and didn't even know Batavia,--had been ashore often, but only for a
_toelatingskaart_ and some good Dutch chow. Well, one afternoon, I was
loafing down a street, and suddenly noticed that the sign-board said,
"Jacatra-weg." The word made me jump, and brought the whole affair on
Celebes back like a shot,--and not as a dream. It became a live
question; I determined to treat it as one, and settle it.
I stopped a fat Dutchman who was paddling down the middle of the street
in his pyjamas, smoking a cigar.
"Pardon, Mynheer," I said. "Does a man live here in Jacatra-weg named
Erberveld?"
"_Nej_," he shook his big shaved head. "_Nej_, Mynheer, I do not know."
"Pieter Erberveld," I suggested.
The man broke into a horse-laugh.
"_Ja, ja_," he said, and laughed still. "I did not think of him. _Ja_,
on this way, opposite the timber yard, you will find his house." And he
went off, bowing and grinning hugely.
The nature of the joke appeared later, but I wasn't inclined to laugh.
You've seen the place. No? Right opposite a timber yard in a cocoanut
grove: it was a heavy, whitewashed wall, as high as a man, and perhaps
two perches long. Where the gate should have been, a big tablet was set
in, and over that, on a spike, a skull, grinning through a coat of
cement. The tablet ran in eighteenth-century Dutch, about like this:--
BY REASON OF THE DETESTABLE MEMORY OF THE CONVICTED TRAITOR, PIETER
ERBERVELD, NO ONE SHALL BE PERMITTED TO BUILD IN WOOD OR STONE OR
TO PLANT ANYTHING UPON THIS GROUND, FROM NOW TILL JUDGMENT DAY.
BATAVIA, APRIL 14, ANNO 1772.
You'll find the story in any book: the chap was a half-caste Guy Fawkes
who conspired to deliver Batavia to the King of Bantam, was caught,
tried, and torn asunder by horses. I nosed about and went through a hole
in a side wall: nothing in the compound but green mould, dried stalks,
dead leaves, and blighted banana trees. The inside of the gate was
blocked with five to eight feet of cement. The Dutch hate solidly.
But Hendrik van der Have? No, I never found the name in any of the
books. So there you are. Well? Can a man dream of a thing before he
knows that thing, or----
* * * * *
The captain's voice, which had flowed on in slow and dispassionate
soliloquy, became half audible, and ceased. As we gave ear to the
silence, we became aware that a cool stir in the darkness was growing
into a breeze. After a time, the thin crowing of game-cocks in distant
villages, the first twitter of birds among the highest branches, told us
that night had turned to morning. A soft patter of bare feet came along
the deck, a shadow stood above us, and the low voice of the mate said:
"_Ada kapal api disitu, Tuan_--_saiah kirah_--_ada kapal prrang_."
"Gunboat, eh?" Captain Forsythe was on his feet, and speaking briskly.
"_Bai, tarek jangcar_. Breeze comes just in time."
We peered seaward from the rail; far out, two pale lights, between a red
coal and a green, shone against the long, glimmering strip of dawn.
"Heading this way, but there's plenty of time," the captain said
cheerfully. "Take the wheel a minute, youngster--that's it,--keep her
in,--they can't see us against shore where it's still night."
As the schooner swung slowly under way, his voice rose, gay as a
boy's:--
"Come on, you rice-fed admirals!" He made an improper gesture, his
profile and outspread fingers showing in the glow-worm light of the
binnacle. "If they follow us through by the Verdronken Rozengain, we'll
show them one piece 'e navigation. Can do, eh? These old iron-clad junks
are something a man knows how to deal with."
MISS JUNO
BY
CHARLES WARREN STODDARD
_Copyright_, 1903, by A. M. Robertson Reprinted from FOR THE PLEASURE OF
HIS COMPANY
I
THERE was an episode in the life of Paul Clitheroe that may possibly
throw some little light upon the mystery of his taking off; and in
connection with this matter it is perhaps worth detailing.
One morning Paul found a drop-letter in the mail which greeted him
daily. It ran as follows:
DEAR OLD BOY:
Don't forget the reception tomorrow. Some one will be here whom I
wish you to know.
Most affectionately,
HARRY ENGLISH.
The "tomorrow" referred to was the very day on which Paul received the
sweet reminder. The reception of the message somewhat disturbed his
customary routine. To be sure, he glanced through the morning journal as
usual; repaired to the Greek chop-house with the dingy green walls, the
smoked ceiling, the glass partition that separated the guests from a
kitchen lined with shining copper pans, where a cook in a white paper
cap wafted himself about in clouds of vapor, lit by occasional flashes
of light and ever curling flames, like a soul expiating its sins in a
prescribed but savory purgatory. He sat in his chosen seat, ignored his
neighbors with his customary nonchalance, and returned to his room, as
if nothing were about to happen. But he accomplished little, for he felt
that the day was not wholly his; so slight a cause seemed to change the
whole current of his life from hour to hour.
In due season Paul entered a street car which ran to the extreme limit
of San Francisco. Harry English lived not far from the terminus, and to
the cozy home of this most genial and hospitable gentleman the youth
wended his way. The house stood upon the steep slope of a hill; the
parlor was upon a level with the street,--a basement dining-room below
it,--but the rear of the house was quite in the air and all of the rear
windows commanded a magnificent view of the North Bay with its islands
and the opposite mountainous shore.
"Infinite riches in a little room," was the expression which came
involuntarily to Paul's lips the first time he crossed the threshold of
Thespian Lodge. He might have said it of the Lodge any day in the week;
the atmosphere was always balmy and soothing; one could sit there
without talking or caring to talk; even without realizing that one was
not talking and not being talked to; the silence was never ominous; it
was a wholesome and restful home, where Paul was ever welcome and
whither he often fled for refreshment.
The walls of the whole house were crowded with pictures, framed
photographs and autographs, chiefly of theatrical celebrities; both
"Harry," as the world familiarly called him, and his wife, were members
of the dramatic profession and in their time had played many parts in
almost as many lands and latitudes.
There was one chamber in this delightful home devoted exclusively to the
pleasures of entomology, and there the head of the house passed most of
the hours which he was free to spend apart from the duties of his
profession. He was a man of inexhaustible resources, consummate energy,
and unflagging industry, yet one who was never in the least hurried or
flurried; and he was Paul's truest and most judicious friend.
The small parlor at the Englishes was nearly filled with guests when
Paul Clitheroe arrived upon the scene. These guests were not sitting
against the wall talking at each other; the room looked as if it were
set for a scene in a modern society comedy. In the bay window, a bower
of verdure, an extremely slender and diminutive lady was discoursing
eloquently with the superabundant gesticulation of the successful
society amateur; she was dilating upon the latest production of a minor
poet whose bubble reputation was at that moment resplendent with local
rainbows. Her chief listener was a languid beauty of literary
aspirations, who, in a striking pose, was fit audience for the little
lady as she frothed over with delightful, if not contagious, enthusiasm.
Mrs. English, who had been a famous belle--no one who knew her now would
for a moment question the fact--devoted herself to the entertainment of
a group of silent people, people of the sort that are not only
colorless, but seem to dissipate the color in their immediate vicinity.
The world is full of such; they spring up, unaccountably, in locations
where they appear to the least advantage. Many a clever person who would
delight to adorn a circle he longs to enter, and where he would be
hailed with joy, through modesty, hesitates to enter it; while others,
who are of no avail in any wise whatever, walk bravely in and find
themselves secure through a quiet system of polite insistence. Among the
latter, the kind of people to be merely tolerated, we find, also, the
large majority.
Two children remarkably self-possessed seized upon Paul the moment he
entered the room: a beautiful lad as gentle and as graceful as a girl,
and his tiny sister, who bore herself with the dignity of a little lady
of Lilliput. He was happy with them, quite as happy as if they were as
old and experienced as their elders and as well entertained by them,
likewise. He never in his life made the mistake that is, alas, made by
most parents and guardians, of treating children as if they were little
simpletons who can be easily deceived. How often they look with scorn
upon their elders who are playing the hypocrite to eyes which are, for
the most part, singularly critical! Having paid his respects to those
present--he was known to all--Paul was led a willing captive into the
chamber where Harry English and a brother professional, an eccentric
comedian, who apparently never uttered a line which he had not learned
out of a play-book, were examining with genuine enthusiasm certain cases
of brilliantly tinted butterflies.
The children were quite at their ease in this house, and no wonder;
California children are born philosophers; to them the marvels of the
somewhat celebrated entomological collection were quite familiar; again
and again they had studied the peculiarities of the most rare and
beautiful specimens of insect life under the loving tutelage of their
friend, who had spent his life and a small fortune in gathering together
his treasures, and they were even able to explain in the prettiest
fashion the origin and use of the many curious objects that were
distributed about the rooms.
Meanwhile Mme. Lillian, the dramatic one, had left her bower in the bay
window and was flitting to and fro in nervous delight; she had much to
say and it was always worth listening to. With available opportunities
she would have long since become famous and probably a leader of her
sex; but it was her fate to coach those of meaner capacities who were
ultimately to win fame and fortune while she toiled on, in genteel
poverty, to the end of her weary days.
No two women could be more unlike than this many-summered butterfly, as
she hovered among her friends, and a certain comedy queen who was posing
and making a picture of herself; the latter was regarded by the
society-privates, who haunted with fearful delight the receptions at
Thespian Lodge, with the awe that inspired so many inexperienced people
who look upon members of the dramatic profession as creatures of another
and not a better world, and considerably lower than the angels.
Two hours passed swiftly by; nothing ever jarred upon the guests in this
house; the perfect suavity of the host and hostess forbade anything like
antagonism among their friends; and though such dissimilar elements
might never again harmonize, they were tranquil for the time at least.
The adieus were being said in the chamber of entomology, which was
somewhat overcrowded and faintly impregnated with the odor of _corrosive
sublimate_. From the windows overlooking the bay there was visible the
expanse of purple water and the tawny, sunburnt hills beyond, while
pale-blue misty mountains marked the horizon with an undulating outline.
A ship under full sail--a glorious and inspiring sight--was bearing down
before the stiff westerly breeze.
Mme. Lillian made an apt quotation which terminated with a Delsartean
gesture and a rising inflection that seemed to exact something from
somebody; the comedienne struck one of her property attitudes, so
irresistibly comic that every one applauded, and Mme. Lillian laughed
herself to tears; then they all drifted toward the door. As mankind in
general has much of the sheep in him, one guest having got as far as the
threshold, the others followed; Paul was left alone with the Englishes
and those clever youngsters, whose coachman, accustomed to waiting
indefinitely at the Lodge, was dutifully dozing on the box seat. The
children began to romp immediately upon the departure of the last guest,
and during the riotous half-hour that succeeded, there was a fresh
arrival. The door-bell rang; Mrs. English, who was close at hand, turned
to answer it and at once bubbled over with unaffected delight. Harry,
still having his defunct legions in solemn review, recognized a cheery,
un-American voice, and cried, "There she is at last!" as he hastened to
meet the newcomer.
Paul was called to the parlor where a young lady of the ultra-blonde
type stood with a faultlessly gloved hand in the hand of each of her
friends; she was radiant with life and health. Of all the young ladies
Paul could at that moment remember having seen, she was the most
exquisitely clad; the folds of her gown fell about her form like the
drapery of a statue; he was fascinated from the first moment of their
meeting. He noticed that nothing about her was ever disarranged; neither
was there anything superfluous or artificial, in manner or dress. She
was in his opinion an entirely artistic creation. She met him with a
perfectly frank smile, as if she were an old friend suddenly discovering
herself to him, and when Harry English had placed the hand of this
delightful person in one of Paul's she at once withdrew the other, which
Mrs. English fondly held, and struck it in a hearty half-boyish manner
upon their clasped hands, saying, "Awfully glad to see you, Paul!" and
she evidently meant it.
This was Miss. Juno, an American girl bred in Europe, now, after years
of absence, passing a season in her native land. Her parents, who had
taken a country home in one of the California valleys, found in their
only child all that was desirable in life. This was not to be wondered
at; it may be said of her in the theatrical parlance that she "filled
the stage." When Miss. Juno dawned upon the scene the children grew
grave, and, after a little delay, having taken formal leave of the
company, they entered their carriage and were rapidly driven homeward.
If Paul and Miss. Juno had been formed for one another and were now, at
the right moment and under the most favorable auspices, brought
together for the first time, they could not have mated more naturally.
If Miss. Juno had been a young man, instead of a very charming woman,
she would of course have been Paul's chum. If Paul had been a young
woman--some of his friends thought he had narrowly escaped it and did
not hesitate to say so--he would instinctively have become her
confidante. As it was, they promptly entered into a sympathetic
friendship which seemed to have been without beginning and was
apparently to be without end.
They began to talk of the same things at the same moment, often uttering
the very same words and then turned to one another with little shouts of
unembarrassed laughter. They agreed upon all points, and aroused each
other to a ridiculous pitch of enthusiasm over nothing in particular.
Harry English beamed; there was evidently nothing wanted to complete his
happiness. Mrs. English, her eyes fairly dancing with delight, could
only exclaim at intervals, "Bless the boy!" or, "What a pair of
children!" then fondly pass her arm about the waist of Miss. Juno--which
was not waspish in girth--or rest her hand upon Paul's shoulder with a
show of maternal affection peculiarly grateful to him. It was with
difficulty the half-dazed young fellow could keep apart from Miss. Juno.
If he found she had wandered into the next room, while he was engaged
for a moment, he followed at his earliest convenience, and when their
eyes met they smiled responsively without knowing why, and indeed not
caring in the least to know.
They were as ingenuous as two children in their liking for one another;
their trust in each other would have done credit to the Babes in the
Wood. What Paul realized, without any preliminary analysis of his mind
or heart, was that he wanted to be near her, very near her; and that he
was miserable when this was not the case. If she was out of his sight
for a moment the virtue seemed to have gone from him and he fell into
the pathetic melancholy which he enjoyed in the days when he wrote a
great deal of indifferent verse, and was burdened with the conviction
that his mission in life was to make rhymes without end.
In those days, he had acquired the habit of pitying himself. The
emotional middle-aged woman is apt to encourage the romantic young man
in pitying himself; it is a grewsome habit, and stands sturdily in the
way of all manly effort. Paul had outgrown it to a degree, but there is
nothing easier in life than a relapse--perhaps nothing so natural, yet
often so unexpected.
Too soon the friends who had driven Miss. Juno to Thespian Lodge and
passed on--being unacquainted with the Englishes--called to carry her
away with them. She was shortly--in a day or two in fact--to rejoin her
parents, and she did not hesitate to invite Paul to pay them a visit.
This he assured her he would do with pleasure, and secretly vowed that
nothing on earth should prevent him. They shook hands cordially at
parting, and were still smiling their baby smiles in each other's faces
when they did it. Paul leaned against the door-jamb, while the genial
Harry and his wife followed his new-found friend to the carriage, where
they were duly presented to its occupants--said occupants promising to
place Thespian Lodge upon their list. As the carriage whirled away,
Miss. Juno waved that exquisitely gloved hand from the window and Paul's
heart beat high; somehow he felt as if he had never been quite so happy.
And this going away struck him as being a rather cruel piece of
business. To tell the whole truth, he couldn't understand why she should
go at all.
He felt it more and more, as he sat at dinner with his old friends, the
Englishes, and ate with less relish than common the delicious Yorkshire
pudding and drank the musty ale. He felt it as he accompanied his
friends to the theater, where he sat with Mrs. English, while she
watched with pride the husband whose impersonations she was never weary
of witnessing; but Paul seemed to see him without recognizing him, and
even the familiar voice sounded unfamiliar, or like a voice in a dream.
He felt it more and more when good Mrs. English gave him a nudge toward
the end of the evening and called him "a stupid," half in sport and half
in earnest; and when he had delivered that excellent woman into the care
of her liege lord and had seen them securely packed into the horse-car
that was to drag them tediously homeward in company with a great
multitude of suffocating fellow-sufferers, he felt it; and all the way
out the dark street and up the hill that ran, or seemed to run, into
outer darkness--where his home was--he felt as if he had never been the
man he was until now, and that it was all for _her_ sake and through
_her_ influence that this sudden and unexpected transformation had come
to pass. And it seemed to him that if he were not to see her again,
very soon, his life would be rendered valueless; and that only to see
her were worth all the honor and glory that he had ever aspired to in
his wildest dreams; and that to be near her always and to feel that he
were much--nay, everything--to her, as before God he felt that at that
moment she was to him, would make his life one long Elysium, and to
death would add a thousand stings.
II
Saadi had no hand in it, yet all Persia could not outdo it. The whole
valley ran to roses. They covered the earth; they fell from lofty
trellises in fragrant cataracts; they played over the rustic arbors like
fountains of color and perfume; they clambered to the cottage roof and
scattered their bright petals in showers upon the grass. They were of
every tint and texture; of high and low degree, modest or haughty as the
case might be--but roses all of them, and such roses as California alone
can boast. And some were fat or _passé_, and more's the pity, but all
were fragrant, and the name of that sweet vale was Santa Rosa.
Paul was in the garden with Miss. Juno. He had followed her thither with
what speed he dared. She had expected him; there was not breathing-space
for conventionality between these two. In one part of the garden sat an
artist at his easel; by his side a lady somewhat his senior, but of the
type of face and figure that never really grows old, or looks it. She
was embroidering flowers from nature, tinting them to the life, and
rivaling her companion in artistic effects. These were the parents of
Miss. Juno--or rather not quite that. Her mother had been twice married;
first, a marriage of convenience darkened the earlier years of her life;
Miss. Juno was the only reward for an age of domestic misery. A
clergyman joined these parties--God had nothing to do with the compact;
it would seem that he seldom has. A separation very naturally and very
properly followed in the course of time; a young child was the only
possible excuse for the delay of the divorce. Thus are the sins of the
fathers visited upon the grandchildren. Then came a marriage of love.
The artist who having found his ideal had never known a moment's
weariness, save when he was parted from her side. Their union was
perfect; God had joined them. The stepfather to Miss. Juno had always
been like a big brother to her--even as her mother had always seemed
like an elder sister.
Oh, what a trio was that, my countrymen, where liberty, fraternity and
equality joined hands without howling about it and making themselves a
nuisance in the nostrils of their neighbors!
Miss. Juno stood in a rose-arbor and pointed to the artists at their
work.
"Did you ever see anything like that, Paul?"
"Like what?"
"Like those sweet simpletons yonder. They have for years been quite
oblivious of the world about them. Thrones might topple, empires rise
and fall, it would matter nothing to them so long as their garden
bloomed, and the birds nested and sung, and he sold a picture once in an
age that the larder might not go bare."
"I've seen something like it, Miss. Juno. I've seen fellows who never
bothered themselves about the affairs of others,--who, in short, minded
their own business strictly--and they got credit for being selfish."
"Were they happy?"
"Yes, in their way. Probably their way wasn't my way, and their kind of
happiness would bore me to death. You know happiness really can't be
passed around, like bon-bons or sherbet, for every one to taste. I hate
bon-bons: do you like them?"
"That depends upon the quality and flavor--and--perhaps somewhat upon
who offers them. I never buy bon-bons for my private and personal
pleasure. Do any of you fellows really care for bon-bons?"
"That depends upon the kind of happiness we are in quest of; I mean the
quality and flavor of the girl we are going to give them to."
"Have girls a flavor?"
"Some of them have--perhaps most of them haven't; neither have they form
nor feature, nor tint nor texture, nor anything that appeals to a fellow
of taste and sentiment."
"I'm sorry for these girls of yours----"
"You needn't be sorry for the girls; they are not my girls, and not one
of them ever will be mine if I can help it----"
"Oh, indeed!"
"They are nothing to me, and I'm nothing to them; but they are
just--they are just the formless sort of thing that a formless sort of
fellow always marries; they help to fill up the world, you know."
"Yes, they help to fill a world that is overfull already. Poor Mama and
Eugene don't know how full it is. When Gene wants to sell a picture and
can't, he thinks it's a desert island."
"Probably they could live on a desert island and be perfectly happy and
content," said Paul.
"Of course they could; the only trouble would be that unless some one
called them at the proper hours they'd forget to eat--and some day
they'd be found dead locked in their last embrace."
"How jolly!"
"Oh, very jolly for very young lovers; they are usually such fools!"
"And yet, I believe I'd like to be a fool for love's sake, Miss. Juno."
"Oh, Paul, you are one for your own,--at least I'll think so, if you
work yourself into this silly vein!"
Paul was silent and thoughtful. After a pause she continued.
"The trouble with you is, you fancy yourself in love with every new girl
you meet--at least with the latest one, if she is at all out of the
ordinary line."