’s wing, had actually turned gray in places. The man's eyes, too, had faded; the darkness had dimmed their lustre. “And how long was he really confined in the tomb : ” I asked, as Mr. H concluded the story. “Just one hour and twenty minutes : " replied Mr. H , smiling blandly. As he spoke, the Lilliputian sloops, with their sails all blown out like white roses, came floating bravely into port, and Philip Wentworth lounged by us, wearily, in the pleasant April sunshine. Mr. H a man who had undergone a strange ordeal. 's narrative haunted me. Here was Here was a man whose sufferings were unique. -His was no threadbare experience. Eighty min- utes had seemed like two days to him! If he had really been immured two days in the tomb, the story, from my point of view, would have lost its tragic element. After this it was but natural I should regard A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE. 207 Mr. Wentworth with deepened curiosity. As I met him from day to day, passing through the Common with that same introspective air, there was something in his loneliness which touched me. I wondered that I had not read before in his pale, meditative face some such sad history as Mr. H had confided to me. I formed the resolution of speaking to him, though with no very lucid purpose. One morning we came face to face at the intersection of two paths. He halted courteously to allow me the precedence. “Mr. Wentworth,” I began, “I —” He interrupted me. • . “My name, sir,” he said, in an off-hand man- ner, “is Jones.” “Jo-Jo-Jones!” I gasped. “No, not Joseph Jones,” he returned, with a glacial air, “Frederick.” A dim light, in which the perfidy of my friend EI was becoming discernible, began to break v upon my mind. It will probably be a standing wonder to Mr. Frederick Jones why a strange man accosted him one morning on the Common as “Mr. Went- 208 A struggle fort LIFE. worth,” and then dashed madly down the nearest foot-path and disappeared in the crowd. The fact is, I had been duped by Mr. H-, who is a gentleman of literary proclivities, and has, it is whispered, become somewhat demented in brooding over the Great American Novel, - not yet hatched. He had actually tried the effect of one of his chapters on me! My hero, as I subsequently learned, is a com- monplace young person who had some connec- tion, I do not know what, with the building of that graceful granite bridge which spans the crooked silver lake in the Public Garden. When I think of the readiness with which Mr. H feel half inclined to laugh, though I am deeply mortified at having been the unresisting victim of his Black Art. built up his airy fabric on my credulity, I THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. None of the episodes in his entertaining vol- ume of Vagabond Adventures, Mr. Keeler takes the reader with him on a professional cruise in Dr. Spaulding's Floating Palace. This Floating Palace, a sort of Barnum's Museum with a keel, was designed for navigation in Southern and Western rivers, and carried a cargo of complex delights that must have much amazed the sim- ple dwellers on the banks of the Ohio and the Mississippi. Here, on board of this dramatical Noah's Ark, the reader finds himself on the pleas- antest terms conceivable with negro minstrels, danseuses, apostolic wax-works, moral acrobats, stuffed animals, vocalists, and a certain Governor Dorr. It was with a thrill of honest pleasure that I came upon this picturesque outcast unexpected- ly embalmed, like a fly in amber, in Mr. Keeler's autobiography. There was a time when I was N 210 The FRIEND or My YouTH. proud to know this Governor Dorr, when I hung upon the rotund music of his lips, listened to his marvellous stories of moving accidents by flood and field, and was melted to the very heart at those rare moments when, in a three-cornered room in the rear of Wall's Drug Store, he would favor me with some of the most lacrymose and sentimental poems that ever came of a despondent poet. At this epoch of my existence, Governor Dorr, with his sarcastic winks, his comic melan- choly, his quotations from Shakespeare, and his fearful knowledge of the outside world, was in my eyes the personification of all that was learned, lyrical, romantic, and daring. A little later my boyish admiration was shattered by the discovery that my Admirable Crichton was — well, it is of no use now to mince words — an adventurer and a gambler. With a kind of sigh that is at present a lost art to me, I put him aside with those dethroned idols and collapsed dreams which accumulate on one’s hands as one advances in life, and of which I already had a promising collection when I was about twenty. I cast off Governor Dorr, I repeat; but, oddly enough, Governor Dorr never cast me off, but persisted in THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 211 turning up at intervals of four or five years in the tender and pathetic character of “the friend of my youth.” As Governor Dorr is the only gentleman in his line of business who ever evinced any interest in me, I intend to make the most of him; and, indeed, among my reputable acquaint- ances there is none who deserves to fare better at my hands. My reputable acquaintances have sometimes bored me, and taught me nothing. Now Governor Dorr, in the ethereal shape of a reminiscence, has not only been a source of great amusement to me at various times, but has taught me by his own funest example that whatever gifts a man may possess, if he have no moral principle he is a failure. Wanting the gift of honesty, Governor Dorr was a gambler and a sharper, and is dead. I was a school-boy at Rivermouth when Gov- ernor Dorr swept like a brilliant comet into the narrow arc of my observation.” One day in * “Governor Dorr,” I should explain, was a sobriquet, but when or how it attached itself to him I never knew ; his real name I suppress for the sake of some that may bear it, if there are any so unfortunate. 212 THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. the summer of 18—I was going home from school when I saw standing in front of Wall's Drug Store a showily dressed person, who seemed to me well advanced in years, that is to say, twenty-five or thirty; he was the centre of a small circle of idle fellows about town, who were drinking in with obvious relish one of those pre-Raphaelite narratives which I was afterwards destined to swallow with open-mouthed wonder. The genial twinkle of the man’s blue eyes, the glow of his half-smoked cigar, and the blaze of the diamond on his little finger, all seemed the members of one radiant family. To this day I cannot disassociate a sort of glitter with the memory of my first glimpse of Governor Dorr. He had finished speaking as I joined the group; I had caught only the words, “and that was the last of gallant Jack Märtinway,” delivered in a singularly mellow barytone voice, when he turned abruptly and disappeared behind the orange and purple jars in Dr. Wall's shop- window. Who is gallant Jack Martinway, I wondered, and who is this dazzling person that wears his best clothes on a week-day ! I took him for TIIE FRIEND OF MY YOUTII. 213 some distinguished military hero, and with a fine feeling for anachronism immediately connect- ed him with the portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh in Mitchell’s Geography, — a work I was at that time neglecting with considerable perseverance. The apparition of so bewildering a figure in our staid, slow-going little town was likely to cause a sensation. The next day in school I learned all about him. He was Governor Dorr; he had once been a boy in Rivermouth, like us, but had gone off years ago to seek his fortune, and now he had come back immensely wealthy from somewhere, South America or the Chincha Islands, where he was governor, and was going to settle down in his native town and buy the “Janvrin Place,” — an estate which the heirs were too poor to keep and nobody else rich enough to purchase. This was appetizing, and after school I wan- dered up to Wall's Drug Store to take a look at my gilded townsman, of whom I was not a little proud. I was so dazed at the time, that I do not recol- lect how it all came about; but Governor Dorr was in the shop holding a glass of soda-water in 220 The friend of MY YOUTH. fathers and die in the course of a single hour; but they endeared the Governor to me, and may- be, when the final reckoning comes, all those good impulses will add up to something hand- some; who can tell? Nearly six months had passed since the begin- ning of our acquaintance, when one morning my noble friend and my copy of Shakespeare—an illegibly printed volume bound in seedy law-calf, but the most precious of my earthly treasures— disappeared from the town simultaneously. Gov- ernor Dorr had gone, as he had come, without a word of warning, leaving his “ancient,” as he was pleased to call me, the victim of abject de- spair. What complicated events caused the abrupt departure of my friend and my calf-skin Shake- speare from Rivermouth never transpired. Per- haps he had spent all his money : perhaps he was wanted by a pal in New York, for some fresh piece of deviltry; or, what is more proba- ble, the pastoral sweetness of life at Rivermouth had begun to cloy on his metropolitan palate. It may have been five or it may have been ten months after his exodus that my late companion 222 THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. his lower jaw had grown heavier and his figure not improved. There was a hard expression in his face, and that inexplicable something all over him which says as plainly as a whisper to the ear, “This is a Black Sheep.” At the crossing our eyes met. Would he recognize his quondam chum and dupe, after all these years? The Governor gazed at me ear- nestly for ten seconds, then slowly drew back, and lifting his hat with a magnificent grand air quite his own made me an obeisance so involved and elaborate that it would be mere rashness to at- tempt to describe it. The lady at my side gave my arm a convulsive grasp, and whispered, “Who is that dreadful man * * “O, that ?—that is the friend of my youth Though I made light of the meeting, I was by no means amused by it. I saw that if Governor Dorr insisted on presuming on his old acquaint- | 22 ance, he might render it very disagreeable for me; I might have to snub him, perhaps quarrel with him. His presence was altogether annoy- ing and depressing. It appears that the man had been lying about The FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 223 Rivermouth for the last twelvemonth. When he was there before he had mystified the town, but now he terrified it. The people were afraid of him, and Governor Dorr knew it, and was hav- ing what he would have described as “a very soft thing.” He touched his hat to all the pretty girls in the place, talked to everybody, and minis- tered to the spiritual part of his nature, now and then, by walking down the street familiarly with an eminent divine who did not deem it prudent to resent the impertinence. For it was noticed by careful observers, that when any person re- pelled Governor Dorr, that person's wood-house caught on fire mysteriously, or a successful raid was undertaken in the direction of that person's family plate. These trifling mishaps could never be traced to the Governor's agency, but the remarkable pre- cision with which a catastrophe followed any slight offered to him made the townspeople rather civil than otherwise to their lively guest. The authorities, however, were on the alert, and one night, a week after my arrival, the Gov- ernor was caught flagrante delicto, and lodged by Sheriff Adams in the Stone Jail, to my great 224 THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. relief, be it said; for the dread of meeting the man in my walks to the post-office and the read- ing-room had given me the air of a person seek- ing to elude the vigilance of justice. I forget which of the laws the Governor had offended,—he was quite impartial in his trans- gressions, by the way, - but it was one that insured him a stationary residence for several months, and I considered myself well rid of the gentleman. But I little knew the resources of Governor Dorr. He had been in the habit of contributing poems and sketches of a lurid nature to one of the local newspapers, and now, finding the time to hang heavily on his hands in the solitude of his cell,—the window of which overlooked the main street of the town, he began a series of letters to the editor of the journal in question. These letters were dated from the Hôtel d'Adams (a graceful tribute to the sheriff of the county), and consisted of descriptions of what he saw from his cell window, with sharp, shrewd, and witty hits at the peculiarities of certain no- table persons of the town, together with some attempts at fine writing not so successful. His * 226 THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. ridiculous light than any amount of abuse could have done. His sentiment was a thousand times more deadly than his satire. - Though my vacation was not at an end by several weeks, I quietly packed my valise that night, and fled from the friend of my youth. I find that I am using the capital letter I rather freely in this sketch, – a reprehensible habit into which people who write autobiography are apt to fall; but really my intention is to give as little of myself and as much of my friend as possible. In the two or three years that followed this ignominious flight from my native town, I fre- quently heard of Governor Dorr indirectly. He had become famous now in his modest way. I heard of him in New Orleans and in some of the Western cities. Once, at least, he reappeared in Rivermouth, where he got into some difficulty with a number of noncombatant turkeys pre- pared for Thanksgiving, the result of which was he spent that day of general festivity at the Hôtel d'Adams. But New York was, I believe, his favorite field of operations, as well as mine. I cannot explain why the man so often came THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 227 uppermost in my mind in those days; but I thought of him a great deal at intervals, and was thinking of him very particularly one dismal November afternoon, in 185—, as I sat alone in the editorial room of the Saturday Press, where I had remained to write after the departure of my confrères. It was a melancholy small room, up two flights of stairs, in the rear of a building used as a ware- house by a paper firm doing business in the basement. Though bounded on all sides by tur- bulent streams of traffic, this room was as se- cluded and remote as if it had stood in the mid- dle of the Desert of Sahara. It would have made an admirable scenic background for a noiseless midday murder in a melodrama. But it was an excellent place in which to write, in spite of the cobwebbed rafters overhead and the confirmed symptoms of scrofula in the plastering. I did not settle down to work easily that after- noon ; my fancy busied itself with everything except the matter in hand: I fell to thinking of old times and Rivermouth, and what comical things boys are with their hero-worship and their monkey-shines, and how I used to regard Gov- THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 229 and was shiny at the cuffs and along the seams. His hat had a weed on it, which struck me as being strange, as I did not remember that any- body had been hanged recently. I afterwards formed a theory touching that weed, based on the supposition that the hat was somebody else's property. Altogether the Governor looked as if be had fallen upon evil days since our last meet- ing. There was a hard, cold look in his eyes which, in spite of his half-apologetic attitude, was far from reassuring. Given a voice in the matter, I would not have chosen to have a private conference with him that dull November afternoon in that lonely room in the old barracks on Spruce Street. The space occupied by the editorial tables was shut off from the rest of the office by a slight wooden rail extending across the apartment. In the centre of this rail was a gate, which my visitor, after a moment's hesitation, proceeded to open. - As I noted down all the circumstances of the interview while it was fresh in my mind, I am able to reproduce the Governor's words and manner pretty faithfully. - 230 THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. He closed the gate behind him with labori- ous care, advanced a few steps, rested one hand upon the back of a chair, and fixed a pair of fishy eyes upon me. If he intended to fascinate me, he failed; if he intended to make me feel extremely nervous, his success was complete. “Telemachus,” he said, at length, in a voice that had lost its old music and may be succinctly described as ropy, -“you know I used to call you Telemachus in those happy days when I was your “guide, philosopher, and friend,'—you see before you a reformed man.” I suppose I was not entirely successful in concealing my inward conviction. “So help me Bob l’’ exclaimed the Govern- or. “I am going to reform, and get some decent clothes,”—casting a look of unutterable scorn on his coat-sleeve. The idea of connecting a reformatory measure with an increase of wardrobe struck me as neat, and I smiled. - “I am going to be honest,” continued Governor Dorr, not heeding my unseemly levity; “‘Honest Iago.’ I am going to turn over a new leaf. I don’t like the way things have been going. I THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 231 was n’t intended to be a low fellow. I ain’t adapted to being an outcast from society. “We know what we are, but we don't know what we may be,” as the sublime Shakespeare remarks. Now, I know what I am, and I know what I’m going to be. I’m going to be another man. But I must get out of New York first. The boys would n’t let me reform. “The little dogs and all, Tray, Blanch, and Sweetheart, see, they bark at me!” I know too many people here and too many people know me. I am going to New Orleans. My old friend Kendall of the Picayune knows my literary qualifications, and would give me an engagement on his paper at sight; but I’m not proud, and if worst came to worst I could get advertisements or solicit subscribers, and work my way up. In the bright lexicon of a man who means what he says, “there 's no such word as fail.” He does n’t know how to spell it.” The Governor paused and looked at me for a reply; but as I had nothing to say, I said it. “I’ve been down to Rivermouth,” he resumed, a trifle less spiritedly, “to see what my old chums would do towards paying my way to New Orleans. THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 233 The Governor was so affected by this that he' searched in several pockets for a handkerchief, but not finding one, he wiped away what I should call a very dry tear with the cuff of his sleeve. “‘Had I but served my God,” he remarked, “‘with half the zeal’ I have fooled away my chances, “he would not have left me in mine age” to solicit financial succor in this humiliating fashion.” It was the mendaciousness of Jeremy Diddler toned down by the remorse of Cardinal Wolsey. “I am well aware,” I said coldly, “that the few dollars I intend to give you will be staked at the nearest faro-table or squandered over the bar of some drinking-shop. I want you to under- stand distinctly that you are not imposing on me.” Now the journal of which I was part proprietor had a weekly circulation of less than forty thou- sand copies, and at the end of the week, when we had paid a sordid printer and an unimaginative paper-maker, we were in a condition that entitled us to rank as objects of charity rather than as benefactors of the poor. A five-dollar bill was all my available assets that November afternoon, and out of this I purposed to reserve two dollars 234. THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. for my dinner at Mataran's. I stated the case plainly to the Governor, suggesting that I could get the note changed at the Tribune office. He picked up the bill which I had spread out on the table between us, remarking that he thought he could change it. Whereupon he pro- duced a portly pocket-book from the breast of his coat, and from the pocket-book so fat a roll of bank-notes that I glowed with indignation to think he had the coolness to appropriate three fifths of my slender earnings. “New Orleans, you know,” he remarked, ex- planatorily. The Governor was quite another man now, running dexterously over the bills with a moist forefinger in the gayest of spirits. He handed me my share of the five-dollar bill with the man- ner of a benevolent prince dispensing his boun- ties, accorded me the privilege of grasping his manly hand, raised his hat with a good deal of his old quasi aristocratic flourish, and was gone. There is this heavenly quality in a deed of even misplaced charity, -it makes the heart of the doer sit lightly in his bosom. I treated my- self handsomely that afternoon at dinner, regard- THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 235 ing myself in the abstract as a person who ought to dine well, and was worthy of at least half a pint of table-claret. I tested the delicacies of Mataran's cuisine as far as my purse would allow ; but when I stepped to the desk to pay the reckoning, those two one-dollar bills rather awkwardly turned out to be counterfeits! Well, I suppose I deserved it. The frequency with which Governor Dorr's name figured in the local police reports during the ensuing twelve months leads me to infer that he did not depart for New Orleans as soon as he expected. Time rolled on, and the Saturday Press, being loved by the gods, died early, and one morning in 1861 I found myself at liberty to undertake a long-deferred pilgrimage to Rivermouth. On arriving at my destination, cramped with a night's ride in the cars, I resolved to get the kinks out of me by walking from the station. Turning into one of the less-frequented streets in order not to meet too many of my townsfolk, I came abruptly upon a hearse jogging along very pleasantly and followed at a little distance by a 236 The FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. single hack. When all one's friends can be put into a single hack, perhaps it is best that one should be buried expeditiously. A malign urchin stood on the corner whistling shrilly through his fingers, which he removed from his lips with an injured air long enough to answer my question. “Who’s dead? Why, Guvner Dorr’s dead. That's 'im,” curving a calliopean thumb in the direction of the hearse. The pity of it! The forlornness of the thing touched me, and a feeling of gratitude went out from my bosom towards the two or three hacks which now made their appearance around the corner and joined the funeral train. Broken down in his prime with careless living, Governor Dorr a few months previously had straggled back to the old place to die; and thus had chance — which sometimes displays a keen appreciation of dramatic effect — once more, and for the last time, brought me in contact with the friend of my youth. Obeying the impulse, I turned and followed the procession until it came to the head of that long, unbuilt street which, stretching in a curve from the yawning gate of the cemetery into the heart of the town, always THE FRIEND OF MY YOUTH. 287 seemed to me like a great siphon draining the life from Rivermouth. Here I halted and watched the black carriages as they crawled down the road, growing smaller and smaller, until they appeared to resolve themselves into one tiny coach, which, lessening in the distance, finally vanished through a gateway that seemed about a foot high. MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 239 club in existence. Whenever you see in our drawing-room four or five young fellows lounging in easy-chairs, cigar in hand, and now and then bringing their heads together over the small round Japanese table which is always the pivot of these social circles, you may be sure they are discussing Tom's engagement, or Dick's extrava- gance, or Harry's hopeless passion for the younger Miss Fleurdelys. It is here that old Tippleton gets execrated for that everlasting bon mot of his which was quite a success at dinner- parties forty years ago; it is here the belle of the season passes under the scalpels of merciless young surgeons; it is here B's financial con- dition is handled in a way that would make B's hair stand on end; it is here, in short, that every- thing is canvassed, – everything that happens in our set, I mean, much that never happens, and a great deal that could not possibly happen. It was at Our Club that I learned the particulars of the Van Twiller affair. It was great entertainment to Our Club, the Van Twiller affair, though it was rather a joyless thing, I fancy, for Van Twiller. To understand the case fully, it should be understood that Ralph 240 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. Van Twiller is one of the proudest and most sensitive men living. He is a lineal descendant of Wouter Van Twiller, the famous old Dutch governor of New York, -Nieuw Amsterdam, as it was then ; his ancestors have always been burgomasters or admirals or generals, and his mother is the Mrs. Vanrensselaer Wanzandt Van Twiller whose magnificent place will be pointed out to you on the right bank of the Hudson, as you pass up the historic river towards Idlewild. Ralph is about twenty-five years old. Birth made him a gentleman, and the rise of real estate—some of it in the family since the old governor's time—made him a million- naire. It was a kindly fairy that stepped in and made him a good fellow also. Fortune, I take it, was in her most jocund mood when she heaped her gifts in this fashion on Van Twiller, who was, and will be again, when this cloud blows over, the flower of Our Club. About a year ago there came a whisper — if the word “ whisper” is not too harsh a term to apply to what seemed a mere breath floating gently through the atmosphere of the billiard- room — imparting the intelligence that Van MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 24l Twiller was in some kind of trouble. Just as everybody suddenly takes to wearing square-toed boots, or to drawing his neckscarf through a ring, so it became all at once the fashion, without any preconcerted agreement, for everybody to speak of Wan Twiller as a man in some way under a cloud. But what the cloud was, and how he got under it, and why he did not get away from it, were points that lifted themselves into the realm of pure conjecture. There was no man in the club with strong enough wing to his imagination to soar to the supposition that Wan Twiller was embarrassed in money matters. Was he in love? That appeared nearly as improbable; for if he had been in love all the world—that is, perhaps a hundred first families —would have known all about it instantly. “He has the symptoms,” said Delaney, laugh- ing. “I remember once when Jack Flem- ming — ” “Ned” cried Flemming, “I protest against . any allusion to that business.” This was one night when Van Twiller had wandered into the club, turned over the maga- zines absently in the reading-room, and wandered 11 P MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 243 Twiller, whom it had taken all these years and all this waste of raw material in the way of ancestors to bring to perfection, —Ralph Van Twiller, the net result and flower of his race, the descendant of Wouter, the son of Mrs. Vanrensselaer Wanzandt Wan Twiller, — in love with an actress | That was too ridiculous to be believed, – and so everybody believed it. Six or seven members of the club abruptly discovered in themselves an unsuspected latent passion for the histrionic art. In squads of two or three they stormed successively all the theatres in town, – Booth's, Wallack's, Daly's Fifth Ave- nue (not burnt down then), and the Grand Opera House. Even the shabby homes of the drama over in the Bowery, where the Germanic Thes- pius has not taken out his naturalization papers, underwent rigid exploration. But no clew was found to Van Twiller's mysterious attachment. The opéra bouffe, which promised the widest field for investigation, produced absolutely noth- ing, not even a crop of suspicions. One night, after several weeks of this, Delaney and I fancied we caught a glimpse of Van Twiller in the private box of an up-town theatre, where 244 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. some thrilling trapeze performance was going on, which we did not care to sit through; but we concluded afterwards it was only somebody that looked like him. Delaney, by the way, was unusually active in this search. I dare say he never quite forgave Wan Twiller for calling him Muslin Delaney. Ned is fond of ladies’ society and that's a fact. The Cimmerian darkness which surrounded Van Twiller's inamorata left us free to indulge in the wildest conjectures. Whether she was black-tressed Melpomene, with bowl and dagger, or Thalia, with the fair hair and the laughing face, was only to be guessed at. It was popularly conceded, however, that Wan Twiller was on the point of forming a dreadful mésalliance. Up to this period he had visited the club regularly. Suddenly he ceased to appear. He was not to be seen on Broadway, or in the Central Park, or at the houses he generally frequented. His chambers—and mighty com- fortable ones they were—on Thirty-fourth Street were deserted. He had dropped out of the world, shot like a bright particular star from his orbit in the heaven of the best society. MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 245 « Where 's Wan Twiller 2’” “Who’s seen Wan TWiller 2 ” “What has become of Van Twiller 7 ° Delaney picked up the Evening Post, and read, —with a solemnity that betrayed young Firkins into exclaiming, “By Jove now !” — “Married, on the 10th instant, by the Rev. Friar Laurence, at the residence of the bride's uncle, Montague Capulet, Esq., Miss Adrienne Le Couvreur to Mr. Ralph Van Twiller, both of this city. No cards.” “It strikes me,” said Frank Livingstone, who had been ruffling the leaves of a magazine at the other end of the table, “that you fellows are in a great fever about Wan Twiller.” “So We are.” “Well, he has simply gone out of town.” “Where 2'' “Up to the old homestead on the Hudson.” “It’s an odd time of year for a fellow to go into the country.” “He has gone to visit his mother,” said Living- stone. “In February 2” “I didn't know, Delaney, there was any stat- MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 247 - II. SHORTLY after Van Twiller's departure the whole thing came out. Whether Livingstone found the secret too heavy a burden, or whether it transpired through some indiscretion on the part of Mrs. Vanrensselaer Wanzandt Wan Twil- ler, I cannot say ; but one evening the entire story was in the possession of the club. Van Twiller had actually been very deeply in- terested—not in an actress, for the legitimate drama was not her humble walk in"life, but — in Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski, whose really per- ilous feats on the trapeze had astonished New York the year before, though they had failed to attract Delaney and me the night we wandered into the up-town theatre on the trail of Van Twiller's mystery. That a man like Van Twiller should be fas- cinated for an instant by a common circus-girl seems incredlble; but it is always the incredi- ble thing that happens. Besides, Mademoiselle MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 251 accustomed orchestra chair, and so on for another week. A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning that he does not perceive he is led, - with what silken threads and down what pleasant avenues it leads him | By and by the soft silk threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus ! Quite a new element had lately entered into Van Twiller's enjoyment of Mademoiselle Olympe's ingenious feats, – a vaguely born ap- prehension that she might slip from that swing- ing bar, that one of the thin cords supporting it might snap, and let her go headlong from the dizzy height. Now and then, for a terrible in- stant, he would imagine her lying a glittering, palpitating heap at the foot-lights, with no color in her lips | Sometimes it seemed as if the girl were tempting this kind of fate. It was a hard, bitter life, and nothing but poverty and sordid misery at home could have driven her to it. What if she should end it all some night, by just unclasping that little hand Ž It looked so small and white from where Van Twiller sat 1 This frightful idea fascinated while it chilled him, and helped to make it nearly impossible 252 MADTMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. for him to keep away from the theatre. In the beginning his attendance had not interfered with his social duties on pleasures; but now he came to find it distasteful after dinner to do anything but read, or walk the streets aimlessly, until it was time to go to the play. When that was over, he was in no mood to go anywhere but to his rooms. So he dropped away by insensible degrees from his habitual haunts, was missed, and began to be talked about at the club. Catching some intimation of this, he ventured no more in the orchestra stalls, but shrouded himself behind the draperies of the private box in which Delaney and I thought we saw him on one occasion. Now, I find it very perplexing to explain what Wan Twiller was wholly unable to explain to himself. He was not in love with Mademoiselle Olympe. He had no wish to speak to her, or to hear her speak. Nothing could have been easier, and nothing further from his desire, than to know her personally. A Van Twiller personally acquainted with a strolling female acrobat' Good heavens ! That was something possible only with the discovery of perpetual motion. Taken from her theatrical setting, MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. 253 from her lofty perch, so to say, on the trapeze-bar, and Olympe Zabriski would have shocked every aristocratic fibre in Van Twiller's body. He was simply fascinated by her marvellous grace and &lan, and the magnetic recklessness of the girl. It was very young in him and very weak, and no member of the Sorosis, or all the Sorosisters together, could have been more severe on Van Twiller than he was on himself. To be weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man. Van Twiller took his punish- ment, and went to the theatre, regularly. “When her engagement comes to an end,” he meditated, “that will finish the business.” Mademoiselle Olympe's engagement finally did come to an end, and she departed. But her engagement had been highly beneficial to the treasury-chest of the up-town theatre, and before Van Twiller could get over missing her she had returned from a short Western tour, and her immediate reappearance was underlined on the play-bills. On a dead-wall opposite the windows of Van Twiller's sleeping-room there appeared, as if by necromancy, an aggressive poster with MADEMOISELLE olyMPE ZABRISKI. 259 at the home of his ancestors. He accepted the invitation with outward alacrity and inward disgust. - When this was settled, and the worthy lady had withdrawn, Van Twiller went directly to the establishment of Messrs Ball, Black, and Company and selected, with unerring taste, the finest diamond bracelet procurable. For his mother ? Dear me, no She had the family jewels. - I would not like to state the enormous sum Van Twiller paid for this bracelet. It was such a clasp of diamonds as would have hastened the pulsation of a patrician wrist. It was such a bracelet as Prince Camaralzaman might have sent to the Princess Badoura, and the Princess Badoura — might have been very glad to get. In the fragrant Levant morocco case, where these happy jewels lived when they were at home, Van Twiller thoughtfully placed his card, on the back of which he had written a line begging Mademoiselle Olympe Zabriski to accept the ac- companying trifle from one who had witnessed her graceful performances with interest and pleasure. This was not done inconsiderately. “Of course 260 MADEMOISELLE OLYMPE ZABRISKI. I must enclose my card, as I would to any lady,” Van Twiller had said to himself; “a Van Twil- ler can neither write an anonymous letter nor make an anonymous present.” Blood entails its duties as well as its privileges. The casket despatched to its destination, Van Twiller felt easier in his mind. He was under obligations to the girl for many an agreeable hour that might otherwise have passed heavily. He had paid the debt, and he had paid it en prince, as became a Van Twiller. He spent the rest of the day in looking at some pictures at Goupil’s, and at the club, and in making a few purchases for his trip up the Hudson. A consciousness that this trip up the Hudson was a disorderly re- treat came over him unpleasantly at intervals. When he returned to his rooms late at night, he found a note lying on the writing-table. He started as his eye caught the words “ — Thea- tre” stamped in carmine letters on one corner of the envelope. Wan Twiller broke the seal with trembling fingers. Now, this note some time afterwards fell into the hands of Livingtsone, who showed it to Stuy- vesant, who showed it to Delaney, who showed PERE ANTOINES DATE-PALM. EAR the Levee, and not far from the old French Cathedral in the Place d’Armes, at New Orleans, stands a fine date-palm, thirty feet in height, spreading its broad leaves in the alien air as hardily as if its sinuous roots were sucking strength from their native earth. Sir Charles Lyell, in his “Second Visit to the United States,” mentions this exotic: “The tree is seventy or eighty years old ; for Père Antoine, a Roman Catholic priest, who died about twenty years ago, told Mr. Bringier that he planted it him- self, when he was young. In his will he provid- ed that they who succeeded to this lot of ground should forfeit it if they cut down the palm.” Wishing to learn something of Père Antoine's history, Sir Charles Lyell made inquiries among the ancient creole inhabitants of the faubourg. That the old priest, in his last days, became very PERE ANTOINE’s DATE-PALM. 263 much emaciated, that he walked about the streets like a mummy, that he gradually dried up, and fi- nally blew away, was the meagre and unsatisfac- tory result of the tourist’s investigations. This is all that is generally told of Père Antoine. In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans was yet occupied by the Rebel forces, I met at Alexandria, in Virginia, a lady from Louisiana, — Miss Blondeau by name, - who gave me the substance of the following legend touching Père Antoine and his wonderful date-palm. If it should appear tame to the reader, it will be be- cause I am not habited in a black ribbed-silk dress, with a strip of point-lace around my throat, like Miss Blondeau; it will be because I lack her eyes and lips and Southern music to tell it with. When Père Antoine was a very young man, he had a friend whom he loved as he loved his life. £mile Jardin returned his passion, and the two, on account of their friendship, became the marvel of the city where they dwelt. One was never seen without the other; for they studied, walked, ate, and slept together. Thus began Miss Blondeau, with the air of PERE ANToINE’s DATE-PALM. 265 were about to assume precluded the idea of love and marriage. Until then they had dwelt in the calm air of religious meditations, unmoved except by that pious fervor which in other ages taught men to brave the tortures of the rack and to smile amid the flames. But a blond girl, with great eyes and a voice like the soft notes of a vesper hymn, had come in between them and their ascetic dreams of heaven. The ties that had bound the youn g men together snapped silent- ly one by one. At length each read in the pale face of the other the story of his own despair. And she 7 If Anglice shared their trouble, her face told no story. It was like the face of a saint on a cathedral window. Once, however, as she came suddenly upon the two men and over- heard words that seemed to burn like fire on the lip of the speaker, her eyes grew luminous for an instant. Then she passed on, her face as im- mobile as before in its setting of wavy gold hair. “Entre or et roux Dieu fit ses longs cheveux.” One night Émile and Anglice were missing. They had flown, -but whither, nobody knew, and nobody, save Antoine, cared. It was a heavy blow to Antoine,—for he had himself half 12 266 PERE ANToINE’s DATE-PALM. resolved to confess his love to Anglice and urge her to fly with him. A strip of paper slipped from a volume on Antoine's prie-dieu, and fluttered to his feet. 22 “Do not be angry,” said the bit of paper, piteously; “forgive us, for we love.” Three years went by wearily enough. An- toine had entered the Church, and was already looked upon as a rising man; but his face was pale and his heart leaden, for there was no sweetness in life for him. Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered with outlandish postmarks, was brought to the young priest, — a letter from Anglice. She was dying; – would he forgive her ? Emile, the year previous, had fallen a victim to the fever that raged on the island; and their child, Anglice, was likely to follow him. In pitiful terms she begged Antoine to take charge of the child until she was old enough to enter the convent of the Sacré-Coeur. The epistle was finished has- tily by another hand, informing Antoine of Madame Jardin’s death; it also told him that Anglice had been placed on board a vessel short- ly to leave the island for some Western port. PīRE ANToINE’s DATE-PALM. 269 At times something seemed to weigh upon her mind. Antoine observed it, and waited. At length she spoke. - “Near our house,” said little Anglice, — “near our house, on the island, the palm-trees are waving under the blue sky. O how beauti- full I seem to lie beneath them all day long. I am very, very happy. I yearned for them so much that I grew sick,-don’t you think it was so, mon père?” “Hélas, yes!” exclaimed Antoine, suddenly. “Let us hasten to those pleasant islands where the palms are waving.” Anglice Smiled. “I am going there, mon père.” A week from that evening the wax candles burned at her feet and forehead, lighting her on the journey. All was over. Now was Antoine’s heart empty. Death, like another Émile, had stolen his new Anglice. He had nothing to do but to lay the blighted flower away. Père Antoine made a shallow grave in his garden, and heaped the fresh brown mould over his idol. 272 PERE ANToINE’s DATE-PALM. and cold, and thinly clad ; but he laughed none the less. “Get thee behind me, Satan!” said the old priest's smile. Père Antoine was very old now, scarcely able to walk; but he could sit under the pliant, ca- ressing leaves of his palm, loving it like an Arab; and there he sat till the grimmest of speculators came to him. But even in death Père Antoine was faithful to his trust. The owner of that land loses it, if he harm the date-tree. And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful, dreamy stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the incense of whose breath makes the air enamoured. May the hand wither that touches her ungently “Because it grew from the heart of little An- glice,” said Miss Blondeau, tenderly. 2T 3. (***) �� <+ © • ! NOW 4 ±====