THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 HIS PEOPLE
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 BY 
 
 R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 
 
 LONDON 
 DUCKWORTH & CO. 
 
 3, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN 
 1906
 
 Some of the following sketches have appeared in "The 
 Saturday Review," " The Speaker," "Dana," and" Guth 
 na Bliadhna" to whose Editors the author makes his 
 thanks and acknowledgments.
 
 TO 
 
 EDWARD GARNETT 
 
 849751
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 His PEOPLE ...... i 
 
 A BOTANIST . . . . . .34 
 
 SIGNALLED . . . . . .44 
 
 LA ZAGALA . . . . . 54 
 
 LE CHEF . . . . . .64 
 
 A WIRE-WALKER . . . . .96 
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL . . . "3 
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU . . . . .130 
 
 LA CAMARGUE . . . . .149 
 
 ON THE SPUR ..... 162 
 
 AN EMIR . . . . . .179 
 
 FATE . . . . . .191 
 
 HA TIL Mi TULIADH . . . .201 
 
 Miss CHRISTIAN JEAN . . . .213 
 
 TOBAR NA REIL ..... 236 
 
 THE GREY KIRK ..... 246 
 
 DAGOS ...... 253 
 
 A MEMORY OF PARNELL . . . .274
 
 APOLOGIA 
 
 IT is (I think) a general belief, that every 
 writer draws his matter straight from the 
 fountains of his brain, just as a spider weaves 
 his web from his own belly, as naturalists aver. 
 This may be so, especially with folk of much 
 invention and no imaginative power. The 
 makers of Utopias and the like, forecasters 
 of society under socialism, and those who 
 write long novels about the theologic doubts 
 which now and then attack a clergyman, and 
 those who treat the lives of celebrated men 
 made small by lack of comprehension, as ob- 
 jects are belittled seen through the large end of 
 a telescope, no doubt enjoy the gift. Peace 
 and good luck to them, and large editions 
 soon sold out, with profits, and prospective 
 knighthoods, and the respect of all right-think- 
 ing men. It may be that which I refer to as 
 invention they style imagination, and if that is 
 so, I am still content to wish them luck, and 
 to repeat that I, in common, as I think, with 
 most of those who write on what they see,
 
 x APOLOGIA 
 
 or have seen, setting it out before the public 
 through the medium of the vision of their 
 brain, and from their point of view, are born 
 entirely lacking in both qualities. 
 
 Still I believe that, be it bad or good, all 
 that a writer does is to dress up what he has 
 seen, or felt, or heard, and nothing real is 
 evolved from his own brain, except the words 
 he uses, and the way in which he uses them. 
 Therefore it follows, that in writing he sets 
 down (perhaps unwittingly) the story of his life, 
 and as he does so, makes it worth reading only 
 by chronicling all his impressions of the world 
 quite honestly, as if he were alone upon a desert 
 island (as in fact he is) and he were writing 
 on the sand. 
 
 Upon this head at least, he need not trouble, 
 for Time is like a strong north wind, which 
 moves the sand upon the shore, and covers up 
 all tracks which human feet have made upon it, 
 however deeply they may seem to mark, no 
 matter if the foot that made them were as 
 perfect as the best Praxiteles designed or as 
 a desert Arab maiden's, henna-dyed and light 
 as a gazelle's. 
 
 One wave, of fashion or the like, one little 
 change of language or of taste, and naught
 
 APOLOGIA xi 
 
 remains, and the blank sheet of sand lies out 
 without a mark upon it, fresh and inviting for 
 another kind of foot to dance upon, and dent 
 it, if it can. 
 
 Therefore, oh writers of imagination or 
 invention, or what you choose to call the thing 
 that makes you write your monumental tomes, 
 which fall out from the press, just as in olden 
 times the hot cross buns fell from the oven 
 upon Maundy Thursday night, do not, I pray, 
 scorn men devoid of inspiration or afflatus, 
 and who perforce must see and touch (like 
 Thomas) before they can believe sufficiently, 
 to take in hand the pen. Go on (after the 
 manner of the pampered jades of Asia) and 
 spin your gossamers, making the meshes of 
 your web as fine as those which only dew 
 reveals to mortal eye, stretched like a rigging 
 through the grass, without apology. 
 
 In fact, there is no need for any, for it would 
 seem that you (connected, as I think, directly 
 with the cosmic spirit of the world) have in 
 yourselves a faculty which acts like armour, 
 keeping you safe from the attacks of the light 
 cavalry of critics, shutting you up securely 
 in a tower of strength, above the flight of all 
 the arrows ever shot by man.
 
 xii APOLOGIA 
 
 Why, if invention, or imagination (or what 
 not) is, of itself, a thing apart, and the trans- 
 mission of it into print causes no pain in 
 parturition, as it were, how happy you must 
 be. All that is wanted is a table and a 
 chair, a ream of paper and a pen or two ; 
 these, with your bottle of fine blue-black ink, a 
 modicum of power in the wrist, and persever- 
 ance to a limited degree, make you both 
 rich and famous, and what has issued from 
 your brain is never felt, for nature or some 
 other mighty power replaces it, just as the sand 
 upon a tidal river's bank comes back again 
 with the tide's ebb and flow. 
 
 You are not torn and twisted, as with a 
 thousand devils struggling to be free, nor can 
 you feel the shame which burns the cheek 
 of those who read in after years what they 
 have written, as it were, against their will ; 
 for writing is so damnable a thing that no 
 one (excepting always the Utopia weavers and 
 the rest of those to whom I have referred) 
 sitting down to write is ever certain what it 
 is that he will do, for it may chance of mus- 
 tard or some other kind of seed, after the 
 fashion of the sower in the Word. A thing 
 which sets one thinking on the curious kind
 
 APOLOGIA xiii 
 
 of crops that farmers must have had to deal 
 with in the Holy Land, when it was time to 
 reap. 
 
 And it is true enough, men write against 
 their will, constrained by some fell power, that 
 they know perfectly they should resist, but 
 cannot for their life; just as they say that some- 
 times women suffering violence have seized 
 their violators round the neck and kissed them 
 fiercely, as though not knowing what they did, 
 or yielding to temptation, just as a writer does 
 when he sees ink convenient to his hand. 
 
 With this apology, I venture forth again upon 
 the highway, after the fashion of the far-famed 
 goose of Cantimpalos, which, as the proverb 
 says, came out upon the road to meet the 
 wolf. 
 
 R. B. CUNNINGHAMS GRAHAM. 
 
 ARDOCH, 7 August, 1906.
 
 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 FULL twenty years had passed since he had 
 seen the once familiar streets. 
 
 Years had gone by years of hard work, of 
 heat, of long and dreary hours spent in the 
 counting-house in Zacate"cas, and in long 
 journeys to Tampico, to Acapulco, and to 
 Mexico. At last, his fortune made, and all 
 the treasure of his youth wasted in making it, 
 he had taken ship to SantandeV. The un- 
 familiar sea, the people all so smartly dressed, 
 the ladies finer by far than even were the 
 daughters of the governor in Zacate"cas, the 
 strange refinements of the cabins, the cere- 
 monious dinner, the band, the futile games in 
 which the passengers engaged, the endless 
 trivialities of European life, which Europeans 
 have erected into fetishes, to which they bow, 
 making them into gods minted in their own 
 images struck him as they might strike an 
 Arab brought from his native plains, with feel- 
 ings of contempt and envy bewilderingly mixed. 
 B
 
 2 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 In the quiet nights within the Tropics, as he 
 paced up and down beneath the awning upon 
 deck, he thought how would Toledo look on 
 his return. In the wild weather, as the ship 
 neared Spain, he wondered whether he would 
 find it changed. Whilst seated in the smoking- 
 room playing at "tute," as he chewed a black 
 cigar between his teeth, with his thoughts wan- 
 dering from the game to the disgust of all his 
 partners, he saw the ochre-red Castilian city, 
 wind-swept, austere, and seated on the rocks 
 above the yellow rolling Tagus, as he had seen 
 it as a child. 
 
 He thought, "Will it look larger, smaller, be 
 more ruinous ; and will the trees upon the 
 Alameda now have grown so much I shall not 
 know them ? " and then smiled at himself, 
 knowing Toledo cannot suffer change. How 
 many of his friends would be alive, he wondered, 
 and he pictured to himself the look upon the 
 faces of the men he once had known, and how 
 they would be sure to say, "What, Juan Icazar? 
 Yes, ah yes, the son of Pedro and Maria, may 
 they both rest in peace. We thought you had 
 been dead, man, years ago." Then, as if in a 
 dream, he saw himself entering the shop of old 
 Higinio Guarrazas, just at the corner of the
 
 HIS PEOPLE 3 
 
 Calle de las Armas, where as a child he had 
 gazed with wonder at the boxes of sardines, 
 the olives in their bottles, the bales of Iceland 
 codfish, cases of macaroni, and all the 
 wondrous products drawn from countries over- 
 seas, which filled the store and made it fairy- 
 land. 
 
 Of course, Higinio would be there, his bushy 
 whiskers maybe a little greyer, and his thick 
 hair turned white; but there, of course, smoking 
 his cigarette, making his entries in his daybook, 
 whilst the clerks ran about and served the 
 customers ; and he remembered that just oppo- 
 site the shop there stood an archway built by 
 the Moors, the infidels, the enemies both of 
 our faith and God. 
 
 All that seemed real to him, for it was 
 stamped upon his brain from childhood, just 
 as the view was stamped that he remembered 
 as he stood upon the terrace below the Puerta 
 del Cambron, and looked across the suburbs, 
 known as Las Covachuelas and Antequeruela, 
 with their tiled roofs forming long pent-houses 
 of brown. Surely right underneath his feet 
 he still would see El Alfar Blanco, where they 
 made hard white pottery and even porcelain, 
 and the two other potteries where as a child he
 
 4 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 played. These were all real, and their founda- 
 tions deep as the foundations of the world ; 
 but the long years in Mexico, the drudgery, 
 the struggle and the strife, the dull hot hours 
 of listless waiting for the evening breeze, merely 
 a bad dream. The long and dusty rides with 
 his gun underneath his thigh, his striped scrape* 
 rolled behind the cantle of his saddle, and the 
 stiff, heavily embroidered " poblano " hat upon 
 his head surely he looked a picture on his 
 horse, but why, he wondered, did the Mexicans 
 all smile and murmur " chapet6n " as he passed 
 by had surely happened to another man. All 
 was unreal, all except the coup upon the Stock 
 Exchange, which, following on years of suc- 
 cessful business, at length had made him free. 
 But still the steamer always drew nearer day by 
 day to Spain, and he, pacing the deck, thought 
 on the future, for the past he put aside just as 
 one does the oboe note of a mosquito, when 
 one has squashed the piper on the wall. Some- 
 times his thoughts ran upon old Antonio Lopez, 
 who, he knew, had left the mountains above 
 Santandr, poor and unknown, just as he had 
 himself gone from Toledo, and by degrees 
 become enriched and founded the great trans- 
 atlantic line, in one of whose best steamers he
 
 HIS PEOPLE 5 
 
 was coming home. How did old Lopez feel, 
 he thought, when, after years of slaving in the 
 Habana, he at length became possessor of a 
 ship, and how, when in the plaza of his little 
 native town, at last a senator, all had come 
 forth to welcome him with bagpipes, flutes, 
 oxen with wreaths of flowers on their heads, 
 the bishop and the clergy of the diocese, and 
 all bowed down before the golden calf, set up 
 and incarnated in himself. Were not their 
 lives and their careers alike, and might not 
 he, too, be a senator? He saw himself just 
 entering the house of Don Adolfo the apothe- 
 cary, where, as he knew, at evening time, the 
 doctor, old Guarrazas, some of the canons of 
 the cathedral, the bookseller, and other worthies, 
 used to congregate. Lifting his hat after a 
 ceremonious " Muy buenas tardes" he would 
 say, " By the by, did you know Pedro Icazar, 
 who had his house in Covachuelas, eh?" Then 
 cautiously, " And what of his son Juan, who 
 went out to the Indies is he alive, think you, 
 or dead of those accursed fevers of the land ? " 
 For it is never good to do things with a rush. 
 Then as a grave "Si, senor, Pedro Icazar ; I 
 should think so, and his son Juan also," went 
 round the ring, touching his hat, he heard him-
 
 6 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 self rejoin, " I am that Juan, much at your 
 service, and at that of honest men." 
 
 How glorious it would be thus to revive old 
 memories (he knew the last of his relations 
 long was dead), and better still to say, 
 " Gentlemen, I wish to offer you champagne " ; 
 then call for "Codorniu," worth ten francs the 
 bottle, and watch it sparkle in the glasses, as 
 all his old friends' faces kindled with delight. 
 
 The other passengers, mostly rich merchants 
 from Habana, Tampico, Cartagena, and from 
 Port Lim6n, all thought him odd, saying, 
 " Icazar surely had heard bells, but he did not 
 know where." Then they all gave him up, 
 leaving him to his reveries, his silent pacing 
 up and down the deck, and to the reconstruc- 
 tion in his mind of that Toledo which he had 
 known so well brown, wind-swept, melancholy, 
 proud in her ruin ; the widow of the Goths, the 
 Romans, Jews, the Moors, and now neglected 
 by her lord and mourning haughtily aloof, like 
 a fair jewel lost on the floor of a deserted 
 garret, its facets chipped and its whole setting 
 tarnished by decay. 
 
 The icy winds of Europe chilled him to the 
 bone, making him shiver in his unsubstantial 
 clothes made for the Tropics, although he, half
 
 HIS PEOPLE 7 
 
 with uneasiness and half with pride, remem- 
 bered in his boyhood he had gone bare-headed 
 in the frosts which grip Toledo in a band of 
 steel, pinching the people in their great bar- 
 rack-looking houses, where they sat wrapped 
 in cloaks about a pan of charcoal, waiting for 
 the sun. Porpoises gambolled round the ship, 
 making him think upon the buffalo which he 
 had seen out in Chihuahua" and New Mexico, 
 and as they neared the coast, steamers passed 
 by, exchanging signals, at which the returning 
 "Indianos" looked approvingly, remarking that 
 " The commerce ... Si, sefior . . . was the 
 great lever by means of which men moved the 
 world . . . that is, the commerce and the 
 steam, for after all, where there is commerce 
 there is progress. ... Si, senor . . . long live 
 the commerce and . . . and the steam." Then 
 they, all having graduated in "the progress" 
 at New York, would order " whiskisoda" and 
 drink to Spain, the steam, the commerce, 
 woman, black eyes, and bull-fighting, and as 
 they drank, unpacked their recollections of the 
 Tropics, and of the ladies they had known in 
 Mazatldn, Salina Cruz (with anecdotes at this 
 point about the Zapote"ca girls, mostly apocry- 
 phal), Cienfuegos, and the Habana, yes, the
 
 8 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 Habana. Ah, what a place ! . . . Its half-caste 
 girls quite lost to shame, but still agreeable, 
 with underlinen starched so stiffly, it would, if 
 placed upon the ground, have stood up like 
 a tub. Much as they lauded the strange 
 beverage, pressing it on him as a cure for 
 melancholy, Icazar did not like it, saying it 
 did not make him happy, and cherishing the 
 recollection of a little wine which he remem- 
 bered in his youth, that came from Villa 
 Cafias, or from Vargas, he did not quite re- 
 member which, although he recollected that 
 the women of the latter place used to walk, 
 carrying their shoes, the long two leagues into 
 Toledo, as he expressed it, at the donkey's 
 feet. 
 
 At last the Asturian mountains, snow- 
 capped and seeming to be hung between the 
 water and the sky, appeared far-off and cloudy ; 
 then by degrees grew nearer, and, the mist lift- 
 ing, showed the Cantabrian coast, smiling and 
 vine-clad to the shore, with the white villages 
 nestling about the hills ; above them chestnut 
 woods, then pines, then masses of grey lime- 
 stone, which by degrees melted away into the 
 snow quite imperceptibly. 
 
 Fishing-boats, with their sails tanned brown
 
 HIS PEOPLE 9 
 
 and pointed sharp as a shark's fin when it just 
 rises to the surface following a ship, were scat- 
 tered here and there ; and soon the long and 
 straggling town of Santander, the Sardineiro 
 with its bathing-boxes, and the white villas 
 smiling through the trees, roused Juan Icazar to 
 enthusiasm, making the blood course through 
 his veins and his eyes fill with tears. 
 
 Once landed on the mole, all was familiar, 
 and yet strange to him. To see white Christians 
 bending under burdens, whilst others ordered 
 them about like negroes, shocked him, accus- 
 tomed as he was to Mexico and its strict 
 colour line. The carabineers, with their green 
 gloves and well-remembered uniforms struck a 
 note in his heart ; but then again, his native 
 country seemed not to have progressed, and as 
 the sleek mouse-coloured oxen drew the creak- 
 ing carts with solid wheels which turned with 
 the whole axle, at two miles an hour, his 
 thoughts went back to Zacatecas, with its 
 smart Yankee Milburn waggons drawn by a 
 team of mules. But the harsh guttural cries 
 of fish-hawkers and water-carriers sounded as 
 sweet to him as did a nightingale, reviving 
 memories of home, of childhood, and of the 
 echoing notes which he remembered still, in
 
 io HIS PEOPLE 
 
 his gaunt native town. Nothing seemed 
 changed except himself. Men lounged about, 
 wrapped in their cloaks and with a cigarette- 
 stained hand appearing underneath their 
 chins, holding the folds about their mouths. 
 Ladies all robed in black came from the 
 churches, followed by their maids, and as they 
 passed along the streets the lounging men 
 undressed them with their eyes, murmuring 
 compliments in an undertone which brought 
 the blood into their cheeks and caused their 
 great black eyes to flame, though they ap- 
 peared unconscious, but treasured secretly each 
 word up in their hearts as a just homage to 
 their charms. In Juan Icazar's ear, his native 
 tongue spoken without the softness with which 
 the racial or climatic influences of the New 
 World endues both branches of the Spanish 
 tongue, seemed harsh and unrefined, but he 
 reflected that his ear was vitiated, and in the 
 north men spoke abominably, but that in his 
 own native town he would hear once again 
 the right Toledan, with its clear utterance, full 
 cadence, and the mysterious something which 
 attaches to a speech when spoken in one's 
 home. The railway-station seemed a little 
 tumbledown, and the time wasted at the ticket-
 
 HIS PEOPLE n 
 
 office needless, and it was strange to see so 
 few advertisements, and those merely of steam- 
 ship companies catering for emigrants, and 
 now and then of bull-fights, with the cartoons 
 adorned with pictures of some famous dancer, 
 such as La Chirigota, with a man's hat upon 
 her head, her hair brought low upon her fore- 
 head, almost covering her ears, and with a look 
 deep-seated in her eyes of gipsy harlotry. 
 
 Still he reflected that all this was due to 
 want of " illustration " and bad government, 
 or perhaps he himself, in his long absence, had 
 turned a foreigner, and saw things in a wrong 
 perspective, and, sinking back into his seat, 
 watched the train creep into Las Fraguas, 
 diving into the bosom of the hills, waking the 
 echoes with its whistling, and making cattle, 
 feeding in the fields of clover and lucerne, stop 
 and look lazily out of their beryl-coloured eyes, 
 munching the while, with a green foam upon 
 their lips. 
 
 The long delays at stations gave the re- 
 turning pilgrim opportunity to hear the well- 
 remembered cries of " Water," " Ground nuts," 
 " Milk," and of the people who sold chocolate 
 made by Matias Lopez of the Escorial, and 
 note they had not varied since when, a youth
 
 12 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 in a bare third-class carriage, he had been 
 jolted to the port. 
 
 Nothing was new except the gum trees, 
 which, rattling in the wind, were planted round 
 the stations, giving an air of an oasis of vul- 
 garity, in the prevailing calm. Slowly the train 
 wound like a snake out of the mountains on 
 to the central plains which, brown and wind- 
 swept, and guarded to the west by distant hills, 
 spread out indefinitely. 
 
 At last he felt himself at home. Long 
 strings of peasants, seated upon asses or on 
 mules, were riding to the fields. Under their 
 stiff black hats were tied checked handkerchiefs, 
 the ends of which were knotted, forming a sort 
 of turban, and their brown clothes and cloaks 
 blended as well with the prevailing colour of 
 the plain as does the colour of a rabbit or a 
 hare with a bare stubble field. He saw the 
 water-wheels, turned by a horse blindfolded 
 with a clout, wearily pacing round, and marked 
 the steam rise up from the hot soil, where each 
 revolving pot poured its contents into the 
 trough, from which it flowed upon the ground. 
 
 Little by little the land grew browner and 
 more bare, and the white towns upon the hill- 
 tops looked more African.
 
 HIS PEOPLE 13 
 
 Night caught the train between AreValo and 
 Avila, right in the middle of the Castilian 
 steppes, which, glacial in winter and in the 
 heat a hell, fill all the middle of the land, wind- 
 swept and shut from Europe by great mountain 
 ranges, austere and melancholy as the brown 
 folk they bear. Avila, with its towers and 
 castellated church, lay sleeping in the moon- 
 light as it had slept for ages in the sun ; and 
 then the train, snorting and groaning, set its 
 face up against the Guadarrama, passing 
 through rock-strewn deserts and through pine 
 woods, looking fantastic as the landscape of 
 a dream through the white billowing smoke 
 belched by the engine as it strove hard against 
 the hill. The Escorial, the great grey epic which 
 Felipe el Prudente thought out in his old age, 
 gleamed on its hill like steel, and as the morn- 
 ing light tinged the far mountains of Toledo 
 pink, Madrid, the royal village of the bear and 
 arbutus, just showed against the sky. On 
 every side the plain flowed round it like a 
 great brown sea in which it stood an island, 
 going down straight into the waves, without a 
 suburb stretching out between the country and 
 the town, to act as breakwater. 
 
 Short time the homing Toledano stayed
 
 i 4 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 within its walls, but set his face towards his 
 Mecca on the Tagus, counting the stations 
 as they passed, and meditating on the flight 
 of time, almost in agony between the joy of 
 seeing once again his native town and terror 
 that he should find all altered and himself for- 
 gotten by his friends. 
 
 The stations passed as slowly as had the 
 years in Mexico, until the train arrived at 
 Algod6r, the junction where the branch from 
 Aranju6z joins the line from Madrid, and then 
 indeed he felt he was near home, and, rising 
 from his seat, paced up and down the carriage 
 just as a sailor walks upon the deck. 
 
 Villages that he thought he had forgotten 
 passed before his eyes. 
 
 Churches that he had dreamt of far away 
 were there to welcome him. 
 
 All was unchanged ; even the cattle feeding 
 on the plain he recognized, knowing them for 
 the fierce Veraguas breed, and feeling half 
 inclined to shake his cloak at them as the train 
 slowly jolted by. 
 
 Then, like a whitish cloud, upon a hill, Toledo 
 burst upon his view. Clustering like bees about 
 their queen, the houses nestled in the rocks 
 beneath the great Alcdzar, grim and four-
 
 HIS PEOPLE 15 
 
 square, topping the craggy height. Nothing 
 had changed : the tall cathedral spire still rose 
 into the air, and still the Tagus flowed beneath 
 the walls in the deep rocky pass. 
 
 All was familiar, and he recognized it all 
 without an effort, standing entranced, with a 
 black burned-out cigarette between his lips, as 
 the train steamed into the town. 
 
 Calling a cab, he told the driver, with the air 
 of one who knew the place, to take him to the 
 Hotel del Pino, and was answered with a stare: 
 " The Hotel del Pino was shut up ten years 
 ago," he said, with the astonished look of one 
 who hears a man allude familiarly to long-for- 
 gotten things. 
 
 " Well, then, to the boarding-house of the 
 Miss Figueroas, in the Calle de la Cruz." 
 
 " The Figueroas have been dead for years," 
 the man replied. " The last, she whom the 
 rest always referred to as La Nina, though 
 she was sixty-five at least, is living still out 
 in a town they call Navalmoral de Pusa, but 
 miles away from here." 
 
 Icazar told the man to take his things up to 
 the best hotel; then, hurt, after the way of those 
 who, having waited long for friends, find that 
 they miss the tryst, walked up the dusty road
 
 16 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 on foot, feeling that he had never left the place, 
 and that the conduct of the Figueroas and the 
 proprietor of the hotel was quite unpardonable. 
 Decaying omnibuses drawn by mules, rattling 
 and jingling on the stones, tore past and 
 covered him with dust ; and by the roadside 
 women sat, with large red jars of water, 
 covered with a board on which were set out 
 glasses and lemons and a small pile of cakes 
 sugared and stuck about with caraways, and 
 looking like a quoit. 
 
 Instinctively he stopped upon the bridge, 
 which is defended by the Puerta del Cambron, 
 and dropped a stone into the swirling river 
 underneath, just as he used to do when sent 
 on errands twenty years ago, to pass away 
 the time. It seemed to take an age in its 
 descent, and its dull splash awoke him from 
 his dream, and as he gazed at the wide- 
 spreading circles which it made in the 
 yellow waters of the stream, a voice behind 
 him fell upon his ear. He heard the well- 
 remembered words " For God," and as he 
 turned felt certain he would see one of the 
 beggars he recalled out of the past; but though 
 the man was dressed in red-brown rags but 
 half concealed by an old tattered cloak, his
 
 HIS PEOPLE 17 
 
 face was unfamiliar, and he had almost mur- 
 mured, "God assist you," but, altering his 
 mind, gave a peseta as a sort of welcome to 
 himself on his returning home. The blessings 
 showered upon his head reminded him that he 
 was in a land where, though most men give 
 alms, none give profusely, and he walked on, 
 feeling he was a stranger in the country of 
 his birth, though he remembered every stone 
 of the rough pavement of the bridge. Boys 
 followed him, proffering their services to guide 
 him through the town. Indignantly he shook 
 them off, muttering he knew Toledo better 
 far than they, but as he spoke he recognized 
 his speech had altered in the long sojourn 
 in America, and differed much from theirs. 
 Breasting the steep and stony street, he 
 stopped to breathe beneath the gate where, as 
 tradition says, the skull of the alcalde who 
 betrayed his trust, and outraged two poor 
 women he found wandering in the fields, is 
 still preserved behind the keystone of the 
 arch. He looked at it as a man looks at 
 an old friend, and to his joy saw that the 
 sculptured stone still bore the figures of the 
 women, with a new severed head between 
 them, set up to mark that a good governor had
 
 i8 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 done them justice, and placed the record of his 
 act in stone to witness to all time. 
 
 Then as he passed into the little Alameda, 
 just on the edge of the high cliff which over- 
 hangs the stream, he looked up at the trees 
 and saw with pleasure they had grown taller 
 and more bushy, patting their trunks, as if he 
 thought that they could feel and answer his 
 caress. 
 
 Then, leaning on the railings, with his arms 
 folded and with his burnt-out cigarette between 
 his lips, he gazed upon the well-remembered 
 view. All was unchanged. Antequeruela under- 
 neath and Covachuelas struggling up the hill, 
 seemed to look up and greet him with a smile. 
 True that the houses had grown smaller as it 
 seemed, and looked more weather-stained and 
 more dilapidated. One that he turned to as 
 by instinct met his eye, with the great vine on 
 which had grown the sweetest grapes in all the 
 world still shadowing the door. The yellow- 
 ochre coloured walls, stained on the weather 
 side with green, seemed not to have grown 
 older, and the corral for chickens at the back, 
 topped, just as he remembered, with a growth 
 of marigolds, stood baking in the sun. The 
 Alfar Blanco lay below his feet, the smoke just
 
 HIS PEOPLE 19 
 
 curling from the kiln, and with a line of brush- 
 wood-laden donkeys waiting at the gate, as 
 they had waited twenty years ago, and just as 
 patiently. 
 
 All was unchanged, and he, getting up from 
 his seat, took out another cigarette, and, light- 
 ing it, resolved before he went to his hotel to 
 visit some of his old friends and to surprise 
 them by his knowledge of the town, before he 
 told his name. 
 
 Just as a horse let loose upon the plains 
 without a moment's hesitation strikes the trail 
 for home, so did Icazar half mechanically take 
 the short cut which leads up the steep, stony 
 Calle del Alfilerito, passing the door of the old 
 building, once a mosque, then synagogue, now 
 turned into a church and duly consecrated, 
 known as " El Cristo de la Luz." So much at 
 home he felt that he would not have been 
 astonished had he met boys, he knew were 
 grandfathers or dead, come shouting out of 
 school. The stony lane led out into the 
 square, with its long rows of shops on a 
 raised causeway under colonnades. The dili- 
 gence for Vargas was just starting, crammed, 
 as he recollected it of old, with peasant women, 
 all carrying bundles, and with a priest crushed
 
 20 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 in between them, smoking and mopping at his 
 face with a red handkerchief. The mules and 
 the apocalyptic horses, harnessed with ropes, 
 so thin it seemed they only stood by balance 
 or by leaning up against each other, had not 
 changed, and the unshaved and roguish-looking 
 driver with his short jacket of black plush with 
 silver buttons, as he sat on his seat, his foot 
 just toying with the brake, and his hands 
 grasping an enormous bunch of reins, appeared 
 identical. 
 
 Boys selling papers two or three days old 
 screamed like macaws upon a field of maize, 
 and half the population seated on the seats 
 enjoyed the sun, wrapped in their cloaks to 
 shield them from the breeze which whistled 
 from the hills. Icazar, smiling, recognized his 
 native town at once, where on one side you 
 burn under the torrents of the sun, and freeze 
 upon the other, and, without knowing that he 
 did so, turned up the collar of his overcoat to 
 keep away the wind. 
 
 He struck into a little street which, as he 
 knew, would take him to the Calle de las 
 Tiendas, and as he walked, cut through the 
 archways mounting the causeway to save the 
 angles, after the fashion of the place. He
 
 HIS PEOPLE 21 
 
 walked through well-remembered lanes, by 
 Moorish arches, windows with wooden lattices 
 and medieval ironwork, and passing houses 
 whose heavy wooden soffits, carved by Mude- 
 jares, were monuments of art, left to decay and 
 crumble in the fierce sun of summer and the 
 winter's frost. Used as he was to Mexico, 
 and to its cleanliness, and to the air of wealth 
 which marks its towns, he felt a shock at first 
 at the neglect of all the buildings, which he 
 remembered just in the same condition in his 
 youth ; but then, as he saw foreigners, with 
 books beneath their arms, stop and admire, 
 with that half-shamefaced look a man assumes 
 when stopping to observe a building in a foreign 
 town, began to feel an air as of an owner, and 
 to half wish to step across and tell them all 
 about the place, and what there was to see. 
 
 Without the least mistake he came out in the 
 Calle de las Armas, crossing a dozen little streets, 
 so steep you scarce could scale them, so narrow 
 that a mule stopping to unload its bales of 
 charcoal at a door entirely stopped the way. 
 Guarrazas' shop was there, with the inscription 
 " Ultramarinos," almost obliterated, but still 
 visible. Holding his breath, he gazed at it, 
 marking the bustle round the door of peasant
 
 22 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 women, whilst shopmen stood and talked to 
 customers, just as in days gone by. 
 
 Entering the shop, he asked for Don Higinio, 
 and a smart shopman answered, " Guarrazas, 
 that was the man from whom the actual 
 owner bought the business. . . . Yes, I re- 
 member now, he died some years ago out at 
 his native place, near Talavera de la Reina ; 
 his widow, too, I hear is dead . . . and ..." 
 Icazar thanked him, and, hurrying from the 
 shop, sat down upon a seat to meditate and 
 smoke. And as he pondered upon this thing 
 and on that, the elementary facts which lie for- 
 gotten, till a shock, such as he had received, 
 forces them rushing to our minds, crowded 
 upon him, and he thought, "Poor old Guarrazas, 
 may God have pardoned him, he might have 
 waited till I came, after so many years." Then 
 as he sat, still smoking, over his head, with 
 such a sudden shaking of the tower it seemed 
 about to fall, the great cracked bell, which he 
 remembered you could hear as far as Algodor, 
 struck the half-hour, astonishing but still de- 
 lighting him, as it had never failed to do when 
 as a child he waited for its chime upon the way 
 to school. He took it as a welcome, just as a 
 man may clutch a superstition to his heart
 
 HIS PEOPLE 23 
 
 without believing it, and rising from his seat, 
 half thought of dropping in on the apothecary, 
 but a vague fear restrained him, and to put off 
 the time, he strolled into the church to see if it 
 was changed. 
 
 He gave some coppers to the beggars at the 
 door, and as a mummified old woman drew 
 aside the mat he passed into the church. Half 
 furtively he dipped his hand into the holy water 
 stoop and crossed himself, muttering it was a 
 superstitious act, yet glad to yield to it, for a 
 true Christian ought to testify, even though 
 God for some wise purpose of His own has not 
 vouchsafed him faith. 
 
 Through the dim aisles there came a sound 
 of voices, which filtered through the piers just 
 as the gurgling of a brook comes through the 
 trees in some great forest, making the traveller 
 turn to it, by instinct, without the wish to 
 drink. 
 
 In the round chapel underneath the tower, 
 the Mass of the Mozarabes was going on, with 
 a scant congregation listening to it, the women 
 sitting squatted on the ground, and one or two 
 old men looking on listlessly and muffled to the 
 eyes. 
 
 Icazar, standing at the door, turning his hat
 
 24 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 between his hands, after the way of an infre- 
 quent worshipper, recalled the ceremony, just 
 as a man recalls the details of a dream seen 
 through the mist of sleep. 
 
 The silver bells rang out to scare the fiends, 
 who, hovering in mid-air, are on the watch to 
 seize a soul when the chance offers, and if the 
 priest should be remiss in offering up his 
 prayers. All the strange ceremonies and 
 curious rites so piously preserved in their 
 captivity among the Moors by Gothic Chris- 
 tians in the south, were faithfully rehearsed. 
 As the priest mumbled at his Mass, and as 
 Icazar listened to him and the strange music 
 which accompanied his prayers, the story of 
 the strife in the old times between the northern 
 and the southern rituals came crowding to his 
 mind. Dimly he recollected he had heard his 
 mother say that the thing came to trial in the 
 great plaza of the town, when, after prayer and 
 a due search for amulets was made, both 
 missals were committed to the flames to test 
 their holiness. The expectant crowd stood 
 round, each prophesying victory for his own 
 Mass book, and certain of success. 
 
 At the first touch of the consuming fire the 
 Gregorian Psalter leaped out on the stones,
 
 HIS PEOPLE 25 
 
 and lay upon the street. All its adherents 
 shouted victory, but still the fire burned on, 
 and at the bottom of the pile, covered with 
 ashes, but by God's grace and by the virtue of 
 the Oriental patience, which perhaps it had 
 acquired in its long sojourn with the Moors, 
 there lay the book of the Mozarabes unharmed 
 and sanctified by the fierce trial it had under- 
 gone, of its authority. 
 
 When the priest reached his " Ita missa est" 
 and the scant congregation had quietly dis- 
 persed, Icazar left the church, following the 
 street known as the passage of the Wooden 
 Man, to the apothecary's, refusing as a slight the 
 proffered help of several street boys, who, when 
 they spy a stranger in the dark lanes which in 
 Toledo bore through the town like worm-holes 
 in a cheese, all cluster round like flies. 
 
 Hardly observing where he walked, but 
 going straight as does a pigeon through the 
 sky, he came upon the shop. A jar of leeches 
 hung beside the door, and on the shelves were 
 the same pots of Talavera ware painted in blue 
 with a great Austrian double-headed eagle, 
 lettered in Latin "Cardamomum" or "Savina," 
 which as a child had made him wonder how 
 any single man could know as much as he felt
 
 26 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 sure that Don Adolfo knew and keep it in his 
 head. 
 
 The selfsame smell of senna met him at the 
 door, mixed with valerian and with dead flies, 
 which made the ointments that his friend pre- 
 pared send out a stinking savour, and which of 
 old had sickened yet attracted him, as he 
 passed by the house. 
 
 A row of chairs stood, as they used to stand, 
 ranged up against the wall, some seated with 
 rough cowskin, shiny with use and with a few 
 white hairs still clinging to the hide, and some 
 with tapestry. 
 
 Coming up to the door half warily, after the 
 fashion of a man who has received a check and 
 has his mind made up that it is possible fate 
 still has blows in store to deal him unawares, 
 Icazar asked, "Is Don Adolfo disengaged?" 
 scanning the pimply-faced assistant, who was 
 sitting on a stool, with some disquietude. " Don 
 Atanasio, I suppose you mean," the man 
 replied. "He has just lain down to take his 
 siesta, but in an hour or two you can come back 
 again, and I am sure that he will undertake 
 your case if you are indisposed." 
 
 "Where, then, is Don Adolfo?" Icazar said, 
 but diffidently, foreseeing that he must be dead,
 
 HIS PEOPLE 27 
 
 and that another of the links with the Toledo 
 which once had been his home had parted, and 
 that he had returned to be a stranger in the 
 town where he had passed his youth. 
 
 " Exactly where is difficult to tell," rejoined 
 the assistant in a strong Seville accent, and with 
 an air as of a humourist, after the fashion of his 
 kind. " For years before his death the worthy 
 man never communicated, heard Mass, con- 
 fessed, or in the least complied with any of the 
 duties of the Church, so that, as Father Perez 
 thinks he comes at times to our ' tertulia ' in 
 the shop poor Don Adolfo may lie howling. 
 But we men of science ridicule such things, 
 putting our faith in Darwin and the great 
 Draper, he who wrote ' Conflict with Science 
 and Religion/ as I am sure you know." 
 
 Thanking the humourist, Icazar hurried from 
 the shop and plunged into the streets. All 
 day he roamed about, seeking his friends and 
 finding none of them, knocking at houses where 
 in times past the doors appeared to open of 
 themselves before his knocking ceased. No 
 one remembered him but one old lady, whom 
 as a child he faintly recollected, and she had 
 turned half-imbecile with age, taking him for 
 his father, asking affectionately after his mother
 
 28 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 and hoping she was well. At nightfall he 
 returned to his hotel, and, dining miserably 
 alone, his joy at coming home turned to despair 
 with disappointment and with loneliness, he 
 half determined to go back to Mexico by the 
 first ship that sailed. 
 
 His dinner over, with a cigar, which tasted 
 bitter in his mouth, between his teeth, he 
 roamed about the town half-aimlessly, passed 
 by the theatre, and after going in found the 
 first act half over ; and as he gazed about, 
 watching the people in the boxes and the stalls, 
 he fell into a dream. 
 
 All his past life and all his present being 
 seemed somehow welded ; the world was empty, 
 and he alone in it, wandering about and looking 
 for a friend. Coffins and tombstones strewed 
 the streets, which all seemed cemeteries, and he 
 alone went sadly up and down reading the 
 epitaphs. 
 
 He heard the singers vaguely, and all the 
 actors had their faces veiled, whilst a thick mist 
 covered the people in the boxes and the pit, 
 and hid them from his sight. All seemed his 
 enemies or, at the least, unsympathetic to him, 
 and nothing he could do helped him to clear 
 away the vapour from his brain, which kept
 
 HIS PEOPLE 29 
 
 him separate from every one he saw, in an un- 
 friendly world. 
 
 Then, without knowing how it came about, a 
 change came over him, and, looking at the 
 stage, he saw the curtain had been lowered and 
 that the audience was going out to smoke, 
 leaving him sitting in the middle of the stalls, 
 alone and solitary. 
 
 He sat half dozing in his seat, tired with his 
 rambles up and down the town, and as he sat, 
 scanning the curtain, lying back against the 
 seat, he felt the sense of loneliness had gone 
 and that the world still held some people whom 
 he knew, without a barrier of intervening mist 
 to keep them separate. 
 
 For instance, the tall gallant in the cloak, with 
 his fair curls upon his shoulders, his pointed 
 beard, trunk hose, and shoes with round rosettes 
 which looked too big for them, was an old 
 friend whom he had known from childhood 
 upwards, and understood him well. His sword, 
 with a long wrinkle in the sheath, which, had it 
 been smoothed out, must certainly have made 
 it more than a fathom from the pommel to the 
 chape, he recognized with joy. 
 
 He thought the look upon the gallant's face, 
 which wreathed his cheeks into a mortary kind
 
 30 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 of smile, as when the stucco gapes upon a wall, 
 was one of welcome, and as he answered it 
 himself it seemed to fade away into the paint, 
 as if the smiler was contented, feeling the 
 tension of the muscles might relax now he had 
 found his friend. 
 
 The lady in the draggled satin gown, which 
 once had been rose-pink, but now had faded to 
 a sort of yellow-ochre, seemed to be bowing to 
 him, keeping her eyes the while right in the 
 middle of the tall gallant's back, and smiling 
 roguishly. 
 
 The fluffy dogs, of no discovered breed, 
 seeming a cross between a badly-bred King 
 Charles and a fox terrier, which stood between 
 the gallant and the dame, uncertain which to go 
 to, being repelled on one side by the terrible 
 long sword and on the other by the whip which 
 sprang directly from the flesh of the fair lady's 
 white-gloved hand and dangled in the air, he 
 knew familiarly. What power prevented him 
 from stretching out his hand to run it gently 
 down their neatly frescoed backs, he knew not, 
 feeling so certain that he owed them a caress 
 for their fidelity. 
 
 Well did he know the palfrey of a light lemon 
 colour, which a young page in a round cap and
 
 HIS PEOPLE 31 
 
 feather, bright scarlet trunks and orange hose, 
 was holding by the reins. He heard it neigh- 
 ing, although no sound came from its widely 
 opened mouth, and he felt tempted to exclaim, 
 " Fair youth, take me the courser to his stall, 
 water and feed him ; for, look you, he has waited 
 in the sun since I was little taller than yourself, 
 and must a- weary be." 
 
 He knew a play was going on upon a stage 
 set in the open air, on which four men wrapped 
 in their cloaks, with swords like torches bran- 
 dished in their hands, fought to defend or 
 carry off a damsel, who, with her hair dis- 
 hevelled, lay like a bag of rags upon the 
 ground, whilst her distressed and aged father 
 wrung his venerable hands and gazed upon 
 the clouds. 
 
 The gallant and the lady and the page he 
 knew were looking at the play, although their 
 eyes were otherwise employed, and fixed on 
 vacancy. The band, which, squatted on the 
 ground, discoursing music of the spheres 
 through the unsympathetic medium of a long 
 Arab -looking flageolet played by a pallid 
 youth, with wind-swollen cheeks and eyes that 
 started from his head, and a round drum on 
 which a negro lad was beating furiously
 
 32 HIS PEOPLE 
 
 ravished his ears with a strange melody which 
 none but he could hear. 
 
 A town which simulated a Toledo drawn 
 from phantasy, with an enormous range of 
 snow-clad mountains towering up above its 
 walls, surmounted by deep orange-coloured 
 clouds, he half divined, half recollected rather 
 than actually saw, was in the background, and 
 underneath its walls sat a gay company at 
 cards, whilst, with a touch of realism, quite in 
 Velazquez' manner, two or three beggars stood 
 behind them as they played, and criticized 
 the game. 
 
 Then, as the curtain rose, and his old friends 
 were rolled above his view, he slowly rubbed 
 his eyes, and opening them again looked out 
 upon the world and found it empty. Then 
 muttering, "All dead ; of all the people I had 
 hoped to see, these are the only friends to 
 welcome me," he walked into the street. 
 Following the Calle de la Plata half mechani- 
 cally, he walked down to the river, and, stand- 
 ing on the bridge, leaned on the parapet and 
 gazed into the stream. 
 
 A chilly wind blew feathery clouds across the 
 moon. Alg61 was rising and the Three Maries, 
 with their gleaming lamps cut through the
 
 HIS PEOPLE 33 
 
 blackness of the night as diamonds cut glass, 
 joining the earth and sky together with a long 
 beam of light. The battlemented walls out- 
 lined against the sky seemed drawn in charcoal, 
 and as the traveller stood leaning on the bridge 
 the Tagus thirstily lapped up against the piers, 
 whilst on its surface came a murmuring as of 
 choked voices striving to be heard, which 
 seemed to greet him, as if the Romans, Arabs, 
 and the Goths pitied his loneliness, and were 
 stretching out their hands.
 
 A BOTANIST 
 
 THE book cost but a shilling on a barrow in a 
 side street of a provincial town. The subject 
 of it, botany, that gentle science, so fit for 
 bruised and disappointed minds. 
 
 In it, the quondam owner had inscribed her 
 name, Matilda Hutton, adding "her booke," 
 perhaps to show her erudition, or perhaps in 
 play. Apparently she lived in Bath, the refuge 
 for old maids and generals who never handled 
 troops but from the windows of a club, for on 
 a little yellowing ticket it was set forth that 
 Pickering & Son sold books, both new and 
 second hand, at Bridge Street, opposite the 
 Wells. 
 
 A gentle soul, Matilda, one feels sure, and 
 one that probably had been, so to speak, still- 
 born from her birth, as far as passion is con- 
 cerned ; or maybe, she had had her brief 
 unhappy passage in her youth, and been de- 
 ceived, and then shut up her soul, pouring her 
 love out on a cat or Blenheim spaniel, and 
 
 34
 
 A BOTANIST 35 
 
 falling back on botany, the all-heal of old 
 maids. I take it that she was a most un- 
 doubted, right old maid, by virtue of her 
 careful handwriting, her notes and her correc- 
 tions of the press, written so delicately, that 
 they seem half clandestine, and an apology for 
 her continuance in life. Besides, between the 
 pages of the book, which is itself a trifling and 
 compendious affair, with blurry woodcuts of 
 the plants (the Flora of our Isles), wild flowers 
 were laid in press. Perhaps she called the 
 book (companion of her rambles, her scientific 
 vade-mecum and her joy) "my hortus siccus" ; 
 for all the hay, which once was leaves and 
 petals, all instinct with life, but now as miser- 
 able and as out of joint with what they were, 
 as are the birds, distorted by a stuffer in a 
 glass case in some museum, not ghosts but tor- 
 tured souls, and smelling of some disinfectant, 
 has a small docket with its Latin name. Thus 
 meadow-sweet, which still exhales a ghostly 
 scent of its sweet self, and is labelled "the 
 Spircea ulmana" as it should be, no doubt, in 
 catalogues of plants; Speedwell, which becomes 
 Veronica officinalis; and Love-lies-bleeding (as 
 perhaps hers did up to her dying day) under 
 the style of A. caudatus; are so transmogrified
 
 36 A BOTANIST 
 
 that if they met in some old garden in a 
 country farm, they would not know each other, 
 unless some kindly creature, such as the writer 
 was herself, had introduced and put them at 
 their ease. Not that such gardens nowadays 
 are to be found, for all the plants with their old 
 English names have lost their modesty, and 
 smack of some emporium in a town, and 
 lengthy catalogue. 
 
 I take it that the Latin was Matilda's joy, 
 but that she loved the flowers for themselves. 
 This, the floss silk which still confines them, 
 and the thin leaves of tissue paper, to save 
 the pages of the precious book and keep the 
 flowers fresh as long as possible, most amply 
 testify. Besides, the scientific names apart, the 
 flowers she dried are all such as she must have 
 loved and gathered in her walks, in the green 
 leafy lanes. 
 
 Campion and eyebright, agrimony, with 
 winter-green, St. John's wort, spearmint and 
 tormentil, with holygrass and herb of grace 
 (called, as she says, by some, countryman's 
 treacle), prunella, gentian, moneywort, and 
 viper's bugloss, of which she says, " I found 
 this plant at Kenilworth, it grows just in the 
 wall above the tiltyard," all witness to her taste.
 
 A BOTANIST 37 
 
 Just fifty years ago she took her walks about 
 the woodlands and the lanes, her book in hand 
 and dressed after the fashion of the times, in a 
 grey linsey-woolsey skirt, kept up from trailing 
 on the ground by an elaborate system of silk 
 cords. Her hair dressed low and covering her 
 ears, and at the back neatly disposed beneath 
 her hat in a loose net of black chenille, with 
 her short gloves of brown or puce-colour laced 
 up the back by a white tasselled string, gave 
 her a look, even when all such garments were 
 in vogue, of being out of fashion and ill- 
 dressed, but not ridiculous. 
 
 Her book in hand, and an umbrella, which 
 I feel sure was bulgy and had lost the india- 
 rubber band which should have kept it ele- 
 gantly furled, and with that air of diffidence 
 that in those days was indispensable to all 
 unmarried women not much blessed with 
 money or good looks, she took her walks 
 abroad. I feel her lonely in her life, living in 
 lodgings, or in a family of serious disagreeable 
 folk who, with the best intentions upon earth, 
 rendered her wretched now and then, and sent 
 her out for refuge, searching for flowers she 
 never could have found. Herb-paris very 
 likely was her dream, or Park Leaves, which
 
 38 A BOTANIST 
 
 she sought diligently, as knights sought the 
 Grail, both in and out of season, hearing no 
 doubt of them from herbalists, or reading in 
 the press, they had been found at Taunton, or 
 near Maryport, or Pevensey, or in the district 
 of Menteith, perhaps in Lundy Island, or in 
 some place quite inaccessible to one of modest 
 means. 
 
 I like to fancy her straying on the roads 
 with a tin box for specimens hung by a green 
 silk cord across her shoulders, her book in 
 hand, her bulgy sunshade tucked beneath her 
 arm, and with her porcelain coloured eyes, 
 shaded by spectacles of neutral tint, which she 
 had varied year by year from her youth up- 
 wards (as the young Parthians changed their 
 bows according to their strength), wide open, 
 but not seeing very much or too acutely, and 
 with an air of having lacked advancement from 
 the first day she entered upon life. But still, a 
 happy soul, as commonly are those born with- 
 out guile ; wearing her happiness, the chiefest 
 boon that nature gives to man, quite un- 
 assumingly, feeling instinctively that to flaunt 
 a quality so rare, would be unkind to ordinary 
 men and smack of cruelty. She must have 
 been contented, although at times the curious
 
 A BOTANIST 39 
 
 injustices and ills that an all-seeing Providence 
 permits, may have astounded her, and set her 
 pondering on the lot of those less blessed than 
 she, who had no book of botany to solace and 
 amuse, but passed their time in sickness or in 
 toil; and as she mused on this thing or on that, 
 the tears would well into her eyes so that she 
 readily mistook gentian for gromwell, muddled 
 up golden-rod and agrimony, and wrote down 
 entries in her book which only that explains. 
 But yet these moments of inquietude and 
 doubt must have been fugitive, for as a 
 botanist she saw that He who made the 
 flowers in their degrees, inspiring, as it 
 seemed, Linnaeus and the rest of those his 
 botanists to classify and set them in their 
 books, must have loved all He made, and at 
 the last no doubt, right would prevail, and so 
 she praised His name. Then, calling to her 
 Blenheim spaniel, for I am sure she had one, 
 she would go into the woods, mildly excited 
 and as eager for the day as is a fisherman 
 when, in the morning, seated in his punt, he 
 throws in ground bait, regulates his float, and 
 settles down to fish. The dog with its large 
 paws and flapping ears, stump tail and back as 
 mottled as a calf's, loved but despised her,
 
 40 A BOTANIST 
 
 after the fashion of its race ; coming back to 
 her call just when it liked, and asking for 
 applause. Those were red-letter days, and 
 she has marked them in the margins of her 
 book, setting forth briefly (but without method) 
 everything she did. " Found a small cistus 
 (yellow) on the chalk . . . hemp agrimony 
 (cannabinaceae) grows by a marsh near Ibbles- 
 worth, a charming graceful plant ; wonderful 
 order, the compositae . . . sunset too beautiful 
 for words," rounding her observations off with 
 a quatrain from Herbert or from Quarles. 
 
 So did these simple joys (I think) sustain 
 her in her life, as they do many subcutaneous 
 pantheists who, unknown to themselves, unite 
 their souls to nature in the fields as naturally 
 as dragon-flies, which as they flit about above 
 the grass with the sun falling on their gauzy 
 wings seem happiness itself. No doubt these 
 halcyon days were far apart, and the dull life 
 of one in narrow circumstances and with few 
 friends, for one so tender as the writer of the 
 notes in the thin faint Italian hand could not 
 have had a widespread circle, does not bring 
 joy except of a subdued, almost clandestine, 
 kind. Still, very likely in the quiet town, the 
 few who knew her loved, though they half-
 
 A BOTANIST 41 
 
 despised, her, thinking her botany a weakness, 
 when it was really the strength that gave her 
 spirit to face life. It is not probable that even 
 in that science, which the old maid forlorn, in 
 every age, has made her own, she attained a 
 great proficiency. 
 
 Linnaeus, though as she says his scheme was 
 " artificial," seems to have been a favourite, for 
 opposite the Ulex Europ&us, she observes, 
 " This is the plant which in full bloom, in all 
 its glory on a common, impelled the great 
 Linnaeus to shed tears. ... I, too, have wept 
 on seeing it in flower." 
 
 At times she stumbles on the harder words, 
 and sets down " monohypogyneae " when it is 
 evident that "monoperigyneae" was really in 
 her mind; but trifles such as that do not impair 
 enthusiasm, either in botany or in any other 
 cause. 
 
 Her life was simple, of necessity, although I 
 cannot fancy it as being otherwise had she 
 had millions, still without doubt it would have 
 pleased her to have money in her purse when 
 an impostor followed her and begged. Some- 
 times, when down a street, a herd of oxen 
 trotted to their doom, she must have shud- 
 dered, thinking that things were out of joint,
 
 42 A BOTANIST 
 
 and longed for money to redeem them from 
 their fate, and to provide a field in which, 
 happy and peaceful, they could ruminate their 
 lives. Lost dogs and homeless cats, larks in a 
 cage and rabbits in a trap, sore wrung the 
 heart that knew itself without a place in the 
 economy of man, making her lift her voice in 
 faltering parable, knowing it was not womanly 
 to teach. Near fifty, I should think, her health 
 grew weaker and her walks more circum- 
 scribed, and by degrees she sank into that 
 feebleness which sometimes wears away the 
 lonely and neglected, as a flower wastes away 
 from lack of tenderness and care, and withers 
 at the root. 
 
 What was her ending ? That is to me un- 
 known, although I judge it peaceful, and of 
 the sort we call, unkindly, a release. Her little 
 property, if she had any, served but to pay her 
 lonely funeral. Her much-loved book perhaps 
 was sold with a job lot of tracts and homilies. 
 
 I fear that no one placed a bunch of myosotis 
 on her grave, which possibly lies desolate with- 
 out a headstone, a mere green mound covered 
 with daisies, and with the grass all eaten up by 
 moss. 
 
 So I take leave of her, having no idea in
 
 A BOTANIST 43 
 
 what green churchyard, with its dark lush 
 grass, its time-defying yew, its lich-gate, cock- 
 topped steeple, and tall clump of rook-filled 
 elms, she lies. Still I am certain she sleeps 
 well, forgotten by her friends and leaving for 
 her only mourner but the spaniel, whose dumb 
 grief most likely was unmarked and comforted 
 by none ; her treasured book, the one memorial 
 of her life. It may be, though, that in the 
 lanes round Bath, the flowers miss something, 
 for surely none can gather them so tenderly as 
 she who loved them all, and never sinned 
 against them or their lives, except by giving 
 them their Latin names when she embalmed 
 them in the hortus siccus of her heart.
 
 SIGNALLED 
 
 THE Casino rooms were crowded. French, 
 English, Poles, Russians, and an occasional 
 Japanese, looking just like a monkey who had 
 escaped from freedom in the woods and volun- 
 tarily had put the chains of trousers and of 
 coats about his limbs, all jostled in the throng. 
 Above them hung the concentrated scent of 
 all the perspirations of their different races, 
 mingled with every essence that the perfumer's 
 art affords to mitigate the odours which 
 humanity distils. All were well dressed, and 
 eighteen centuries of culture and of care had 
 culminated in making every one alike. Thus 
 all spoke French, of course with varying 
 accents ; but as they all read the same books, 
 had the same thoughts, and wore the selfsame 
 clothes, the accident of accent did not separate 
 them, and they formed one immense, well- 
 scented family as to exteriors, though with their 
 hands all secretly raised against each other, and 
 their tongues wagging ceaselessly in calumny, 
 
 44
 
 SIGNALLED 45 
 
 just as a bulrush wags by the edge of some old 
 mill-race, half filled up with mud. 
 
 All round the tables men and women stood, 
 pushing and elbowing, and with their eyes fixed 
 on the money on the cloth, adoringly, as it had 
 been the Holy Grail and they all vowed to 
 search for and to grasp it, at the peril of their 
 souls. 
 
 Men who at home were magistrates and 
 pillars of a church, or members of some 
 county council, gazed at the demi-mondaines 
 as they went to and fro brushing against the 
 players to attract attention, with their eyes 
 aflame or with a swinish puckering of their, lips 
 which spoke of lust unsatisfied, not from re- 
 ligious principles, but from the fear of spies and 
 interfering friends. 
 
 They eyed the women just as a starving dog 
 looks at a butcher's shop, sideways and lurk- 
 ingly, for fear a blow may fall upon him, out 
 of some quarter unforeseen. Smartly dressed 
 women looked at their sisters of the demi- 
 monde half with dislike half with approval, as if 
 they somehow understood that they, although 
 they were transgressors of trades-union rules, 
 were helping them in their life's strife with man ; 
 whilst others with the colour rising in their
 
 46 SIGNALLED 
 
 cheeks pressed up against them as they passed, 
 just as cats press against a chair, meeting their 
 eyes with a bold comprehending stare. Remote 
 from all the rest in a cane rocking-chair there 
 sat a girl, thin, dark, and dressed quite quietly, 
 so quietly that at first sight you might have 
 taken her for a young married woman who had 
 got separated from her friends and had sat 
 down to rest. 
 
 Her high-heeled shoes just tapped upon the 
 ground as the chair rocked, and as it balanced 
 to and fro revealed her stockings half way up 
 the calf, so fine and worked so open, that it 
 appeared the hair upon the flesh might pass 
 between the stitching, just as a little fish escapes 
 through the fine meshes of a net. 
 
 Men passed before her, in the half-sneaking 
 and half-swaggering way that men assume 
 before a woman whom they have held between 
 their arms a night or two ago, and whom 
 they dare not recognize in public, although 
 they want the world to see that they are well 
 acquainted, and in its censure half applaud the 
 fact. Their hands involuntarily just touched 
 their hats, and as they looked an inch or two 
 above her head murmured a greeting, and then 
 straightening their legs they fell into a strut, as
 
 SIGNALLED 47 
 
 of a bull-fighter who has been nearly caught by 
 the bull's horns, and wants the crowd to think 
 he is not frightened as he edges to the limits of 
 the ring. She gave her salutation by a half 
 rising of her eyebrows, and a faint smile, half of 
 amusement and half contempt, just flickered on 
 her lips, as some one with his wife or daughter 
 on his arm suddenly flushed or paled and 
 looked with interest at the chandelier as he 
 passed opposite her chair. Callow and fledg- 
 ling youths boldly saluted her, colouring as 
 they did so to their hair, whilst grave and 
 decorated men just raised their eyes, and fat 
 provincials wildly plunged and bolted at the 
 sight of her, just like young horses faced 
 suddenly in a deep lane by the fierce rattle of a 
 motor-car. 
 
 Still nothing in her dress or manner was 
 unlike that of a hundred other women in the 
 rooms, as she sat quietly at the receipt of 
 custom, watching her various acquaintances as 
 they passed by give by their guilty looks the 
 lie both to the faith and the morality they held, 
 and which, no doubt, she held herself as sacred, 
 and as fixed as are the poles, although she saw 
 them outraged in her person twenty times a 
 week, just as in Spain, 'tis said, that a society
 
 48 SIGNALLED 
 
 founded to protect the lower animals, finding 
 itself in difficulties, arranged a bull-fight to 
 increase its funds and clear away its debts. 
 
 But as she sat indifferent, waiting what fate 
 should send her, to her amazement, another 
 girl, but little younger than herself, sat down 
 beside her, and with " II fait tray sho nais- 
 cepars" fell into conversation with her as easily 
 as if they had been friends. 
 
 The girl, who knew the world, glanced at 
 her quickly, half thinking that the stranger 
 came from some island in the ^gean Sea, but 
 saw at once her island lay to the north, and 
 that she had addressed her in pure innocence of 
 heart. 
 
 Though she had often seen fair English girls, 
 dressed in short skirts, boisterous in manner, 
 fresh-coloured and half manlike in their ways, 
 striding along as if their knees would burst 
 their petticoats, this was the first time she had 
 met or spoken to one, and the experience some- 
 how brought the blood into her cheeks. 
 
 " Yes, it is hot," she said, and stole a glance 
 half of amazement, half approbation, at the fresh 
 English girl, who seated by her side seemed 
 quite unconscious of the difference in their lives 
 and talked so naturally and in such curious
 
 SIGNALLED 49 
 
 French. She marked her sunburned hands, 
 gloveless and strong as those of a young man, 
 and, made observant by the manner of her life, 
 saw she was pretty at a glance, although her 
 clothes were ugly and her fair hair all gathered 
 in a knot. As she thought upon this thing and 
 on that, and on the shielded life of the fair 
 English girl, so little younger than herself, and 
 on her own, a flush rose on her face as she per- 
 ceived that she was shy before the other's inno- 
 cence and want of knowledge of the world. 
 At first the conversation languished, till the 
 stranger, who had sat down with so much lack 
 of ceremony beside her, looking her over with 
 wide-open eyes, said, " I liked the look of you, 
 as I was straying up and down, looking out for 
 my mother, who had got lost whilst I was 
 watching the roulette. You looked so pretty, 
 and you are well dressed, you know you are, 
 and so does every one, all the men look at you, 
 when they pass by, just as a schoolboy at a cake 
 in a shop-window. How foolish they all are." 
 
 Used to all kinds of compliments point-blank, 
 none that she ever had received, in all her life, 
 had put her to such difficulty, and once again 
 she stole a look at her fair complimenter's face 
 
 to reassure herself that she was really as innocent 
 E
 
 50 SIGNALLED 
 
 as she appeared to be. "Well dressed," she 
 murmured, "well, any woman likes to be well 
 dressed." To such a commonplace of femininity 
 no answer was required beyond a simple affirma- 
 tion, and a look of admiration at the clothes. 
 
 "Why, what a lot of men you know!" the 
 English girl exclaimed, as counts and viscounts 
 whom she knew by name walked by, as they 
 sat talking, staring a little at the strange com- 
 panionship of the two girls, all making a half 
 recognition as they passed. " Why is it, none 
 of them take off their hats I thought that 
 Frenchmen always were polite ?" 
 
 Then as she got no answer, but a tapping of 
 her companion's heels upon the floor, and a 
 faint blush as of annoyance at her words, fear- 
 ing she had offended her acquaintance, whom 
 she already had begun to admire on account of 
 her nice clothes, and evident knowledge of the 
 world, she said, just as a schoolboy might have 
 said, " It's awful hot in here. Would you mind 
 going out into the air, and we can sit and talk ?" 
 The other, like a person in a dream, got up and 
 followed her, and the two girls walked through 
 the crowd, the English girl quite unconcerned, 
 pushing her way, after the fashion of a forward 
 player in a football team, smiling and only
 
 SIGNALLED 51 
 
 anxious to get out into the air. The other, red 
 and uncomfortable, but hypnotized by the frank 
 manners and good faith of her she followed, 
 hardly knew where she was until she found her- 
 self seated in a cane chair upon the terrace, and 
 heard her guide say, " Well, this is better than 
 the stuffy room." 
 
 From the Casino came the hum of voices, 
 and points of light seemed to break through the 
 windows, and a faint smell of perspiration and 
 stale scent defiled the atmosphere as it came 
 floating up to where they sat. A breeze sprang 
 up and cleared away the fleecy clouds before 
 the moon, whose rays, half deadened by the 
 glare of the electric lamps upon the terrace, 
 seemed to be concentrated shyly on the mag- 
 nolia trees which formed the background of the 
 artificial scene, falling on their metallic-looking 
 leaves, which it subdued and turned to plates of 
 silver in its light. Moths hung about the great 
 electric lamps, like men about a courtesan, and 
 seemed to swim in the long beam of light which 
 issued from the globes. Sometimes they flew 
 against the glass with a dull furry noise, and 
 then fell stunned and lay upon the paths, with 
 their wings fluttering, until some high-heeled 
 shoe, just peeping out from underneath a cataract
 
 52 SIGNALLED 
 
 of lace, crushed them to pulp upon the stones, 
 or carried off their bodies sticking to the sole. 
 
 Silence fell on the girls as, walking to the 
 balustrade, they stood and looked over the wide 
 white road, across the lawn set with its bunches 
 of white pampas-grass and of euonymus, upon 
 the sea, which stretched out cool and clean and 
 undefiled even by all the tawdriness of the 
 Casino and its lights. Up from the shore there 
 came a long-drawn sigh as if the waves had 
 brought to land the last expiring breath of some 
 lost sailor as they swirled upon the beach. 
 The light air stirred the curls upon the fore- 
 heads of the girls, and the mysterious com- 
 panionship of youth drew them together without 
 words making them feel a bond of sympathy. 
 
 Tears stood in the dark eyes of the French 
 girl, she did not quite know why, and something 
 seemed to force her to bestow her confidence 
 upon the girl who stood beside her, although 
 she felt it would be useless, as she could never 
 understand. 
 
 As she stood hesitating, the other, seeing her 
 tears, caught at her hands and said, " I say, 
 whatever is the matter ? I am so sorry. Tell 
 us about it, it will do you good. Is it about 
 any of those bounders who grinned at you, and 
 did not raise their hats ? "
 
 SIGNALLED 53 
 
 The other looked at her, and, struggling to 
 keep back her tears, said, " No, no, not about 
 any man, I hate them all ... that is, I am not 
 sure ... I think one is not quite so horrible as 
 all the rest but then I have no right to talk to 
 you, so innocent, about such things." She felt 
 the hand of her companion tighten on her own, 
 and all her sorrows running from her heart ; her 
 prostituted youth, the recollection of her home, 
 perhaps the thought of the one man less 
 horrible than were the others, forced her to 
 speak and lay her head upon the shoulder of 
 the mysterious friend, who had come as it were 
 out of the depths to comfort her. 
 
 As she was struggling to choke down her 
 tears and speak, and as the English girl stood 
 wondering, but sympathetic and expectant, 
 clasping her hand in hers, a strong high voice 
 broke through the stillness of the night. 
 
 " Ethel, my dear," it said, " where have you 
 got to ? We have been looking for you for the 
 last hour, and father is so cross." The girls 
 just pressed each other's hands, and separated, 
 as ships which have but signalled may be parted 
 by a mist, without the time to make out either 
 their numbers or the ports from which they 
 hail.
 
 LA ZAGALA 
 
 I WENT once into the Cathedral of Burgos and 
 paid to have the curtain drawn from before the 
 figure of a most striking and realistic crucifix. 
 Beside me stood a countryman dressed in his 
 sheepskin coat, and with a blanket striped in 
 brown and white over his shoulder ; in his 
 hand a staff. I saw him cross himself and fall 
 upon his knees, whilst from his face ran drops 
 of sweat. He gazed with the fixed eyes of faith, 
 and as the curtain was whisked hurriedly across 
 the crucifix, drawn by a bored, yet merry- 
 looking acolyte, he rose again and murmured 
 " It is finished." Perhaps, with the interior 
 vision, he had seen the crucifixion, and had felt 
 and suffered with his Lord. Again, it may 
 have been he had felt nothing, and been but 
 hypnotized by gazing on the Christ. Into these 
 mysteries of the human soul the thinking man 
 looks with reluctance, if he is wise, for it may 
 be that looking, he may chance upon reflections 
 in his own, which may surprise him, in despite 
 
 54
 
 LA ZAGALA 55 
 
 of faith. But I, more lucky than my shepherd, 
 or perhaps less lucky, for again the matter is 
 one of the perspective of the mind, can say 
 that at a theatre last night, here in this wind- 
 swept mud- brown village, capital that was of 
 all the Spains, when the piece was over not 
 only did I say regretfully "It is finished," but 
 I wanted it straight to begin again. And yet 
 perhaps it would not have appealed to every 
 one, because it had no moral precept to in- 
 culcate in the last act, after in the first three, 
 the actors like unlicensed bridegrooms all had 
 run their course. Religion seems to have left 
 as an inheritance to its half-sister chill morality, 
 that in the last act of our lives all should be 
 strictly done within the limits of its law. And 
 thus it seems that we have merely, as is usual, 
 changed one collar for another, but have re- 
 mained essentially the selfsame dogs. But in 
 the theatre of which I write, laws were made 
 merely to be broken, and serve as counsels of 
 perfection, and quietly and bitterly, just as in 
 life itself, the story was unrolled. 
 
 In the bare theatre, devoid of accessories, 
 and decorated but by the ingenious installation 
 of electric light, decked out in toilets which 
 apparently were made on purpose for trans-
 
 56 LA ZAGALA 
 
 Pyrenean use, and with their coal-black hair 
 set thick with specious-looking diamonds, sat 
 hard-eyed ladies, with their full busts bulging 
 beyond the fronts of boxes. All were full 
 armed with fans, as if each one had come to 
 judge the world. But if the ladies in the 
 boxes with their attendant men appeared as if 
 they were but part and portion of a play in 
 which they took the part of ladies and of 
 gentlemen, the sovereign people in the gallery 
 took the reproach away. 
 
 Well are they called in Spain the brazen folk 
 (gente del bronce) and "los Morenos," for all 
 were dark and many of them, through want of 
 washing and with the glare of sun and burning 
 of the fierce Castilian wind, shone bright as 
 brass itself. Short and square-built, with eyes 
 that twinkled merrily, something between the 
 twinkling of the eyes of jockeys and of 
 monkeys, their faces shaved but once a week 
 and for the most part set in a stubble of black 
 wire, their flat white hats from Cordoba or 
 blue Basque caps formed as it were an aureole 
 of rascalism. 
 
 Naturally, knowing nothing on any subject 
 under heaven, they were critical of all. Actors 
 and actresses, the piece, the theatre, the ladies
 
 LA ZAGALA 57 
 
 in the stalls, the Government, all had their 
 turn, and upon each and all they gave their 
 absurd opinions, formed with much native 
 quickness but without intelligence, just as a 
 woman glancing at a horse sees at the first 
 sight that it is a jade, but has no power to give 
 her reasons words, or as a monkey looking at 
 a nut sees at the first glance that it is rotten 
 at the heart. 
 
 In rows they sat as thick as gulls upon a 
 rock, their cloaks thrown back, their thin brown 
 fingers coloured orange at the tips from the 
 eternal cigarette, the only fire of Vesta never 
 extinguished in the Spains. Their women in 
 the mass were handsome, strong and even 
 harder-eyed than were their sisters in the stalls. 
 Their hair piled up in masses, or parted in the 
 middle, half concealed their eyes, and the white 
 powder daubed upon their cheeks dusted their 
 brows, encroaching on their heads, so that the 
 face and hair melted together in a coat of 
 white. At first sight one divined the realistic 
 view, both of the stalls and gallery, and it was 
 faithfully set forth upon the stage. 
 
 The hard white light, brown land and wind- 
 swept hills, the meandering rivers dry in the 
 summer and in the winter torrents, the mixture
 
 58 LA ZAGALA 
 
 of the Arab with the Goth, the Roman, and 
 the Carthaginian cross, with garnishing of 
 gipsy and of Jew, have all contributed to the 
 material point of view. 
 
 The authors of the play, descendants by the 
 right divine of genius from the great unknown 
 writer who evolved the curious masterpiece of 
 choice Castilian known as " La Celestina," had 
 set forth as in a spectroscope the very pith and 
 marrow of the life of Spain. Homelike, and 
 biblical, and seasoned with the salt of Betica, 
 it formed a southern complement to the plays 
 of Ibsen, in its simplicity and truth. In a huge 
 sparsely furnished house, somewhere near 
 Seville, lived an hidalgo, who must have 
 been descended from the Ingenious Gentle- 
 man, he of the running greyhound, the bold 
 ferret, and the horse who had more corners 
 than had a real from the mint of Potosi. Tall, 
 grey, and upright, all his delight was in his 
 horse and land, and all the world to him was 
 full of people eager to do good, if they but got 
 the chance. Withal no fool in things that ap- 
 pertain to daily life. In speech and dress pre- 
 cise ; sober in diet and for morality a bar of 
 steel. His wife having died whilst on a 
 journey, for some strange notion of saving
 
 LA ZAGALA 59 
 
 pain to his two daughters, he had concealed 
 her death. 
 
 With various excuses and a wealth of lying 
 letters only to be excused to conscience by the 
 idea of doing good, he kept the fraud alive. 
 At last his eldest daughter married, and the 
 younger went on a visit to her, leaving their 
 father, lonely, with his servants and his horse. 
 Still he wrote on, and always held out hopes of 
 his dead wife's return. Into the Andalusian 
 Eden glided all unawares the female snake, 
 creeping about the heart of the hidalgo after 
 the fashion of its prototype of old. 
 
 She was a country girl, and her entry with 
 her father, a stupid and yet humorous Andalu- 
 sian clown, appeared quite natural, as she came 
 to take a servant's place, left vacant by a death. 
 
 The solitary gentleman had a mania that all 
 his servants in the evening should come into 
 the drawing-room and learn to read and write. 
 This led to intimacy, and by degrees to love. 
 But still the simple gentleman would not con- 
 fess it even to himself. Then came upon the 
 scene a rough Asturian miller, one Polanco, 
 whom in his loneliness the modern Quixote 
 had invited to his house. He and his dog 
 Veneno soon overran the place, the latter
 
 60 LA ZAGALA 
 
 sleeping on the hidalgo's bed, the former 
 talking and laughing with the maids. One 
 day he pinched the Zagala (the new maid), 
 and then her master found out what had been 
 passing in his heart. He instantly boxed 
 Polanco's ears, and turned him and his dog 
 Veneno out of doors. 
 
 He went, protesting that his expulsion left 
 a bad savour in his mouth. Next came the 
 hesitations of a man of feeling and of sense, 
 described with humour and with pathos, and 
 at last a secret marriage, and a brief interval 
 of transient happiness. Then one by one his 
 servants leave him, some from jealousy of their 
 old comrade, and others, as the old nurse who 
 brought his children up, out of respect for the 
 remembrance of his wife. As the old nurse 
 went out, carrying her bundle, Spanish fashion, 
 in a towel, the soul of the Zagala for the first 
 time wakened into life. Till then she had 
 accepted, in the Eastern way, life, love, and 
 everything as fate. But then she suddenly 
 became alive, and screamed impressively, " Go 
 call her back." Then doubts assailed her, and 
 she thought that she had been a traitor ; but 
 her old father came to visit her, and her pride 
 in her smart clothes and jewellery stilled, for
 
 LA ZAGALA 61 
 
 the moment, all her qualms. Her father is 
 astonished, smells her pocket-handkerchief, 
 touches her flounces timidly, and is delighted 
 when she tells him " she is all lace inside." 
 Then in the whimsical, half-stupid manner of 
 his kind, says, " I feel half ashamed to be your 
 father," which she takes as he had meant it, for 
 a compliment. 
 
 But in the village where the drama passes, 
 news of the marriage soon had filtered out. 
 None would believe it, and Polanco, with his 
 dog, determines to deliver up himself a victim 
 on the altar of his friendship, and to learn the 
 truth. He comes, is well received, and when 
 he learns the truth is thunderstruck. In vain 
 the poor hidalgo tries to make Polanco under- 
 stand that he has tried to act, if foolishly, still 
 like a Christian and a gentleman. By the 
 inexorable logic of a commercial world, Polanco 
 shows him that he has brought ruin upon him- 
 self and misery upon the daughters whom he 
 loves, and probably upon the girl whom he has 
 taken to his heart. 
 
 Indignantly he asks Polanco, "Would you 
 not have acted in the same manner as I did ? " 
 and gets the answer, " I I should have acted 
 in a very different way."
 
 62 LA ZAGALA 
 
 Just as they are about to quarrel, comes a 
 letter from his daughter saying she and her 
 husband have returned from Italy, and will be 
 with him in an hour. It seems they think the 
 mother is at home. Then for the first time all 
 the significance of his action rises before his 
 eyes. How can he meet his daughters, and 
 present them instead of the long longed-for 
 mother, a young servant girl. The Zagala 
 overhears him, and is mad with terror, and 
 threatens then and there to run away. The 
 daughters come, and then taking the elder one 
 aside, he tells her of his pious fraud and after 
 tears obtains her pardon ; but he knows that 
 there can be no pardon for the next action that 
 he must confess. Days pass, and by degrees 
 the daughters slowly begin to feel all is not 
 right. Then they ask for the nurse who brought 
 them up, and hear she is at home living alone 
 in a small cottage in a village near at hand. 
 The eldest goes and sees her, learns the truth, 
 and comes back heart-broken. Still though, she 
 doubts, until by accident she sees her father 
 kiss his wife. At last her love prevails, and 
 she forgives her father, and agrees to take the 
 younger sister off and keep the truth from her. 
 They go, and the poor father is left desolate.
 
 LA ZAGALA 63 
 
 He naturally turns to his wife for comfort, 
 misses her ; grows uneasy ; searches the house, 
 the terrace ; rushes out to the garden calling 
 upon her name. You hear him in the orange 
 grove, and from the eyes of all the "brazen 
 people " in the gallery real tears drop. They 
 make their way through paint upon the faces 
 f ladies in the boxes and the stalls. The 
 theatre suffers and weeps, as if each man and 
 woman lived the agony upon the stage. 
 Lastly the poor hidalgo rushes back again, 
 and in a moment, takes it in, and stands turned 
 to a pillar of salt grief. Then cloaks are flung 
 across the mouth, women tie highly coloured 
 shawls under their chins, ladies throw furs 
 about their powdered shoulders, and the audi- 
 ence, holding their handkerchiefs before their 
 mouths, for it is good to take precautions in the 
 subtile air, stream out into the night.
 
 LE CHEF 
 
 JUST at the corner of the streets called Twenty- 
 fifth of May and Calle de Cangallo stood 
 Claraz's hotel. In those days, long before 
 the city of La Plata rose and fell, before La 
 Union Civica was known, and whilst the 
 echoes of the Paraguayan war were still re- 
 sounding in the River Plate, it was a busy 
 spot. The life of Buenos Ayres ran before 
 the door. Only three squares away the two 
 great Plazas, with their palaces and barracks, 
 basked in the sun, or shivered in the wind, 
 according as the PampeVo whistled, or the hot 
 north wind blew. The Stock Exchange was 
 near ; the mole within a stone's throw, and up 
 the deep-cut Calle de Cangallo, which looked 
 more like a dry canal than a great thorough- 
 fare, stood several of the principal hotels. The 
 house was built all round a courtyard, with 
 a great archway over which were rooms 
 upon an upper floor where Claraz kept his 
 saddlery, his books, and natural history collec- 
 
 6 4
 
 LE CHEF 65 
 
 tions, and in which he generally lived, to be 
 away from noise. The rest of the establish- 
 ment was but one story high, though being 
 built upon a bank, it looked right out across 
 the River Plate, in Buenos Ayres nearly thirty 
 miles in breadth, so that the houses in La 
 Colonia, on the other side, are only visible 
 upon the clearest days. Claraz himself, a tall 
 and black-haired Swiss, of all the men I ever 
 saw, was the least fitted for the business of 
 keeping an hotel. Well educated and with 
 scientific tastes, his guests were almost all 
 either commercial travellers or sheep and cattle 
 farmers, who strode into the place, with a 
 Basque porter carrying their saddles, took off 
 their pistols, hung them on their beds, and 
 called for drink incontinently, stamping about 
 the brick courtyard in their long riding-boots 
 and spurs. As all the rooms looked out into 
 the yard, the fashion was to leave the doors 
 wide open and to converse whilst lying on 
 your bed, with any one you knew. In some 
 respects the place was like a school, with the 
 initial difference that you were pretty sure to 
 learn some things worth knowing, after a day 
 or two. Claraz himself, being a naturalist, 
 knew all the animals and a percentage of the 
 F
 
 66 LE CHEF 
 
 myriad shrubs and trees of the republic, and 
 others in their several degrees were able to 
 impart much knowledge of a varied kind and 
 differing quality. 
 
 Kincaid from Patagonia had much Indian 
 lore, and knew the chiefs of all the southern 
 tribes. Though he lived out upon the fringe 
 of Indian territory, and far removed from 
 towns, his neighbours gauchos, and his life to 
 herd his sheep and cattle all the day and sit 
 down either alone or with his herdsmen in a 
 hut at night to smoke and read a "Glasgow 
 Herald" ten weeks old, which told him in 
 eight columns all the ecclesiastic news of the 
 Free Church and the Establishment, he yet 
 remained a Scotchman, so Scotch that had 
 you met him in a railway-carriage you would 
 have thought him a new-comer fresh from 
 Kirkcaldy or from Perth. Benitez Wilson, 
 half Argentine, half Englishman, kept a pul- 
 fierla in the south camp, and having been to 
 England to be educated, had returned home 
 again, more Argentine than ever, after the 
 fashion of the Texan youth sent by his father 
 to tour round Europe, who being asked on his 
 return what mode of life he proposed to em- 
 brace, replied, "Guess, Poppa, that I'll have a
 
 LE CHEF 67 
 
 horse-ranch out in Nueces County or down 
 by Goliad." Thin, slight, and dark, with long 
 brown hands, and feet eternally imprisoned in 
 tight patent-leather boots, he did not look the 
 man to keep a frontier drinking-shop ; but was 
 reported, when a fight arose, to be a master of 
 the art of throwing empty bottles, which he 
 delivered like a Benjamite, and seldom missed 
 his mark. What was worth knowing about 
 racing on the flat (three squares or fifty) bare- 
 backed and owners up, he knew, and no one 
 from the Tres Arroyos to Tandil was cun- 
 ninger in the innumerable false starts which 
 are the science of a gaucho race. His life had 
 made him taciturn, but when he chose, he 
 could discourse of many things with the 
 strange double view of the mixed-blooded 
 man, which makes him never quite at home 
 with either race, and an eternal stranger in the 
 land. The other guests were mostly bagmen, 
 usually Frenchmen from Marseilles or Bor- 
 deaux, black-bearded, voluble and unilingual, 
 for why should any one whom God has blessed 
 by making him a Frenchman struggle with 
 other tongues? "You do not speak the lan- 
 guage of the place," Benitez Wilson had re- 
 marked to Monsieur Lagadigadon. "Certainly
 
 68 LE CHEF 
 
 not," he answered. " fe parle Franfais, et fa 
 me suffit, voyez-vous." But notwithstanding 
 their linguistic limitations, they were a jovial 
 set, carrying destruction, as it seemed, amongst 
 the female sex of every land, and passing hours 
 relating all their conquests, although the listen- 
 ers might well have been aware, by personal 
 experience, that all the tales were false. They 
 and a knot of Englishmen, mostly offshoots of 
 county families, and known in Buenos Ayres 
 as the " Gentle Shepherds," made the most 
 noise of all the visitors, and passed their time 
 in general in the billiard-room, playing the 
 cannon game, with lumps of chalk held in the 
 bridge hand, with balls like turnips, and with 
 cues like table legs. 
 
 The fashionable streets in which were situated 
 the best shops cut the Cangallo at right angles, 
 and even in those days had tramways running 
 down them preceded by a boy on horseback 
 who blew upon a horn, so that the curious little 
 inn, even then, was an anachronism, though 
 Buenos Ayres still in some respects was primi- 
 tive. Horses were commoner than dogs ; they 
 stood at every house, with their feet hobbled 
 during the time their owners talked or drank, 
 and now and then, when they got bored, they
 
 LE CHEF 69 
 
 would hop off, raising their shackled feet like 
 rocking-horses, and congregate in knots, where 
 with their reins tied to the saddles drawing 
 their heads into their chests, they stood and 
 Tabulated. Before the Stock Exchange dozens, 
 or sometimes hundreds, stood, and stockbrokers 
 felt their way cautiously amongst them with 
 propitiatory words, hissing and chirruping, and 
 sometimes coming to a standstill, so to speak, 
 storm stayed, amongst a sea of tails and hoofs, 
 too difficult to pass. The presidential escort, 
 dressed as exaggerated lancers, used to ride 
 down the streets behind the carriage of the 
 president, just as a troop of Indians rides be- 
 hind a chief, all with their toes scarce touching 
 their small native stirrups, their bodies swaying 
 easily above the hips, talking and laughing, and 
 some smoking cigarettes. The upper classes 
 dressed in black broadcloth, and all wore black 
 felt hats which made them look like Maltese 
 ship-chandlers or touts in the Levant. They 
 held themselves the first of humankind, calling 
 the English "gringos," the Italians "carca- 
 mafios," Spaniards "gallegos," a term which 
 they resented, as in Spain the word gallego 
 is used to designate a man of all work, and the 
 Brazilians, monkeys (macacos), whilst referring
 
 70 LE CHEF 
 
 to themselves as the Portefios (men of the 
 port), though at that time there was no harbour 
 in the place. Women, except the higher classes 
 who had travelled and seen that Mecca of 
 the rastaquouere, "Paris de Francia," dressed 
 in a loose black skirt with petticoats much 
 starched and laced, wore low-cut shoes and 
 white silk stockings, and minced upon the 
 stones. Over their heads they wore the 
 mania, a thick black cashmere shawl 
 which, crossing on the chest, covered de- 
 ficiencies and served them for protection and 
 disguise. They seldom ventured far from 
 home, except to mass, or to walk three 
 or four together in a row about the squares, 
 when in the evening military bands discoursed 
 the strains of Offenbach or clashed out patriotic 
 music written in general by Italian music- 
 masters. 
 
 The house of Juan Garay, one of the con- 
 quistadores, still stood, a long low brick or 
 mud adobe edifice, close to the corner of the 
 square, and usually the architecture was half- 
 Moorish, flat-roofed and flanked by towers called 
 miradords, all dazzlingly white. A few tall 
 French-built buildings studded the town, break- 
 ing the line of long flat roofs, and looking
 
 LE CHEF 71 
 
 vulgar and unsuitable both to the people and 
 the place. One of these just at the corner of 
 the largest square was let in furnished suites 
 and called " La Casa Amueblada," and occupied 
 in general either by French or by Hungarian 
 women, who sat in dressing-gowns, with their 
 hair most elaborately dressed, at all the bal- 
 conies. Painted but unashamed they sat at 
 the receipt of custom, which seldom seemed 
 to lack, although their tariff was in general 
 a gold ounce, a coin which in those days was 
 plentiful. In almost every side street, red 
 lamps and doors ajar held by a chain, denoted 
 where a lower class of ladies lived, and not 
 content with this, the bars and cigarette shops 
 all held their houris, and that although the 
 women of the place were keen competitors. 
 So much so, that in a town in Entre Rios a 
 Frenchman having called upon the ruler of the 
 place with a request to start a tolerated house, 
 was answered with an oath : " Yes, start it and 
 be damned, but you are certain to be ruined, 
 for here the women all are amateurs." General 
 society scarcely existed in the modern sense, 
 but followed antique Spanish or semi- Moorish 
 rules, the men at parties congregating into 
 knots, smoking and talking scandal, and the
 
 72 LE CHEF 
 
 girls seated upon chairs against the wall, whis- 
 pering in undertones whilst managing their 
 fans. Sometimes a man approached them, and 
 selecting one, led her with compliments point- 
 blank about her " beauteous eyes," her "grace " 
 or what not, to the dance, which was a slow and 
 swinging Spanish waltz danced with much 
 balancing of hips, the arms held out like pump- 
 handles, and during which the woman's head 
 rested upon her partner's shoulder with her eyes 
 closed, as she had been asleep, and smiling 
 rapturously. The ceremony over, she was led 
 slowly to the refreshment-room and ate an ice 
 or drank some lemonade, standing the while a 
 fire of compliments, which as she knew them all 
 by heart and they were fixed as is a liturgy, must 
 have been wearisome, although their age did 
 not seem able to impair their efficacy and per- 
 sonal effect. In the less fashionable circles, they 
 danced the pericdn and el cielito, quaint, old- 
 world dances with much waving of their hand- 
 kerchiefs, and breaking now and then into some 
 verses which the unlucky man was held to 
 improvise, though generally he broke down 
 utterly and the song ended in a laugh. The 
 older people sat and drank mate, smoking 
 cigarettes of black tobacco made in Brazil,
 
 LE CHEF 73 
 
 which they lit frequently from a hot coal kept 
 on a chafing-dish, or from a slow match hanging 
 to a chain. On one side all was new, that is in 
 what concerned commercial life, and steamboats 
 and hotels were certainly more comfortable than 
 those of England in the days of which I write. 
 Upon the social side, with the exception of 
 some rich men who had been educated either in 
 Paris or in Bordeaux, or who had travelled, 
 customs survived from Spain, and not from 
 modern Spain, but from the Spain of the pre- 
 revolutionary age. As there was little mixed 
 society, except that of the nymphs of every land 
 that Europe sent as civilizers, we as a general 
 rule remained at Claraz's at night, and either 
 talked or played at billiards, drinking the while 
 mate or cafia punch, or a decoction which we 
 called "la boisson Cavantous" compounded of 
 such simples as white Curasao, gum, gin and 
 bitters, and a little lemon-juice. 
 
 Most of the company is dead, the last-named 
 liquid, helped by whisky, having proved too 
 much for them, in spite of struggles almost 
 heroic in their foolishness. Some have been 
 killed by Indians, drowned at sea, knocked on 
 the head in rows, or died in drinking-shops. 
 Long John Arbuthnott, known to us all as
 
 74 LE CHEF 
 
 "Jar," from the initials of his name, and by the 
 reason of a flowing beard which, mingling with 
 his hair, caused him to look like Jove, sailed in 
 a schooner to the Falkland Islands, and the 
 last seen of him was his tall figure wrapped in a 
 pampa poncho, waving good-bye as she cleared 
 in a gale of wind from Maldonado and dropped 
 into the mist. 
 
 Lucien Simmonet, a young Parisian journa- 
 list, who gained his living in a mysterious way 
 by writing paragraphs from Paris in a back 
 street in Buenos Ayres, became head secretary 
 to His Majesty Aureille the First, King of 
 Arauco, and his last letter to me, dated from 
 Union Bay in Patagonia, just as his chief and 
 he were starting for their Mecca in the West, 
 has formed his epitaph, for from the wilds of 
 Araucaria, if he returned, that is to me un- 
 known. Dunsmere was lost in those vague 
 regions known as "down about the Straits"; 
 all that remains of him is a blue poncho barred 
 with red, which lay for years upon his father's 
 sofa in his smoking-room, and a whip made of 
 coronilla wood mounted with silver, which 
 when I used to take it up from where it lay, 
 would bring him back to me, and make the 
 tears stand in his father's eyes, who knew
 
 LE CHEF 75 
 
 intuitively where and with whom my thoughts 
 were straying, whilst I held it in my hand. 
 Others have turned respectable. Simon Uruchi 
 has an estancia in the district of Tuyu, is 
 wealthy, a senator I think, and now and then 
 his name appears in "La Tribuna" as having 
 spoken on free-trade, protection, or the inherent 
 right of every man to cheat, or something of 
 the kind. All the Italians have gone home, 
 having made "leetel money," and settled down 
 to smoke Virginia cigars, grow their own wine, 
 and talk of the old days amongst the "Barbari." 
 My partner is a country squire in Devonshire 
 who hunts and sits upon the bench, is a staunch 
 Protestant and true, keeping his sitting in the 
 chancel manfully and standing up for Church 
 and King, though he believes in neither of 
 them, as far as I can see. John Bland, the 
 " Rengo," has an Indian wife, ten children, and 
 a rancho near Cala in Entre Rios, wears native 
 clothes (the poncho and the chiripa), has almost 
 lost his English, and, a friend tells me, is happy 
 as a dragon-fly, watching his flocks increase and 
 his own life slip peacefully away. One hung on 
 till last year, and then departed, not the least 
 inclined to go, for life was pleasant to him, his 
 groove just fitted, and in his way he had
 
 76 LE CHEF 
 
 achieved renown. At Claraz's we called him 
 Treadway, though his name was Cossart ; but 
 certain difficulties he had when in the little 
 frontier town called El Bragado, where, as he 
 said, " I used to sing basso cantante in the 
 church choir, and serve the Mass, vous voyez fa 
 (fid, mon cher" induced him for a time to 
 change his name, although he still remained 
 a stoutish Frenchman, broad-shouldered, and 
 with a profile just below the waist beginning 
 even then to show, though he fought with it 
 manfully and possibly with stays. His dead 
 white face set in a jet-black beard, looked like a 
 pearl in black enamel, and his large beaky nose 
 "fai un grand diable de nez comme tons Us 
 gens intelligents? he used to say gave a fierce 
 look which his intensely black and simple eyes 
 quite truthfully belied. He was perhaps a little 
 truculent, and stood a good deal on his dignity 
 at open doors and crossings, and when he 
 walked the streets and had the wall at his right 
 hand, for nothing in the world would he have 
 given up his right. No, not if his chief hero, 
 Napoleon III, whom he admired but yet called 
 Badinguet, had risen from the dead. 
 
 Few people even in Buenos Ayres at that 
 day, when life was cheap and every man went
 
 LE CHEF 77 
 
 armed, cared to contest the matter with him, 
 for he was strong as a West Highland bull, 
 or, as he said, un lapin, and moreover his 
 troubles in Bragado had given him a name 
 which it was his chief care to keep alive. 
 Though born in London he was French to the 
 backbone, his family having come from Car- 
 pentras ; but yet spoke English perfectly, with 
 just a little foreign accent grafted on cockney, 
 which did not in his mouth sound vulgar, but 
 as it were a complement to his appearance, 
 which certainly was French. Thus no one but 
 a Frenchman of his type could, when a woman 
 passed, look at her with a conquering air and 
 say, " Not bad, that little girl, eh ? Strange 
 how she smiled at me but then they all do ; 
 one gets no peace because of them ah, sacrtes 
 femmes!" He could not have believed himself, 
 but for their self-respect, men of his type and 
 nationality were forced in those days to assume 
 that attitude, as Englishmen of the same time 
 and kind thought it incumbent on them when a 
 horse passed by them on the road, to put their 
 heads a little on one side and mutter critically, 
 " He seems to me to go a trifle short on the off 
 fore, or perhaps on the near hind." Just at that 
 moment he was working as a diver, which his
 
 78 LE CHEF 
 
 proportions did not seem to fit him for, but 
 which, as he said, " after my trouble in the camp, 
 a simple matter of an almost necessary homi- 
 cide, is prudent, and the most fitting occupa- 
 tion for a man who wants to pass unseen." A 
 statement which in itself was logical enough, 
 had he but gone about the streets, lived, slept, 
 and had his being in his diver's dress. But as, 
 his duties over, he dressed himself in the black 
 suit with low-necked shirt and black felt floppy 
 hat, which was the uniform of every one, the 
 reason was not plain. But, be that as it may, 
 he dined at Claraz's, sleeping in what he called 
 " mon taudis " in a by-street, and was ready at 
 all times to talk and tell his strange adventures 
 in the provinces, or to play billiards, at which 
 game he easily gave fifty in a hundred to 
 almost any one in town. This talent, joined 
 with great generosity and natural kindness, a 
 somewhat "pawky" humour, and the most 
 perfect feelings of a natural gentleman, made 
 him a favourite with all. Though not weighed 
 down with money, he always had the "Vie 
 Parisienne" sent to him from France, esteem- 
 ing that thereby he kept himself in touch with 
 what he called " Le Bitume " and " La Haute 
 Bicherie," not that he had nostalgia of the city
 
 LE CHEF 79 
 
 of the light, thinking that the life in Buenos 
 Ayres was the pleasantest the world afforded, 
 as many of us thought ; but from a sense of 
 duty, as it were, just as the Englishman pored 
 on the "Licensed Victuallers' Gazette," reading 
 accounts of prize-fights in the halcyon days of 
 Sayers and the Benicia Boy, and other worthies, 
 long departed to that limbo which presumably 
 they share with jockeys, touts, and sporting 
 noblemen. The "Gentle Shepherds" used to 
 borrow the French papers, and pore on them, 
 especially when they found anything indecent, 
 and then among themselves aver with oaths 
 the French were "an immoral crowd," return- 
 ing to the pure columns of " Bell's Life" with 
 Saxon innocence. Such differences of ideals, 
 no doubt, are in the very life-blood of a race ; 
 and points of honour, which the " Gentle 
 Shepherds" held in high esteem, were to the 
 Frenchman quite incomprehensible, and each 
 looked on the other with contempt tempered 
 by whisky or by absinthe, according to their 
 kind. Both of them looked down on the 
 Argentines, calling them "niggers" or des 
 barbares, whilst they returned in kind, heaping 
 the English up together with the Germans 
 under the name of gringos, calling the French
 
 8o LE CHEF 
 
 gabachos, and looking with contempt on both 
 of them, as men who could not ride. Still 
 they jogged on together, misunderstanding 
 one another mutually, as they were joined in 
 holy matrimony. 
 
 I left the country thinking never to return, 
 being seen off by many of the society at the 
 quaint little inn, into the whaleboat which in 
 those days took one out to the steamers which 
 lay eight, ten, or twelve miles off, often hull down, 
 in the thick yellow water of the River Plate. 
 After two years, lacking advancement and with 
 the nostalgia of the open plains, the horses and 
 the wild free life, I sailed again, landed in 
 Buenos Ayres, and found the place had altered 
 in that time almost as much as European cities 
 alter in an age. No longer whaleboats took 
 one from the ship, nor did a cart drawn by 
 three horses with a Basque riding the near-side 
 animal, or a bullock-wagon with a man seated 
 on the yoke, carry one to the shore where the 
 water shoaling made it unsafe for boats. Steam- 
 launches pitching on the choppy waves like 
 buckjumpers, in half an hour or so, performed 
 the passage which in the whaleboats often took 
 more than two, and on arriving near the beach,
 
 LE CHEF 81 
 
 I found a smart tin pier replaced the wooden 
 wharf which had survived apparently from when 
 the conquerors first landed at the city of Good 
 Airs. But once inside the town, although fell 
 progress had already laid its hands on many of 
 the older buildings, sweeping away the house 
 of the old conqueror Garay as if, according to 
 a friend of mine, it had been nothing but a dis- 
 agreeable mother-in-law, the old life held its 
 sway. 
 
 Still at the corners of the streets the hob- 
 bled horses stood. Hard hats, except amongst 
 officials, and the like, had made scant progress. 
 Few people carried walking-sticks, but in their 
 hands held plaited raw-hide whips, with silver 
 tops, flat lashes, and a thong to hang them to the 
 wrist. Still women went to church all dressed in 
 black. Basque milk-boys rode their ponies, 
 seated between their cans, dressed half like 
 sailors, half like gauchos, wearing the chiripd 
 and the broad belt fastened with silver coins, 
 with a black jacket and thick boots, a sort of 
 cross between the kind a pilot and a cattle- 
 rider wear. Beggars no longer rode, but with 
 increase of wealth and of modernity, had mul- 
 tiplied a little, as if to prove that no one 
 
 has devised a scheme to make the rich man 
 G
 
 82 LE CHEF 
 
 rich, and not involve as its corollary the in- 
 creasing poverty of our poor brethren in 
 the Lord. Arrived at Claraz's a changador 
 carrying my things up from the custom-house, 
 all was unchanged. The owner still sat quietly 
 in his upper room and classified his plants, 
 whilst guests arrived and either at their own 
 sweet will selected rooms, or were inducted 
 into them by an old housekeeper from Biscay 
 who spoke but little Spanish, and that all topsy- 
 turvy, who could not read or write or far less 
 cipher, standing for all that manfully between 
 her master and his guests, and bustling about. 
 The bagmen still disputed as of yore about their 
 conquests, the " Gentle Shepherds " drank and 
 idled through the day, cursing the country, but 
 still loath to leave it, knowing that in a British 
 colony they must work or starve, contingencies 
 they did not care to contemplate, all being 
 gentlemen. In such a place it did not take 
 more than ten minutes to shake down and 
 learn the local news, hear of the revolution 
 up in Entre Rios, the Indian maldn upon 
 the frontiers, the death of So-and-so, the feats 
 of some one's horse, and to absorb a cocktail, 
 which done, the world appeared to fall again 
 into its last year's rut. " And Cossart ? Oh,
 
 LE CHEF 83 
 
 yes, he has left off his diving," Claraz said, 
 " and keeps a restaurant, makes a good 
 living, and has a mistress called Emilienne." 
 Dinner-time brought him to the inn, and it 
 transpired that, being bred a cook, at the first 
 chance he had returned to his profession, and 
 now appeared rather bejewelled, but yet quite 
 the gentleman, to play his game at billiards 
 and incidentally welcome me effusively, and 
 tell me of his altered circumstances and of 
 Emilienne, whom he described with so much 
 detail that I appeared to know her perfectly, 
 both dressed and undressed, her ways, thoughts, 
 habits, with une tache vermeille which she 
 had upon her shoulder, her business aptitude, 
 and other details which recited openly put the 
 most hard drinking of the "Gentle Shepherds" 
 to the blush, as their conventions and those of 
 the possessor of cette bonne brave fille differed 
 as much as do the stars, both in their glory 
 and their magnitude. The restaurant turned 
 out to be a stuffy, much beflied and dusty 
 little place in which one dined extremely 
 well and cheaply, and heard ten languages 
 spoken all at once and loudly, and where le 
 chef, wearing the habit of his craft, went round 
 to every table and talked familiarly to all his
 
 84 LE CHEF 
 
 guests, hoping their food was to their liking, 
 and Emilienne, dressed in grey beige, her hair 
 en bandeaux, presided at a desk, so quiet 
 and businesslike that it appeared she just had 
 left a convent to come and take the post. The 
 guests departed ; the chef, leading me to the 
 desk, presented me to the fair priestess of 
 cdans, who bowed tres dignement, accepted 
 mes hommages, and comported herself gener- 
 ally in such a way as to quite justify the 
 choice my friend had made. To the out- 
 ward eye, the lady seemed one of those sensible 
 commercial French women, who in a situation 
 which an English girl would fill after the 
 fashion of Moll Flagon, or half ashamed, 
 knew how to conquer virtue by her seemly 
 conduct, although she had it not, that is if after 
 all mere virtue can be put beside good humour 
 and real kindliness of heart. 
 
 Our talk ran on my friend's advancement, 
 his future prospects, on politics, religion, the 
 next president, the drought, the locusts, 
 Indians, and other subjects which a year 
 spent in Europe slackens the grasp of, and 
 in all of them Emilienne gave her opinions 
 when asked for them, in such wise manner 
 and so foolishly, that at last the chef said to
 
 LE CHEF 85 
 
 her with the kindly air with which a man 
 speaks to a child, " Ma belle ', go and see what 
 the marmitons are at," and she, patting her 
 bandeaux and smoothing out her skirt, tripped 
 dutifully away. We sat and smoked Brazilian 
 cigarettes, drank lemonade, and watched the 
 fireflies flitting in the trees in the back garden, 
 what time the chef unfolded all his plans. 
 "You see," he said, "that diving business led 
 to nothing " ; then, for more emphasis, repeated 
 it in French, " menait a rien> pas meme fa" 
 and as he spoke he bit his thumb-nail and 
 waved his hand before his face in token of 
 disgust, "f avals mes quarante ans, yes, 
 forty years, so I said, Cossart, mon ami, after 
 all, you are a cook, a cook professed, and it is 
 in les marmites that your future will be found. 
 I thought of marrying, but then at forty years 
 without a sou, not twenty paper dollars in the 
 bank a dot you laugh, at forty years with 
 my black beard becoming grey. I thought of 
 shaving it, but . . . bah ! So I went to a lady 
 that I knew, what they call Trotaconventillos, 
 eh, and asked her to get me somebody, not too 
 pretty, not too young, neither too thin nor fat, 
 a good arithmetician and rangte } and she, the 
 Lord knows where, procured Emilienne . . .
 
 86 LE CHEF 
 
 il faut une femme, mon cher, that poses you, 
 especially in ce sale metier that I follow now." 
 Laughing internally I told him that his lines 
 had fallen not quite in a hard place, and he, 
 loosening the buttons of his waistcoat, rejoined, 
 "Yes, I have ambition, quand on est chef it 
 always is like that. My hand, you see, what 
 with the diving and the years I spent out at 
 Bragado minding sheep, had got a little rusty, 
 so I said, Mon gars> you take this little 
 restaurant, get to your tools, and then when 
 you have saved a bit, go home and settle 
 down, after a month or two of course in La 
 Ville Lumiere ; for before I die what I ambi- 
 tion is to be the chef at a swell London club, 
 so that at last I shall be known for what I am, 
 
 and make a name, eh " Every ambition 
 
 being equal, and but measurable by the effort 
 it entails, I cordially agreed, bade him farewell, 
 and in the morning took the steamboat up the 
 Parana, landed at Diamante, found my tropilla 
 waiting, and galloped to my house. 
 
 Two years brought me again to Buenos 
 Ay res on my return to Europe, where I found 
 my friend, still prosperous, his little cafe 
 changed for a larger one, Emilienne gone, 
 " Par tie la mdtine, avec un riche Bre"silien"
 
 LE CHEF 87 
 
 and duly was seen off on board my ship by 
 Cossart, from whom I parted not thinking I 
 should meet him, for his ambition to be chef in 
 a good London club seemed to be quite for- 
 gotten in his prosperity. Two or three, or 
 perhaps five years had passed, when, lunching 
 at a club in Edinburgh, and having got a 
 mutton-chop, half raw, half burned, I sent (the 
 first and last time in my life) to see the 
 manager. The waiter said that Monsieur 
 Trastour was away, but Monsieur something 
 or another would come and speak to me. He 
 came, and looking up I beheld Cossart, un- 
 changed except that he had shaved his beard, 
 and looked a little like an actor, with his blue 
 stubbly chin. Speaking in Spanish, I asked 
 him to meet me at a cafe" in an hour or two, 
 finished my lunch, and then sat down to smoke 
 and ponder on the strange meeting after so 
 many years. The chef appeared true to the 
 tryst, embraced me, patting my shoulder with 
 his great hairy hands, and hugging me. " You 
 see," he said, " this is an e"tape on the way to 
 London, but ogni strada men a Roma no, no 
 whisky, it is an article of faith I know here in 
 this North but I will tell you how I came 
 here yes, a cigar," and he chose a long black
 
 88 LE CHEF 
 
 oily one, not lighting it, but keeping it stuck in 
 the corner of his mouth. " You see, mon cher, 
 I think it was the sedentary life that got upon 
 my nerves. Then, too, that matter of Emi- 
 lienne les femmes, mon ami, (a vous abtme un 
 homme" He paused* and looking at him I 
 perceived that he was growing stouter, and no 
 doubt in general les femmes did not appeal 
 so much to him as in the days gone by, 
 although a little later in the street he criticized 
 them freely, as an old troop-horse out at grass 
 is said in story-books to prick his ears at the 
 sound of military music, even when yeomanry 
 pass by. " Travel," he then continued, " is 
 the best cure for all affections of the heart 
 you smile well, well, that poor Emilienne 
 was not perhaps so fatal to my peace, but 
 vanity, and we all have it rien doutez pas. 
 You see, I did not like the chaff about that 
 damned Brazilian and his dollars, although, no 
 doubt, had I been in his place, I should have 
 done the same. Better by far to run about the 
 world, even with such an ignoble macaque, 
 than keep the books of a mere guinguette such 
 as mine was, eh ? Philosophy is in our Gallic 
 blood, not of course the dull Germanic trash 
 about first causes woman is man's first cause
 
 LE CHEF 89 
 
 but, well one resigns oneself to the inevi- 
 table so I attached myself as cook and secre- 
 tary to a diplomatist. Half the whole world I 
 travelled with him for two years, going from 
 Buenos Ayres up to Corumbd you know, in 
 Matto Grosso. Ah, yes, I recollect, you told 
 me when you first went there after the Para- 
 guayan war, the alcalde came down to the 
 steamer riding on an ox. Well, not much 
 changed, that Corumba, when I was there. 
 Nothing to cook, of course, but charqui dulce 
 and some mandioca, and as there was no 
 business, nothing to write. The people still 
 washing out gold-dust, you recollect ? " I 
 nodded, and he seemed to remember his cigar 
 was still unlighted and struck a match upon his 
 thigh, though there were matchboxes upon the 
 table, remarking as he did so, ''usage de la 
 guerre" 
 
 " Mon cher, a desolating country, hot as the 
 nether hell and damp his excellency's boots 
 were mildewed every day, and I, though cook 
 and secretary, cleaned them, out of dtsceuvre- 
 ment, for they were London boots, and seemed 
 a link with home. Mosquitoes like a thick 
 cloud after rain, and every cursed crawling 
 thing you ever saw, the people, negroes almost
 
 90 LE CHEF 
 
 to a man, and yet, I liked the place so did 
 his excellency it grew upon us both. Nothing 
 on earth to do after the call de rigueur on the 
 governor. We lounged about all day in our 
 pyjamas, swung in our hammocks, listening to 
 our lives. I cooked the breakfast, having a 
 negro girl for marmiton, dished it myself, and 
 waited on his excellency, who talked to me 
 quite freely, for entre nous we were the only 
 Christians in the place. Then he sat down to 
 smoke, and I stood by and talked to him, 
 telling him of all kinds of things and others, 
 to pass the time away. Then came the siesta, 
 and we got upon our horses and rode them 
 down to bathe, going into the river on their 
 backs for fear of the electric eels, the rayas, 
 and some little devils of the deep they call a 
 pejere"y. Then out into the forest, a veritable 
 decoration of the opera, with climbing plants 
 like ropes on every tree, monkeys and parrots 
 and butterflies a foot across the wings. Then 
 back to dinner and a stroll about the town, 
 right through the grass-grown plaza, with the 
 adobe palm-thatched houses whitewashed and 
 gleaming in the night bon Dieu, I grow 
 poetical. But still I liked the place, and 
 sometimes, walking down the street I hear the
 
 LE CHEF 91 
 
 niggers scratching their guitars or playing the 
 marimba, and wish that I were back again. 
 It's stupid, isn't it ? But it's stronger than my- 
 self mats on est philosophe. With my diplo- 
 matist I went from Buenos Ayres to Madrid, 
 where I got tired of him, gave him his congt, 
 so to speak, and left him in the hands of the 
 worst cook I ever met, a Greek, without an 
 atom either of culinary knowledge or of 
 dignity. I found myself in London, and in 
 a month or two this billet has turned up, but I 
 shall not stay long in this cold place amongst 
 these people, whose chief pleasure is to talk 
 about the quarrels of their Kirks. Not that I 
 look down on religion ; it is a useful scourge 
 enough, and keeps them honest for the fear of 
 hell, and comforts women and all those who 
 never read Voltaire or Rousseau, but for the 
 rest, God's not a bad man, as we would say, 
 out in the River Plate." 
 
 So saying the philosopher lit his cigar again, 
 shook hands with me, and went to look after 
 les marmitons, who, as he said, were ever 
 on the watch to spoil his plans and break his 
 heart by letting saucepans overboil, entrees 
 grow cold and tough, and bringing down dis- 
 credit on his head. I watched him swagger
 
 92 LE CHEF 
 
 down the street, looking at all the girls he 
 passed, shouldering the men, and humming 
 softly " Popol," a song in vogue in those days, 
 with its absurd refrain of "je me nomme 
 Popol" and setting forth the adventures of its 
 hero when "au fond de fAmdrique, pays 
 du Panama, il faisait de la botanique quand 
 p'tite Frangaise passa" 
 
 Six or eight months had passed when, 
 passing that fine specimen of modern archi- 
 tecture, St. Peter's, Eaton Square, on horse- 
 back, riding to the Park, a voice called after 
 me in somewhat Gallic Spanish, and turning in 
 the saddle I saw my friend emerging from the 
 church. A wondrous change had come upon 
 him, for he was "tingle"? as he would have 
 called it, in a frock-coat, with a gardenia in his 
 buttonhole. His hat shone shiny as a life- 
 guardsman's helmet, and was cocked at such 
 an angle on his head, it seemed capillary 
 attraction only could keep it in its place. His 
 boots were like the top layer of a pot of jelly, 
 and in his hand he had a silver-mounted cane, 
 the crutch of which was ivory, shaped like a 
 woman's leg. In his left hand he held new 
 gloves of a bright sang de boeuf, and on his 
 cheek the barber's powder clung, like sugar on
 
 LE CHEF 93 
 
 a cake. As a smart wedding was in process I 
 was prepared for anything, to hear he was a 
 millionaire, was married, or had made money 
 on the Stock Exchange. " I come," he said, 
 " from witnessing a marriage ceremony. One 
 of my employers or my clients, all is one, has 
 lost his liberty to-day." As I was still profane 
 to what he meant, he said, " I have at last 
 achieved the summit of my hopes, and there is 
 no one rather than yourself whom I would 
 make the sharer of my joy." Then straddling 
 out his legs, he critically scanned my horse and 
 tried to run his hand down its foreleg, almost 
 receiving a slight kick whilst doing so. " Not 
 a bad horse, mon cher, a little sickle-hocked 
 I think what, eh, from South America? 
 then not a word, we have been there our- 
 selves." As I gazed speechless at him, know- 
 ing he knew as little about horses as I knew 
 of his mystery, he drew out a cigar from 
 an enormous silver-mounted case, lit it, and 
 puffing out the smoke, scanning the while 
 the ladies as they left the church, finding no 
 doubt some of them "sickle-hocked" enough, 
 he said, "At last I am the chef of a swell 
 London club, and feel I am the right man for 
 the place, for I have now the time to think my
 
 94 LE CHEF 
 
 menus out ; my marmitons are good, and," 
 tapping on his head, "something here tells me 
 that I shall succeed and make a name at last." 
 Sending my horse home, I got into a cab and 
 took him to a restaurant, to hear about his 
 luck. As we walked through the grill-room, at 
 the end of which the cooks, dressed all in 
 white, presided at the fire, he whispered pas 
 de personalitts. We sat down at a table, and I 
 think I ate a mutton-chop, red and enormous, 
 and flanked by mushrooms and tomatoes, the 
 moral cookery which England loves, and out 
 of which have grown the brains and sinews of 
 the Imperial race, so dear to editors. He 
 watched me, as one might watch a cannibal 
 with horror and amazement, and being without 
 appetite, as often happens, I can well believe, 
 to those of his profession, drank lager beer and 
 crumbled up some bread. 
 
 He spoke about his plans and his ambitions, 
 and how one day he should retire, and though 
 he should keep on "my little digging" here in 
 town, should buy some land at Carpentras to 
 plant his cabbages as Diocletian did, because 
 he said the air is good there, and that they 
 grew a little wine, delicious, and as he spoke 
 he blew a kiss at it, puffing his cheeks out like
 
 LE CHEF 95 
 
 a cannon-ball. What more he might have said 
 the Lord God knows, and himself only, for a 
 portrait-painter came into the place, and, sitting 
 down, began to talk to us. I introduced him 
 as an artist, and the chef t bowing, said, " I am 
 an artist, too," then lowering his voice, he 
 added, " culinaire."
 
 A WIRE-WALKER 
 
 I 
 
 THE talk had run on women in the club 
 smoking-room of a small foreign port. In 
 it were gathered all the heterogeneous waifs 
 and strays, which, floating on the gulf stream 
 of their lives, had for the moment swirled into 
 the quiet eddy of the sleepy little town. 
 Spaniards and Greeks and Englishmen all said 
 their word ; the solitary Frenchman who, by 
 virtue of his race, was held a doctor in the 
 matter, had set forth his crude philosophy born 
 on the boulevard, culled from the simples of 
 the "cafe" concert," and duly sublimated in the 
 crucible of prejudice with which men judge 
 those without whom they cannot pass their 
 lives, and which they who are judged repay 
 with interest. 
 
 A Consul, thin, lean, and capriform in face, 
 had given his opinion that wedlock was the 
 thing that is, of course, after a man has 
 reached the time of life when that is, in fact 
 
 9 6
 
 A WIRE-WALKER 97 
 
 as you may say he has become and here 
 he blew a cloud of smoke through his wide 
 nostrils, looking at the ceiling, on which a 
 crowd of chubby Cupids (or angels) sprawled, 
 their bellies downwards he has become fit for 
 monogamy by force. His hearers languidly 
 assented to so obvious a truth, and he took up 
 his tale. 
 
 "You see," he said, "the family, and 
 property, and personal dignity, and the desire 
 of all men to live cleanly," and here a voice 
 broke in, "When he cannot do otherwise," at 
 which he gravely nodded, recognizing, as it 
 were, a brother in the Lord, with a grave 
 smile, and wetting with his tongue the corner 
 of his lips " all these things, I say, impel a man 
 to matrimony. But, for all that, the innate 
 antipathy of sex to sex remains unchangeable." 
 
 He paused, and those who sat around, 
 knowing he was a master in the science which 
 he treated of, took up their glasses with a 
 grave "Jess so," " Tres fa'en," or " Vaya" ac- 
 cording to their race. No one had any single 
 word of good to say, though all seemed to 
 have looked into the subject carefully, with- 
 out allowing prejudice of race or creed to stay 
 
 them in their task. 
 H
 
 98 A WIRE-WALKER 
 
 Hoarse voices bawling vegetables or fish, 
 with the last syllables so prolonged that the 
 words melted into one another, and formed a 
 cry as of a bird, broke the still air, and flies 
 upon the sugar-basins hummed their paeans to 
 the heat. Men shifted in their chairs, leaving 
 damp patches when they moved, and drops of 
 perspiration hung on their foreheads, whilst 
 they sat waiting for the breeze which springs 
 at evening from the overheated sea. 
 
 "Ak, sacrtes femmes" the Frenchman mur- 
 mured, balancing his cane rocking-chair and 
 knocking off the ash from a husk cigarette, 
 "torment of all our lives, our only real 
 pleasure, and yet cats all of them, yes, cats, 
 who in the very moment of possession will 
 strike their claws into the flesh of him who 
 holds them in his arms, if but a thought occurs 
 to them that they have thrown away a chance. 
 No hearts, no heads, digestions like an ostrich, 
 cold calculating, void of imagination, dead to 
 the arts, and yet delightful, businesslike, sen- 
 sual as monkeys, pious, by par bttise, eh ? 
 and, tell me now, who here can say a word in 
 their defence ? " 
 
 Just as he spoke a newspaper on a cane table 
 stirred, and every one, looking out seaward,
 
 A WIRE-WALKER 99 
 
 exclaimed at once, " The breeze ! " and on the 
 water of the bay a kind of shiver ran, a green- 
 ish tint shone on the waves, and on the distant 
 hills the pink light deepened to a reddy-brown, 
 the palm trees in the square seemed to erect 
 their leaves, and in the smoking-room men 
 gathered at the window wiping their foreheads, 
 drinking in the wind. 
 
 The weary look which summer in the tropics 
 brings to Europeans cleared away, and left 
 their faces jovial or commonplace, honest, or 
 mean or calculating, burned dark by sun and 
 alcohol, but natural, without the corpse -like 
 pallor which the long-heated hours had set 
 upon their skins. 
 
 Ice chinked in glasses, and in the leaves of 
 the hibiscus hedge about the club the fireflies 
 darted, and the green frogs croaked musically, 
 whilst all mankind, refreshed, laid in a stock of 
 energy for next day's conflict with their enemy, 
 the sun. 
 
 The Consul, having said his say, called for 
 an advocatus fcmince, amongst the smiles of his 
 compeers. 
 
 One who had sat and smoked, taking no 
 part in the debate, knocked the ashes of his 
 pipe upon the table, and, looking round, re-
 
 ioo A WIRE-WALKER 
 
 marked : " I knew a wire- walker whose history, 
 I think, might interest some of you, and per- 
 haps go a little way towards altering some 
 of your opinions about the enemy." 
 
 Voices broke in on him, saying the tale was 
 of no value if he had been the lover of the 
 girl, for, as a fat man sagely said, speaking in 
 broken English : "In that case you would 
 have either hate her all your life, or else, so 
 that you had no quarrel with her, which is 
 impossible, or nearly so, be influence on her 
 behalf." 
 
 The smoker, with a smile, rejoined: "Nothing 
 of that sort. My interest was half-platonic and 
 half-literary, with just a dash of Socialistic bias 
 and contempt of the society in which she, I, 
 and all of us exist." 
 
 Eyebrows were raised, and some formed an 
 unspoken "crank" upon their lips, as he took 
 up his tale. 
 
 " I met her at a charitable lady's house, who, 
 though a poetess herself, or perhaps on that 
 account, had interested herself in Victorina's 
 fate. I forgot to tell you Victorina was her 
 name. She looked to me exactly like a sailor, 
 dressed as a woman short, fair, and broad, 
 flat-breasted as a man, her flaxen hair cut
 
 A WIRE-WALKER 101 
 
 like a boy's, her hands thick, square, and 
 muscular, duckfooted like a ballet-dancer, and 
 dressed in reach-me-downs." 
 
 "Yes," said the fat man, "hardness of 
 feature is a great help to virtue. Go on, old 
 man, no one had thought of scarecrows, and 
 it appears to me the lady's clothes put her 
 clean out of court at the first pop, as you 
 may say, speaking profanely in the Yankee 
 style." 
 
 He leered and nursed his stomach after the 
 fashion of the obese, blew out his breath in a 
 half-whistle, wiped his perspiring head, and 
 settled in his chair. 
 
 " That's where you're wrong ; you bet your 
 bottom dollar," answered the story-teller, " for 
 there was something in the sturdy little girl not 
 unattractive, a sort of look of one well crucified 
 by life, which, well, I don't know how, seemed 
 to convey that is I liked her that's the 
 short of it. Wire-walking at the time was not 
 so common as it has since become, and nets, 
 although, of course, one knows that they are 
 chiefly for the public, not for the acrobat, were 
 quite unknown, so that the danger, though not 
 much greater, seemed so, and if the walker fell
 
 102 A WIRE-WALKER 
 
 he had the chance of hitting some one who sat 
 smoking in the stalls. This made the thing 
 alarming, that is, of course, to the general 
 public, who now insist on nets, saving thereby 
 their conscience and their bones. 
 
 " She used to walk across a music-hall on a 
 wire stretched from the flies to the top gallery, 
 a man she called ' my poppa ' hauling her up 
 with a rope round her leg, letting her down 
 again with a half coil right round the body, 
 which by long use had left a mark, just like a 
 serpent, in the flesh. (No, I did not examine 
 it myself, and if you interrupt I shall dry up.) 
 The performance was a good one of its kind, 
 dangerous, of course, for people go to music- 
 halls just as they go to bull-fights, or to see 
 gladiators if they could get a licence from the 
 County Council hoping that some one may 
 be killed. 
 
 " Strangely enough, once on the wire she 
 became graceful, and the square figure in pink 
 tights she used to think that black were far 
 more decent, and lament that taste forced her 
 to pink swayed easily and lightly in the air. 
 As I looked at her on the wire I always used 
 to be reminded of a flying-fish, which as it 
 darts upon the waves is magical, but if it lands
 
 A WIRE-WALKER 103 
 
 on board is but a clammy, leaden-coloured fish, 
 gasping its life out on the deck." 
 
 In the black darkness of the tropic night, 
 lighted but by the fireflies and the stars, for in 
 the clubroom lights had been put out not to 
 attract the insects, a voice remarked, " Even a 
 sparrow shall not fall, etc., but that says nothing 
 about fish." 
 
 "Who flo' dat brick?" the narrator of the 
 tale exclaimed, as said the negro, rubbing his 
 head, when some one hit him with a stone. 
 " But life even to wire-walkers is not all walking 
 in the air in pink silk tights, stared at by 
 venerable lechers, examined curiously by ladies 
 through their opera-glasses, and when the walk 
 is over and the neck yet unbroken, cheered by 
 the crowd who, disappointed of the half-ex- 
 pected accident, applaud vociferously, partly 
 from custom and partly for the joy of noise 
 innate in all mankind. 
 
 " She did not know exactly who she was, 
 where she was born, or anything about her 
 birth. One day in Austria somewhere she 
 remembered that a woman whom she thought 
 was her mother, had taken her to see a man 
 who travelled with a show. They had talked 
 long over some beer, and then the woman went
 
 104 A WIRE-WALKER 
 
 away, leaving her with a man whom after that 
 she called her 'Poppa,' and who had trained her 
 to the wire. With him there was a woman, an 
 Italian, who was cruel to her, beating her when 
 she fell, and starving her. This she did not 
 resent, although another child who lived with 
 them was better treated, for she said ' " Poppa " 
 was making me a star.' 
 
 "Time passed, and she travelled round the 
 world with ' Poppa ' and the tent, performing 
 now and then till she grew strong and skilful 
 on the wire. ' Poppa,' it seems, was not at- 
 tracted to her as a woman, and kept her safe 
 from men, because he wished her to live 
 cleanly, to become a star, for stars must suffer 
 if they wish to shine, even in circuses. 
 
 "After having travelled half the world, and 
 been in every town of Europe and America, 
 but seeing nothing of them but their music- 
 halls and the mean lodgings where she slept, it 
 seems she tired of ' Poppa ' and of the cruelty 
 of the Italian woman, who was his mistress 
 or his wife, as she believed. 
 
 " She left him and set up for herself, and 
 having made some money, met her fate in a 
 French engineer who hung about the wings. 
 Rene had just the little culture that she lacked,
 
 A WIRE-WALKER 105 
 
 although by that time she had learned to speak 
 most of the tongues of Europe, half like a 
 parrot, half like a child, with all the verbs in 
 the infinitive. Rend, she said, was ' rather 
 faineant because the world was hard to him, 
 and so I thought, as it was hard to me, there 
 would be two of us.' In person he was slight, 
 short, dark, and sallow, his fingers stained with 
 cigarettes, his pointed boots worn almost with- 
 out heels, curved like canoes, and his large 
 necktie of black crpe de ckine, tied in a bow, 
 betrayed the man of genius who disdains hard 
 work as too mechanical. He told her that he 
 had waited all his life for a good woman, and 
 that his heart was pure and undefiled, for, 
 as he said, the body sins, we all know, but 
 the soul is stainless, and all that matters is 
 intention, and he was certain that his own 
 were pure. 
 
 "That sort of man, if he be weak in body, 
 always proves irresistible to women such as 
 Victorina, who have been starved of love. 
 
 " She loved him as a strong-bodied, simple- 
 minded woman loves a man weaker in physique 
 than herself, as a dog loves his master, and as 
 abjectly. He gave up instantly all attempt to 
 work, and used to lounge about the circus,
 
 io6 A WIRE-WALKER 
 
 holding a rope occasionally or pulling at the 
 corner of the net spread underneath his wife 
 with much solicitude, as well he might, seeing 
 his fortune dangling in the air. 
 
 " They rambled through the world, she 
 happy in her work and love ; and he, getting 
 a little weary of her as time went on, made love 
 to other women, for, as he said, 'man is an 
 animal just as polygamous as another, and it is 
 wise to follow Nature's law.' 
 
 ''He drank a little now and then, and in his 
 cups beat his wife ineffectually, for the disparity 
 between their strength was great. She, who 
 could easily have strangled him or killed him 
 with a kick, never resented it, thinking appar- 
 ently that beating 'was a necessary part of 
 married life, sanctioned by custom and sanctified 
 by use. 
 
 "Finding themselves at Ipswich, and with 
 the longing for a child, for which most likely 
 she had married Rene", still unsatisfied, she 
 bought one from a tramp, giving its mother 
 three pound ten for it, and treating it as if it 
 were her own. Ren and she alike adored it, 
 and it became the bone of their contention, 
 each struggling for its love and striving to
 
 A WIRE-WALKER 107 
 
 supplant the other by all the arts with which a 
 child's affection can be won. 
 
 " They fought about it almost as fiercely as 
 theologians fight about some dogma which 
 neither understands. Both seemed to have 
 forgotten that it was not their own, and spoke 
 of it as 'ours.' 'My girl shall be a nun,' the 
 pseudo-father said, not that he was religious, 
 but having read Lamartine in his youth, was 
 sentimental in a half-educated way, holding a 
 nunnery to be poetical and a fit place for one 
 who, as he called her, was a child of misery. 
 The woman, far more practical, after the 
 fashion of her sex, wanted to bring her up to 
 commerce, seeing her, no doubt, in her mind's 
 eye, dressed in grey beige and seated at a desk 
 setting down figures in a ledger, and in time 
 well married to some shopkeeper, who should 
 never know her mother's name. Both were 
 agreed, although the child was only three years 
 old, that she must never know her mother's 
 calling or smell the scent of sawdust and of 
 gas mixed with the smell of horses and of gun- 
 powder which float in circuses." 
 
 As he talked on the moon had risen, and his 
 hearers, half asleep, sipping at their drink and
 
 io8 A WIRE-WALKER 
 
 holding in their mouths cigars and cigarettes, 
 mostly burnt out, cursed the mosquitoes, 
 whilst from the sea the white, wet mist crept 
 over everything, shrouding the mangrove 
 swamps in silver cobwebbing and hanging on 
 the palm-leaves till it fell dripping on the 
 stones. 
 
 The drowsy negro waiters looked in and 
 hoped the time had come to close, then 
 grinned mechanically, and slipped out at the 
 door to doze upon the floor of the verandah 
 whilst the narrator again took up his tale. 
 
 "You fellows do not make what I call an 
 invigorating audience," he said, "but I must 
 finish, for you know a tale untold is like a love 
 that never is enjoyed both make your heart 
 ache and, besides, are bad for the digestion 
 Oh, Jango, some gin and ginger Where was 
 I ? Yes, I remember. 
 
 " The funny thing about the whole affair was 
 that poor Victorina, who had passed all her life 
 in music-halls, never suspected Rend, who on 
 his part took but small trouble to conceal what 
 he referred to as his little frailties ; so that his 
 goings on with her own maid who dressed her
 
 A WIRE-WALKER 109 
 
 for the wire, when she perceived, she took 
 as a thing natural, although annoying, just as 
 she would have borne the toothache or sea- 
 sickness, or any other ill of life which falls like 
 rain upon the just and the unjust, with perhaps 
 a partiality for those less fit to bear it and 
 to suffer its effects. 
 
 " ' Men have far more temptations than our- 
 selves/ was her remark ; ' no wonder that they 
 yield to them,' and although to her, reared 
 in some vague and kindly superstition, half 
 Greek, half Roman, she no doubt thought 
 marriage a sacrament to be observed by 
 women, but to men a counsel of perfection 
 and to the full as unattainable as is the 
 moon. 
 
 "No doubt she suffered, but suffering was 
 the lot which she had taken up at birth, as she 
 had taken blows, starvation, and an occasional 
 fall from off the wire. 
 
 " So when they started out again upon 
 their rounds she took the girl with her and 
 cared for her as she had been a sister ; and 
 when her child was born never reproached 
 her, as she said, ' The child is Rene's, and 
 after all it has no blame ; the blame is his,
 
 no A WIRE-WALKER 
 
 and he will leave the girl now he is tired of 
 her.' 
 
 " But Rene\ having tired of both of them, 
 slipped off, taking her savings with him, and to 
 make all complete he carried off the adopted 
 daughter, leaving a letter saying ' he thought it 
 was his duty to the child to save her from a life 
 in music-halls.' 
 
 " Still Victorina struggled on, growing a 
 little more disillusionized than before, and with 
 her husband's mistress and her child upon her 
 hands. 
 
 " She took to hearing Mass, not, as she said, 
 'in a religious way, though it is good, but 
 chiefly it is quieting, and as I do not under- 
 stand a word he says, it sounds impressive, and 
 the incense makes me sleep.' 
 
 " Not a bad reason for a religious faith, 
 which, had the ceremony been in the vulgar 
 tongue, would have seemed common, for what 
 we understand, though it be beautiful, we never 
 value, thinking that mystery is a veil to beauty 
 when in reality it is a shroud. 
 
 " But to return to Victorina, if you are not 
 asleep. She never seemed afraid, and yet was 
 certain always that she would die in harness,
 
 A WIRE-WALKER in 
 
 so to speak that is in tights and in a circus 
 'for that is how we all die late or soon,' she 
 told me, 'in our trade.' 
 
 "So I was not surprised one day to get a 
 letter from her ' Poppa,' posted in New York, 
 and read the cutting of a newspaper in the 
 familiar style the great Republic has invented 
 for itself. 
 
 '"Woman falls from her wire in Coney 
 Island, misses the net, body bounds off upon an 
 awning horrible panic in the theatre society 
 women faint victim never moves, carried out 
 dead. But for that tragedy it was a red-letter 
 day for Coney Island not only human but 
 animal performers excelled. Elephants, horses, 
 and a bear showed the effects of long rehearsal 
 and of careful work.'" 
 
 The narrator stopped, and looking round the 
 room saw that his audience mostly were asleep, 
 only the Consul sat upright and smoked 
 mechanically. Laying his cigarette upon an 
 ash-tray he thanked the story-teller, and re- 
 marking, " Poor little devil, she had come into 
 the category of women by her suffering," 
 strolled out into the night. 
 
 The mist had lifted from the mangroves,
 
 ii2 A WIRE-WALKER 
 
 and the moon shone down upon the sea, turn- 
 ing it into a vast silver shield, whilst on the 
 beach the sobbing of the waves raised Nature's 
 threnody.
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 
 
 OF all historians (after the Greeks), perhaps 
 the directest and most simple-minded were 
 those who chronicled the exploits of the dis- 
 coverers of America. It may be that as some 
 of them, like Xenophon, treated of what they 
 had seen and done themselves, it seemed in- 
 vidious to them to do more than set down what 
 they saw. In their bald narratives, in which 
 one sees the pen was not the instrument they 
 had most used, sometimes there are little bits of 
 self-revealment worth preservation by a curious 
 man. In all their writings, treating as they did 
 of what the world had never seen, and what they 
 took good care for the most part the world should 
 never see again, are many curious facts. One 
 of the most original and most forgotten writers 
 is Hulderico Schmidel, the first historian of 
 Buenos Ayres and of Paraguay ; but then how 
 many historians, worthy of a better fate, sleep 
 disregarded under the dust of libraries, on a 
 secure top shelf. Like Bernal Diaz in Mexico, 
 i us
 
 ii 4 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 
 
 Hulderico was both an historian and a soldier ; 
 faith they both had, befitting " Christianos 
 Rancios " in those days, but not the faith 
 removing common sense and mountains. 
 
 Had any one appeared with a story of 
 Santiago on his well-known milk-white charger 
 rallying the Spanish arms, Hulderico would 
 have answered as Bernal Diaz did on a similar 
 occasion in Mexico : " It may be so, but to me, 
 sinner that I was, was vouchsafed nothing but 
 the sight of Francisco Morla on his old grey 
 horse." Probably both of them would have 
 allowed the apparition of a saint in a battle or 
 otherwise, as a thing possible, but their credulity 
 went no farther than it was obligatory to go. In 
 the narratives of both, inches and feet, hundreds 
 and thousands, get jumbled up together now 
 and then, as they do in even more important 
 scriptures than those which they have left. 
 Both of them relate stories of wondrous animals 
 and strange adventures, and of enchanted cities, 
 but neither speaks of having seen them ; both 
 were good soldiers and criticised their generals 
 freely. But here the likeness stops ; for Hul- 
 derico had not the touch with the pen, no matter 
 how he used the sword, of the historian of 
 Montezuma and the good horse "Motilla."
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 115 
 
 Hulderico Schmidel was a Fleming or a 
 German, and that is all we know of his 
 nationality, except that he sailed from Antwerp, 
 and on his return retired to Strasburg. His 
 work originally was written in German, but a 
 Spanish translation exists, from which I take 
 these notes. He seems to have constituted 
 himself historian of the expedition, on the 
 principle of the Spanish proverb, " A falta de 
 buenos, mi marido alcalde" 
 
 Many of his Spanish names are twisted in 
 the most marvellous fashion, and when he uses 
 names of places and things in Guarani they 
 become (to me at least) inextricable. Some- 
 times the translator seems to have been puzzled 
 with a phrase, and leaves it in German, spelling 
 it phonetically like Spanish. Hulderico seems 
 to have been an honest, simple-minded man, 
 whose greatest care was to keep his arms, 
 especially his arquebuse, in order, for he 
 mentions with pride that his accoutrements 
 were always bright, and that " Mi arcabuz 
 siempre relucia como las estrellas" 
 
 In 1511 Juan Diaz de Solis, seeking for a 
 passage to the Moluccas, had entered the es- 
 tuary of the River Plate, and given it the name, 
 then, landing on the island of Martin Garcia,
 
 n6 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 
 
 had been killed by the Ghana or the Charrua 
 Indians. Some fourteen years before the 
 expedition of Mendoza, Sebastian Cabot had 
 sailed some distance up the Parana, and built 
 the fort of Espiritu Santo on the Caracafia, 
 close to where now stands the city of Rosario 
 de Santa F6. The leader of the expedition 
 was one Don Pedro de Mendoza, a gentleman 
 of the town of Guadix, in the province of 
 Almeria. Don Pedro had been secretary to the 
 Emperor Charles V, and a courtier, and was the 
 last man in the world to command an expedition 
 of the kind. He undertook to pay the expenses 
 of the expedition and to found a city, on the 
 condition he was made adelantado (governor) 
 and had certain privileges accorded to him. 
 With him went two thousand five hundred 
 Spaniards and one hundred and fifty Flemings 
 and Germans, amongst whom was Hulderico 
 Schmidel. Also in the fleet were seventy-two 
 horses and mares, from which have sprung 
 the countless herds of horses in the River 
 Plate. Schmidel sailed from Antwerp in 1834. 
 In fourteen days he arrived in Cadiz and 
 joined Don Pedro de Mendoza's fleet, which 
 was just about to sail. From Cadiz the fleet 
 sailed to the Canaries, thence to the Cape
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 117 
 
 Verds, and thence "to a certain island" called 
 Rio de Janeiro. 
 
 In this " island " the first ill-luck happened 
 to the expedition. "There our general, being 
 ill and very weak, named as his lieutenant one 
 Juan de Osorio ; but shortly after, suspecting 
 his faith, commanded four of his friends to kill 
 him, which they did, sewing him up \cosiendole 
 a punaladas] with dagger thrusts." Hulderico, 
 who though a good soldier was free with his 
 comments on his officers, remarks, " This did 
 not please us all, as Osorio was brave and 
 prudent, and beloved of all the soldiers." To 
 be loved of the soldiers was the highest praise 
 that Hulderico had to give to any one ; and, as 
 his history shows, to receive their love an 
 officer had not to look too closely at what his 
 soldiers did. 
 
 From Rio de Janeiro the fleet sailed to the 
 River Plate, and "entering the estuary we came 
 on a town of almost three thousand Indians, 
 called Querandis. There we built a town, 
 and called it Buenos Ayres on account of 
 the wholesome airs which there prevail." A 
 curious little town it must have been (to judge 
 by the woodcut in the first edition of the work), 
 built of wood and mud, and with little turrets at
 
 n8 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 
 
 every angle, a sort of transatlantic Nuremberg, 
 at least as imagined by the designer of the 
 print. 
 
 "These Indians [the Querandis] brought 
 fish and meat to the town for fourteen days, 
 and because they missed a day, the general 
 sent out an armed force, commanded by 
 his brother, composed of three hundred foot 
 and thirty horse ; amongst the latter I went 
 myself." From the very first the blessings of 
 civilization seem to have been made apparent 
 to the wretched Indians. One wonders, had an 
 armed expedition of Indians landed in Spain or 
 England, if the inhabitants would have brought 
 them provisions, without payment, for fourteen 
 days. 
 
 "We found the Indians encamped to the 
 number of four thousand, and having attacked 
 them, they killed the brother of the general, 
 Don Diego de Mendoza, and twenty soldiers. 
 Their arms are tridents pointed with flints, 
 arrows and bows, and three balls of stone tied 
 together with a string ; with these they caught 
 and brought the horses to the ground." 
 
 This is, I think, the first mention of the 
 bolas, a weapon which has played so great a 
 part in the life of the River Plate, and with
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 119 
 
 which the gauchos caught the soldiers in the 
 ill-fated expedition to Buenos Ayres under 
 General Whitelocke. Provisions seem now to 
 have begun to fail, for "our general commanded 
 to give out to each one three ounces of flour a 
 day, and each third day a fish, and he who 
 wanted any more to get it for himself." In 
 spite of the ration of fish and bread, hunger 
 increased so that many of the soldiers died. 
 The Indians, too, besieged the new-built city, 
 and almost burnt it by shooting arrows with 
 burning straw tied to them. 
 
 The general, after having dispatched Juan 
 de Ayolas on an expedition up the Parana, 
 and after leaving a garrison in Buenos Ayres 
 " provisioned for a year at reason [a razon de] 
 of a pound of bread a day, and if they wanted 
 more to look for it," embarked for Spain, and, 
 after having spent more than four thousand 
 ducats and seen the expedition reduced to 
 five hundred and sixty men, died on the voyage. 
 
 Hulderico says little or nothing about the 
 country, nor does he tell us what the Pampas 
 appeared like, solitary, without the horses and 
 the cattle, peopled only by the wandering 
 Indians, the deer, and ostriches. Nor does he, 
 like the author of the almost contemporary
 
 120 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 
 
 poem of the " Argentina," embellish his recital 
 with the story of the ill-fated love of the Indian 
 chief Siripo for the wife of the Spanish captain 
 Hurtado, nor yet with the story of Maldonado 
 and the lion, which in the " Argentina " is 
 depicted so movingly that a modern naturalist 
 from Buenos Ayres almost believes it. 
 
 Juan de Ayolas ascended the Paraguay and 
 founded the city of Assumption. There Hul- 
 derico meets the " Carlos," who eat the root 
 padades which tastes like apples, and who have 
 fish, pigs, ostriches, and Indian sheep as big 
 as mules (perhaps the tapir), goats, chickens, 
 and rabbits. These Indians are short and fat, 
 and harder workers than the rest. Their city 
 is called Lampere (Lambare") and is well 
 fortified. " Now these Carios would not keep 
 quiet [no quisieran aguietarse], for they had 
 not experienced our swords or arquebuses ; so 
 we drew near and fired an artillery upon them, 
 and they, seeing the wounds and holes in all 
 their bodies, fled, leaving about three hundred 
 dead." 
 
 So far so good; the most usual and expeditious 
 way to make an Indian keep quiet has always 
 been with swords and arquebuses. Nothing so 
 readily convinces him of European superiority.
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 121 
 
 "We then attacked the town, and the Indians, 
 fearing for their wives and children, asked for 
 pardon, offering to do our bidding. Admitted 
 to peace, they regaled \regalaron\ our captain, 
 Ayolas, with seven Indian girls, the oldest of 
 eighteen years. To the soldiers they gave 
 two girls apiece, with food and other things, 
 and in this manner we made friends, and 
 founded the city of Assumption, in the year 
 of God one thousand five hundred and thirty- 
 nine." 
 
 The method of making friends seems to have 
 been of the roughest, but not more so than in 
 Matabeleland to-day, though our arquebuses are 
 an improvement on those of Hulderico's time. 
 
 " The Cario Indians make a wine of algar- 
 roba," called by the Germans, Joannebrot or 
 Bockorulein ; " their city is on the river which 
 flows into the Parabol " Hulderico always calls 
 the Paraguay the Parabol "and is called 
 Fuechkamyn." 
 
 The unfortunate translator, in a foot-note, 
 says : " It is not easy to find out this place or 
 to make plain the error of its name"; and, 
 indeed, there is a most strange air of Thuringia 
 about the spelling, which must have been most 
 puzzling to a Spaniard. After having made
 
 122 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 
 
 friends with the Carios, his captain sent Hul- 
 derico to Santa Catalina, in Brazil, and on 
 their return they were wrecked in the River 
 Plate, and all lost " except myself and five 
 others, who swam to shore holding to the 
 mast. We reached shore naked and without 
 food, and had to walk eighty leagues to the 
 town of San Gabriel, by which the grace and 
 care of God was abundantly made manifest." 
 The grace is, of course, a matter for theologians, 
 but the care is not so manifest to ordinary 
 mortals as it seems to have been to the writer 
 of the narrative. 
 
 41 Things being thus," begins the next chapter 
 after the narration of the shipwreck, "Alvar 
 Nunez Cabeza de Vaca arrived from Spain 
 with four hundred men and thirty horses." He 
 landed in Santa Catalina and marched overland 
 to Assumption, in Paraguay, a distance of nearly 
 two thousand miles, with the loss of only a 
 single soldier. 
 
 Of all the conquerors of the Indies, Alvar 
 Nunez was perhaps the most remarkable. Born 
 of a great family, he had distinguished himself 
 in Mexico, and already undergone ten years' 
 captivity in Florida. Alone of all the conquerors 
 he treated the Indians with strict justice, so that,
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 123 
 
 as Hulderico says, "did but an Indian wench 
 squeal, the soldier had to suffer for it." 
 
 Ayolas, the lieutenant appointed by Don 
 Pedro de Mendoza, being dead, the soldiers 
 had elected Dominguez Martinez de Irala to 
 succeed him. Irala was a Biscayan, a man of 
 low origin but of considerable character ; he 
 eventually became Governor of Paraguay, and 
 had already commenced the series of intrigues 
 by which he succeeded in disgracing Alvar 
 Nunez, and in sending him a prisoner to Spain. 
 For the present the pleasant days of pillage 
 and Indian wenches' squealing disregarded were 
 over for Hulderico, for " our new general treated 
 the soldiers harshly, and forced us to pay for 
 all we took." Was ever such injustice heard 
 of? Men had not left their countries to pay 
 for things as if they were in a mere shop in 
 Antwerp or in Rotterdam. 
 
 Alvar Nunez started shortly on an expedition 
 to reach Peru by land. This was the dream of 
 all the explorers of the River Plate as soon as 
 they discovered there were no precious metals 
 in that country, and in such an attempt Ayolas, 
 the lieutenant appointed by Mendoza, died. 
 After sailing up the river " we came to the 
 country of the Lasacusis, who go naked and
 
 i2 4 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 
 
 painted in blue patterns (especially the women), 
 and with such art that even in Germany I 
 doubt that any of our best limners could exceed 
 the fineness of their designs. They wear a 
 crystal through their lower lips, and are not 
 handsome." Here I can add my testimony to 
 Hulderico's, for a Chaco Indian with a hole in 
 his lower lip and a piece of crystal in it, saliva 
 exuding through the hole, is not a pleasant 
 sight. " After asking for peace [this seems 
 apocryphal], we fell on them and killed many 
 of the men, and captured many of the women, 
 who were of great value to us." 
 
 In what their value consisted Hulderico does 
 not reveal ; but a terrible disillusion was soon 
 to come upon him, "for the cacique came to 
 the General Alvar Nunez, and promised to 
 obey the king if the women were returned. 
 The general consented to this, considering that 
 the Indians were subjects of the king." So 
 that " the women of value " were lost to the 
 soldiers, "at which they murmured." This is 
 one of the many instances, both in Hulderico's 
 narrative and Alvar Nunez' own memoirs, in 
 which he seems to have incurred great odium 
 by protecting the Indians. 
 
 In the battle, "so numerous were the infidels 
 that many of our men were massacred." But
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 125 
 
 " the multitude of dogs is the undoing of the 
 hare," observes the writer. So Hulderico went 
 on doing his duty and slaying Indians, keeping 
 always his arquebuse " in order and fit for 
 service," and noting down with some little pro- 
 lixity all that he thought worth noticing, even to 
 the dimensions of a crocodile. The study of 
 natural history always presented a fine field for 
 the early discoverers of America. Certainly it 
 had difficulties unknown to-day, notably in the 
 fact that in those days there were more animals 
 to study. Thus we learn that the " carbuncle is 
 a little animal which has a mirror in its forehead 
 which shines like fire." Also that the only safe 
 way to kill a crocodile is to hold a looking-glass 
 before your face, for if its eyes meet yours you 
 certainly turn mad. "This, though, cannot be 
 true, for I have killed above three thousand of 
 them, and never had a looking-glass in my 
 possession during all my pilgrimages in the 
 Indies." There is a butterfly, also, which turns 
 first to a worm and then into a rat, and which 
 destroys the crops ; it feeds on human flesh, 
 and is discriminating, too, as to the kind of 
 man it feeds on, for " Mas le sabe carne de un 
 Pagano que no de Espanol o Castellano" 1 
 
 1 " La Argentina " (canto iii), contemporary poem descriptive 
 of conquest of River Plate, by Barco de la Centenera.
 
 126 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 
 
 This was fortunate, as the number of the 
 Spaniards was relatively small. It should be 
 observed, though, that Hulderico never says he 
 saw these wonders, but only relates them as 
 having been told by others. Many of his 
 observations on the Indian tribes leave little 
 to be desired for terseness, though they are 
 not exactly descriptive, as when he says, " the 
 Sebenes, these Indians have moustaches." One 
 is glad to hear this, though I believe it to have 
 been a mistake. " The Ackeres have larger 
 stomachs than other Indians, and are swift of 
 foot." Largeness of stomach is not invariably 
 accompanied by fleetness of foot, but the power 
 of observation involved does great credit to the 
 narrator. 
 
 So he chronicles his adventures, sometimes 
 " marching for days in water to the knees," 
 sometimes " marching for days without a drop 
 of water, so that even the most avaricious 
 amongst us came to think of water as of more 
 account than gold." At last, " having marched 
 and sailed more than three hundred leagues, 
 according to the calculations of those who 
 understood the stars," the expedition came to 
 the Lake of the Xarayes, and saw " la casa del 
 gran Moxo" This palace was " built of stones
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 127 
 
 four square, with many flanking towers, and as 
 fair in its proportions as any castle of Spain or 
 Flanders." This is the only instance where 
 Hulderico's enthusiasm seems to have got the 
 better of his judgment, for no such building of 
 stone with towers was ever found east of the 
 Andes. Here the expedition turned, on 
 account of the illness of the general. The 
 description he gives of the intrigues of Irala 
 and final banishment of Alvar Nunez is very 
 much biased, as befits a soldier writing of a 
 general who was particular about " Indian 
 wenches," trifles into which no self-respecting 
 conqueror should have looked too closely. 
 
 Hulderico returned to Assumption, and tells 
 us no more of himself, of Alvar Nunez, the 
 "carbuncle," "the Indians with moustaches," 
 or anything of note till at last " one day I was 
 on guard over the well, for there was scarcity 
 of water and the people had to drink by turns, 
 when a letter was brought to me saying my 
 brother was dead, and that my family prayed 
 for my return ; the letter had come in fourteen 
 months from Cadiz." He does not seem to 
 have considered the time excessive, but without 
 words " I dressed myself in my best clothes, 
 and putting on a fine red mantle I went to the
 
 128 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 
 
 general, and laying my services before him, 
 asked for permission to return." This was 
 granted with many flattering phrases and a 
 letter for the king. The general said that " I 
 had been a faithful soldier, not anxious to slay, 
 but always performing orders and keeping my 
 arms and armour in good condition." " Not 
 anxious to slay, but always performing orders," 
 seems to reveal that " orders " had been often 
 peremptory. 
 
 In six months, and after dangers not a few, 
 he reached a point in Brazil, " llamado San 
 Gabriel asi de Cristianos como Ingleses" 1 
 Here he took ship to Lisbon, and arrived " with 
 all my luggage and many parrots " after a 
 voyage of five months. In Cadiz " I engaged 
 a passage in the ' Henrique Lebertzen ' for 
 Antwerp." The parrots and the luggage went 
 in another ship, and a great tempest having 
 arisen, the ship went down, so that " I arrived 
 in Antwerp as poor as when I left." "Still 
 [" still " seems ambiguous], after twenty years 
 it pleased Providence that I should arrive at 
 the port from which I sailed, but what miseries 
 and hungers, perils and journeyings I passed in 
 
 1 The Englishman is still a doubtful Christian to the Latin 
 races, and they, I suppose, are pagans to the Englishman.
 
 HULDERICO SCHMIDEL 129 
 
 my sojourn in the Indies is only known to God 
 himself, to whom all praise, etc. Amen." So 
 far Hulderico, but in a note he informs us he 
 retired to " Estrasburgo." Perhaps when there 
 he sometimes doubted whether Providence had 
 really been so kind in bringing him back home. 
 Perhaps he wandered up and down the streets 
 seeking for sun and finding none. Perchance 
 (like others who have known the Indies) the 
 recollection of the adventurous life came back 
 at times, and turned the Leberwurst and 
 Sauerkraut to Dead Sea fruit. Perhaps he 
 heard the parrots scream through the woods of 
 Paraguay and saw the Parana, its thousand 
 islands almost awash, thicketed with seibos and 
 lapachos with their yellow and purple flowers, 
 smelt the sweet espinillo blossom in his nostrils, 
 and hated Estrasburgo when he thought upon 
 the past. Seated in a trim Dutch garden with 
 cut box hedges and clean brick walks, dozing 
 in some arbour over his pipe of right Varinas, 
 perhaps he wished he had remained in Paraguay 
 to fall by an Indian arrow like a conquistador, 
 and that some other soldier had received the 
 order to write commentaries. 
 
 K
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 THE steamer glided from the yellow waters of 
 the River Plate into a narrow channel over- 
 arched with trees, which almost swept her 
 deck. A thick white mist rose from the 
 stream, which shrouded both the banks and 
 rose half up the masts and funnel, leaving the 
 tops of trees hanging like islands in the air. 
 Upon their highest branches cormorants and 
 vultures sat asleep, which at the passing of the 
 boat awoke and screamed, then dropped into 
 the mist. 
 
 The channel narrowed, or appeared to do so, 
 in the gloom which brooded on the river and 
 its banks, although the moon shone brightly 
 and the Southern Cross was hung above our 
 heads, the black Magellan clouds looking like 
 mouths of funnels in the sky, deep and 
 mysterious. Capella was just rising, and the 
 stars, though not so bright as in the northern 
 hemisphere, seemed far more luminous and 
 gleamed more yellow and more phosphores- 
 
 130
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU 131 
 
 cent, than do their sisters of the North. 
 Carpinchos, startled from their sleep, plunged 
 with a splash into the stream and swam for 
 refuge to the reedy banks, their backs awash, 
 and their flat heads stretched out upon the 
 water, looking like giant prediluvian rats. 
 
 Moths, large as humming-birds, hung round 
 the binnacle, making the helmsman curse, 
 although his compass was a sinecure, as from 
 the bow, the pilot, sounding with a cane, 
 guided the vessel up the stream. From both 
 the banks and from the islands with their 
 feathery canes, the shrill mosquitoes' oboe piped 
 its unpleasing tune. Nothing was heard but 
 now and then the pilot's nasal cry as the 
 stream shoaled, or the faint distant neigh of 
 some wild stallion gathering up his mares. All 
 was so still and ghostly that the snorting of the 
 steam seemed like an outrage upon Nature, 
 which wept great tears of dew upon the deck, 
 to see herself defiled. 
 
 Hours, which seemed long as days, went 
 past, and still the steamer struggling with the 
 current pressed into the night. At times she 
 ran her nose against the bank, and from the 
 trees the mist, congealed upon the leaves, 
 poured down like rain upon the awnings and
 
 132 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 the shrouds. At times she grounded on a 
 sandbank, backed, and was helped by all the 
 crew, pushing her off with poles, then, shiver- 
 ing, swung into the stream, strove for a minute 
 with the hurrying water, and once more glided 
 through the mist. 
 
 Great wreaths of camalotd floated past her 
 her sides, and now and then she swerved to let 
 a tree come swirling lazily along. At last the 
 mist grew lighter, and the moon, sinking below 
 the trees, showed that the morning was at 
 hand. The stars waxed paler and the air 
 more chilly, and men, sleeping upon the deck 
 beneath the awning, tjieir heads upon their 
 saddles, with their long silver-handled knives 
 close to their hands, stirred and drew close 
 their ponchos in their sleep. Others sat up 
 and lighted cigarettes, smoked silently and 
 then lay down again, the white dew glistening 
 on their blankets and their hair. 
 
 As the dawn brightened, and Capella fell 
 behind the trees, the whistle sounded, echoing 
 through the woods. The vessel edged into 
 the bank, as if by instinct, and her sides 
 rubbed against a pier made of rough planks 
 and almost level with the stream. Some 
 sleepy soldiers, smoking cigarettes, came
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU 133 
 
 through the mist like spectres and a man 
 dressed in uniform stepped from the pier on to 
 the deck, went down below, and in a little 
 while came up again, wiping his lips, and with 
 an air of having done his duty to the State. 
 
 The passengers, each with his hand-bag, or his 
 saddle, as the case might be, stumbled ashore, 
 and took their way through a rough path cut 
 in the woods, which, after half a mile, came 
 out upon a plain, and a short league away 
 beheld the town, flat-roofed and white, silent 
 and shining in the rising sun. 
 
 A diligence, which should have met the 
 steamer, drawn by six horses driven, and one 
 in front on which a ragged boy, half gaucho, 
 half town loafer, rode, whirled in a cloud of 
 dust towards them, and they, scaling it as it 
 were a fortress, were jolted to the town. 
 
 Stuck like a chessboard on a table, on the 
 plain, and with the streets all intersecting one 
 another into squares, the houses all flat-topped 
 and painted white, and with the towers called 
 miradords looking like minarets, and the 
 church dome resembling a mosque, it had a 
 sort of Oriental look. The sandy unpaved 
 streets, in which lean yellow dogs prowled 
 after offal all the day, and howled at night in
 
 134 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 chorus at the moon, smacked also of the East. 
 There the resemblance ended, and the line of 
 posts, to almost every one of which a horse 
 was tied, and the great stores, in front of 
 which stood horses hobbled, for no one 
 went on foot above two squares, was purely 
 Argentine. Horses pervaded all the place, 
 in every open space they fed attached to ropes, 
 in all the yards they stood up to the fetlocks in 
 black mud, or in hot dust, according to the 
 season of the year, and ate alfalfa, or were led 
 down to water by their owners, with the long 
 picket rope known as a manador curled like a 
 lasso in the hand. Men dressed in loose black 
 cashmere trousers, with high patent-leather 
 boots, the tops all worked in patterns with red 
 or yellow thread, their ponchos fluttering in 
 the wind, rode past on silver-mounted saddles 
 and with bits furnished with cups of silver 
 on each side the mouth, and with an eagle 
 wrought in silver moving with every step 
 below the horse's mouth. Their horses, with 
 manes hogged to the middle of the neck, 
 leaving upon the withers a long lock six inches 
 wide to mount by, snorted and passaged at the 
 strange sights of town, tried to whip round and 
 spring across the street like goats, if a dog
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU 135 
 
 stirred, or a door fastened with a bang. 
 Sometimes if they had eaten corn, a feat which 
 often took them days to learn and which they 
 only learned on being tied up without food, 
 they trotted slowly at the paso castellano, their 
 long tails squared off at the fetlock joints, 
 swinging as if in rhythm to the short jogging 
 trot. Their riders with their hats kept on by 
 strings of silk with tassels underneath the chin, 
 their bridle hand held high, and on the right 
 their flat hide whips just dangling on their 
 horse's quarters to keep him to the bit, 
 assumed the far-off look of an ineffable content 
 which horsemen, mounted on a horse that does 
 them credit, put on quite naturally in every 
 quarter of the world. 
 
 Wild and barefooted boys, on bare-backed 
 ponies, careered about the outskirts of the 
 town, and the one beggar of the place, an old 
 Canarian, rode a thin horse and when he saw 
 a charitable face, took off his hat and mumbled, 
 " For the love of God," receiving what was 
 given, as his due, for alms are not a favour to 
 the receiver, but to the giver, who thereby lays 
 up for himself treasures beyond the skies, 
 where beggars are not, and where horses, if 
 they exist, are winged like Pegasus. It was a
 
 136 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 gaucho town that lived upon the "camp," as 
 people styled the adjoining country in the 
 pidgin-English of the place. A town in which 
 all men went armed, their knives and pistols 
 sticking out below their coats, and where, if 
 you were so inclined, on any pretext you might 
 fight with any one, no questions asked, and if 
 you killed your man, get on your horse and 
 ride into the " camp," secure of never being 
 caught, so that you did not venture into town, 
 or run by accident into the hands of the police. 
 During the hot hours of the day all slept, 
 leaving the streets deserted and the stores wide 
 open, so that a man could walk into them and 
 knocking with his whip upon the counter or 
 the door, find no one, till at last some sleepy 
 shopman would appear and say that business 
 was suspended, and retreat, cursing, to his bed. 
 The sun declining put new life into the town, 
 and in the various stores men sat and talked 
 and criticised the horses and the women as 
 they passed. Still later on, the evening 
 brought the ladies of the place into the plaza, 
 all dressed in Paris fashions of a year ago, to 
 saunter up and down in groups beneath the 
 orange trees, in which the fire-flies flitted, 
 making the heavy leaves seem all alive with
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU 137 
 
 light. As they passed by, a fire of compli- 
 ments was turned on them, which they 
 pretended not to hear, and yet were piqued if 
 no one paid them, for as the saying was, even 
 a compliment from a black man is better than 
 indifference from a prince. 
 
 In the still air the tinkle of guitars sounded 
 like Cupid's sheep-bells, and at the iron-grated 
 windows on the streets men stood, flattening 
 themselves against the bars, to talk to wome^ 
 whom the judicious custom of the place only 
 allowed to see their lovers with a stout iron 
 railing set betwixt the two. 
 
 Between a male and female saint a wall of 
 bricks and lime, the proverb says, but a stout 
 iron bar aids virtue plaguily. 
 
 Although the streets were all deserted after 
 ten, through the wide-open windows and the 
 doors of patios you saw the richer people of 
 the place, seated at tables playing cards or 
 dancing, and at the window-bars the loafers 
 stood, as at a theatre, but now and then giving 
 forth their opinions of an ankle or a foot, not 
 disrespectfully but with the freedom of the 
 Spanish race, which holds all men, as men, 
 are equal, and that the want of money does 
 not debar a man from being human, or its 
 possession raise him to a god.
 
 138 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 The lower classes congregated in the 
 pulpertas^ and there drank gin and mate, 
 danced the " cielito, the gdto" and the pericon, 
 and not infrequently got drunk and fought with 
 their long silver-handled knives. They played 
 at monte", each producing his own pack, 
 marked at the back (so that he knew each 
 card as it was dealt), and striving to impose it 
 on the rest. They, knowing well the trick, 
 preferred a neutral pack, which, although 
 marked, was yet unknown to any of the 
 players, and having made a bank, they 
 gambled desperately, so that a man, having 
 begun well dressed, with silver-mounted arms 
 and belt well stocked with dollars, not seldom 
 left the place stripped to his trousers and his 
 shirt. 
 
 The foreigners assembled at one of the 
 hotels, either at Ellerman's or at the Fonda del 
 Vapor, kept by a Basque, Don Pedro, where 
 they drank and sang, roaring the choruses 
 of comic songs, after the fashion of boys at 
 public schools or sailors in a port. 
 
 Don Pedro owned a long and flat- roofed 
 house, built round a courtyard in which there 
 was a well. Above the doorway hung a model 
 of a steamboat made in wood, from which the
 
 GUALEGUAYCHIJ 139 
 
 fonda took its name. Broad in the beam, and 
 painted blue and red, the funnel like a mast, 
 and with enormous paddle-boxes, on one of 
 which the captain, dressed in a general's 
 uniform, girt with a sword, appeared to bellow 
 through a speaking-trumpet to the stars, the 
 model might have served for a museum in 
 some inland capital, where none had seen the 
 sea. But yet it was Don Pedro's pride, and 
 pointing to it, he would say, " Steam, . . . 
 si, senor, the steam is the great power which I 
 have heard Prometheus stole from heaven ; it 
 means our life, for life is progress, and there 
 can be no progress without steam." Not that, 
 for all his aphorism, Don Pedro differed from 
 his fellow-countrymen, who slow and steady, 
 and as obstinate as a male mule, are able, it 
 is said, to drive a nail into the door by beating 
 on it with their heads, and then when driven 
 home, to draw it with their teeth. 
 
 The rooms all looked upon the patio, and it 
 was well, after an evening of cana punch and 
 song, to shut the door and put the candle out 
 of sight, for the chief form of wit was shooting 
 at the lights, and as you sat and read, a pistol 
 shot was pretty sure to knock the plaster from 
 the wall, close enough to your head to make
 
 140 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 things dangerous, as the man firing generally 
 was drunk. The rooms were bare, but for a 
 wooden folding-bed known as a catrd, a chair, 
 a table, and a washing-stand. Don Pedro's 
 pride was centred in his dining-room, which 
 was adorned with various French prints of 
 hunting scenes, all highly coloured, in which 
 the hunters in high-collared coats and bushy 
 whiskers, girt about with knives, rode centaur- 
 like. One was entitled " Fox-hunting to the 
 Wild Boar," and showed a monstrous beast 
 as bulky as a hippopotamus careering on the 
 grass. The hunters to the boar rode after him, 
 all clad in green, with high and shining boots, 
 from their left sides there dangled cutlasses, 
 and round their bodies horns like ophicleides. 
 " Fox-hunting to the Deer " showed a strange 
 animal much like an antelope, loping across the 
 fields with a great company of beagles follow- 
 ing at his heels, all lolling out their tongues. 
 Last scene of all set forth the kill, which was 
 enacted in a pigsty, wherein the deer had 
 fled, and where a huntsman manfully butchered 
 her with a cutlass ; the pack of beagles sitting 
 on their hams, look like peccaries when they 
 have run a man into a tree, and watch expec- 
 tantly.
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU 141 
 
 To the hotel there gravitated the more 
 respectable of the young English cattle-farmers, 
 a fair proportion of French bagmen, and some 
 substantial Basques who, as Don Pedro was 
 a countryman, gave him patronage. One or 
 two wool-buyers from Buenos Ayres, and an 
 Italian engineer or two, who loafed about, 
 waiting for contracts to build a bridge or make 
 a railway to the moon, and several experts in 
 what were known as fruits of the country 
 (frutos del pais] consisting of, in general, hides, 
 with hoofs and horns, and salted beef to send 
 to Cuba and to Brazil, to feed the slaves on 
 the plantations, made the contingent commerce 
 furnished to the house. 
 
 Science contributed two German lepidop- 
 terists, who in their rooms pursued their 
 mystery in a strong smell of camphor, and 
 at meals ate solidly, their knives and forks 
 clinking upon their teeth like foils in a sharp 
 bout. Captain McCandlish, too, was there, a 
 worthy mariner, who, having lost his ship for 
 drunkenness, passed all his life regretting the 
 old days, when in the 'fifties he had had a 
 brig in the South Seas. Much did he dwell 
 upon the islands and the life : "Conceity folk, 
 yon Kanakys, ye ken. The weemen too, sort
 
 142 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 of free living . . . juist vera leetle prejudice 
 aboot them. I mind one o* them doon in 
 Eromango . . . dod no, long before the 
 missionaries cam', spoilin' the place. I cana' 
 bear a Kanaky, in breeks, ye ken . . . seems 
 to corrupt them . . . fine buirdly bodies, but 
 European clothes mak's them upsettin'. 
 
 " Weel, this gurl, ye see ; lads ... I dinna 
 care to mind aboot her, whiles I juist think I 
 never should have left the islands. . . . Awfu 1 
 easy life ; taro, ye ken, is handy planted, 
 handier far than tatties ... a bonny climate 
 too, and then the weemen. Man, I think I was 
 a fool to leave the islands, and to fetch up in 
 this mud turtle, round-bottomed sort o' a 
 smouchin' toon, where everything is dear, and 
 no a body kens the dogvane from the kingston 
 valve. Hech, sirs, I think I was a fool." 
 
 Then he would snort in his red pocket-hand- 
 kerchief, light up his pipe (he "couldna' stan' 
 thae cigareets "), call for more whisky, and 
 stagger down the street, lurching a little in his 
 gait, as if he was at sea. 
 
 Within a square of the hotel was set the 
 police-station and in a lane hard by some huts 
 in which some half-caste " Chinas," with several 
 Mulatas, and two or three Hungarian and
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU 143 
 
 German girls, become too faded for the capital, 
 sat painted at their doors. Vice was so 
 unattractive, set as it was in a mud hovel, 
 thatched with straw, that many, whom the love 
 of virtue bound but lightly, yet were virtuous 
 from disgust. Whether the moral gain was 
 great, only the moralist can say, and he was an 
 infrequent visitor in those days, either at 
 Ellerman's or at the Fonda del Vap6r. In 
 fact morality was looked at in the larger or the 
 Latin way, with the result that on the whole 
 life was far cleaner than in Anglo-Saxon lands, 
 where nature being what it is, the same things 
 happen but are rendered meaner by conceal- 
 ment ; the homage, as they say, vice pays to 
 virtue, but which makes virtue, as it were, 
 compound a felony and smirches both of them. 
 Racing and cock-fights were the national 
 sports, the former for short distances, two or 
 three furlongs, with innumerable false starts, 
 all of set purpose and with the object of tiring 
 out the weaker horse before the race began. 
 Barefooted and with silk handkerchiefs tied 
 round their heads, a custom which they 
 evidently took from the Indians, who tied a 
 woollen string called vicha round their brows, 
 and with their flat-thonged whips hung on their
 
 144 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 wrists, the riders made pretence to give their 
 horses all their head, leaning well forward on 
 their necks and shouting wildly, but all the 
 time they held them well in hand. As all the 
 starts were flying and by mutual consent, if 
 one man saw his horse was but an inch behind 
 the other's, or if he noticed that his adversary's 
 horse (for all the races were confined to two) 
 was getting out of hand, he stopped and, 
 getting off, walked slowly back again up to the 
 flag. This naturally upset the temper of a 
 violent horse, who at the next attempt would 
 rear and plunge, and break out sweating, and 
 perhaps run half the course before he could be 
 stopped. When at the last they got away, 
 each shouted " Vamos" and then they plied 
 their whips, the horses close to one another, 
 for if a man could bore the other rider off the 
 course he won the race. 
 
 But at this game all gauchos were adepts, as 
 well as that of trying to kick the opposing 
 horse's chest, to put their feet below the other 
 rider's heel and hurl him to the ground, all 
 which was reckoned fair, and part of racing, 
 just as at cards they had a code of signs which 
 were allowable, but in both cases, tricks and 
 signs were all conventional, and nothing might
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU 145 
 
 be done, except what wont and immemorial 
 use had rendered sanctified. 
 
 To a low building built in a circle and 
 looking like a little bull-ring the sportsmen of 
 the town repaired on Sundays, nearly all 
 carrying cocks beneath their arms, or balanced 
 on the pommels of their saddles as they rode. 
 To show that nationality was no bar to sport, 
 the committee had drawn up rules and invita- 
 tions in several tongues ; the one in English 
 ran : " Sunday and other holly days there are 
 large cock-fight. The native and the foreign 
 cock is both accepted, and are accepted all 
 kind of cock whatever his prevention." To 
 make all clear, at the bottom of the page was 
 written " The direction," which the composers 
 of the document imagined had the same 
 meaning in an English as in a Latin tongue. 
 English or French or Spanish, or no matter 
 what the tongue, all men were equal in the 
 arena of the cocks. The love of blood and 
 money, the two strongest passions, write what 
 they please of love, levelled down most of them 
 to a mere mass of animals, with bloodshot eyes, 
 mouths open and their lips drawn back upon 
 their teeth, sweating with interest, and 
 following every wound the birds inflicted with
 
 146 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 their sharp steel spurs, all pity laid aside, and 
 for the time savage as tigers, ready to quarrel 
 with their brother if the red cock struck out 
 the other's eye and he had criticized the 
 stroke. 
 
 The remnant, those who cared not for the 
 blood, and in whom the skill and fortitude of 
 the trained cocks neither excited nor evoked 
 compassion, called the odds with regularity, 
 marking each turn in every combat, and when 
 at last the victor dashed his spur down through 
 the brains, and then himself fell dead beside his 
 foe, just crowing out his victory as he fell, 
 stretched out their hands to take the dollars 
 that their bird had gained them with his life, 
 with a low chuckle of content. 
 
 But when in England or in South America 
 did life, either of man or beast, stand any 
 chance when there was money to be made? 
 The only difference is, that here we try to hide 
 from others and ourselves the motives of our 
 deeds, and there they stuff the dollars dripping 
 red with blood into their pockets and light 
 their cigarettes. 
 
 The town, such as it was, when first the 
 little stern-wheel steamer groped through the 
 mist, her decks swept by the dripping boughs
 
 GUALEGUAYCHU 147 
 
 of nandubay and espinillo, no longer now 
 exists. 
 
 No doubt the house in which they tortured 
 Garibaldi, hanging him by the thumbs and 
 flogging him across the face with raw-hide 
 whips, has long made way, perhaps for a new 
 church, perhaps for some smart bar-room, in 
 the Yankee style. 
 
 No longer in the shady lanes Paz and 
 Dolores sit waiting for their customers, playing 
 guitars, and with their pictures of a saint above 
 their beds. Ladies from Paris and from 
 Buda-Pesth, not so religious, but as super- 
 stitious to the full, no doubt adorn the town, 
 driving their trade, and keeping their accounts 
 by double entry, with the view of honourable 
 retirement in their riper years when paint has 
 failed and drink imparts no lustre to the eyes. 
 The loafers cannot any longer stare in through 
 the re/as on the ladies at a ball and criticise their 
 clothes. Increasing wealth no doubt has set a 
 bar betwixt the classes, making the poor man 
 feel his poverty, and the rich know that isolation 
 is the best weapon in the fight that he must 
 wage. Who would allow a horse to stray 
 about, now that no doubt his price is trebled, 
 or to stand hobbled in a street, when all drive
 
 148 GUALEGUAYCHU 
 
 motors, and he would be in danger of his life ? 
 A vast and tin-roofed " terminus," in which the 
 engines scream and whistle all the night, is the 
 chief labarum of progress, and all who see it, 
 with the smoke from its workshops hung 
 across the sky, bow and adore it and are 
 satisfied. Few still remain, who can recall the 
 days, when taking horse a man could ride to 
 Corrientes, without an obstacle to stop him on 
 his way, but flooded rivers, if it should chance 
 to rain, or want of water if there was a drought. 
 Those were the days when on a journey 
 man took no thought for food, for riding to a 
 house, if by some chance there was no meat in 
 \hzgalpon, they said, "You have a lazo eh? 
 The cattle are but half a league away out on 
 the rise, beyond the round Ombu. Well, go 
 and kill a cow, take all the meat you want, 
 but leave the hide ; the owner does not like 
 his brand to turn up in a parcel of strange 
 stuff . . and so. . with God."
 
 LA CAMARGUE 
 
 SWEPT by the winds of Africa which meet the 
 winds of the Swiss mountains and the north ; 
 winds and more winds which never cease ; 
 scorched by the sun in summer and in the 
 winter scourged by cold, it looks upon the sea. 
 
 Salt marsh and waste of aromatic herbs, 
 great heathy plains towards the east, and to 
 the west alluvial steppes without a stone, but 
 broken here and there by patches of grey olive 
 woods and vineyards, a line of sandhills runs 
 along the beach which opens to a little bay 
 where the three Marys landed from the East. 
 It still remains a shadow of the past a melan- 
 choly region of decaying towns with medieval 
 walls, in which the sparse inhabitants look out 
 of place, as beggars herding in some vast 
 Italian palace which has seen better days. 
 
 It seems as if a portion of the Pampa 
 between Bahia Blanca and the Romero 
 Grande" had got adrift and floated out to sea, 
 and then got stranded on the fertile plains of 
 France. A land of vast horizons, mirages, 
 
 quick change of temperature, of violent 
 
 149
 
 150 LA CAMARGUE 
 
 tempests, mosquitoes, ague, fever, of flights of 
 red flamingoes, fierce black cattle, and the 
 white horses which tradition says the Arabs 
 left there after the rout at Tours. In hardly 
 any other part of Europe does the old world, 
 the world before the Middle Ages, still maintain 
 itself as strongly as in this island in the marshy 
 delta of the Rhone. 
 
 When Caesar knew it and long afterwards 
 when Musa and his Saracens passed by upon 
 their march to Tours, it could not have been 
 very different from what it is to-day. The 
 railway crosses it, but railways in a plain have 
 not the strength to force themselves upon the 
 landscape as amongst hills, and only make a 
 track such as a snail leaves on a window-pane. 
 
 The island does not seem intended to be 
 lived in but by, the horses and the kine, and 
 should be kept, just as Segovia and Toledo 
 should be kept, as a memento of the past to 
 show men what the world was like before 
 they spoiled it with their manufactories. The 
 scattered hamlets grouped around their churches 
 look primitive and at the same time unsubstan- 
 tial as if they had been built by the lacustrine 
 dwellers of a bygone age, or like an Indian 
 camp of wickeyups.
 
 LA CAMARGUE 151 
 
 Round most of them the marshes stretch, and 
 from them rises up a hum of shrill mosquitoes' 
 pipes, as if they challenged man to live there 
 at his peril and presaged fever and unquiet 
 sleep to the invaders of their realm. And in 
 effect inhabitants are few. Your plainsman 
 seldom is gregarious, and on this heathy sea 
 of scrubby aromatic plants the infrequent 
 herdsman with his lance looks like a Guaycuru 
 or Arab, and as remote from modern European 
 life as either of them, sitting immovable in his 
 high-peaked Montpellier saddle and looking 
 out across the plains. 
 
 'Tis said that long before the Romans, 
 Greeks, and Saracens, the inhabitants adored 
 the sun. Perhaps of all the peoples of their 
 continent, they were alone in this, their almost 
 reasonable faith. No doubt to. wile them from 
 their bright belief, to the sad Galilean mystery, 
 the Marys, she of Magdala, Maria Jacobe!, 
 and Mary Salom6 with Trophimus and 
 Saturninus, Cleon and Lazarus, Sidonius, 
 Joseph of Arimathea, and the rest of the 
 strange errant saintly company which landed 
 on the dunes just where the old Byzantine 
 church is built, sought out their shores. 
 
 Mary of Magdala who, one would have
 
 152 LA CAMARGUE 
 
 thought, had long ago wiped off her sins upon 
 the Saviour's feet, retired into the desert ; one 
 of those earthly purgatories which all saints 
 had ever at command to serve them as a step 
 to heaven, and having sought the Holy Cave, 
 she passed her life in prayer. The other 
 Marys, one the mother of St. James the Great, 
 the other of the lesser James, with Sarah, an 
 old servant who had been a slave, lived and 
 died where they landed, on the spot where 
 afterwards their church was built, and which 
 still bears their name. 
 
 Joseph of Arimathea, who, though a Christian, 
 yet was a rich man, passed on to England, and 
 was lost among the mists. The rest remaining 
 in the land preached and evangelized, and for a 
 testimony of their success they left their features 
 stamped upon a rock so that all men might see 
 them and venerate their deeds. They wrote 
 their names in stone, but Mary Magdalene, 
 more pious and poetical than they, preserved 
 her name in tears, which, falling from her eyes, 
 were, by the grace divine, turned to a river, 
 which issuing from the cave, where she wept 
 daily at her prayers, carries her sins out to the 
 sea, where they are lost amongst the waves. 
 
 Their memory will endure whilst the stone
 
 LA CAMARGUE 153 
 
 still retains their images, and whilst the creed 
 they preached is venerated, but hers can never 
 die as long as water runs and grass grows 
 green and the mistral raises her c6ronach. 
 
 But in despite of saints and of their shrines, 
 of pilgrimages, of holy caves, legends and 
 miracles so well attested that to believe them 
 would imply a faith in human testimony that 
 contact with humanity rubs off, the ancient faith 
 still lives. 
 
 Neither in Naples nor in Seville is life more 
 joyous, nor does the fear of the dread mysteries 
 which the virgins and the saints crossed over 
 sea to inculcate, weigh less upon the mind. 
 In all three places a reasonable and satisfying 
 superstition fills men's souls, but does not 
 influence their lives, more than the faith in 
 Jupiter and Mars, Diana, Venus, and the rest 
 of high Olympus influenced the ancients, that 
 is, those ancients who, like the people of 
 La Camargue, thought the first duty of a 
 government was to give bread and bulls. 
 
 In the old towns which ring the river island 
 all about, each with its aqueduct and temple, 
 the Roman type remains, and any woman in 
 the streets with her black hair, full bust, 
 and low broad eyebrows could step into an
 
 154 LA CAMARGUE 
 
 amphitheatre, and gloat upon a gladiator's 
 agony, turning her thumb down if he fought 
 badly, or was not a personable man, with as 
 much relish as she now enjoys the dying 
 struggles of a horse, or, as in England, ladies 
 watch a pheasant writhing its life out by a 
 green covert side. 
 
 But the intense and ancient life runs stronger 
 in the country than the towns. The guardians 
 of the cattle form a race apart, unique in 
 Europe, for the brown herdsmen of the plains 
 between Lebrija and the hills of Ronda, 
 although they pass their lives on horseback, 
 are in the main men of the village or the town, 
 whereas the Camarguais are as true countrymen 
 as are the Arabs or the Mexicans. In this 
 forgotten nook of Europe, hedged about by 
 the tall reeds which fringe the Rhone, and the 
 white sands which border on the sea, if it is 
 true that Saracens once passed, it is quite 
 certain that they left some of their customs 
 deeply rooted in the land. 
 
 Whence comes the high Montpellier saddle, 
 with its cantle rising well above the waist, and 
 its iron stirrups covered in to save the toes ? 
 Where in all Europe but in Southern Spain, 
 where men are partly Moors by blood and by
 
 LA CAMARGUE 155 
 
 inheritance, is to be seen the bit with the high 
 port, and the long reins, joined at the middle 
 and finishing in a flat whip, and where the 
 hand held high, to turn the horse upon his 
 neck, and not to heave him round by pull- 
 ing at his mouth ? The active horses and 
 the tall, silent, swarthy men, might all be 
 African, although veracious history, so careful 
 of her generalities, so careless of her facts, 
 does not inform us that the Saracens had time 
 to intromit, as Scottish law-books phrase it, 
 with the women of the land. 
 
 To give the infidel his due and if we give it 
 to the devil, why not extend it to the infidel ? 
 he usually did not take long to intromit with all 
 the women that he came across, but in this 
 instance time was wanting, so it seems strange 
 he should have left his horse-lore ; but the 
 fact remains. These customs are not relics of 
 the Middle Ages, for the old knights rode 
 differently and the bits they used were such 
 as were required to pull up Flemish demi- 
 elephants and not to turn a pony lightly as a 
 seagull whirls upon the wing, after the fashion 
 that the men in the Rhone delta use. 
 
 To see them bring a "point" of cattle up to 
 the rude corral in which they shut the bulls
 
 156 LA CAMARGUE 
 
 before a bull-fight, takes one back to Mexico or 
 the South Pampa, Nebraska or to Queensland, 
 and makes one wonder why it is these centaurs 
 do not emigrate with their wives, families, 
 and stock to Venezuela and settle up some 
 " llano " hitherto unpeopled, founding a race 
 apart and uncommercialized as the Moors from 
 Granada might have done, when the Red 
 Towers were won. 
 
 Just swaying in the saddle, with the bridle 
 hand held high, the hat blown back, and kept 
 in place by a black ribbon underneath the 
 chin, and in the right hand the long lance, 
 tipped with the crescent and called a " trident " 
 in La Camargue, the herdsmen dash about the 
 sandhills (there is no sane man on a horse's 
 back), their ponies' shoeless feet cutting the 
 ground just as a skate cuts ice, shouting the 
 while, out of the joy of life, and the proximity 
 of death. The bulls, just as in Spain, led by 
 an ox or two that wear bells, come snorting 
 up to the corral, then stop and wheel, and 
 plunge away into the maze of sandhills by the 
 sea. The guardians float after them, their 
 ponies' manes and tails streaming like foam 
 from off a wave into the air, just as a swallow 
 rushes at a gnat. The people shout, and in a
 
 LA CAMARGUE 157 
 
 cloud of dust the bulls are brought up with a 
 rush, causing the men and boys to fly for safety 
 up the posts of the corral, on to the wheels of 
 carts, or up the gratings of the windows of the 
 houses, to which they cling like flies. 
 
 The wooden bars are let down with a clang, 
 the animals driven into an inner pen, and the 
 whole village breaks out in a shout of 
 " Lagadigadon" as if each man by his own 
 strength and skill had done the feat, instead of 
 having stood and gossiped till the bulls rushed 
 past. 
 
 The riders slowly dismount, unloose their 
 girths, light cigarettes, and taking out their 
 knives scrape off the sweat from just behind 
 the girths where the hard spurring leaves a 
 bloody foam. The horses stretch themselves 
 and yawn, and then stand panting, looking at 
 one another out of the corner of their eyes. 
 
 The corralling over, in the Byzantine church 
 of the three holy Marys the bell " chaps " out, 
 and the whole population headed by the mayor 
 goes in to mass, the horsemen, after the fashion 
 of their kind, sitting down in the sand, to talk 
 of horses and of cattle, and illustrating what 
 they say with diagrams drawn with the points 
 of knives.
 
 158 LA CAMARGUE 
 
 Mass over, and the whole village having 
 dined, seated at wooden tables before the cafes 
 in the main street, the bull-ring fills, the local 
 firemen's band braying out the strains of songs 
 from the music-halls in the sailors' quarter of 
 Marseilles. 
 
 Three or four chosen guests mount a rude 
 "shoggly" platform, only just beyond the reach 
 of the bull's horns, and the mayor tells the 
 chief fireman to blow a fanfare on the horn, 
 announcing that he will give, drawn from the 
 funds of the municipality, five francs to any one 
 who can pull off a tricolour rosette pinned to 
 the forehead of the bull. 
 
 In a moment all the huge corral fills up with 
 ragamuffins and fishers from the shore, the 
 nameless loafers who in every town throughout 
 the world work hard at keeping up the houses 
 by leaning up against the walls, and one or 
 two assistants from the little shops, who give 
 themselves what they think is the air of 
 Spanish bull-fighters. As no one has a cloak, 
 and for all means of keeping off the bull his 
 jacket or a sack, the task is not so easy as 
 it might be thought. Not that the loafers care 
 to risk their skins, with the exception of the 
 one or two who, having drunk sufficiently, get
 
 LA CAMARGUE 159 
 
 rolled about like barrels by the bull. After 
 some twenty minutes, and when the bull stands 
 panting in the middle of the ring, and all the 
 loafers having fled for refuge are seated safely 
 on the bars of the corral, the cornet sounds 
 again, and the mayor beckoning for silence as 
 did St. Paul at Athens, rises and says that 
 the sum now is doubled, and the sport begins 
 again. 
 
 The mayor's munificence by this time had 
 attracted to the ring a plumber, who putting 
 down a basket with his tools, walks into the 
 ring. The people seem to know him, and 
 mutter that he is a " lapin, who has no cold 
 about his eyes," a thing quite evident, for, 
 taking off his coat, he makes some "passes" 
 quite in the style of Cuchares, and as the bull 
 charges and passes him, snatches the cockade 
 from its horn, and walks up quietly to the 
 mayor, amongst the people's cheers. He gets 
 the largess, and another bull is let into the ring, 
 the first being taken out by the tame oxen, who 
 decoy him to the gate. 
 
 After a sailor from Marseilles has got more 
 largess, two herdsmen, armed with "tridents," 
 come into the ring, and when the bull runs 
 at them, catch him on their poles, and hold
 
 160 LA CAMARGUE 
 
 him for an instant, bellowing. Loud cheers 
 salute the feat, which wants a good eye and 
 a steady hand, and then the populace, just as 
 they do in Spain, invades the ring, and has a 
 pleasant twenty minutes with the bull. 
 
 Lastly, the mayor, placing himself before the 
 firemen's band, adorned with his three-coloured 
 sash, and in a hat coeval with the Third 
 Empire, marches majestically across the ring, 
 and the day's sport is done. 
 
 Then evening falls upon the little town, and 
 in the vast and solitary marshes the herdsmen 
 with their long "tridents" in their hands, held 
 high like spears, convey the bulls back to their 
 pasturage, their ponies snorting and passaging 
 as the stiff breeze blows up the spindrift 
 from the sea. Night shuts the scene, and the 
 dull roar of surf upon the beach fills the 
 immensity of marsh and sandhills, whilst from 
 the pastures where the cattle feed come 
 bellowings and the strange sounds which rise 
 at night from lands uncultivated, where man 
 has not been able to subdue and fetter Nature, 
 forcing her with his plough and spade to give 
 him crops, enslaving her just as he is enslaved 
 himself by progress, with its ten thousand 
 unnecessary wants, become necessities.
 
 LA CAMARGUE 161 
 
 All that is left of the old disappearing life is 
 doomed the small black cattle will give place 
 to shorthorns, the semi-wild white ponies to that 
 well-bred stock, as little interesting as is the 
 man who breeds it, and the black smoke of 
 factories desolates the sky. 
 
 A melancholy and mosquito-haunted land it 
 is, where beavers still are said to lurk, although 
 unseen by all except tradition's piercing eye, 
 which has immortalized them, and will not wot 
 of their decease. A land once seen, which 
 haunts you always, with its white horses and 
 its fierce black bulls, its sun, mistral, its fevers, 
 ague, and the mist which floats above the 
 marshes where the cattle harbour, seeking 
 protection from the flies. 
 
 Charlemagne and Roland, Saracens and 
 Goths, the Greeks, the Romans, Csesar and 
 the Phoenicians saw it and passed by, upon 
 their way to history. Perhaps they thought it 
 not worth occupation, and left it desolate, to 
 the flamingo and the ibis to possess and 
 populate. They saw and left it ; but for its 
 chiefest honour it still holds the bones now 
 purified by tears, of the adulteress whom Jesus 
 loved, and its chief saint is Mary Magdalene. 
 
 M
 
 ON THE SPUR 
 
 PRINCES had smiled upon him. All London 
 had admired the tall lithe figure dressed in 
 white. Uncomprehended and uncomprehend- 
 ing, he had talked with ministers and statesmen, 
 and had sat silent with restless eyes at theatres 
 and at reviews, glancing with tacit approbation 
 at the battalions of strong sun-burned men, and 
 at the ranks of bare white shoulders in the 
 boxes and the stalls. What he had thought, 
 when he returned to the great stucco house in 
 Bayswater, thronged all the day with Jews and 
 rastaguoudres and at night silent, and with some 
 of the mystery of the East, redeeming even 
 the commonness of mid- Victorian architecture, 
 no man can tell. 
 
 No doubt, the two veiled women, who like 
 bundles had accompanied him, asked questions 
 as to the wonders of the mighty Londres, which 
 roared all day and night outside, but which 
 they, bound in their haiks and the convention 
 of their husbands' faith, had never seen but 
 
 through their veils when peeping from a window, 
 
 162
 
 ON THE SPUR 163 
 
 or through the blinds when driving in the town. 
 But in the intervals of visiting our public insti- 
 tutions or our cotton mills, and as he listened 
 to the promises of statesmen assuring him of 
 England's interest in the welfare of Morocco, 
 and of protection for himself, the tall young 
 Arab Chief Menebhi no doubt thought 
 anxiously of what was going on at Court in 
 far Marakesh, where, as he knew, his rivals 
 were at work. At last, word came that all was 
 over, and that England which had lionized him 
 for a whole month had got another idol, and 
 with the cross of some Victorian order was 
 waiting civilly to send him on to Germany, 
 where the same flatteries and promises were 
 ready at Berlin. 
 
 There without doubt he saw the pomp and 
 state of German militarism, watched educated 
 men turned to machines skirmish and counter- 
 march, whilst all the time rumours arrived from 
 home that his liege lord the Sultan was being 
 warped against him by his foes. Days followed 
 days, and still the weary round of ceremonies, 
 which held him half impatient half attracted, 
 succeeded one another, whilst telegrams and 
 letters from his friends urged his return if he 
 set store upon his life.
 
 1 64 ON THE SPUR 
 
 When, from the quay at Bremerhaven he 
 stepped aboard the steamer, with his two wives 
 well veiled, his suite and all the useless things, 
 as snuff-boxes from which sprang singing birds, 
 electric toys, repeating watches, and all the 
 costly trash which Orientals buy in Europe, his 
 heart must have rejoiced. 
 
 Our pomp and state and noise, our crowds 
 and all the rushing to and fro of modern life, 
 delights an Oriental for a time. He sees 
 our trains and steamers, our telegraphs and 
 telephones, and marvels at them, but in a little 
 while they pall upon him, and his mind, not to 
 be deceived with symptoms, goes at once to 
 causes and sometimes actually, at others with a 
 sort of instinct, he asks himself, are these men 
 happier than we for all their miracles ? 
 
 He knows a watch is useful, and prefers a 
 gun that kills a mile away to one that carries 
 but a hundred yards, and is quite ready to 
 accept all our inventions, even to railways and 
 to telegraphs, for they seem natural things and 
 admirable in that they save exertion, but on the 
 understood condition that he shall take and use 
 them, but not change the essence of his life. 
 So would a cave-dweller, and almost every 
 savage, eagerly clutch a sword and throw away
 
 ON THE SPUR 165 
 
 his club, if it were offered to him, but each 
 would know, as does the Oriental, that for 
 himself his way of life is best. 
 
 During the voyage the ex-ambassador must 
 have paced anxiously enough about the deck, 
 or, squatted on a cushion, looked out on the 
 horizon as earnestly as did the sailor in the 
 "Pinta's" shrouds, when the New World was 
 known to be at hand. No doubt occasionally 
 he asked the officers why, if the ship could 
 steam her sixteen knots, she could not manage 
 sixty, for with a miracle so great as was the art 
 of navigation, surely all things were possible, 
 and but a matter of more coal. 
 
 When the low coast line with the lonely sea 
 without a sail appeared, and the brown walls of 
 Mazagan, with its mosque towers, and its half- 
 dozen palm trees came in sight, and as the 
 boats came dancing through the surf, the tall 
 white figure paced about the deck. To land, 
 to meet some faithful friends, to greet the 
 governor, all with an air of being still in 
 favour, and as a man who, having stood before 
 the kings of Europe, was anxious for an 
 audience with his lord, must have been as the 
 rack to him, but still he bore it quietly, speaking 
 to all, with the attention due to each particular
 
 166 ON THE SPUR 
 
 and individual man. Then as he ambled on 
 his mule through the unpaved and dusty streets, 
 a messenger from his own tribe walking beside 
 his knee, as if to welcome him, gave him the 
 news of his disgrace. He learned the Sultan, 
 young and inexperienced, and left to flatterers, 
 all of whom were eager to supplant the 
 minister, too far away to speak a word in 
 his defence, had turned away his face. 
 
 Horses, the tribesmen said, were ready, and 
 on the road a strong detachment was in waiting 
 to ride with him to Court and to protect him 
 on the way. He made no sign, but rode 
 impassively out to a saint's tomb, just beyond 
 the walls, ostensibly to pray. Sending his 
 secretary, a thin brown doctor of the law from 
 Mecca, to get his wives and property ashore, he 
 prayed with all the bowings and prostrations 
 which his faith required, and which as in like 
 cases in most creeds, have by degrees become 
 more vital than the prayer. 
 
 His tribesmen waited silently until the long 
 formalities which pass between an Arab and his 
 God had been completed, and then when he 
 had shuffled on his shoes and stood erect, 
 poured out their news in the succession of 
 quick snapping gutturals which makes a
 
 ON THE SPUR 167 
 
 stranger think that they are on the point of 
 murder, when but engaged in a quiet talk about 
 the price of cows or barley at the sok. 
 
 Whilst absent in Berlin and London, it 
 appeared that, bit by bit, the confidence of 
 the young Sultan had been undermined. 
 Menebhi, so it seemed, had been accused of 
 having borne himself more as a Sultan than 
 an envoy ; of having worn the hood of his 
 burnous drawn forward covering his head when 
 he had stood before the Christian kings, as if he 
 were their equal, and the like. Such accusa- 
 tions, if they be vague enough, always impress 
 an Oriental's mind, and in this case the poison 
 had sunk in, and El Menebhi was advised that 
 on his arrival at Marakesh he would be straight 
 disgraced. Disgrace with Orientals usually 
 carries loss of property, and not infrequently, 
 of life. Some urged immediate flight to 
 Europe, others that refuge should be taken 
 with some consul in Tangier ; some that he 
 should remain encamped and send a messenger 
 to argue out the case. 
 
 He, getting off his mule, called for green 
 tea, drank the three semi-sacramental cups in 
 silence, holding the silver ring which keeps the 
 amber ball in place inside the cup, with his lean
 
 1 68 ON THE SPUR 
 
 index finger, and then calling the head men of 
 the deputation, said : 
 
 " I start at once for Court ; bring me a horse, 
 one that can do the distance within thirty hours, 
 and send a man on a swift-pacing mule to warn 
 the tribe. Three hundred men of powder are 
 to meet me at El Saghariz." 
 
 As he ceased speaking, the setting sun just 
 falling on the yellow walls of Mazagan turned 
 them to orange, then to rose-pink, and lastly to 
 a violet tinge, which made the whitewashed 
 houses look unnatural and ghastly, as the sea- 
 breeze sprang up and caused the leaves of palm 
 trees to rattle on their trunks. 
 
 The call to prayers rang out, prolonged and 
 quavering, and the grave storks upon the 
 battlemented walls appeared to listen to it, 
 turning their heads and chattering their beaks. 
 At corners of the streets and in the open 
 spaces in the negro village just outside the 
 walls, dotted with castor-oil plants and with 
 cactuses, those of the faithful who felt them- 
 selves impelled, engaged in prayer, rising and 
 falling like automata. 
 
 Men led their horses down to water, letting 
 them jump about and wallow in the sand like 
 buffaloes, and at the wells the women filled
 
 ON THE SPUR 169 
 
 their water-jars, whilst the sea-breeze just 
 rustled from the west. 
 
 As the last call rang out, repeated from the 
 different towers and taken up in the straw hut 
 which, in the negro village, serves as a mosque, 
 and given back reverberating from the hot walls 
 in one continuous peal as if the callers were 
 determined to take Allah's ear by storm ; wake 
 him, if sleeping ; or call him back, if on a 
 journey ; Menebhi mounted, settled his haik, 
 raising himself erect in the short Arab stirrups, 
 and leaning back against the cantle of his high 
 red saddle, touched his horse sideways with the 
 spur, and struck into the road. His friends 
 and tribesmen, after a hurried blessing, swung 
 themselves some upon their horses, others on 
 their mules, and then the shadowy white 
 figures melted into the night, their horses' 
 footsteps muffled in the sand, making the line 
 of horsemen look like their own ghosts. They 
 pushed along, their bridles jingling, and their 
 horses swerving now and then as a wild boar 
 broke from the bushes with a grunt, through 
 the thick scrub which for a league or two circles 
 about the town. Then striking into a grey stony 
 tract in which grows now and then a caroub 
 tree, and now and then some patches of white
 
 i;o ON THE SPUR 
 
 broom, they reached a well just as the false 
 dawn reddened the sky, and as the freshness of 
 the night turned chilly, making them draw their 
 haiks and their burnouses tighter and tie their 
 handkerchiefs around their necks to stop their 
 hoods from falling back in the cold air. 
 
 Hard by a saint's tomb near the well where 
 grow palmettoes, dwarfs of their species, 
 twisted and gnarled, fantastic-looking in the 
 half light when moon is down and sun not 
 risen, and stars above shine coldly through the 
 night, they lighted down. Taking a carpet 
 from a mule, they squatted silently upon it, 
 whilst a black slave made tea, their horses 
 standing with their girths loosened, and the 
 blood dripping down from their flanks, where 
 in the rapid march the edges of the stirrups and 
 the spurs had bitten through the skin. They 
 yawned, their eyes disappearing almost in their 
 heads, rested a leg, and laying back one ear 
 pricked the other forward, listening to every 
 noise, neighing occasionally, and now and then 
 rising and striking at each other with their feet. 
 The mules dozed quietly, their huge red 
 saddles making them look like hobby-horses in 
 a pantomime. Drinking his tea, which he did 
 noisily as a duck eats a weed beneath the
 
 ON THE SPUR 171 
 
 water of a pond, a sign of breeding amongst 
 Arabs and the Moors, Menebhi sat, his shoes 
 kicked off, pale and fatigued, for during the 
 past months he had not ridden, but yet 
 resolute. 
 
 " How are the beasts," he said, " Si Hamed? 
 I want to reach the tomb of Sidi ibn Nor at 
 daybreak, for if we do, and meet the tribesmen 
 with fresh beasts, we can arrive in Marrakesha 
 at the evening call." 
 
 Si Hamed rose, a lean brown Arab, tall and 
 taciturn. Shuffling along in horseman's boots 
 and long straight spurs, such as those worn by 
 knights of old, he scanned the animals. Some 
 he pulled by the tails to see if they resisted ; 
 for if they stand as firm as trees, it is a sign 
 that they are strong. Others he patted, 
 dragging down their eyelids to see if they were 
 red ; for when a horse upon the road begins to 
 flag, his eyelid and the flesh about the eye 
 grows paler, as the heart weakening in its 
 action pumps less blood into the veins. He 
 took the mules' long ears and tweaked them, 
 watching most carefully if it took long for 
 them to go back to their pose ; and these 
 formalities gone through without a word, he 
 silently came back, seated himself upon the
 
 i;2 ON THE SPUR 
 
 carpet's edge, and in a guttural voice ejaculated 
 " Good." The false dawn waning gave place 
 to dark and heavy clouds, obscuring all the 
 heavens, and rendering the roads almost 
 impossible to travel but at a walk, stumbling 
 in the deep ruts left by the feet of countless 
 travellers for generations past. Then by 
 degrees the first grey light of day appeared, 
 the dark black clouds rolled past, and on the 
 trees and shrubs great drops of moisture hung, 
 wetting the long blue Arab cloaks as they 
 brushed swiftly through the bushes on their 
 way. The stars were setting, and the road lay 
 white before them as they struck into the plain, 
 which, like a sea, stretches from just outside the 
 bushy country of the coast, right to the foot of 
 the low hills, which lie between it and the stony 
 steppe, on which Mardkesh, girt with its palm 
 trees, stands as in a sea. 
 
 As the first rays of sun fell on the company 
 they felt the exultation which buoys up a man 
 who has been riding all the night, and finds 
 himself untired, his horse still fresh, and all the 
 terrors of the darkness blotted out. They shifted 
 in their saddles, rising erect, then settling them- 
 selves again pushed on in groups of threes and 
 fours, talking and looking out across the plain.
 
 ON THE SPUR 173 
 
 In half an hour the round white saints' tombs 
 of the Sok Thelatta ibn Nor appeared like 
 mushrooms, and every eye was strained to see 
 whether the tribesmen had arrived. As they 
 rode on, a cloud of dust just rising to the west 
 showed their arrival, and soon the sun shone on 
 the slender single-barrelled guns that Arabs use, 
 holding them upright in their hands, after the 
 way their ancestors held spears. 
 
 Out of the dust the tribesmen charged, firing 
 their guns and whirling round like seagulls on 
 the wing. Then pulling up, their horses snort- 
 ing and passaging, they passed at once from 
 wild excitement to the grave silent attitude 
 which Arabs all affect, just as day changes into 
 night within the tropics, without the twilight 
 intervening to give semitones. 
 
 Quickly Menebhi and his band changed 
 horses, and in haste swallowed some food, 
 and then he gave directions to his friends. 
 
 "Follow us," he said, "about a rifle-shot 
 behind, and send at once back to the tribe for 
 reinforcements ; tell them to hold the bridge 
 across the Tensift at Marakesh when I have 
 crossed it, and have gone into the town." 
 
 Once more they took their way across the 
 plain, now heated almost to a furnace by the
 
 174 ON THE SPUR 
 
 sun. With faces covered up by veils and 
 handkerchiefs, they looked like maskers in a 
 play, and as they went the lizards darted 
 through the heated stones, snakes basked, and 
 now and then mysterious pools appeared, which, 
 as the horsemen neared them, took themselves 
 farther off and reappeared, mocking them in 
 their thirst, they seemed so real, just as our life 
 seems real until death comes in and cheats us, 
 ere we can slake our thirst upon the road. 
 
 Hours passed, and still the horses jogged, 
 trying to keep up with the mules' swift 
 swimming walk, the heat increased and every 
 stone reflected it, so that it struck both from 
 above and from below and seemed to burn into 
 the bones. The horses sweated and then dried 
 again, the particles of salt glistening upon their 
 skins, and still they pushed along, a cloud of 
 dust blown by the following wind, enveloping 
 and hiding them from sight. At last about the 
 noonday call to prayers, the trees and gardens 
 of the saints' tombs at the oasis of the saint 
 Rahal appeared on the horizon, as it seemed. 
 But the deceiving mirage this time was a friend, 
 for in an hour they reached them, and dismount- 
 ing, breathed their horses, halting for half an 
 hour beneath some orange trees.
 
 ON THE SPUR 17 
 
 In front the plain stretched on to Zagheriz, 
 which they reached, now fatigued, at three 
 o'clock. Leaving the weaker animals, they set 
 their heads towards the hills of El Gibila, 
 knowing that if they reached them with an 
 hour or two of light, that there were hopes of 
 getting into town before the gates were closed. 
 Changing his horse for a swift-pacing mule, 
 Menebhi led the way, dashing along the stony 
 path, spurring and pulling at his bit, after the 
 Arab style when they ride mules, which answer 
 better to the bit than even to the spur. Right 
 at the summit of the pass, Marakesh burst on 
 them, the Kutubieh like a lighthouse of Islam, 
 springing sheer from the plain like a tall palm 
 tree of brown stone. They raised a shout, 
 knowing that they were well ahead of news, 
 and, without looking at the palm wood or the 
 swift green-grey river running on the stones, 
 dashed down the road to join the level plain. 
 They passed the little saint's house on the hill, 
 and as the sun was sinking, leaving but one 
 short hour of light, reached the long bridge 
 which spans the Tensift and then called a halt. 
 The men arrived in groups, their horses panting 
 and gasping, and Menebhi said : 
 
 " Hold me the bridge until more men come
 
 176 ON THE SPUR 
 
 from the tribe. Let ten men follow me, and in 
 ten minutes ten more men, and in an interval 
 another lot of ten. When I go in beneath the 
 gate, let a man ride three or four hundred paces 
 back and call a halt, and so on with all the 
 other bands of ten. Be ready, keeping your 
 horses bitted, and if at dawn you do not see 
 me coming through the gate attack the town 
 and seize some notables to serve as hostages." 
 Settling his clothes and haik, he rode into 
 the palm woods which seethe about Mardkesh 
 like a flood. He rode through palms and still 
 more palms, whose trunks, touched by the 
 setting sun, glowed red, and then entering 
 the zone of gardens, paced along between high 
 aloe hedges or brown tapia walls. Crossing 
 the wide maiddn, which serves as horse-market, 
 he entered by the lofty horseshoe gate, the 
 guards not seeing in the dusty, road-stained 
 horseman, muffled to the eyes as is the fashion 
 in the land, the powerful minister and his 
 familiar friends. Passing the gate, their horses 
 slipping on the stones, they rode through 
 crowded streets, and open spaces, where the 
 jugglers and the story-tellers gather crowds, 
 right to the palace walls. Dismounting, with a 
 sign he gave his horse to one of his attendants
 
 ON THE SPUR 177 
 
 and saying to the captain of the guard, " The 
 Sultan sent for me and I am here," walked to 
 the courtyard where he knew his master would 
 be found. 
 
 As he passed through the various yards and 
 ante-rooms, from the high Kutubieh tower the 
 call to prayer rang out, booming and echoing, 
 and taken up from every minaret. He shivered, 
 knowing his danger, and recognising that the 
 conflict was at hand. 
 
 Crossing the last of all the courtyards he 
 came to where the guards keep watch, just 
 where the Sultan sits. The soldiers knew him 
 and respectfully made way, no news of his 
 disgrace having reached them, and as he gave 
 the Peace, his rival dressed in white, and with 
 his face shining with joy, as does the face of him 
 who has found favour with his lord, stood in the 
 gateway. Just for an instant, in the pale dust- 
 stained man, he did not know his foe. But as 
 he would have spoken and have barred the way, 
 the other, throwing back his hood, looked him 
 between the eyes, and said, " Our Lord expects 
 me," and as he spoke he passed into the 
 court. The soldiers closed the gate, and the 
 once joyous and successful rival sank, a white 
 heap of rags, upon a bench. 
 
 N
 
 178 ON THE SPUR 
 
 All night he sat, waiting his fate, and as the 
 morning sun just kissed the mosque towers, 
 flushing them rose-pink, the gateway opened 
 and El-Menebhi, pale with fatigue and dust, 
 but with his eyes alight with victory after the 
 night's debate with his liege lord, appeared 
 before him, as he sat upon the ground. He 
 rose, saluted and stood silent, and the successful 
 rider, throwing his haik across his shoulder, and 
 beckoning for his horse, looked at him stonily 
 and muttered, " Dog ! "
 
 AN EMIR 
 
 ONLY two years ago it was a waste of sand, 
 which from the edge of a high cliff looked out 
 across the straits at Spain, that submerged 
 fraction of the Eastern world. On it dogs, 
 yellow and as thin as jackals, played. When 
 it was dark they howled, making night hideous 
 or melodious, according as the listener's ears 
 were tuned to the roar of cities or to the 
 silence of the East. Ragweed and mignonette, 
 and now and then a bur and now and then 
 a gentian struggled from the sand, their stalks 
 grown woody with the drought. Dead dogs 
 and cats strewed it abundantly, with offal of all 
 kinds, and on the scanty grass an ass or two 
 fed without appetite, resigned to fate. 
 
 At times some Arabs from the interior 
 camped upon it, their bell-shaped tents sewn 
 with squat bottles of blue cloth springing like 
 mushrooms from the sand, their mules and 
 horses standing listless in the sun, stamping at 
 
 flies or neighing shrilly when they were fed at 
 
 179
 
 i8o AN EMIR 
 
 night. Their owners wandered on the cliff 
 looking across toward "El-Andalus," pondering, 
 perchance, upon the black, the incompre- 
 hensible, the element on which Allah has given 
 scant dominion to his faithful, and of which 
 Musa, he who conquered Spain and died in far 
 Damascus, poor and a prisoner, said, " It is 
 a thing the mind of none can compass, vast 
 and ungovernable ; fools ride it to their ruin in 
 their hollow ships. . . . Such is the sea, no man 
 hath bridled it." 
 
 Perhaps the campers wondered why the 
 people of the faith, those who alone can 
 properly pronounce the letter dod t did not 
 again attempt the conquest of the land which 
 once they ruled, or perhaps their thoughts but 
 ran upon the price of eggs in Tdngier, or in 
 the sok of Jabaltdr. 
 
 Jews and more Jews, the women handsome, 
 but graceless as must be all condemned for 
 centuries to persecution, and the men more 
 Spanish than the Spaniards in their faces, but 
 much more European in their minds, lived in 
 long rows of pink or sky-blue houses, upon 
 every side. The little plain called the Marshan, 
 on which in Carolean times battles were fought 
 against the Moors, under the chief the English
 
 AN EMIR 181 
 
 called Lord Gaylan, spread out between the 
 cliffs above the sea and those which run down 
 to the River of the Jews. Just at the end 
 a Moorish cemetery, a field of stones, cut into 
 little paths on every side, in which the feet of 
 all the passers-by for centuries had left deep 
 ruts, seemed to connect the living and the 
 dead, in the familiar way of Africa, where no 
 God's acre, railed and cut off from all the 
 world, forms both a barrier against the quick, 
 and yet a link with those who sleep beneath 
 the grass. 
 
 The waste of sand, the cemetery, the howling 
 dogs, and all the features of the life of Tangier, 
 which have endured since first Ibn-Batuta left 
 its walls to set forth on his travels, seemed 
 likely to go on for ever, as changeless as the 
 tide-rip which foams and billows in the middle 
 of the Straits. 
 
 Then on a day a gang of builders suddenly 
 appeared, Arabs with sacking tied about their 
 loins, talking and shouting, and falling over 
 one another in their zeal to do as little as was 
 possible. A Spanish foreman, solemn and 
 olive-coloured (a Moor in trousers and a cap), 
 speaking a jargon between Andaliiz and Arabic, 
 and half incomprehensible to all his workmen,
 
 182 AN EMIR 
 
 walked about, looking intensely grave, and now 
 and then cursing his men for dogs of infidels. 
 
 A Jew, thin, lithe and eager, acted the part 
 of clerk of works, and in a month or two walls 
 and more walls of courtyards, the scheme of 
 every Moorish house, rose as by magic from 
 the sand. The noise and the confusion of the 
 men would have shamed Babel easily, and yet 
 the work went on, went on by force of human 
 strength and sweat, men raising stone by 
 pulleys, in which palmetto ropes creaked noisily, 
 whilst donkeys waited patiently with lime. 
 
 So did they build the Pyramids, the temples 
 at Palenque, and thus did the Alhambra rise 
 out of the rocks which crown the gorge above 
 the courses of the Darro and Genii. Grave, 
 bearded, white-clad men, holding each other's 
 hands, as children do in lands where custom 
 sets a gulf unbridgable betwixt the actions of 
 the old and young, came and sat down on 
 heaps of stones and criticized. They gave 
 their reasons solemnly, and with much calling 
 upon God, raising their hands with a slow 
 motion from the wrist, and turning up their 
 palms towards their auditors, who listened to 
 them silently with now and then a pious phrase, 
 which whistled through the larynx as the wind
 
 AN EMIR 183 
 
 whistles through the trees. Some held the 
 employment of the Christian would bring bad 
 luck, whilst others gave as their opinion that 
 the infidel was given might by God over the 
 steam and electricity, and it was right to profit 
 by his lore, as Allah, for wise reasons of his 
 own, allowed him greatly to enjoy the earth, 
 reserving to himself the power, the world's 
 play done, to cast him into Tophet, where he 
 should wither for a thousand years. 
 
 Men swarmed like ants about the walls, 
 chattering like parrots in a field of maize, and 
 mules and donkeys carrying bricks and lime 
 went to and fro, men urging them with blows 
 and shouting curses on their mothers, all 
 which they took unmoved and uncomplaining, 
 their round black eyes looking amazed and 
 philosophically upon their fellow-slaves who 
 ran beside them yelling in their ears. 
 
 Word came from Suez or Port Said that 
 soon the owner of the place might be expected, 
 and that all work be finished by a certain day, 
 on which he with his women and his suite 
 would be in Tangier, and would take possession 
 of the house. Painters and decorators, working 
 with a will, soon gave the interior a habitable 
 air, glazing the windows with parti-coloured
 
 1 84 AN EMIR 
 
 glass, and painting dados of great stripes of 
 blue picked out with orange, and finishing pink 
 window-frames with green, a scheme of colour 
 which to a Western eye seems crude, but which 
 in Africa the light tones down and softens as 
 in a garden flowers are blended by the sun into 
 a harmony. 
 
 Then, all desisted from their work, and the 
 great house stood silent in the sun, as some 
 huge palace in the realms of the "Arabian 
 Nights " called up by genii, springs in a night, 
 and perhaps vanishes away as speedily, into 
 the sand from which it rose. Though built so 
 hastily, it yet looked solid, the long white walls 
 without a window, giving it an air as of a 
 fortress, which the great gate did not belie 
 though plated with sheet tin. 
 
 The master landed at the port, his baggage 
 packed in carpets and in great wooden cases, 
 filling a lighter to the water's edge, and he 
 himself, dressed all in fleecy white, was welcomed 
 by his friends. He got upon his mule, settled 
 his clothes, and followed by a friend from 
 Mecca, rode slowly through the town. Women 
 and eunuchs followed, and the whole train 
 emerging from the walls, clattered and slithered 
 up the slippery street paved with rough cobble
 
 AN EMIR 185 
 
 stones, and stood before the house. Cushions 
 were brought and, sitting down, the owner's 
 part was done, for he sat drinking tea and 
 opening letters, handing them to his secretary 
 to read and comment on, as if he had already 
 lived a lifetime in the house new risen from 
 the sand. His household silently fell into its 
 accustomed round. A throng of wild retainers 
 lounged about the door, which opened on a 
 narrow street, giving no inkling of the splendour 
 of the place. Horses and mules were hobbled 
 in the grounds, and tents were pitched in 
 corners, in which mysterious men dozed on 
 their saddles, or sat drinking tea, and at which 
 messengers arrived bearing exaggerated news 
 about the doings of the French upon the 
 frontier, the fights between the tribes, and of 
 the struggles of the various European Powers 
 for the predominance at Fez. 
 
 The owner having been a minister of state, 
 one of those men who in the East are sure to 
 sow the seeds of jealousy in sovereigns' minds 
 by standing out too high above the crowd, and 
 who had fallen into disgrace, losing most of his 
 property, and running in danger of his life, 
 looked on his palace as a sort of exile, not that 
 he, as an Arab, probably was more attached to
 
 186 AN EMIR 
 
 one place than another, but as a banishment from 
 power, which so appeals to all men of his race, 
 that Diocletian, the one philosopher in practice, 
 who has sat upon a throne, to them would be 
 a madman, and his retirement, the wisest action 
 history has set down of any ruler in the world, 
 incomprehensible. Their subtle, quick and yet 
 material minds rise to few flights of fancy. 
 That which exists, for them is absolute, and 
 Allah sent his sun, his rain, his power or 
 poverty for men to bear, enjoy or profit by, 
 but not to criticize. 
 
 So in his garden, which had been made as 
 quickly as the house, and which his taste had 
 set with beds of Indian corn and vegetables, 
 after the fashion of his race, that holds all 
 gardens should be used for profit, and flowers 
 as incidental, and not necessities as in the 
 West, he passed the portion of an Oriental's 
 life that Westerns ever see. Dressed all in 
 spotless white, eager and lithe, and never 
 still an instant when upon his feet, he roamed 
 about much as a tiger roams about its cage. 
 At times he sat, quiet and impassible, as is 
 a joss upon its shrine, in one of those small 
 narrow rooms the Moors construct in which to 
 see their friends who cannot pass into the
 
 AN EMIR 187 
 
 house. Beside him sat his secretary, a young 
 black-bearded Arab doctor of the law, who had 
 passed years in Mecca and at Cairo, and yet 
 had learned no word of any tongue but Arabic. 
 Quick and intelligent, almost vivacious in his 
 speech, his manners courteous, and his smile 
 as ready to break out as sun in April, and to 
 illumine all his face with seeming kindliness, 
 some thought he was a fanatic at heart, others 
 that in the holy city of the Haj, seeing the 
 mystery too near, he had become indifferent, 
 even a sceptic, as happens now and then to 
 ardent Christians who have lived long in Rome, 
 and become too familiar with their faith. But, 
 if his thoughts were difficult to fathom, as 
 no doubt the thoughts of Europeans, ever a 
 mystery to Easterns, were to him, they were as 
 clear as crystal beside those of the accomplished 
 ex-minister, now fallen from his high estate, to 
 whom the house belonged. 
 
 Jews, Moors and Europeans and an occasional 
 out-at-elbows Turk, all thronged his doors, 
 most of them anxious for assistance of some 
 kind. To some he gave hard cash, to others 
 promises, but always courteously, so that none 
 said of him as says the adage, " The man has 
 neither charity nor a kind word to give."
 
 1 88 AN EMIR 
 
 But, on the other hand, the richer Europeans, 
 in want of lions (which had long ago retired 
 into the Atlas Mountains beyond Fez), had 
 hailed with acclamation his advent in their 
 midst. 
 
 No party was complete without him, and 
 as the dancers whirled about, with arms and 
 shoulders bare, he sat and possibly discreetly 
 wondered at the show. 
 
 Silent and bored, but smiling, he sat at 
 parties, timid but haughty, for no one better 
 than an Arab knows all the gradations of 
 society, or is so quick to take offence at 
 courtesies omitted, or any social sin committed 
 by his host. Women, young, beautiful and 
 half-undressed, stood by his side, their petticoats 
 just mingling with his flowing robes, and he 
 who from his youth had never looked a woman 
 in the face, except she was his sister or his 
 wife, stood unconcerned, although his blood, no 
 doubt, ran boiling through his veins. Still he 
 smiled on, a smile so enigmatical that even 
 diplomats who put him down as a hot-headed 
 Arab chief, must surely now and then have 
 wondered what he thought. 
 
 The hospitalities that he received from 
 German, English, and from French alike, he
 
 AN EMIR 189 
 
 paid back amply in his new palace, in which 
 the plaster and the paint were hardly dry, and 
 where the flowers in the garden seemed to have 
 been planted all in bloom, and yet which, by 
 the virtue of the climate and the custom of the 
 land which makes it natural to let a house 
 decay for want of necessary care, then build 
 another by the side of it, neither seemed old 
 nor yet conspicuously new. 
 
 Playing at tennis with young ladies in his 
 court, which, painted green to mitigate the 
 glare, looked out upon the sea, he still looked 
 dignified. Walking about the open yards, 
 which serve in Arab houses as reception-rooms, 
 after a dinner party, and no doubt conscious 
 that a dozen curious eyes of carefully veiled 
 women watched from upper windows, envying 
 or perhaps despising the greater opportunities 
 their European sisters had, he looked as must 
 have looked the Emirs of Granada, when they 
 entertained a batch of Christian knights and 
 ladies, in the last bulwark of Islam, in Spain. 
 
 So, in the house which he had built, as it 
 were by chance, and in the garden looking on 
 the sea, he passed his days, for the most part, 
 after the fashion of his fathers, half of his life 
 shut from the world behind a curtain, from
 
 i 9 o AN EMIR 
 
 which at times came voices in dispute and 
 sometimes songs, harsh and high pitched, but 
 haunting as is a cricket's paean to the sun, 
 heard in a noonday halt beneath the trees. 
 Sometimes he rode abroad, erect and swaying 
 on his horse, his long white draperies afloat, 
 with his eyes fixed upon the distance, after the 
 manner of his ancestors who, as they rode 
 across the sands, looked out for enemies. His, 
 though concealed, are just as imminent, and 
 he awaits them still, uncomprehended and 
 incomprehensible, courteous and cruel, rash 
 and yet diplomatic, lounging the hours away 
 upon the cliff, from which he sees the land 
 where his race flourished, and from which, 
 constrained by circumstance or fate, it sank 
 again into the sands.
 
 FATE 
 
 IN a long corridor of an old Georgian house, 
 lit by a skylight and by a window over the hall 
 door, there hung a piece of needlework in a 
 dark rosewood frame. In silk, some lady of 
 the family had worked a landscape setting forth 
 the district and the house in which the picture 
 hung. It stood four square and looked out on 
 the east, across the moss which once had been 
 a sea. On either side of the great strath ran 
 lines of hills, one rough and heather-clad, as 
 when just at their feet the Romans were rolled 
 back, the other smooth and green, and sloping 
 off towards the south. The moss itself was 
 brown and on its face the shadows came and 
 went, chasing each other as the hours pursue 
 eternity, leaving no trace where they had 
 passed. 
 
 Trees stood about the house and in the 
 pictured needlework ; in one case stiff and 
 formal, looking like ineffectual monuments 
 of grief in cemeteries, and in the other 
 whispering in the wind, labouring and groaning 
 
 191
 
 192 FATE 
 
 in the storm, and in the sunshine all alive 
 with bees. 
 
 The careful needlewoman had displayed each 
 stone and window in the house ; colouring those 
 black which had been closed during the opera- 
 tion of the window tax ; and had dwelt lovingly 
 on walls and pediments. The range of hills 
 under her magnifying steel had changed to 
 mountains, and a small lake had come into 
 existence supplied with water from the fountains 
 of her brain. Right carefully she had devised 
 the cedars, with the beech avenue, the syca- 
 mores, the weeping yew, and the stiff terrace 
 upon which the house was set, whilst every 
 post in all the fences was portrayed both with 
 elaborate stitching and with circumstance. 
 
 Just as much inkling of perspective was 
 employed as to make all unnatural, and yet 
 on looking at it, you felt it had been done with 
 tenderness, and the contriver must have put 
 her soul into the task. 
 
 Such artless works sometimes more nearly 
 touch the heart than the most airy flights of 
 genius, when the place represented has been 
 dear to the beholder and the artist ; for places, 
 unlike men, can never vary, and time itself 
 breeds no satiety of love.
 
 FATE 193 
 
 The faint, fresh smell of fir trees in the wet, 
 that scent of dampness rising from the moss 
 and the perfume of bracken, sweet and sharp, 
 must have been present always to the worker 
 as she sat sewing at her window-seat, whilst 
 gazing at the rain. 
 
 Time does not mellow needlework as it does 
 pictures, yet still it gives it interest, and as the 
 colours fade and ends of silk grow rough, it 
 seems a soul is born in them which speaks to 
 us out of its nothingness, bringing us somehow 
 nearer to the dead. 
 
 So it hung on, getting a little yellower, more 
 flyblown, and with the varnish scaling from the 
 rosewood frame and the gold falling off in 
 particles from the interior rim, as winter damp 
 and summer sun succeeded year by year in 
 the long corridor of the old Georgian house. 
 Birds sat upon it now and then, and bats 
 occasionally hid themselves between it and the 
 wa}l, and darted out again as fearlessly as if 
 the lonely passage had been an alley in a 
 wood. Nothing appeared less likely than that 
 a tragedy should be unrolled with it as 
 background, or as the world, in which after 
 the fashion of the greater world outside its 
 o
 
 194 FATE 
 
 frame, birth, life, and death should pass all 
 unperceived. 
 
 Life was serene as usual in the corridor, 
 whilst the dust gathered on the picture- frames 
 and clung upon the looking-glasses as frost 
 clings on a cabbage leaf in the late autumn 
 after a cold night. The house itself, buried in 
 woods, woods and more woods, stood lonely, 
 and in the avenues guttered and channelled 
 by the winter rains, the grass grew rank. The 
 terraces were pitted here and there with holes 
 made by the rabbits in their play, who left 
 a little heap of sand outside them, to which 
 occasionally clung brown silky fur. 
 
 The roedeer, venturing from the copses, 
 strayed in the summer nights and belled close 
 to the windows ; and the soft flying owls wafted 
 from tree to tree like kites, or hooted litanies 
 from the tall larches, whilst from the woods 
 and mosses rose the faint noises which at night 
 wake recollections of the time when men and 
 animals perchance all spoke one tongue. 
 
 The charm of desolation had descended on the 
 place, and the rare lights and few inhabitants 
 seemed to be lost in nature, which invaded 
 them, swallowing them in her amplitude as 
 the stray vegetation swallows up a church
 
 FATE 195 
 
 deserted by the Jesuits out on the Chaco or in 
 Paraguay. Gnomons had fallen from sundials, 
 and the stone slabs of terrace steps yawned 
 open : from some of them sprang ferns, whilst 
 on the coping of the walls the moss grew 
 tenderly. The ponds were half grown up with 
 flags and bulrushes. Great banks of sand and 
 mud stretched into them, brought by the burns 
 in winter, and on them feathers stuck, looking 
 like snowflakes and fluttering in the wind. All 
 was so quiet that the mast falling from the 
 beech sounded like raindrops pattering upon 
 ice or on a window-pane. 
 
 Nothing disturbed the quiet of the place, 
 which slowly seemed to fall to ruins and become 
 more beautiful each day. Then, on a summer 
 morning when the swallows darted through the 
 trees, hawking at flies, and on the grass the 
 squirrels ventured timidly to play, springing 
 upon the overhanging boughs at the first 
 sudden noise, a bubble seemed to swell below 
 the glass and force it outwards at the corner of 
 the frame. It grew mysterious and white, next 
 turned a rusty brown, then was forgotten as the 
 days slipped past, each one so like the other that 
 the flight of time was imperceptible, darkness 
 succeeding light as stealthily as the owls floated
 
 196 FATE 
 
 through the wood, lighting like thistle-down 
 on the elastic branches of the trees. 
 
 Weeks passed and still the mystery was 
 unsolved, only beneath the envelope a fluttering 
 motion now and then was seen, as if a spirit 
 prisoned in its cell stirred faintly, struggling to 
 free itself from matter and to escape into the 
 sky. But no one marked it much, for tragedies 
 may be enacted at one's elbow, and none the 
 wiser ; for indeed, most tragedies seem comic 
 to the looker-on, who does not comprehend 
 the motive, and takes the sufferer for a mere 
 ill-bred person, who might have lived and died, 
 just like the rest of us, had he had common 
 sense. 
 
 So the bees hung about the lime trees, 
 making their music in the flowers, the cedars' 
 branches swayed like windmills' sails, and in 
 the thickest of the woods the capercailzie 
 crowed, flapping their wings with a strange 
 hollow sound which echoed through the trees, 
 like negro tomtoms by night up some mosquito- 
 haunted river on the Coast, or like the mournful 
 drum which Bernal Diaz heard during the siege 
 of the great temple of Tenochtitlan. 
 
 Then, on a morning in late June, when the 
 soft air just curled the rising mist from off the
 
 FATE 197 
 
 moss into tall pillars such as rise in a simoom, 
 one who had looked by chance at the old 
 needlework in passing, saw that the tragedy 
 had taken place. 
 
 The temple's veil was rent, and fallen 
 asunder, and underneath the glass a brown and 
 fluffy moth had come into the world, been born, 
 had stirred, just fluttered and had died, seeing 
 the air it could not fly in, feeling the life within 
 it, which fate that laughs at all things, moths 
 and men alike, said it should never taste. 
 
 To wish it peace, it who had not known 
 trouble, were in vain, and for repose, its wings 
 had never fluttered in the air. Care, sorrow, 
 love, hate, pain, revenge, and still less avarice, 
 or ambition by which the fool and not the noble 
 falls, it should know none of, and probably would 
 not have felt in its brief joyous life. 
 
 But to be cabined in a cage of glass, to suffer 
 \h.t peine forte et dure of death by pressing, for 
 no committed crime, poor, fluttering fairy round 
 the lamp of life, 'twas hard. How brief your 
 pleasures and how innocent,, merely to play 
 about the corridors of the old melancholy house 
 to prove your wings, and then to soar into 
 some fir tree on the lawn, equipped at once 
 with all the lore inherited from those your
 
 i 9 8 FATE 
 
 ancestors in Eden, who flitted through the 
 cypresses of that fair garden on the Tigris, 
 and then after a day or two, at most a month, 
 to love, to rove at night amongst the trees, to 
 fall at the first frost or heavy shower, and lie 
 amongst the needles of the pines without a 
 single crime upon your conscience, tender as 
 your wings, this would have been your fate. 
 
 Alas, poor fellow, would-be flutterer in the 
 realms of a hard world, perhaps the fate 
 presiding at your birth who with her unkind 
 shears cut off your destiny, was kind. Who 
 knows? You might have come to ruin or 
 mishap, e'en you who surely had no unkind 
 thought in your minute and microscopic brain. 
 
 Circling about at night, thinking no evil, 
 after the fashion of your clan, a candle light 
 which to your complex eyes might have 
 appeared a sun, vast, round, and vivifying, 
 might have attracted you and left you writhing 
 agonized and maimed, a prey to children who 
 in their rage for self-improvement, or from the 
 cruelty which we who have no wings bear in 
 our blood as the true sign of the great curse 
 our common Maker set upon us at the Fall, 
 might have transfixed you with a pin. 
 
 Perils we know not of and which have never
 
 FATE 199 
 
 entered our dull brains, so ill attuned to all the 
 mysteries of your world, may have awaited 
 you. Some pestilence which no physician of 
 our kind has diagnosed might have attacked 
 and struck you blind, crippling your flight or 
 rendering you unsightly to the companions of 
 your merry little world. This might have 
 been, or the fell spider with his web of fated 
 filaments entangled your soft wings and drawn 
 you struggling to his den, cut off your life and 
 fed upon your flesh, for these are dangers 
 even we who know so little of your lives can 
 comprehend. From these your fate has freed 
 you, making you equal to great Caesar, 
 Hannibal, to Alexander, both to the greatest 
 and the least of all mankind, by the mere fact 
 that you have lived. 
 
 Rail not at fate, poor iridescent moth, although 
 the hues upon your wings were meant to shine 
 at twilight as you flickered through the trees 
 with just as fair a lustre as the most gorgeous 
 butterfly who hovers in the sun on the Tijuca's 
 slopes can ever boast. Do not repine, although 
 no snowflake would have floated from the 
 sky more delicately than the unallowable 
 pulsations of your wings would have conveyed 
 you through the twilight air in your brief
 
 200 FATE 
 
 honeymoon with life. You will not know 
 the joy of liberty, tender and innocent in its 
 conception, as moths alone conceive it, of all 
 created things. Let no cursed man of science 
 with his dog Latin and apocalyptic Greek 
 dispel my ignorance, telling me that the family 
 of moths is as rapacious as the vulture or the 
 crow. I'll not believe it, but will mourn thy 
 fate, condemned to see for a brief moment all 
 the beauties of the light, never to flit at evening 
 in the dark recesses of the trees. Poor pilgrim 
 to a world unworthy of your innocence, who 
 lived and died so quickly, surely you solved 
 at once the mysteries which we live for a 
 lifetime and still never grasp. My fellow- 
 sufferer by fate, you, who left instantly the 
 world in which we tarry longer instants, with 
 as scant comprehension of our lives perhaps as 
 you, do not forget us prisoned in our glass ; 
 but in the limbo where you flutter now, think 
 that a fellow-moth remembers you, just as you 
 lived and died, with your soft body, iridescent 
 wings, and sharp antennae.
 
 HA TIL MI TULIADH 
 
 ALL was unchanged, and Nature cared not, 
 being occupied with sun and moon and stars, 
 the tides, the mists, the dew, rain, snow, the 
 fall and reproduction of the leaf, and the great 
 mysteries, the cause of which evades and 
 always has evaded man. She smiled, as she 
 does sometimes at a funeral, sending a glimpse 
 of sun upon a coffin-plate, so that the cold- 
 nipped mourners read the age of the deceased 
 whilst they stand peering down into the grave, 
 as in a blaze of light. 
 
 All was unchanged. 
 
 The two tall lime trees towered above the 
 rough field-gate contrived of poles running 
 through horseshoes wedged into their trunks. 
 
 The leaves just swept the roof, and in the 
 evening air they seemed to sigh for the 
 departed, who for so many years had watched 
 them green in April bursting into life, and 
 glorious in autumn as they fell carpeting the 
 road, and piled upon the level doorstep with its 
 
 201
 
 202 HA TIL MI TULIADH 
 
 concentric pattern drawn in chalk ; the rush- 
 thatched byre, upon whose roof grew fumitory 
 and corydalis, looked just as it had looked for 
 forty years, and the low door flanked by great 
 tufts of golden-rod and of angelica, and painted 
 blue, was shut for ever on its late owners and 
 on me. Through it, from earliest childhood, as 
 I passed, I led my ponies, tying them in the 
 dark beside the cow to the tall uprights which 
 in Highland cowsheds serve for stalls. 
 
 Two sisters, almost the last survivors of an 
 ancient race, had lived for years in the old 
 cottage by the reedy lake. Descendants of the 
 retainer of a feudal chief, their ancestors had 
 been hereditary ferrymen, for, in the days of 
 old, caste, now confined to India and the East, 
 was spread throughout the world. 
 
 In what rough coracle or boat their remote 
 ancestors had ferried over to the island, men 
 dressed in skins, no one can say, for from 
 the dawn of history in Menteith marauding 
 clansmen, coming with a creagh from the 
 laigh, had been rowed over to the castle in the 
 isle by some one of their race. 
 
 In the deep bay, rush-locked and clear, they 
 or their father had constructed a rude pier of 
 stones and wattles, to which a boat was tied,
 
 HA TIL MI TULIADH 203 
 
 the paint all sun-cracked, and with an inch or 
 two of water in the well. 
 
 So in the days gone by, in houses occupied 
 by gentlemen whose pedigrees were longer 
 than their purse, an antiquated carriage, used 
 as a roosting-place by hens, slowly decayed in 
 some gaunt coach-house, given up to damp. 
 
 Carriage and boat were evidence of better 
 times, a link with days of glory long departed, 
 drawing a smile or tear, according to the point 
 from which the man who saw them looked upon 
 the world. 
 
 So in the cottage the two sisters lived ; relics 
 of days when men were civil in their speech, 
 had time and did not spare it in its use. They 
 never travelled far, but, for all that, they knew 
 the world in which they lived themselves in all 
 its niceties. Constrained by poverty to work, 
 the sisters yet appeared two ladies in distress, 
 not fallen in fortunes, though their Potosi was 
 but the little croft and garden with " its hantle 
 of sour plumtrees," but, so to speak, having 
 suffered wrong from Nature, which had not 
 placed them free from all necessities at birth. 
 Not that they lacked advancement either, for 
 in their heart of hearts they held themselves 
 the equals of the highest in the land ; a tacit
 
 204 HA TIL MI TULIADH 
 
 claim which all admitted, but their equals, in 
 the old-fashioned district where they lived. 
 Raw-boned and rather hard of feature, the 
 eldest had the soft Highland voice and manner, 
 which somehow seems not to belong to modern 
 life, and places the possessor of them in a 
 world outside the present age. The younger, 
 gentle and delicate, had never married, must 
 have been pretty in her youth, and lived her 
 life subordinated to her sister, admiring her, 
 and in her turn being admired and cherished 
 by her in a half-tender and half-peremptory 
 way. 
 
 Their father was an ancient Celt who formed 
 a link with olden times, being compounded of 
 quite different essences and stronger simples 
 than men of latter days. Born as he was, just 
 where the Highlands and the Lowlands touch, 
 he had amalgamated much of the characteristics 
 of the two. His manners were all Highland, 
 his knowledge of the world partly his own and 
 partly that of the Low Country, as we style 
 the realm of bogs and marshy fields that swells 
 and billows like a sea up to the lumpy range of 
 tawny hills that cuts them from the north, and, 
 till the days of railways, formed a bar as strong 
 and as insuperable as is a navigable river, or
 
 HA TIL MI TULIADH 205 
 
 indeed the sea. Short, and in later years bent 
 almost double, but to the last alert upon his 
 legs, time and the rain, which when it ceases 
 for a fortnight is the theme of prayers in 
 church, had turned him a light fern colour, and 
 his clothes, and hair originally grey (for no 
 one living could remember when his head was 
 brown) had weathered to a lichen-looking 
 green, and his blue twinkling eyes, not bleared 
 with age, could, as he said himself, "discern a 
 gentleman almost a mile away." Gentry and 
 gentlemen, by which he understood those of 
 old family, for money could not make, nor the 
 want of it mar, in his opinion, were the chief 
 objects of his creed. 
 
 " The Queen can mak' a duke, she canna' 
 mak' Lochiel," he would observe with pride, 
 not that the limitation of the royal power 
 rejoiced him, for he held, as do Mohammedans, 
 that he who reigned did so by right divine, but 
 it seemed to him evident, or else the prayer for 
 those "set over us and under Him" had been 
 of no account. 
 
 Withal he was himself a gentleman, if 
 natural good-breeding makes one, conjoined 
 with courtesy in speech. Upon a visit, when 
 he had showed you round his croft, with what
 
 206 HA TIL MI TULIADH 
 
 an air he used to offer you fruit in a cabbage 
 leaf, saying, "Will ye tak' berries, laird," or 
 "leddy," as the case might be, thus exercising 
 hospitality in its best sense, by giving what he 
 had without false shame or with excuses for his 
 poverty. One ate them, listening all the time 
 to local lore, distorted through the vision of his 
 years, and rendered picturesque partly by want 
 of education and partly by the way he touched 
 his subject, embroidering and adorning it with 
 sidelights of his own, just as an artist draws 
 from what he sees in his own brain, and neither 
 copies nor extenuates his theme. 
 
 Seated upon the gunwale of his boat, and 
 talking volubly in the soft Highland accent, 
 which makes you think that you knew Gaelic 
 once upon a time, the landscape all unchanged, 
 the scrubby oak copse straggling up the hill, 
 the bracken yellowing in the autumn breeze, 
 and leaves of sycamores, mottled and black, 
 like trout in moorland burns, all falling softly 
 round about, whilst the white mist crept up and 
 hung the castle and the chapel in the air, 
 making the great stag-headed chestnuts in the 
 Isle of Rest look like gigantic antlers thrown 
 against the sky, the things and men of which 
 he spoke became alive again and the long,
 
 HA TIL MI TULIADH 207 
 
 broken link with the old world was welded into 
 shape. You heard unmoved, and as a thing 
 quite natural, and which it seemed had 
 happened to yourself, how he had walked to 
 Eglinton to see the tournament, taking three 
 days to do it, in the rain ; had slept beneath 
 the trees, had seen it all, especially the 
 Emperor of the French, " Napoleon Third, 
 ye ken," the Queen of Beauty carried through 
 the mud, and then tramped back again. 
 
 Who, in these days of education and of 
 common sense, made manifest and plain by 
 copy-book, would do the like, out of pure 
 love of sport, lightness of heart, or the sheer 
 devilment of youth ? 
 
 All the old legends of the Borderland he 
 knew ; with much about Rob Roy, who as he 
 used to say was " better in a tuilzie than a 
 fight, for all his skill o' fence, and they long 
 arms o' his, ye mind, he could untie the garters 
 frae his hose without a stoop or hogging up his 
 back." He talked about the man just as he 
 were alive, so naturally and without effort, 
 having heard all he told you from his 
 grandfather, that it would not have startled 
 you on looking round to see Red Robert in the 
 flesh come trotting down the hill, his target at
 
 208 HA TIL MI TULIADH 
 
 his back, and his long Spanish " culbeir " in his 
 hand, humming a waulking song or whistling 
 a strathspey. 
 
 All the old legends of the district and his 
 lore of times gone by he left his daughters, 
 which, working in their minds and coming 
 to the surface in their speech, stranded them 
 lonely in the world, without a fellow, just as 
 a glacier-carried boulder in a glen must feel 
 deserted in the tall heather where it lies, far 
 from the hills and stones. 
 
 The younger sister first departed, going on 
 before to tell their father that the world was 
 changed, and that no place was left for them or 
 theirs, and that the osprey built no more in the 
 old chestnuts which the monks had planted 
 round the grey priory in the isle, and that the 
 trees themselves were growing balder and more 
 sere. The elder lingered on alone, brisk but 
 alert, driving her cow down to the mossy 
 "park," and stepping east to church when it 
 was fine, not following the road, but going 
 through the fields (though it took longer by 
 them), perhaps from the hereditary Highland 
 habit of avoiding stones in days when every 
 man made his own brogues at home. In 
 summer time she took into her house artists
 
 HA TIL MI TULIADH 209 
 
 and fishermen, and those whom the fine weather 
 drives into the country for a time, and who 
 lounge through their time smoking and bored, 
 but conscious it is right to do as others do, and 
 therefore satisfied. They thought her odd, and 
 she esteemed them common, but "awfa' clever 
 folk, ye ken, ane o' them painted me a bit 
 picture o' ma sister from a fotygraph, ane o' 
 they dagyriotypes, ye mind them, done on 
 glass, which I have by me since it was ta'en 
 back aboot sixty-three, the time o' yon review 
 at Paisla', the verra image o' her, laird, I'm 
 tellin' ye." The effort of the limner's art 
 (to which even a " dagyriotype " on glass 
 was preferable) hung in her little parlour, 
 resplendent with megilp, shining with poppy 
 oil, and setting forth the patient with a grin 
 upon her face, and with the clothes in fashion 
 forty years ago, themselves not beautiful, 
 rendered ridiculous by newness, just as a play 
 of the same time appears to us absurd, not that 
 our own are better, but because folly is a 
 changing quantity and different in degree. 
 
 Our friendship, fast but intermittent, lasted 
 many years, and the byre door through which 
 my ponies used to pass became too small to 
 lead my horse through, and so we generally
 
 2io HA TIL MI TULIADH 
 
 talked outside the house, not that we said 
 much, for she was growing deaf, and I knew 
 all her stories years ago, but it pleased both of 
 us, and when I mounted and rode off she used 
 to stand, holding her hand above her eyes, 
 after the fashion of a sailor on a pier, looking 
 out seaward, even when not a sail is on the 
 sea. 
 
 Her death was in the olden style, after 
 the fashion she had lived ; so to speak, not 
 premeditated, but natural, just as a tree dies at 
 the top, decaying downwards, till it is gone 
 almost before those who have known it all 
 their lives are well aware of its decease. The 
 neighbours told me, for I was absent in that 
 region which folks in Menteith call " up aboot 
 England," that she was " travellin* " from 
 church, felt ill upon arriving at her house, took 
 to her bed, and "sleepit bonnily awa' " upon 
 the following day. A man, that is a man who 
 feels the ancient Highland spirit in his blood, 
 would like to die with his boots on, but for a 
 woman this was the nearest thing to sudden 
 death, and quite became the last of an old 
 violent race of men. 
 
 In the old churchyard by the lake, amongst 
 the Grahams and the Macgregors, some of
 
 HA TIL MI TULIADH 211 
 
 whom have swords upon their headstones, for 
 all their trade-mark and memorial of their 
 lives, she sleeps. With pride of race and 
 Scottish thoughtfulness she left sufficient to 
 erect a stone, in which is cut her name, her 
 sister's, that of her father, and those of many 
 of her clan. It stands in the wet grass, close 
 to the wall of the kirkyard, a sort of landmark 
 in the history of Menteith, showing a page 
 turned down ; a page on which but few could 
 read, even before the book was shut for the 
 last time. To bid her sleep in peace is but a 
 work of supererogation, after full eighty years 
 of life. Those who remain tossing and turning 
 upon life's uneasy pillow stand more in need of 
 such a wish. 
 
 So I "stepped west," and, coming to the 
 Highland cottage by the lake, found the door 
 shut, the hearthstone cold, the garden eaten 
 up with weeds, the flauchtered feals upon the 
 cowhouse roof fallen from the poles, and 
 the old boat, hauled up upon the beach, 
 paintless and blistering in the sun. No cow 
 fed in the little rushy park, even the withies 
 which had once confined the gate were burst 
 and swinging in the wind. The door was shut, 
 shut against me, and shut upon the last of my
 
 212 HA TIL MI TULIADH 
 
 old friends ; so, sitting down upon the step, on 
 which no longer was a pattern laid in chalk, I 
 smoked and meditated, seeing a long procession 
 pass upon the road, all riding ponies which 
 grew larger towards the end, until a man upon 
 a horse brought up the rear. They stopped 
 before the house, which seemed to have turned 
 newer, and in which a fire of peats burned 
 brightly on the hearth. Then, from the door 
 . . . but ... I will return no more (Ha til 
 mi tuliadh) ; he who waits at the ferry long 
 enough will get across some time.
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 Two pictures hang upon my study wall, faded 
 and woolly, but well stippled up, the outlines 
 of the hills just indicated with a fine reed pen, 
 showing the water, coloured saffron, deepening 
 to pink in the deep shadows of the lake. 
 Although one picture is a sunset and the other 
 done as it would seem at sunrise, they show a 
 country which even yet is undefiled by any 
 human step. 
 
 So accurately is the dark brown tree set in 
 position on the border of the fleecy lake, one 
 feels an artist, superior to mere nature, has 
 been about the task. The castle on the 
 mountain top, in one of the two masterpieces, 
 is at the bottom of the hill in its compeer, and 
 in the two a clear blue sky throws a deep 
 shadow over the unruffled water, on which 
 float boats with tall white sails, progressing 
 without wind. 
 
 Still, with their frames, which are but 
 fricassees of gingerbread well gilt, to me they 
 
 213
 
 214 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 say a something all the art of all the masters 
 leaves unsaid. 
 
 A masterpiece speaks of imagination in its 
 maker ; but those pale blue-grey hills and 
 salmon-coloured pinkish lakes, castles which 
 never could have been inhabited, boats sailing 
 in a calm, and trees that seem to rustle without 
 breeze, set me reflecting upon things gone by, 
 and upon places of which I once was part, 
 places which still ungratefully live on, whilst 
 that of me which lived in them is dead. 
 
 A long low Georgian room, in which the 
 pictures hung, with its high mantelpiece, its 
 smell of damp and Indian curiosities, and 
 window looking out on the sunk garden 
 underneath the terraces, the sides of which 
 were honeycombed by rabbits, rises in my 
 view, making me wonder in what substance of 
 the body or the mind they have been stamped. 
 
 How few such rooms remain, and how few 
 houses such as that, to which the dark and 
 dampish chamber, with its three outside walls, 
 and deep-cut mouldings on the windows and 
 the doors, was library. We called it "book- 
 room," in the Scottish way, although the books 
 were few and mostly had belonged to a dead 
 uncle who had bought them all in India, and
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 215 
 
 on their yellowing leaves were stains of insects 
 from the East, and now and then a grass or 
 flower from Hyderabad or Kolapur (as pen- 
 cilled notes upon the margin said), transported 
 children to a land so gorgeous that the like of it 
 was never seen on earth. These books were all 
 well chosen, and such as men read fifty years 
 ago Macaulay's Essays, with the Penny 
 Cyclopaedia, Hume, Smollett, Captain Cook, 
 The Life of Dost Mohammed, Elphinstone's 
 Cabul Mission, with Burckhardt's Travels, 
 enthralling Mungo Park, and others of the 
 kind that at hill stations in the rains, or 
 in the plains during the summer, must have 
 passed many an hour of boredom and of heat 
 away for their dead purchaser. The rest 
 were books of heraldry and matters of the 
 kind, together with a set of Lever and of 
 Dickens, with plates by Cruikshank or by 
 Hablot Brown. One in particular set forth a 
 man upon a horse, with a red fluttering cloak 
 streaming out in the wind, galloping in the 
 midst of buffaloes with a long knife between 
 his teeth. But books and furniture and Indian 
 curiosities, with the high Adams chimney-piece 
 and portraits of the favourite hounds and 
 horses of three generations, were, as it were,
 
 216 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 keyed up to the two water-colours, one of 
 which hung up above a cabinet sunk far into 
 the wall and glazed, the other over a low double 
 door, deep as an embrasure. 
 
 All through the house the smell of damp, of 
 kingwood furniture, and roses dried in bowls, 
 blended and formed a scent which I shall 
 smell as long as life endures. This may, of 
 course, have been mere fancy ; but often in 
 old houses some picture or some piece of 
 furniture appears to give the keynote to the 
 rest. But it seemed evident to me that, in 
 some strange mysterious way, the pictures, 
 outstanding in their badness, had stamped 
 themselves upon the house more than the 
 Reynoldses and Raeburns on the walls, though 
 they were pictures of my ancestors, and the two 
 water-colours represented no known landscape 
 upon earth. They entered into my ideas so 
 strongly (though they were unobtrusive in 
 themselves) that, looking from the window-seat 
 in the deep bay of the sunk window in the 
 dining-room, across the terraces, over the sea of 
 laurels, beyond the rushy "parks," and out upon 
 the moss and the low lumpy hills that ran down 
 to the distant lake, almost divided into two by 
 a peninsula set with dark pine trees and with
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 217 
 
 planes, the landscape seemed unfinished and 
 lacking interest without the castles and the 
 chrome-laden skies of the twin masterpieces. 
 
 It may be, too, that the unnatural landscape 
 caused me to form unnatural views of life, 
 finding things interesting and people worthy of 
 remark whom others found quite commonplace, 
 merely upon their own account, and not from 
 the surroundings of their lives. So every one 
 connected with the house of the two works of 
 art became mixed up somehow with them in 
 a mysterious way, as well as things inanimate 
 and trees, the vegetation and the white mist 
 which half the year hung over moss and woods, 
 shrouding the hills and everything in its 
 unearthly folds, making them strange and half 
 unreal, as is a landscape in a dream. 
 
 Perhaps the fact that the house stood just 
 at the point where Lowlands end and the great 
 jumble of the Highland hills begins, and that 
 the people were compounded of both simples, 
 Saxon and Celtic mixed in equal parts, gave 
 them and all the place an interest such as 
 clings to borderlands the whole world over, 
 for even forty years ago one talked of "up 
 above the pass " as of a land distinct from 
 where we lived. Down from those regions
 
 2i8 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 wandered men speaking a strange tongue, 
 shaggy, and smelling of a mixture of raw 
 wool and peat smoke, whose dogs obeyed 
 them in a way in which no dog of any man 
 quite civilized, broken to railways and refresh- 
 ment-rooms, obeys his master's call. The 
 bond of union may have been that both slept 
 out in the wet dew, huddling together in the 
 morning round the fire for warmth, or some- 
 thing else, the half-possession of some sense 
 that we have lost, by means of which, all 
 unknown to themselves, the drover and his 
 dog communicated. Communion, very likely, 
 is the word, the old communion of all living 
 things, the lost connection between man and all 
 the other animals, which modern life destroys. 
 
 But, be that as it may, the men and dogs 
 seemed natives, and we who lived amongst the 
 mosses and the hills seemed strangers, by lack 
 of something or by excess of something else, 
 according to your view. 
 
 The herds of ponies that the men drove 
 before them on the road fell naturally into the 
 scheme of nature ; sorrels and yellow chestnuts, 
 creams and duns, they blended with the scrubby 
 woods and made no blot upon the shaggy hills. 
 Instinctively they took the long-forgotten fords,
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 219 
 
 crossing below the bridges, and standing knee- 
 deep in the stream, the water dripping from 
 their ropy tails and burdock-knotted manes. 
 The herds of kyloes too have gone, which 
 looked like animals of some race older than 
 our own. The men who drove them, with 
 their rough clothes of coarse grey wool, their 
 hazel crooks, and plaids about their shoulders, 
 whether the wind blew keenly or midges 
 teased in August, all have disappeared. Their 
 little camps upon the selvedge of the roads are 
 all forgotten, although I know them still, by 
 the bright grass that grows upon the ashes of 
 the fires. Or have they gone, and are the 
 hills brown, lumpy, heather-clad, and jewelled 
 after rain by myriad streams, merely illusions ; 
 and is it really that I myself have gone, and 
 they live on, deep down in the recesses of 
 some fairy hill of which I am not free ? 
 
 Men, too, like my friend Wallace of Gart- 
 chorrachan, have disappeared, and I am not 
 quite sure if we should bless the Lord on that 
 account. All through Menteith, and right 
 "across the hill" as far as Callander and 
 Doune, he was well known, and always styled 
 Laird Wallace, for though our custom is to 
 call men by the title of their lands, thus
 
 220 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 making them adscripti glebes to the very 
 soul, the word Gartchorrachan stuck in our 
 throats, although we readily twist and distort 
 the Gaelic place-names in our talk just as the 
 Spaniards mutilate the Arab words, smoothing 
 their corners and their angles out in the strong 
 current of their speech. 
 
 Dressed in grey tweed with bits of buckskin 
 let into the shoulders of his coat, for no one 
 ever saw him leave his house without a gun, he 
 was about the age that farmers in the north 
 seem to be born at that is, for years he had 
 been grey, but yet was vigorous, wore spectacles, 
 and his thick curly hair was matted like the 
 wool upon a ram, whilst from his ears and 
 nostrils grew thick tufts of bristles, just as a 
 growth of twigs springs from the trunk of an 
 old oak tree, where it has got a wound. 
 
 His house was like himself, old, grey, and 
 rambling, and smelt of gun oil, beeswax, and 
 of camphor, for he was versed in entomology, 
 and always had a case of specimens, at which 
 he laboured with a glass stuck in his eye, 
 reminding me of Cyclops or of Polyphemus, 
 or of an ogre in a story-book. Botany and 
 conchology and generally those sciences which 
 when pursued without a method soon became
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 221 
 
 trifling and a pastime, were his joys, and he 
 had cabinets in which the specimens reposed 
 under a heavy coat of dust, but duly ticketed 
 each with its Latin name. 
 
 He spoke good English as a general rule, 
 and when unmoved, as was the custom with the 
 people of his class and upbringing, but often 
 used broad Scotch, which he employed after 
 the fashion of a shield against the world, half 
 in a joking way and half against the sin of 
 self-revealment which we shun as the plague, 
 passing our lives like pebbles in a brook, which 
 rub against each other for an age, and yet 
 remain apart. 
 
 In early life he had contracted what he called 
 a "local liassong," the fruit of which had been 
 a daughter whom he had educated, and who 
 lived with him, half as his daughter, half as 
 housekeeper. Her father loved her critically, 
 and when she not infrequently swept china on 
 the floor as she passed through the drawing- room 
 (just as a tapir walks about a wood, breaking 
 down all the saplings in its path), he would 
 screw up one eye, and looking at her say, 
 " That's what you get from breeding from a 
 cart-mare, the filly's sure to throw back to the 
 dam."
 
 222 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 Withal he was a gentleman, having been in 
 the army and travelled in his youth, but had 
 not got much more by his experience than the 
 raw youth of whom his father said, " Aye, 
 Willie's been to Rome and back again, and 
 a' he's learnt is but to cast his sark aince every 
 day." But still he was a kindly man, the prey 
 of any one who had a specious story, the 
 providence of all lame horses and of dogs 
 quite useless for any kind of sport, all which 
 he bought at prices far above the value of the 
 most favoured members of their race. 
 
 His inner nature always seemed to be just 
 struggling forth almost against his will, mastering 
 his rough exterior, just as in pibrochs, after the 
 skirling of the pipes has died away, a tender 
 melody breaks out, fitful and plaintive, speaking 
 of islands lost in misty seas, of things forgotten 
 and misunderstood, of the faint, swishing noise 
 of heather in the rain moved by the breeze at 
 night, and which through minor modulations 
 and fantastic trills ends in a wild lament for 
 some Fingalian hero, like the wind sighing 
 through the pines. 
 
 Nothing was more congenial to his humour 
 than to unpack his recollections of the past, 
 seated before the fire, an oily black cigar which
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 223 
 
 he chewed almost like a quid between his 
 teeth, and with a glass of whisky by his side. 
 
 After expatiating upon the excellencies of 
 his lame, jibbing chestnut mare, that he had 
 bought at Falkirk Tryst from a quite honest 
 dealer, but which had gone mysteriously so lame 
 that even whisky for his groom had no effect in 
 curing her, he usually used to lament upon the 
 changes which the course of time had brought 
 about. All was a grief to him, as it is really 
 to all of us, if we all knew it, that some 
 particular landmark of his life had disappeared. 
 No one spoke Gaelic nowadays, although he 
 never in his life had known a word of it. The 
 use of " weepers " and crape hat-bands by the 
 country-folk on Sunday was quite discontinued, 
 and no one took their collie dogs to church. 
 Coffins were now no longer carried shoulder- 
 high across the hills from lonely upland straths, 
 as he remembered to have seen them in his 
 youth. Did not some funeral party in his 
 childhood, taking a short cut on a frozen loch, 
 fall through and perish to a man ? a circum- 
 stance he naturally deplored, but still regretted, 
 as men of older generations may have regretted 
 highwaymen, as they sat safely by their fire. 
 Although he never fished, he was quite certain
 
 224 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 no one now alive could busk a fly as well as a 
 departed worthy of his youth, one Dan-a-Haltie, 
 or make a withy basket or those osier loops 
 which formerly were stuck between the "divots" 
 in a dry stone dike, projecting outwards like a 
 torpedo netting, to stop sheep jumping from 
 a field. Words such as flauchtered feal and 
 laroch were hardly understood ; shepherds 
 read newspapers as they lay out upon the hill, 
 the Shorter Catechism had been miserably 
 abridged, and the old fir-tree by the Shannochill 
 was blasted at the top. 
 
 All these complaints he uttered philosoph- 
 ically, not in a plaintive way, but as a man 
 who, at his birth, had entered as it were into 
 a covenant with life just as it was, which he 
 for his part had faithfully observed, but was 
 deceived by fate. 
 
 Then when he had relieved his mind he used 
 to laugh and, puffing out the smoke of his thick 
 black cigar, which hung about the tufts which 
 sprung out of his nostrils, just as the mist hangs 
 dank above a bog, he would remark, " I'm 
 haverin'," as if he was afraid of having to 
 explain himself to something in his mind. On 
 these occasions, I used to let him sit a little, 
 and usually he would begin again, after a look
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 225 
 
 to see if I had noticed the gag he suddenly had 
 put upon himself, and then start off again. 
 "Ye mind my aunt, Miss Christian Jean?" 
 I did, eating her sweetmeats in my youth, and 
 trembling at her frown. 
 
 " Ye never heard me tell how it was I kisted 
 her," he said, and then again fell into contem- 
 plation, and once again began. "My aunt, 
 Miss Christian Jean, was a survival of the 
 fittest aye, ye know I am in some things quite 
 opposed to Darwin, the survival of the potter's 
 wheel in the Fijis and several other things . . . 
 aye, haverin' again ... or the most unfitted 
 to survive. 
 
 "She was a gentlewoman, . . . yes, yes, 
 the very word is now half ludicrous, ye need 
 not smile, . . . lady is a poor substitute. 
 Tall, dark, and masculine, and with a down 
 upon her upper lip that many a cornet of 
 dragoons, for there were cornets in those days, 
 might well have envied, she was a sort of 
 providence, jealous and swift in chastisement, 
 but yet a providence to all the younger mem- 
 bers of her race who came across her path. 
 
 " I see her now, her and her maid, old 
 Katherine Sinclair, a tall, gaunt Highland 
 woman, who might easily have walked straight
 
 226 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 from the pages of Rob Roy, and her old 
 butler, Robert Cameron, grey and red-faced, 
 and dressed eternally in a black suit, all stained 
 with snuff, a pawky sort of chiel, religious and 
 still with the spirit of revolt against all dogma- 
 tism which modern life and cheap and stereo- 
 typed instruction has quite stamped out to-day. 
 My aunt kept order in her house, that is as far 
 as others were concerned. Each day she read 
 her chapter, in what she styled the Book, not 
 taking over heed how she selected it, so that 
 the chapter once was duly read. It happened 
 sometimes that when she came into the room 
 where, as my cousin Andrew used to say ye 
 mind that he was drowned in one of those 
 Green's ships, fell from aloft whilst they were 
 reefing topsails in a dark night somewhere 
 about the Cape. 
 
 "I've heard him say he could come down the 
 weather-leach of a topsail, just like a monkey, 
 by the bolt ropes. . . . Where was I, eh ? 
 Aye, I mind, he used to say that my aunt's 
 prayers reminded him of service in a ship, with 
 all hands mustered ; so as I said, my aunt 
 would sometimes open up the book and come 
 upon a chapter full of names, and how some one 
 begat another body and sometimes upon things
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 227 
 
 perfectly awesome for a maiden lady to read 
 aloud, for 'twas all one to her. 
 
 " Then the old butler would put his hand 
 up to his mouth and whisper, ' Mem, Miss 
 Christian, Mem, ye're wandered,' and she would 
 close the book, or start again upon another 
 chapter and maybe twice as long. 
 
 " My aunt and her two satellites kept such 
 good order, that a visitor from England, seeing 
 her neat and white-capped maids file in and 
 take their seats facing the menservants, 
 expressed her pleasure at the well ordered, 
 comely worship, and received the answer, 
 ' Yes, my dear, ye see at family prayers we 
 have the separation of the sexes, but I under- 
 stand when they meet afterwards at the stair 
 foot, the kissing beats the cracking of a whip.' 
 
 " Poor Aunt Christian, I used to shiver at 
 her nod, and well remember when a youth how 
 she would flyte me when I pinched the maids, 
 and say, ' Laddie, I canna" have you making 
 the girls squeal like Highland ponies ; it is not 
 decent, and decency comes next after morality, 
 sometimes, I think, before it, for it can be 
 attained, whereas the other is a counsel of 
 perfection set up on high, but well out of our 
 reach.'
 
 228 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 " A pretty moraliser was my poor aunt, 
 almost a heathen in her theory, guided by 
 what she said were natural laws, and yet a 
 Puritan in practice, whereas I always was 
 a theoretic Puritan, but shaped my life ex- 
 clusively by natural laws, as they appear to 
 me. 
 
 " Let ministers just haver as they will, one 
 line of conduct is not possible for nephews and 
 for aunts. Take David, now, the man after 
 the Lord's own heart, and ask yourself what 
 would have happened if his aunt . . . aye, 
 aye, I'm wandered from my tale ... I ken 
 I'm wandering. 
 
 " Well, well, it seemed as if my aunt might 
 have gone on for ever, getting a little dryer 
 and her face more peakit, as the years went 
 by and her old friends dropped off and left 
 her all alone. That's what it is, ye see ; it's 
 got to come, although it seems impossible 
 whilst we sit talking here and drinking that 
 is, I drinking and you listening to me talk. 
 One wintry day I was just sitting wiping the 
 cee-spring of a gun, and looking out upon the 
 avenue, when, through the wreaths, I saw a 
 boy on a bit yellow pony-beast come trotting 
 through the snow.
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 229 
 
 "It was before the days of telegrams, and I 
 jaloused that there was something special, or no 
 one would have sent the laddie out on such a 
 day, with the snow drifted half a yard upon the 
 ground, the trees all white with cranruch like 
 the sugar on a cake, and the frost keen enough 
 to split a pudding stone and grind it into sand. 
 
 " I sent the laddie to the kitchen fire, and 
 ripped the envelope, whilst the bit pony rooted 
 round for grass and walked upon the reins. 
 The letter told me that my aunt had had 
 a fit, was signed by ' Robert Cameron, butler,' 
 and was all daubed with snuff, and in a 
 postscript I was asked to hurry, for the time 
 was short, and to come straight across the hill 
 as the low road was blocked by the snow 
 drifting and nobody could pass. I harnessed 
 up my mare not the bit blooded chestnut I 
 drive now" this was the way in which he 
 spoke of the lame cripple which had conveyed 
 him to my house "but a stout sort of Highland 
 mouse-coloured beastie that I had, rather short 
 backit, a little hammer-headed, and with the 
 hair upon the fetlocks like a Clydesdale. . . . 
 Maun, I think ye dinna' often see such sort of 
 beasts the now." I mentally thanked God for 
 it, and he again launched out into his tale.
 
 230 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 "An awful drive, I'm tellin' ye! I hadna' 
 got above Auchyle ye mind, at the old bridge 
 just where yon English tourist coupit his creels, 
 and gaed to heaven, maybe last summer when 
 I saw I had a job. The snow balled in the 
 mare's feet as big as cabbages, and made her 
 stotter in her gait, just like a drunken curler 
 ettlin' to walk upon a rink. I had to take her 
 by the head till we got on the flat ground, up 
 about Rusky. Man, it was arctic, and the little 
 loch lay like a sheet of glass that had been 
 breathed upon, with the dead bulrushes and 
 reeds all sticking through the ice ! The island 
 in the loch seemed but a blob of white, and 
 the old tower (I dinna' richtly mind if, at one 
 time, it belonged to some of your own folk) 
 loomed up like Stirling Castle or like Doune 
 in the keen frosty air. The little firwood on 
 the east side of the old change-house that 
 one they called Wright, or some such name, 
 once keepit was full of roe, all sheltering like 
 cows, so cold and starved they scarcely steered 
 when I passed by and gave a shout to warm 
 my lungs and hearten up the mare ; and a cock 
 capercailzie, moping and miserable, sat on a 
 fir tree like a barn-door fowl. I ploutered on 
 just to where there used to be a gate across
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 231 
 
 the road, where ye see Uamh Var and the 
 great shoulder of Ben Ledi stretching up out 
 by the pass of Leny and the old chapel of 
 St. Bryde. It was fair awesome ; I did not 
 rightly know the landscape with the familiar 
 features blotted out. I very nearly got myself 
 wandered just in the straight above the Gart, 
 for all the dikes were sunk beneath the snow, 
 and the hedge-tops peeped up like box in an 
 old cabbage-garden. At last I reached the 
 avenue, the mare fair taigled, and the ice 
 hanging from her fetlocks and her mane and 
 wagging to and fro. The evergreens were, 
 so to speak, a-wash, and looked like beds 
 of parsley or of greens, and underneath 
 the trees the squirrels' footsteps in the snow 
 seemed those of some strange birds, where 
 they had melted and then frozen on the ground. 
 Across the sky a crow or two flew slowly, 
 flapping their wings as if the joint oil had been 
 frozen in their bones and cawing sullenly. 
 
 " On the high steps which led up to the door 
 the butler met me, and as he took my coat, 
 said, * Laird, ye are welcome ; your poor dear 
 auntie's going. Hech, sirs, 'twill be an awfu' 
 nicht for the poor leddy to be fleein' naked 
 through the air towards the judgment-seat.
 
 232 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 Will ye tak speerits or a dish o' tea after your 
 coldsome drive, or will I tak' ye straight in to 
 your aunt? I'm feared she willna' know you. 
 But His will be done, though I could wish He 
 micht hae held His hand a little longer; but 
 we must not repine. I've just been readin' out 
 to her from the old Book, ye ken, passin' the 
 time awa' and waitin' for the end.' 
 
 "All day my aunt lay dozing, half-conscious 
 and half-stupefied, and all the day the butler, 
 sitting by the bed, read psalms and chapters, 
 to which she sometimes seemed to pay attention, 
 and at others lay so still we thought that she 
 was dead. Now and again he stopped his 
 reading, and peering at his mistress with his 
 spectacles pushed up, wiped off the tears that 
 trickled down his face with his red handker- 
 chief, and, as if doubting he were reading to the 
 living or the dead, said, ' Nod yer heid, Miss 
 Christian,' which she did feebly, and he, satisfied 
 she understood, mumbled on piously in a thick 
 undertone. 
 
 "Just about morning she passed away quite 
 quietly, the maids and butler standing round 
 the bed, they crying silently, and he snorting 
 in his red pocket-handkerchief, with the tears 
 running down his face. The gaunt old H ighland
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 233 
 
 waiting- woman raised a high wail which echoed 
 through the cold and silent house, causing 
 the dogs to bark and the old parrot scream, 
 and the butler stottered from the room, 
 muttering that he would go and see if tea was 
 ready, closing the door behind him with his 
 foot, as if he feared the figure on the bed 
 would scold him, as she had often done during 
 her life, if it slammed to and made a noise. 
 
 "All the week through it snowed, and my 
 aunt's house was dismal, smelling of cheese and 
 honey, yellow soap, of jam, of grease burnt in 
 the fire, and with the dogs and cats uncared for 
 rambling about and sleeping on the chairs. 
 The cold was penetrating, and I wandered up 
 and down the stairs quite aimlessly, feeling 
 like Alexander Selkirk in the melancholy house, 
 which seemed an island cut off from the world 
 by a white sea of snow. None of Aunt 
 Christian's friends or relatives could come, as 
 all the roads were blocked ; even her coffin was 
 not sent till a few hours before the funeral, the 
 cart that brought it stalling in the snow, and 
 the black-coated undertaker's men carrying it 
 shoulder-high through the thick wreaths upon 
 the avenue. 
 
 " The servants would not have a stranger
 
 234 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 
 
 touch the corpse, and the old butler and myself 
 kisted my aunt, lifting her body from the bed 
 between the two of us. A week had passed 
 and she looked black and shrunken, and as I 
 lifted her, the chill from the cold flesh struck 
 me with horror, and welled into the bones. 
 I could not kiss her as she lay like a mummy 
 in the kist, for the shrunk face with the white 
 clothes about the chin was not the same Aunt 
 Christian's, whom I had loved and before whom 
 I trembled for so many years, but changed 
 somehow and horrible to see. 
 
 " The butler did, looking at me, as I thought, 
 half reproachfully as I stood silently, not once 
 crying but half stupefied, and then as she lay 
 shrunken and brown on the white satin lining 
 of the kist, we stood and looked at one another, 
 just as we had been partners in a crime, till 
 they began to hammer down the Hd. A 
 drearsome sound it makes. One feels the 
 nails are sticking in the flesh, and every time 
 ye hear it, it just affects ye more than the last 
 time, the same as an earthquake, as I mind I 
 heard a traveller say one day in Edinburgh. 
 What the old butler did, I do not mind ; but I 
 just dandered out into the garden, and washed 
 my hands in snow, not that I felt a skunner at
 
 MISS CHRISTIAN JEAN 235 
 
 my poor Aunt Christian's flesh, but somehow 
 I had to do it, for ye ken 'twas the first time." 
 
 Laird Wallace stopped just as a horse props 
 suddenly when he is fresh and changes feet, 
 then breaking into Scotch, said : " I have 
 talked enough. That's how I kisted my Aunt 
 Christian Jean, puir leddy, a sair job it was, 
 and dreich. . . . Thank ye, nae soddy, I'll tak' 
 a drop of Lagavoulin." Then lighting a cigar, 
 he said, " Ring for my dog-cart, please," and 
 when it came he clambered to the seat, and 
 pointing to his spavined mare, said, " Man, a 
 gran' beast, clean thorough-bred, fit to run for 
 her life " (and this to me who knew her) ; then, 
 bidding me good-night, drew his whip smartly 
 on her scraggy flank, and vanished through the 
 trees.
 
 TOBAR NA REIL 
 
 RIGHT at the summit of the pass it lies, nothing 
 above it but the sky. On every side the 
 billowing heath-clad hills engirdle it about. 
 Flat stones encircle it, and on its surface water 
 spiders walk. Red persicaria, with wax-like 
 stalks and ragged leaves, grows by its edge. 
 Below it stretches out a vast brown moss, 
 honeycombed here and there with black peat 
 hags, and a dark lake spreads out, ringed on 
 one side with moss, and on the other set like 
 a jewel in a pine wood, with a white stretch of 
 intervening sand. On it are islands with great 
 sycamores and chestnuts, stag-headed but still 
 vigorous, and round their shores the bulrushes 
 keep watch like sentinels. Mists rise from moss 
 and lake and creep about the corries of the 
 hills, blending the woods and rocks into a 
 steamy chaos, vast and unfathomable, through 
 which a little burn unseen, but musical, runs 
 tinkling through the stones. So at the little 
 bealach the well lies open to the sky, too high 
 
 236
 
 TOBAR NA REIL 237 
 
 for the lake mists to touch it, as it looks up at 
 the stars. 
 
 They say that on a certain day in mid- 
 summer, a star when at its zenith shines into 
 the well. Which the star is, if Rigel or Alg61 
 or Aldebaran with his russet fire, is clean 
 forgotten, for nowadays tradition has scant 
 place in men's imagining. He who looks on 
 the water at the fateful hour, and sees the star 
 reflected in the well, acquires again the ancient 
 universal tongue, by which in ages past men 
 and the animals held speech. For him the 
 language of the birds becomes intelligible. The 
 trees that groan or whisper in the breeze 
 divulge their lore, and disclose all that they 
 have seen in their long peaceful lives. Fish in 
 the rivers and the lakes have no more dread of 
 him, and, rising to the surface of the linns, tell 
 him the marvels of the deep, whilst snakes and 
 lizards, with newts, the moles and bats, impart 
 their troubles or their joys, making their little 
 secrets plain, by the strange virtues of the 
 mystic star transmitted through the well. 
 
 There is no record of any one who, having 
 drunk, obtained the power and straightway got 
 into communication with all animals and things. 
 No doubt if at the appointed hour the fountain
 
 238 TOBAR NA REIL 
 
 had turned all to gold, a town would have 
 arisen on the pass, and Baal's priesthood or an 
 aristocracy would have reserved the right to 
 drink and gaze upon the well, and temples of 
 Alg61 or Aldebaran would have sprung up as 
 if by magic from the hill. But man, who lives 
 an outcast from all living things, cut off by 
 pride and want of sympathy from beasts and 
 birds, and careless of his own connection with 
 the world except so far as it may bring him 
 the twin curses, wealth and power, which have 
 combined to make him vile, cared not for such 
 a gift. So trees and animals and beasts, with 
 stones and streams, watched vainly every 
 recurring year throughout the centuries for 
 some adventurer who should break through 
 the bonds which held the self-crowned monarch 
 of the world in silence, condemned for ever to 
 live dumb but to his own kind's speech, whilst 
 on all sides secrets he never dreamed of were 
 waiting to be heard. So as a Highlander went 
 past, driving his cattle from the low country 
 in Menteith, or in the summer evenings a 
 group of men wrapped in their plaids, with 
 curly hazel shepherd's sticks, and carrying long 
 single-barrelled Spanish guns, trotted along the 
 steep and winding path, their deerskin shoes
 
 TOBAR NA REIL 239 
 
 making no sound upon the stones, the rabbits 
 sitting at their holes watched them expectantly. 
 The birds upon the branches turned their 
 round heads and looked towards the well. 
 The trees and plants and heather on the hill 
 seemed to sigh softly in the summer air, as if 
 inviting them to halt until the mystic star 
 should rise, then drink and break the spell. 
 
 But they, absorbed in the affairs of life, 
 which lead men onward prisoners to the grave, 
 discoursed of hogs and pownie-beasts, of trysts 
 and markets, and of the price of hirsells and of 
 queys. At times they stopped and drank, but 
 never lingered, scooping the water in their 
 palms or in their cuachan of birch-wood hooped 
 with silver, drawing their hands across their 
 mouths, and sometimes murmuring, " Aye, och 
 aye, they say that when a body drinks here, 
 when the stars are up, he learns a vast o' 
 things, that's why they ca' it Tobar na Reil, 
 but I mind lying here aince o' a summer's 
 nicht, sleeping ye ken, after some awqua that 
 I had doon by at old McKureton's, and never 
 learned a thing." 
 
 And whilst they talked, the trees and stars, 
 half-sleeping in the cold moon's light, listened 
 but drowsily, and all they heard was Angus
 
 240 TOBAR NA REIL 
 
 answer Finlay, " Och aye, McKureton just 
 keeps the finest awqua that I ever drank no 
 more, Finlay McLachlan," and his compeer 
 and fellow-driver, looking up whilst kneeling 
 by the spring, would answer sapiently, " And 
 neither did I too." And so the well slept on, 
 having for its one tragedy the fight between 
 the Grahams of Menteith, and Stuarts on a 
 raid from Appin, whose leader's head, struck 
 by a sword-cut from his body at a blow, rolled 
 down the pass, calling out imprecations even 
 after death. 
 
 With the exception of this brief tragedy, 
 history the well has none. Its very name 
 means nothing to the men who now inhabit, 
 where once its namers dwelt. The legend 
 lives as a tradition, to be laughed or wondered 
 at, according to the attitude of mind of him 
 who hears it, for education has new superstitions 
 of its own, which have expelled those of the 
 older race. Who that to-day, when all flee 
 from responsibility as from the plague, would 
 incur the burden of the sorrow of the trees, 
 the winds, the beasts? for man aspires not to 
 equality but to command, by which, when he 
 possesses it, he straightly becomes an outcast 
 from his kind.
 
 TOBAR NA REIL 241 
 
 Yet, had it been but for the pleasure of 
 another sorrow to his life, 'tis strange that no 
 one quenched his thirst, for joy is transient, 
 whilst sorrow lives for ever, and to prove 
 sorrows yet unknown might have stirred some 
 one with imagination, had there been any such 
 a traveller on the road which winds by Glenny 
 to the valley of the Teith. And yet the district 
 set with Sith-bhrughan and with traditions 
 of a fairy causeway in the lake, a borderland 
 of races in the past, a frontier where the 
 Lowland hob and Highland pixie met on neutral 
 ground, to dance upon the green, seemed to 
 invite experiment, and call for its Columbus to 
 explore a newer world than that he saw in 
 Guanahani from his caravel. 
 
 A gentle world in which no hatred reigns ; 
 where envy and all malice are unknown, where 
 each one tells his secret to his friend unwittingly, 
 because the speech they use is universal and 
 without volition, and not as ours, confined to 
 persons and articulate. The speech that lives 
 in the clear water of the well, at the conjuncture 
 of the star, has no vocabulary, no rules, no 
 difficulties, but he who has it, speaks as does 
 the wind, and saying nothing in particular, is 
 
 understood of all. Thus it can never lie, or 
 R
 
 242 TOBAR NA REIL 
 
 lead astray, and so is valueless to us, as 
 valueless as gold upon a desert island, with no 
 one to enslave. 
 
 No one has claimed it since the first framers 
 of the legend paddled their coracles upon the 
 lake ; no one will claim it, or ever think but 
 for an instant of the treasure waiting to be 
 grasped. Red-deer and roe and kyloes on the 
 hills are all born free of it, and swallows from 
 the south need no interpreter, but straightway 
 tell their travels to the birds who but a week 
 ago have left the pole, or to the weasels and 
 the wrens who never wandered more than a 
 mile or two from where they saw the light ; they 
 find themselves as much at home amongst the 
 scrubby copse, as they were, only a month ago, 
 in cane brakes and in palms. 
 
 But if the birds and beasts, the trees and 
 grasses and the stones, mourn the estrange- 
 ment and the want of faith of man, so does 
 mankind feel vaguely its own loneliness amongst 
 created things with which it cannot have 
 communication, and before which it always 
 must be dumb. What tender idylls moss and 
 lichens could unfold, if only some one of the 
 passers-by throughout the centuries had learned 
 their speech, and taught his children, taking
 
 TOBAR NA REIL 243 
 
 them, as the most sacred duty in his power, 
 upon the star's appearance in its round, to 
 drink and learn, and thus transmit their know- 
 ledge to their children, making them all 
 hereditary dragomen by right divine, betwixt 
 their race and the creation of the beasts. 
 
 Drink and admire, the motto says, upon the 
 well in far Marrakesh set among its palms. 
 Above the fountain, built by some pious 
 pilgrim, who perhaps had felt the desert's 
 thirst and reared this monument to the one 
 God He who alone brings comfort in the 
 sands the horseshoe arch is blue with pottery. 
 Intricate patterns marked in lustrous tiles cross 
 and recross each other, and arabesques repeat 
 some pious saw or play upon God's name. 
 Over the humble fountain on the pass 
 unknown to fame, the skies are canopy, and 
 the stars set in them, celestial glow-worms 
 of the firmament, which mark the hours the 
 passers-by neglect. No pious pilgrim there 
 has hedged about the spring with masonry ; no 
 sculptured stone relates its virtues, for it serves 
 but as a drinking-place for roe, who as they 
 drink admire and give their thanks instinctively, 
 wiser by far than man. No one remembers 
 the lone well among the heath or cares for it,
 
 244 TOBAR NA REIL 
 
 but to smile scornfully at the old simple legend 
 of the past. In all the district where it lies, 
 few know its bearings, and for the name, refer 
 to it "as a sort o' Gaelic fash aboot a star; 
 I mind my feyther kent the meaning o' it," 
 dismissing it at once as "juist a haver, auncient 
 but fair redeeklous, an auld wife's clishmaclaver," 
 beneath the notice of an "eddicated man." 
 
 So it sleeps quietly upon the pass just where 
 the road descends to Vennachar and rises 
 from Menteith. Winds sweep the bents and 
 rustle in the ling, setting the cotton-grass 
 a-quivering, bowing the heads of the bog 
 asphodel, and carrying with them the sharp 
 perfume of the gale, sweeter and homelier 
 than the spice of Araby. 
 
 In the dark mirror of the lake below, the 
 priory and the castle hang head downwards, 
 and on the bulrushed shore the wavelets break 
 amongst the stones. The earl's old pleasance, 
 now neglected, is a park for cows, its few 
 surviving sycamores have withered at the top, 
 and soon will follow those who planted them 
 into the misty region of the past. 
 
 The well, the star, the scrubby oak copse on 
 the hill, the old Fingalian road, distinct in 
 moonlight, or in the morning after frost, for
 
 TOBAR NA REIL 245 
 
 time itself appears unable to efface the taint 
 man's footsteps leave upon the ground, remain 
 and call to the chance passer-by to stop and 
 drink at the conjunction of the star. They 
 call in vain, and nature in the breeze still raises 
 its lament, uncomprehended by the ears of 
 man, who, in his self-forged fetters, fails to 
 understand.
 
 THE GREY KIRK 
 
 IN a grey valley between hills, shut out from 
 all the world by mist and moors, there lies a 
 village with a little church. 
 
 The ruined castle in the reedy loch, by which 
 stand herons fishing in the rank growth of 
 flags, of bulrush and hemp-agrimony which 
 fringes it, is scarcely greyer than the hills. 
 The outcrop of the stone is grey, the louring 
 clouds, the slated roofs, the shingly river's bed 
 and the clear water of the stream. The very 
 trout that dart between the stones, or hang 
 suspended where the current joins the linn, 
 look grey as eels. 
 
 Green markings on the moors show where 
 once paths the border prickers followed on 
 their wiry nags led towards the south, the land 
 of fatted beeves and well-stored larders, clearly 
 designed by Providence or fate to be the 
 jackman's prey, but long disused, forgotten 
 and grassed over, though with the ineffaceable 
 imprint of immemorial use still clear. 
 
 246
 
 THE GREY KIRK 247 
 
 Dark, geometrical plantations of black fir 
 and spruce deface the hills, which nature 
 evidently made to bear a coat of scrubby oak 
 and birch. Wire fences gird them round, the 
 posts well tarred against the weather, and the 
 barbed wire so taut that the fierce winds 
 might use them as yEolian harps, could they 
 but lend themselves to song. 
 
 A district which the wildness of the past 
 has so impressed, that the main line of railway 
 steals through its corries and across its moors 
 as it were under protest, and where the curlew 
 mocks the engine's whistle with his wilder cry. 
 
 The village clusters round the kirk, as bees 
 crowd round their queen, the older houses 
 thatched. Their coping-stones carved with a 
 rope, remain to show how, in the older world, 
 their rustic architects secured their roofs against 
 the blast. 
 
 No doubt the hamlet grew between the 
 castle and the church. The jackman of the 
 chief, the sacristan and kindly tenants of the 
 church, ready and near at hand to put on 
 splent and spur, and able to take lance or 
 sprig of hyssop in their hand at the first tinkle 
 of the bell or rout of horn. 
 
 The castle in the loch has dwindled to a pile
 
 248 THE GREY KIRK 
 
 of stones, from which spring alders, birches 
 and sycamores, whose keys hang yellow in the 
 wind, unlocking nothing but the sadness of the 
 heart, which marks their growth, from the 
 decay of the abandoned keep. 
 
 A modern mansion set with its shrubberies 
 and paltry planted woods, where once the 
 Caledonian forest sheltered the wild white 
 cattle in its glades, seems out of place in the 
 surrounding grey. Its lodge, with trim-cut 
 laurels and with aucubas and iron gate, run in 
 a foundry from a mould, is trivial, comfortable 
 and modern ; and the low sullen hills appear 
 to scorn it in their fight with time, for they 
 remain unchanged from the bold time of 
 rugging and of rieving, when spearsmen, not 
 a pensioned butler, kept the gate. 
 
 The crumbling and decayed stone wall, 
 secluding jealously the boggy meadows of the 
 park, shuts off the modern mansion with its 
 electric light, its motor-cars, its liveried ser- 
 vants and its air of castellated meanness, from 
 the old houses huddling in the wynd. They 
 look towards the chapel with its high-pitched 
 roof, its squat round tower with crenellated 
 top and its sharp windows pointed like a lance. 
 It seems to gaze at them, as if it felt they were
 
 THE GREY KIRK 249 
 
 the only links that time has left it with its old 
 own world. The eye avoids the modern 
 buildings in the town, the parish church, four 
 square and hideous, with windows like a house, 
 and from the hills falls on the chapel and is 
 satisfied. Only in some old missal, with the 
 illustrations by some monk adscribed to his 
 small round of daily cares, can you behold its 
 equal, as it stands desolate and grey. 
 
 The chapel of a race of warriors, men dark 
 and grey as is the stone of which its walls are 
 built, once a lone outpost of the great mother 
 fort in Rome, it lingers after them, sheltering 
 their tombs and speaking of their fame. In- 
 stinctively one feels that once its doors stood 
 open, just as it were a mosque or church in 
 lands where faith continues the whole week, 
 and men pray as they eat or sleep, just when 
 they feel inclined, and naturally as birds. 
 
 In the green churchyard, whose grassy 
 hillocks wave it like a sea, the long grey tomb- 
 stones of the undistinguished dead appear like 
 boats that make towards some haven, laying 
 their courses by the beacon of the tower. 
 
 The church itself floats like a ship turned 
 bottom upwards on the grassy sea. Its voyage 
 is ended, and the men who once clattered in
 
 2 5 o THE GREY KIRK 
 
 armour in its aisles and through its nave now 
 sleep below its flags. A maimed ritual and 
 a sterner creed prevail, and those who worship 
 in the church have shown their faith by laying 
 down encaustic tiles over the spur-marked 
 stones on which their forebears jingled in 
 their mail. A fair communion table of hewn 
 stone, smug and well-finished and with the 
 wounds upon the bleeding heart all stanched 
 (as one would think), stands where the altar 
 stood, cold and uninteresting, a symbol of the 
 age. Non ragioniam ; on every side, lie those 
 who, in their time, carried their wars across the 
 border, and on the bridge at Rome charged on 
 the people who pressed round them, just as 
 they would have charged in Edinburgh, had 
 any other clan presumed to take the croon of 
 the old causeway of the High Street, and 
 brought upon themselves an excommunication 
 from the Pope. 
 
 Stretched under canopies of stone they lie, 
 looking so grim and so impenitent, that one is 
 sure they must be satisfied with their present- 
 ments, if, looking down on their old haunts, 
 they see their images. Many are absent who 
 would have filled a niche right worthily, Tine- 
 man and the Black Knight of Jedburgh and
 
 THE GREY KIRK 251 
 
 others of the house, who, in their time, shook 
 Scotland to the core. But in the middle of the 
 aisle, in leaden caskets hooped with iron and 
 padlocked, lie two hearts. One, that of Archi- 
 bald who belled the cat. The other heart has 
 travelled much, and in its life beat higher with 
 all generous thoughts than any of its race. 
 
 He who possessed it (or was possessed by it), 
 liked ever better, as he said, to hear the lave- 
 rocks' singing than the cheeping of the mouse. 
 His hands were able, all his adventurous life, 
 to keep his cheeks from scars, as he averred in 
 Seville to the Spanish knight, who wondered 
 at their absence from his face. Carrying a 
 heart to Palestine, he fell, not in the Holy 
 Land, but on the frontiers of Granada, that 
 last outpost of the Eastern world. The heart 
 he carried lies at Melrose, and his own, sealed 
 fast in lead, soldered perhaps in some wild 
 camp lost in the Ajarafe" of Sevilla, is the chief 
 ornament of the grey chapel of his race. 
 
 Set like a ship, the chapel lies in the long 
 waves of sullen hill and moor that roll away 
 towards the south. 
 
 In its long voyage through the sea of time, 
 crews of wild warriors have clung to it, as their 
 one refuge from the spear of life. Each in their
 
 252 THE GREY KIRK 
 
 turn have fallen away, leaving it lonely, but 
 still weather-tight and taut ; a monument of 
 faith, as some may think, or of good masonry 
 and well-slaked lime, as the profane may say, 
 still sailing on the billowy moors which 
 stretch towards Muirkirk ; so little altered that 
 any one of those who in the past have prayed 
 within its walls, if he returned to a changed 
 world, would cling to it as the one thing he 
 knew. 
 
 So it drifts on upon its voyage through time, 
 bearing its freight of warriors to their port.
 
 DAGOS 
 
 CADIZ was stifling, and all the world sat waiting 
 for the breeze. In the dark streets, which cut 
 like drains right through the town, not a 
 breath stirred to break the heat. The cries of 
 water-sellers, with their guttural " Aguaa," 
 long prolonged and Arab sounding, broke the 
 still air, just as a corncrake's cry falls on the 
 ear as a relief, when in the wheat-fields of the 
 south the sun pours down as he would bake 
 the earth, and seems to set the air in motion 
 by its sound. The gardens in the plazas 
 drooped, and the long bells of the daturas 
 closed up as if they slept the siesta during 
 the hot hours. 
 
 The city lay, a very cup of burnished silver, 
 in the fierce glare, and in the waters of the 
 bay the pink and blue and yellow houses were 
 reflected, looking as if a coral reef had turned 
 into a town. The waves just crept about the 
 great black shoal known as " Las Puercas," 
 lazily swashing on the cruel stones which have 
 
 253
 
 254 DAGOS 
 
 so often pierced the sides of ships, in winter, 
 when the Levante blows. 
 
 Men slept in rows on the lee side of 
 boats. The horses in the cabs hung their 
 tired heads, and where a man threw water at 
 a cafe" door upon the street, a steam ascended, 
 as if the stones were heated underneath. 
 
 Only upon the alameda, that of Apodaca, 
 where the sea-breeze first strikes, the palm 
 trees braved the sun, seeming to draw new 
 life from out its rays ; and at their tops there 
 ran a murmur, as when a little air just plays 
 upon the outside leach of a lateen, making it 
 crinkle up before it fills the belly of the sail 
 and strains upon the sheet. 
 
 But in the cafes of the Calle Ancha the 
 people, sitting drinking their horchata and agraz, 
 talked just as loud and just as earnestly as if 
 their conversation ran on some great principle, 
 or as if something was at stake. Upon the 
 shady side, the ladies, their faces white with 
 powder, which made their great black eyes 
 look larger and more lustrous, walked up and 
 down, swaying a little on their hips, just as a 
 thoroughbred walks in the paddock before 
 saddling, receiving as they went a shower of 
 compliments and quodlibets> which would have
 
 DAGOS 255 
 
 made a woman unaccustomed to such fire 
 fairly turn tail and run, but which just made 
 the colour heighten a little underneath the 
 powder on their cheeks, increased the flame 
 of their black eyes, and made the swaying of 
 their walk a little more pronounced as they 
 held on their course, as the feluccas in the bay 
 stood up to a beam wind. 
 
 Just at the corner of the Calle Columela at 
 a small cafe where sailors congregate, a fan 
 shop on one side and on the other a refino, 
 a group of men sat talking lazily. 
 
 At last, one rising, said, " I hear it coming," 
 and as he spoke, up the deep street there came 
 a sighing, and the breeze, bearing a little 
 flight of bats before it, which passed like 
 swallows just above the heads of all the idlers 
 with a shrill twittering, came rushing through 
 the funnel made by the houses, after the fashion 
 of a bore, when it ascends a river on a low, 
 shoaly coast. 
 
 It came, bending the palm trees with its 
 sweep, making their leaves all rustle on the 
 trunks, and spreading a red haze over the low 
 and arid hills above San Lucar, and by Rota, 
 and making ships at anchor at the Trocadero
 
 256 DAGOS 
 
 balance a little as the white lacy net of foam 
 ran seething past their bows. 
 
 Within the town it worked a wondrous 
 change, for when the dust it brought at first 
 had cleared away, the horses in the cabs 
 pricked up their ears and looked as if ten years 
 had been rolled off their lives ; the loafers on 
 the quays got up and shook themselves, throw- 
 ing their tattered jackets, which had served for 
 pillows on the stones, across their shoulders, 
 and, after having looked out seaward with a 
 long stare at the horizon to see if any vessel 
 was in sight, straggled in groups towards the 
 plaza to pass the evening on the seats. 
 
 Fans worked less lazily, and in the cafes 
 men, after lighting cigarettes, mopped their 
 wet brows and settled down to talk, which in 
 the little fairy city, with its long piles of dazzling 
 salt ringing it round like outworks to landward, 
 and its blue sea which, dashing up against the 
 walls, showers spray upon the blood and orange 
 banner on the low ramparts of the fort, is the 
 chief object of their lives. 
 
 The sailors in the little cafe, captains of 
 ships of every nation upon earth, all felt the 
 spell of the invigorating breeze, and by degrees 
 their talk after a few attempts at topics which
 
 DAGOS 257 
 
 to most landsmen have a certain vogue, 
 as horses, women, theatres, and politics, soon 
 by degrees drifted back naturally to the one 
 subject of real interest, the sea, the element 
 by which all lived, and which whilst all abusing 
 so had wound itself about their lives as to 
 exclude aught else as absolutely as if they had 
 been born in it, like porpoises or whales. 
 Mostly the men were northerners, blue-eyed 
 and freckled Swedes, Danes, or Norwegians, 
 whose rough serge clothes and heavy boots 
 contrasted strangely with the stray Spaniards 
 and Italians who in their pointed-toed, white 
 canvas shoes and spotless linen scarcely looked 
 sailors beside their brethren from the North, 
 whose huge red hands beat on the table when 
 they emphasized their points, like a door 
 banging in the wind. 
 
 Two things, however, formed a link between 
 them, the sea, and that they all spoke English, 
 more or less broken, as a common lingua franca 
 in which they all could meet. 
 
 Captain Karl Harold, who had sailed for five- 
 and-thirty years out of his little native port in 
 Norway, bringing down deals to Malaga, to 
 Almeria, and to the other ports in what he 
 called "the Middle Sea," sat smoking a great 
 s
 
 258 DAGOS 
 
 meerschaum pipe, on which a boar -hunt was 
 depicted carved in high relief. His great red 
 throat was cut across by the thin narrow 
 linen band of his grey flannel shirt, till it looked 
 like one portion of an hour-glass, and you 
 divined that underneath it must be thinner and 
 probably quite white. A small straw hat was 
 set upon the back of his enormous head, and on 
 his forehead stood great beads of perspiration, 
 which he mopped up continually with a red 
 pocket-handkerchief quite large enough to hoist 
 upon a raft supposing he had suddenly been 
 wrecked. 
 
 Quiet and unassuming, he sat drinking beer 
 which disappeared down his capacious throat 
 just as a fishing-boat may be sucked in and 
 disappear from sight when caught at certain 
 junctures of the tides in Coirebhreacain 
 whirlpool or in the Moskoe-Strom. His 
 speech was slow, and as he talked of countries 
 he had seen, of port dues, of the villainies of 
 certain governments which kept no lights on 
 dangerous places of their coasts, his curly golden 
 fleece, flecked here and there with grey, shaken 
 by his emotion, set one a-thinking of what a 
 sheep would look like if it could be endued 
 with understanding and wake up to a sense of
 
 DAGOS 259 
 
 all the wrongs it and its kind endured at the 
 fell hands of man. 
 
 " Gadiss," he said, " is fine little town ; not 
 too much cultivated the people in it ; no man 
 have heard of Ibsen ; . . . de beer is goot 
 too, but not very strong. I bore myself soon 
 in Gadiss, and never can get any repairs done 
 to my ship. I have mine main-yard littel 
 sprung now, and have to go round to 
 Gartagena to get it fixed. The theatre too 
 is elementary, and have no psychologic in it. 
 . . . . Their dancing is goot, the Romans 
 knew that. ' Impropa Gadiss,' they say, but I 
 think perhaps Liverpool or Cardiff is more 
 wicked as Gadiss, for the peoples is not so 
 elementary as here. ... Uf, ah, it is still hot! 
 Can none of you tell us some story, eh ? You, 
 McMillan, or Fernandey, eh ? Don Joesay, 
 Why you not tell us littel something, eh ? " 
 
 Before Fernandez had time to speak, Captain 
 McMillan cut in with: "Ay, Fernandey, 
 something aboot yon time you had the 
 blackbird - catching schooner, when ye ran 
 niggers up to North Queensland from the New 
 Hebrides. Man, a gran' business that slaving 
 I mean the importation of indentured labour. 
 I've heard it was a fair saxty per cent job.
 
 260 DAGOS 
 
 . . . Saxty per cent ! worth a little risking 
 in these days o' low freights and big insurance 
 money. I mind I had a wee bit flutter, way 
 back in the sixties, wi' a bit cargo, ane o' the 
 last was run. I landed them in a wee port 
 na, na, I'll no tell ye the name o' it doon 
 aboot Rio Grande do Sul, the Brazeels, ye 
 ken. A queer felly yon king up at Loandy ; 
 we ca'ed him Brass Belly, and a Christian too, 
 except of course when there was business on. 
 Weel, they just had a friar up in the bit port, 
 before I got my stuff on board . . . thae 
 "Portygees," ye ken . . . and had them a' 
 baptized . . . just throwing holy water on 
 them in a horn, and mumbling a wheen Latin, 
 and makin' crosses in the air fair superstition, 
 I ca'ed it ; and I'm telling ye, when aince 
 I got to sea I had out the old Book, and just 
 undid his job . . . had them a' resprinkled, 
 and pit up a bit prayer ower them in the Free 
 Kirk o' Scotland style. There was no reunion 
 o' the free churches in thae days . . . nane 
 o' your U.F.'s set them up. A wheen o' 
 they newly admitted Christians died on the 
 passage, but the lave o' them I got safe enough 
 to Rio Grande do Sul, and, man, a gran' 
 price I got for them. Nae one ever jaloused
 
 DAGOS 261 
 
 they were all sort of members of the Free 
 Kirk, or God knows what would ha' happened. 
 They Brazeelians are a superstitious lot. . . . 
 Tell us yer yarn, Captain Fernandey ; oot wi' 
 it, Don Joesay." 
 
 He paused, and opened a bottle of soda- 
 water, letting the cork fly with a bang and 
 most of the contents spurt out, and then pouring 
 himself about a claret glass of whisky, tempered 
 it slightly with what soda still remained, and 
 drained it to the dregs, but slowly and with as 
 little effort as if it had been milk. 
 
 Boys selling lottery tickets dangled them 
 underneath the noses of the customers, 
 beseeching them to buy and win the biggest 
 prize ; beggars came in and stood behind the 
 tables resisting all the objurgations of the 
 assembled northern skippers and disappearing 
 instantly when they heard Captain Fernandez 
 say " May God assist you " in a quiet tone of 
 voice. Silent and rather dapper-looking, he 
 sat sipping lemonade, smoking innumerable 
 cigarettes, and now and then assenting 
 gravely with a "Bueno! Yes, that iss so," 
 or merely by a slight clicking of his tongue 
 against the palate and a faint upward motion 
 of the head.
 
 262 DAGOS 
 
 Short, slight, and burned so dark you might 
 have thought that he had Indian blood ; one 
 thin and nervous hand, on which a heavy 
 diamond ring shone like electric light, held his 
 eternal cigarette ; the other now and then stole 
 almost unconsciously behind his back and 
 rested for an instant, as if to reassure himself 
 that it was there, upon a little hump formed by 
 the handle of his pistol underneath his coat. 
 
 As all his fellows looked at him he slightly 
 flicked the ash off from his cigarette against 
 the edge of the white marble table around 
 which they sat, and blowing out an interminable 
 cloud of smoke from both his nostrils, said : 
 " Why, you fellows want to hear a tale ; it is 
 still time to see the third piece at the theatre, 
 or we can go and hear the Mochuelito sing 
 * Las Chiclaneras.' How he bewails himself, 
 the little gipsy rogue ; not his like in all the 
 Spains to hang upon a note." No one 
 adventuring anything except a grunt from 
 Captain Harold that " De folk music of the 
 zooth, with de irregular intervals it have, say 
 nothing to me," Fernandez slowly began to 
 speak, half automatically : " My friends, I think 
 of something happen to me long ago ; plenty 
 of the psychology in it, Captain Karl, enough
 
 DAGOS 263 
 
 to satisfy your Ibsen, he who have so much 
 grace." The passing jibe left Captain Harold 
 quite unmoved save for a puffing out of his 
 great cheeks and a slight blowing sound as 
 when a whale has finished spouting and lies 
 upon the water as if it contemplated whether it 
 should begin again or sink into the depths. 
 "It was way back my God ! I think it was 
 thirty-five, perhaps forty year passed. I was 
 third mate in a Peruvian barquentine trading 
 from Paita, up the coast to San Francisco, 
 Guaymas, San Bias, and Mazatlan, Salina-Cruz, 
 Tehuantepec, and Acapulco, and all those littel 
 ports in Mexico. 
 
 "The barquentine was built in Paita. 
 Beautiful she was ; they never build no such 
 vessels now these days." 
 
 " Stow the description," cut in McMillan ; 
 " I never had a guid conceit o' thae bit Paity 
 barquentines. . . . Yon way of staying forward 
 the topgallant mast and lashing every sail down 
 to a spar, looks fair theatrical. ..." 
 
 "All is in the taste, my McMillan. You 
 talk about your Scotch girls and say nothing 
 like number one West Highland lassie; she 
 have straight back, short leg, and head like 
 sunset, I think she look like German dachshund.
 
 264 DAGOS 
 
 . . . All is in the taste. . . . Where was I 
 now ? Ah, yes, the barquentine. She was 
 called ' La Estrella de Paita.' She was clipper 
 number one. ... I see her now ; she sit upon 
 the water just as she had been blown there like 
 a leaf off a tree. 
 
 " She was all right, it was the people that 
 was in her that was bad. Most of them Indians 
 Cholos from the Bolivian ports and from 
 Peru, one or two Correntinos from the Argentine 
 Republic, half gauchos and half sailors, and 
 with another part half devils, the cook a negro 
 from about Panama or Savanilla, and two or 
 three quite decent fishermen from Chiloe". You 
 bet your ole sea-boot you have to keep your 
 weather-eye well skin with all those infidels. 
 
 " The skipper was a Mexican, hail from 
 Arispe. Cristo, what a man ! He knew the 
 coast blind-drunk and blindfold, and that was 
 all he know. 
 
 " Ah, yes, Captain Karl Harold say, come 
 heave round Rodney, and it is time, and it is 
 true I am a little slow in making plain sail on 
 my yarn. 
 
 " Well, let me see. . . . Yes, we were 
 dodging up the coast of Lower California, 
 inside what we call Sea of Cone's and you the
 
 DAGOS 265 
 
 Californian Gulf. We have well passed the 
 islands at the mouth ; islands of Revillagigedo 
 they are call, and their names San Benito, La 
 Nublada, and cetera. We lay a little in towards 
 the coast between San Bias and Mazatlan to 
 catch the lightest air ; the c Estrella ' sail almost 
 if a lady move a fan. . . . But I say no more 
 of her, eh. You know that coast, eh, friends?" 
 
 " I know him well," said Captain Karl, "just 
 like the coast where Peer Gynt's yacht was 
 lost and he find Providence not economical. 
 Wonderful man dat Ibsen, what you call bawky 
 up in Aberdeen." 
 
 " Pawky, you mean," said the indignant Scot, 
 and once again Fernandez launched into his 
 tale. 
 
 " Baffling light winds force us across amongst 
 the islands opposite Cabo Haro upon the other 
 coast. What so many islands and none of 
 them inhabited by man La Trinidad, Espiritu 
 Santo ; what you call Holy Spirit, and 
 Branciforte, Isla del Carmen islands and still 
 more islands, till you can have no rest. Just 
 about midday we were running under easy sail 
 under the lee of the large Isla del Carmen, 
 hoping to get a slant of wind across to Guaymas 
 to take us through the strait.
 
 266 DAGOS 
 
 "What salt there is in Carmen Island, eh 
 green, white, and rose colour, almost as much 
 as Cadiz and, in my time, no one live on it, 
 and only schooners from El Puerto de la Paz 
 occasionally call. What you call jumping-off 
 place, 1 think, though where you jump to 
 except into the sea ? But I remember ; I was 
 young then, five-and-thirty years ago where 
 have the years gone, tell me ? ... It was so 
 interesting, for as you sail along the coast you 
 feel like Alvarado or Cortes, and always think 
 you come to something new, just as you think 
 in life. 
 
 " What a fine day it was ; and all that salt it 
 looked like crystal in the sun, in some places 
 like a garden, and all the streams run through 
 a reddish sort of grounds. Scarcely a ripple 
 on the sea, which have an oily look ; just enough 
 wind to keep the sails just drawing. You 
 recollect that ' La Estrella ' sail if you move 
 a fan, eh ; three or four fan make a stiff gale 
 for her. Well, well, island of Branciforte was 
 on her weather bow, three or four league away, 
 and we just weathered Cabo de . . . I forget 
 his name, but it is just where the salt finishes 
 and the thick forests all begin, for island of 
 Carmen is about twenty mile in length, and
 
 DAGOS 267 
 
 broad, broad as from here to Rota, say about 
 three league. When we pass by that little 
 cape all changed at once, and it was fairyland 
 island of Carmen pretty, pretty when you pass 
 that cape. Trees coming down right to the water 
 edge, and little cove of sand so white you want 
 to go ashore and bathe. All the crew came on 
 deck to look at him, and the Correntinos, they 
 say, ' Ah, . . . like the country up the Parana, 
 by the. Esquina,' and they fall talking their 
 Guarani, a heathen tongue it is. They say the 
 devil go twelve years to school to learn him, 
 and come away a fool. 
 
 "The two Chil6tes stand open-mouth, like 
 children at the window of a pastry-cook, and 
 when the captain came on deck he looked 
 across the bay and say : ' Si, sefior. Yes, 
 a man could build a neat jacal there and have 
 good time with a nice Indian wife, one of those 
 Zapoteca girls if you could steal one from about 
 Salina-Cruz, or if not a good Yaqui.' ' I 
 always like an Indian girl,' he say; 'they are 
 cooking well, and have no nonsense like white 
 woman, and if you beat them, not go stick 
 a knife in you when you are drunk or sleep.' 
 Not too much of a Christian was our old man, 
 but he know all the coast from Guaymas down
 
 268 DAGOS 
 
 to Paita as well as if he was a shark. His 
 mother I think she was a Pima or a Yaqui, and 
 you know no one can make good Christian out 
 of an old Moor. Just as we were standing by 
 to go about, and the wind looked like fresh'ning 
 a little bit, he say, that is the captain say 
 (I think I tell you that his name was Guadalupd 
 Perez. No ! ah, I thought I did) he say 
 there is a man upon the beach, running down 
 to the shore. I jump upon the rail, and see him 
 waving his arms and making signals with 
 a bough. ' Strange,' say the skipper, ' a man 
 on isle of Carmen, where there is no Indians, 
 and only schooners touch from Puerto de la 
 Paz to load up salt, and now and then hunt the 
 wild goats that swarm about the place.' Well, 
 the poor devil on the beach go on like sema- 
 phore, waving his arms about, and then he run 
 down to the edge and go upon his knees. The 
 old man curse a little about losing a fair wind, 
 but give the order to back the fore topgallant 
 sail and send away a boat. 
 
 " I went away with the two Correntinos in 
 our dinghy to find out what was up. As we 
 come close in the man ran to the boat up to the 
 middle, and clamber in as if a tiger running
 
 DAGOS 269 
 
 after him, and lie down in the bottom gasping 
 like a fish. 
 
 "I give him littel mescal. The 'Estrella' 
 never carry rum, only mescal, because the 
 skipper get it cheap up in Arispe, where they 
 grow plenty aloes, what they call there maguey. 
 ' Ah,' say the man, and shake my hand as if he 
 pull it off. He say in Spanish, for he was 
 Chilian down from Talcahuano, ' That do me 
 good. Mother of God ! three months and 
 never see a man ; I think I going mad.' 
 
 "He was burnt almost black, and ragged I 
 tell you, ragged like a saint down about Casa- 
 blanca or at Mazagan ; his hair like bird's nest, 
 no shoes, and his feet all cracked with walking 
 up and down hunting for shell-fish on the rocks. 
 He look back always towards the island as if 
 he thought the devil was behind the trees, and 
 so I clap him on the shoulder and say, ' All 
 right, ole man, cheer up your pecker, there is 
 not nothing to be 'fraid of, and I shall take you 
 to the ship.' At first he speak a little slow, but 
 when he once get fairly under weigh the words 
 come out like water from a barrel when you 
 have set it run. He tell our skipper he have 
 sailed from Copiap6 and bound to San 
 Francisco, and that the vessel founder out at
 
 270 DAGOS 
 
 sea, and that he alone have reached the island 
 floating upon some wreckage, about six months 
 ago. He seem a little hazy about things and 
 have a hang-dog look ; but we say that the poor 
 man is mad with solitude, and have him shaved 
 and washed and give him suit of dungaree and 
 send him down below. He speak with no one, 
 and when he eat a little come up upon deck 
 and fix his eyes upon the island as if he sorry 
 after all to leave it, so that I tell him, ' Eh, you, 
 do you want go ashore again ? ' and he laugh 
 like a rabbit when you kill him, and lights a 
 cigarette. I tell you I did not much take to 
 the fellow, he have a pug-dog look. 
 
 " We ran along the coast a bit, maybe an 
 hour or two, as the wind had veered a little 
 round, and doubled another little cape, and 
 once again stand by to go about and stretch 
 across the gulf. Just as the ole man going to 
 give the order, up go his glass again, and he 
 call out, 'Jesus Maria ! I think I see a smoke. 
 Surely,' he say, 'devils are in the island,' and 
 as he speak a column of black smoke rise up 
 just by the wall of forest which stand behind 
 the beach. Looked like as if some one had 
 thrown green wood upon the fire to make the 
 smoke more black. We edge her little nearer
 
 DAGOS 271 
 
 in, and once again a man come running down 
 the sand and wave his arms about. Same old 
 nonsense send a boat ashore, and come back 
 to the ship with one more ragged Chilian very 
 like the last. When he come up the side and 
 see the man we first took off he stare a little, 
 and with a yell grab a belaying pin and spring 
 at him just like a jaguar. 
 
 " One of the Correntinos threw a rope about 
 his neck. They were, I think I told you, half 
 sailor and half gaucho, and with another half 
 of devil in their blood that make them ready 
 for any kind of thing. 
 
 " Well, the ole man he look at them and say 
 * Virgen de Guadalupe ! Put her about ; let 
 me get off from isle of Carmen before some 
 more poor shipwrecked Chilians come out of 
 the woods and make my ship a lunatic asylum, 
 for they are all stark mad.' 
 
 " We go about and lay our course for 
 Guaymas, with a lively little wind, about a 
 five-knot breeze, I think, and then the skipper 
 have the two Chilians aft and question them 
 about their devilment. 
 
 "It came out then that they were really 
 the only two men saved out of their vessel 
 which have founder in a fog. They reach
 
 272 DAGOS 
 
 the shore upon some wreckage, and pretty 
 nearly starve. 
 
 " Two months and three pass by, they all the 
 time hunting for shell-fish and snaring birds to 
 eat. Then something happen and they fight, 
 then separate, for island of Carmen get too 
 little for them if they live close and speak. 
 Each think the other come and kill him in the 
 night, and they pass all their time, each with a 
 stick under his hand to keep his friend away. 
 Then we come on the scene, and the first man 
 hope that we never find the other leave him 
 there to die." 
 
 He ceased, and the sea-breeze swept through 
 the funnels of the streets in the now silent and 
 deserted town as it would tear the cobble-stones 
 out of their bedding, and the light scud raced 
 overhead towards the east like feathers through 
 the sky. The audience sat silent for a time, 
 and then McMillan, taking up his parable, 
 observed: " A curious case, Fernandey. Aye, 
 oo, aye, I'm glad your fellows both were 
 dawgos. I canna' think that a white man could 
 ever have descended to such a meanness. . . . 
 Now I ca' it just incredible in a full chop white 
 man." 
 
 Fernandez, holding a glass of water in his
 
 DAGOS 273 
 
 hand, looked at him gravely and rejoined : 
 " You see this water. All my life I have loved 
 water, . . . good air, good water and good 
 bells, the proverb says, and yet, when I have 
 been in an old sailing-ship out in the eastern 
 seas, and when the water had run short been 
 put upon two pints a day for drink and cooking, 
 I have stand round the barrel, and though it 
 smelled just like the drainings of a tanyard, 
 counted the drops when it was poured into my 
 pannikin as if they had been gold. 
 
 " Si, senior, . . . that is I mean, . . . how 
 do you put it, eh ? it is not good to say 
 fountain out of your basin I shall never 
 drink .... eh, no senor."
 
 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 
 
 HE always seemed to me a creature from 
 another world, or a survival of some older type 
 of man. Not that in ordinary respects he 
 differed from the usual race of all mankind, 
 having their passions, weaknesses, and all the 
 rest developed to the full, together with an 
 incapacity to get his stirrup-leathers the same 
 length, on horseback, when he rode. His 
 strangeness was, as is the strangeness of a faun 
 or hamadryad, beings we all know did exist 
 and have their being, so strongly has their per- 
 sonality been drawn for us and petrified in stone. 
 
 Occasionally we feel that characters in poems 
 and in pictures are far more real than the sham 
 human beings who go about in millions, pre- 
 tending to be men. 
 
 The subject of my recollection, and how sad 
 it is to rack the half-sealed chambers of the 
 mind for the impressions of dead friends left on 
 it, as the sun leaves pictures, so some think, 
 indelible on every stone, was one of those 
 
 274
 
 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 275 
 
 whose death strikes us as an injustice and in 
 some way a mistake. 
 
 Crossing St. James's Street I well remember 
 seeing on a bill, " Death of the Irish Leader," 
 and thinking that it was some error of the 
 press. 
 
 Your politician dies, and it appears quite 
 natural. Last week he had his knighthood ; a 
 month ago became the last of all the peers, 
 received the garter at the last royal birthday, 
 and now resumes the sleep which was but 
 three parts broken during the whole course 
 of his life. One pauses, recollects his small 
 peculiarities, his tricks of speech and manner, 
 and then forgets him, half-pitying, half with 
 contempt, thinking an ill-graced actor has 
 passed through the wings, into the freedom of 
 the street, and left behind him nothing but the 
 remembrance of his faults, when once the 
 electro-plated glamour of the daily press has 
 been rubbed off, leaving the tin all bare. 
 
 But when a man, such as was Parnell, passes, 
 all the infirmities of life fall off, and only his 
 originality and greatness stay. Then it be- 
 comes a marvel that the multitude of rats has 
 been the undoing of the lion. One tries to 
 cipher out in what his influence lay, then gives
 
 276 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 
 
 it up, and is content to say, " I knew him, may 
 he rest well at last." 
 
 In the dull, drab and common world of 
 English life where everything is done upon the 
 lowest level that the intellect of man can 
 compass, in which our Gladdies and our 
 Dizzies, with Pam and Bright and Buckshot 
 Forster and the rest, appear like vestrymen 
 unglorified, a figure such as his seemed almost 
 insolent. 
 
 It is too soon perhaps to try to mark his 
 place in history, but since Old Noll (hero in 
 England, and in Ireland devil), perhaps no 
 stronger character has played its part upon the 
 boards of the great theatre at Westminster. 
 He had not eloquence as it is generally 
 appraised, although at times the intensity of 
 hate he bore us and our twaddling institutions, 
 gave him a glacial fire, which scorched even 
 the dull wet-blankets of the House, where all is 
 commonplace. 
 
 He was not deeply read, not even in the history 
 of the land for which he fought. He was not 
 humorous, nor had he wit, but now and then 
 inflections came into his voice, which stirred 
 one more than all the spurred-up caperings of 
 orators, as when he finished up a phrase with
 
 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 277 
 
 "This is going on to-day in Ireland," in 
 which he put such force and venom that 
 the word Ireland seemed to die upon his 
 lips in froth. 
 
 I cannot think of him as popular even at 
 home upon his own estate, nor yet at school, 
 still less with his own followers, especially with 
 those of them who sold their Lord, and quite 
 omitted to make sure the thirty pieces should 
 be paid ; and when they lost them did not have 
 the grace to hang themselves. 
 
 Not popular, in the hail-fellow-well-met and 
 loudly cheered conception of the word, but yet 
 with an attraction for all women whom he came 
 across, who were drawn to him by his careless 
 treatment of them, and by the wish that nature 
 has implanted in their sex, to be the rulers of 
 all men who stand above their kind. 
 
 Straying about the House of Commons after 
 the fashion of a new boy at a school, I chanced 
 to sit down quite unthinkingly upon a bench. 
 An Irish legislator edged up and whispered, 
 "You're sitting in his seat." 
 
 To this I answered something about the seats 
 being free unless they had a name attached to 
 them, and I fear bade my interlocutor fare to 
 Gehenna by the shortest route. A gentle voice
 
 278 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 
 
 behind me almost whispered in my ear, " Quite 
 right, the seats are free." 
 
 This laid the first stone to the building of a 
 desultory friendship which lasted till his death. 
 
 Occasionally we dined together, not talking 
 very much, as we had nothing very much in 
 common, except a love of horses. 
 
 Of them Parnell knew little, and the little 
 that I knew was almost absolutely from the 
 colonial point of view, so that our theories did 
 not conflict, as often happens between friends. 
 On politics we never talked, as upon almost every 
 point we disagreed, he leading a great party, I 
 being a mere unit of an amorphous crowd of Non- 
 conformists, Temperance Reformers, Deceased 
 Wife's Sisters Monomaniacs, and Single Taxers, 
 with all the faddists and the dried fruit of out- 
 worn Liberal politics which at that time the tide 
 of Liberalism had left like jelly-fish and sea- 
 weed, stranded and dying on the beach. 
 
 And what a beach it was, strewn with the 
 dead remains of Leagues and Federations 
 and Societies, mostly composed of Treasurer 
 and Secretary, long-haired and stammering 
 speakers, all with their theories of prompt 
 regeneration for the body politic, and a col- 
 lecting box to shove beneath the public's nose.
 
 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 279 
 
 We raved, we ranted, and we called on 
 Englishmen to rise, to embrace the movement 
 and ourselves, and comprehend that social and 
 political emancipation was at hand and that 
 we were the men. 
 
 Amongst this herd of addle-brained and 
 sometimes generous, sometimes self-interested 
 reformers (but in all instances belated), which 
 the late lowering of the franchise had let loose 
 upon the world, and most of whom had not 
 sufficient wit to run a coffee-stall, the figure of 
 Parnell stood out, like the Old Man of Hoy 
 stands out against the sea. The little waves of 
 the above referred to muddletonians, who with 
 their iteration damnable and advocacy of 
 reforms long dead, surged round him, almost 
 unnoticed and unnoticeable. 
 
 The larger scum of Liberal and Conservative, 
 each again occupied with questions which had 
 long been superannuated, left him unmoved. 
 
 The party leaders feared and hated him, for 
 he despised them, and his outlook upon politics 
 seemed but to point out all their lack of strength 
 and incapacity. 
 
 Gladstone, who though in talk for fifty years, 
 never contrived to say a single thing either 
 original or worth remembering, was over-
 
 280 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 
 
 balanced by him, and Salisbury looked on him 
 as Turk looks at a native Christian who rebels, 
 whilst Morley, from the dreary, arid heights of 
 Mount Philosophus, admired and wondered but 
 supported loyally, although perhaps feeling a 
 little hurt at having to play the second violin to 
 one who knew no Greek. Balfour, by virtue 
 of his sestheticism, was repelled, and did not 
 hesitate to shoot out mildly philosophic lips. 
 Churchill admired, and perhaps intrigued with 
 him whom without doubt he thought a rebel, 
 but in politics and love all that succeeds is fair. 
 Chamberlain very likely dreamed of some 
 municipal Home Rule, with Parnell as a county 
 councillor glorified, a parliament for gas and 
 sewage, existing by his will in Dublin, and all 
 the Irish Nationalists, apparelled in frieze coats 
 and battered hats stuck with dudheens, shil- 
 lelaghs in their hands, dancing round and 
 singing " Long live Birmingham ! " 
 
 No one else counted, and in this motley 
 crew of dreamers and of dullards, with here 
 and there an able man upon the make, to give 
 consistency, the Irish Leader jostled for a place. 
 
 Whatever were his faults, and I suppose that 
 being human, he had many of them, one thing 
 is clear to me, that above all he hated England
 
 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 281 
 
 and her ways. With what a seething coldness, 
 as of ice upon the edges of a crater, he would 
 say "your country" or "your Queen." Even 
 the House of Commons, stupid as it was, 
 would shiver, and red-faced Tory Squires, 
 and Nonconformists reared on seed-cake and 
 lemonade, rise in their seats, shaking their 
 mottled or their plebeian fists at his calm 
 smiling face. 
 
 It did us good to hear him stammer through 
 a speech, misquoting all his notes, halting and 
 trying back, and pouring all the vitriol of his 
 contempt upon us as we sat. 
 
 It seemed as if some sort of incoherent 
 Daniel had come to judgment and was about to 
 pass his sentence on us all. 
 
 The British Parliament for generations had 
 listened to the tirades of all kinds of Irishmen, 
 but they had all been of another sort and 
 different magnitude. 
 
 In them, the Saxon was a tyrant and a brute, 
 a sort of Juggernaut, feared and yet envied, 
 who had laid waste the land. But now he 
 figured as an ass, and as ridiculous, whilst all 
 the Irishry, taking their cue from their chiefs 
 speeches, publicly thanked their gods that they
 
 282 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 
 
 were Irish, and professed to think that the 
 word English, applied with reference to them- 
 selves, was more than infidel, and quite as bad 
 as Protestant, or thief. Thus did the Chief 
 make it impossible for British ministers to take 
 up the "poor Patrick " attitude, which in the 
 past had always been a trump. 
 
 No one, I think, was ever hated by the 
 House as was Parnell, and he returned its hate 
 a hundredfold, taking delight in gibing at it, 
 and making it absurd. 
 
 Nothing offended him so much as when 
 some hypocritical " Noncon," whom he and 
 Gladstone had kicked round into Home Rule, 
 would talk about the " union of our hearts," 
 and prophesy that soon all difference of race 
 would be obliterated. Then as he ground his 
 teeth, and his pale cheek grew white with rage, 
 he sometimes muttered " Damn them," with so 
 much unction and such fervency, that one felt 
 sure his prayer, if not immediately vouchsafed, 
 would yet be taken ad avizandum as the 
 lawyers say, and perhaps be of avail. But 
 whether it was answered, or fell harmless on 
 the unwholesome air of parliament, it had the 
 effect somehow of setting one a-thinking of
 
 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 283 
 
 how great a fraud the British Empire was, and 
 rousing one out of the feeling of sublime 
 contentment with ourselves, with which we of 
 the Celto-Saxon race are prone to look at all 
 things here below, knowing that we enjoy a 
 place apart and specially reserved for us in 
 mansions in the skies with all repairs performed 
 for us, by the Creator of the World. 
 
 When we debated with much circumstance, 
 and with citation of innumerable unnecessary 
 figures (the ever-present refuge of a dullard in 
 a speech), some weighty matter of a railroad in 
 the Midland Counties, it was a sight to see the 
 Irish Leader lounge into the House, stroking 
 his beard and pulling his moustache with long 
 white fingers, on which dull sparkled his historic 
 sapphire ring. He would remark half con- 
 fidentially to his lieutenant, " Biggar, I think 
 that this debate ought not to finish before twelve 
 o'clock." To which his Sancho Panza would 
 reply, " It's quite impossible ; I've let the boys 
 away." Then, absently, as if he had never 
 seen the man, or at that instant suddenly 
 became aware that he persisted still in living, 
 Parnell would say, " Tell Gallagher to 
 speak." " Gallagher, sir, the only thing he
 
 284 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 
 
 knows is butter." "Well, let him speak on 
 butter." 
 
 And in an instant Gallagher would rise, quite 
 unprepared, and speaking, maybe, for the first 
 time in that august assembly which, as a general 
 rule, strikes us of the predominant partnership 
 stark dumb and curdles all our brains. 
 
 With figures and with facts, which all looked 
 feasible, the string-pulled member-marionette 
 would thunder forth on the injustice done to 
 Irish industries in general, and that to Irish 
 butter in particular, by the abominable Bill 
 before the House. After an hour, with perspira- 
 tion running down his face, he would begin to 
 talk upon the Irish question as a whole, be 
 pulled up by the Speaker, engage in wrangles 
 with the Tories, and speak and speak, with 
 illustrations of his theme, with so much vigour 
 and such aptness, that you began to think a 
 hideous wrong was going to be done. Just 
 about midnight Parnell might saunter in and 
 either say "I think I will not speak," or 
 "Biggar, tell that fool to stop ; I wish to say a 
 word." Then word would somehow be con- 
 veyed to the rapt orator, who would subside, 
 perhaps in the very middle of a phrase, and
 
 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 285 
 
 Parnell, rising, would proceed, apparently quite 
 coldly, but with shut fists, and a light foam 
 about the corners of his mouth, to distil vitriol, 
 drop by drop, into the very souls of Englishmen, 
 till Gladstone, putting on his hat, would leave 
 the House, and comfortable Liberals, who had 
 been cultivating a Cork or Limerick brogue, by 
 means of which to show goodwill to Ireland, 
 would shiver in their broadcloth coats, and 
 curse the day that made him their ally. 
 
 No one, I think, since Oliver the Great and 
 Good (I write for the mere Englishry), has 
 made the House of Commons tremble to its 
 cowardly depths, as did Parnell, and never 
 Irishman before or since his time, if we except 
 Hugh Roe O'Neill, has ever treated, upon equal 
 terms, with the old English foe. 
 
 Undoubtedly, he both despised and hated 
 Gladstone, who on his part showed plainly that 
 he was in the presence of a stronger man, and 
 though after his death he damned him with faint 
 praise, could not have been much disappointed 
 when, after his nine days' waiting, the Noncon- 
 formist cat jumped as it did, and shut Home 
 Rule off for a hundred years. 
 
 Not that I think that Gladstone did not 
 believe in Ireland's wrongs, but that he did not
 
 286 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 
 
 wish to see an Irish parliament led by a man 
 far stronger than himself. 
 
 During the days of sturm und drang 
 when he was fighting for his soul, I saw him 
 now and then as one sees figures in a dream. 
 
 Once seated in an old-fashioned eating-house 
 off the Strand, he wandered in, and seeing me, 
 sat down and talked during the dinner which 
 he could not eat. We spoke of horses, of 
 which, as I have said, he knew but little, and I 
 not overmuch, and then sauntered down to the 
 House, to find it counted out. 
 
 Then came his death and funeral, with as it 
 seemed, no one ashamed in Ireland, and almost 
 everybody secretly pleased in London, as if 
 they felt an enemy of England was gone, as in 
 fact was the case, for he who lets a Briton see 
 he does not reverence him and his country, 
 commits the crime against the British Holy 
 Ghost, a spirit plethoric and heavy, generous 
 but overbearing, and as well stuffed with pride 
 as is an airship or a fire-balloon with gas. 
 
 Let him sleep well, a Protestant amongst the 
 serried graves of those who lie looking towards 
 Rome, whilst they await the Trumpet's call. A 
 Saxon leader of a Celtic race, a man who, 
 though no orator, yet held enthralled a parlia-
 
 A MEMORY OF PARNELL 287 
 
 ment that lives on talk. Well may his spirit 
 hover hesitatingly between the towers of West- 
 minster, where he enforced respect, and the 
 grey columns upon College Green, the un- 
 faithful Mecca, which he never lived to reach.
 
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