The early twilight of a Sunday evening in Hamilton, Bermuda, is an
alluring time. There is just enough of whispering breeze, fragrance of
flowers, and sense of repose to raise one's thoughts heavenward; and
just enough amateur piano music to keep him reminded of the other
place. There are many venerable pianos in Hamilton, and they all play
at twilight. Age enlarges and enriches the powers of some musical
instruments--notably those of the violin--but it seems to set a piano's
teeth on edge. Most of the music in vogue there is the same that those
pianos prattled in their innocent infancy; and there is something very
pathetic about it when they go over it now, in their asthmatic second
childhood, dropping a note here and there where a tooth is gone.
We attended evening service at the stately Episcopal church on the hill,
where five or six hundred people, half of them white and the other
half black, according to the usual Bermudian proportions; and all well
dressed--a thing which is also usual in Bermuda and to be confidently
expected. There was good music, which we heard, and doubtless--a good
sermon, but there was a wonderful deal of coughing, and so only the high
parts of the argument carried over it. As we came out, after service, I
overheard one young girl say to another:
“Why, you don't mean to say you pay duty on gloves and laces! I only pay
postage; have them done up and sent in the Boston Advertiser.”
There are those that believe that the most difficult thing to create
is a woman who can comprehend that it is wrong to smuggle; and that an
impossible thing to create is a woman who will not smuggle, whether or
no, when she gets a chance. But these may be errors.
We went wandering off toward the country, and were soon far down in
the lonely black depths of a road that was roofed over with the dense
foliage of a double rank of great cedars. There was no sound of any kind
there; it was perfectly still. And it was so dark that one could detect
nothing but somber outlines. We strode farther and farther down this
tunnel, cheering the way with chat.
Presently the chat took this shape: “How insensibly the character of the
people and of a government makes its impress upon a stranger, and gives
him a sense of security or of insecurity without his taking deliberate
thought upon the matter or asking anybody a question! We have been in
this land half a day; we have seen none but honest faces; we have noted
the British flag flying, which means efficient government and good
order; so without inquiry we plunge unarmed and with perfect confidence
into this dismal place, which in almost any other country would swarm
with thugs and garroters--”
'Sh! What was that? Stealthy footsteps! Low voices! We gasp, we close up
together, and wait. A vague shape glides out of the dusk and confronts
us. A voice speaks--demands money!
“A shilling, gentlemen, if you please, to help build the new Methodist
church.”
Blessed sound! Holy sound! We contribute with thankful avidity to the
new Methodist church, and are happy to think how lucky it was that those
little colored Sunday-school scholars did not seize upon everything
we had with violence, before we recovered from our momentary helpless
condition. By the light of cigars we write down the names of weightier
philanthropists than ourselves on the contribution cards, and then pass
on into the farther darkness, saying, What sort of a government do
they call this, where they allow little black pious children, with
contribution cards, to plunge out upon peaceable strangers in the dark
and scare them to death?
We prowled on several hours, sometimes by the seaside, sometimes inland,
and finally managed to get lost, which is a feat that requires talent in
Bermuda. I had on new shoes. They were No. 7's when I started, but were
not more than 5's now, and still diminishing. I walked two hours in
those shoes after that, before we reached home. Doubtless I could have
the reader's sympathy for the asking. Many people have never had the
headache or the toothache, and I am one of those myself; but everybody
has worn tight shoes for two or three hours, and known the luxury of
taking them off in a retired place and seeing his feet swell up and
obscure the firmament. Once when I was a callow, bashful cub, I took a
plain, unsentimental country girl to a comedy one night. I had known her
a day; she seemed divine; I wore my new boots. At the end of the first
half-hour she said, “Why do you fidget so with your feet?” I said, “Did
I?” Then I put my attention there and kept still. At the end of another
half-hour she said, “Why do you say, 'Yes, oh yes!' and 'Ha, ha, oh,
certainly! very true!' to everything I say, when half the time those are
entirely irrelevant answers?” I blushed, and explained that I had been a
little absent-minded. At the end of another half-hour she said, “Please,
why do you grin so steadfastly at vacancy, and yet look so sad?” I
explained that I always did that when I was reflecting. An hour passed,
and then she turned and contemplated me with her earnest eyes and said,
“Why do you cry all the time?” I explained that very funny comedies
always made me cry. At last human nature surrendered, and I secretly
slipped my boots off. This was a mistake. I was not able to get them on
any more. It was a rainy night; there were no omnibuses going our way;
and as I walked home, burning up with shame, with the girl on one
arm and my boots under the other, I was an object worthy of some
compassion--especially in those moments of martyrdom when I had to
pass through the glare that fell upon the pavement from street-lamps.
Finally, this child of the forest said, “Where are your boots?” and
being taken unprepared, I put a fitting finish to the follies of the
evening with the stupid remark, “The higher classes do not wear them to
the theater.”
The Reverend had been an army chaplain during the war, and while we were
hunting for a road that would lead to Hamilton he told a story about two
dying soldiers which interested me in spite of my feet. He said that in
the Potomac hospitals rough pine coffins were furnished by government,
but that it was not always possible to keep up with the demand; so, when
a man died, if there was no coffin at hand he was buried without one.
One night, late, two soldiers lay dying in a ward. A man came in with
a coffin on his shoulder, and stood trying to make up his mind which of
these two poor fellows would be likely to need it first. Both of them
begged for it with their fading eyes--they were past talking. Then one
of them protruded a wasted hand from his blankets and made a feeble
beckoning sign with the fingers, to signify, “Be a good fellow; put
it under my bed, please.” The man did it, and left. The lucky soldier
painfully turned himself in his bed until he faced the other warrior,
raised himself partly on his elbow, and began to work up a mysterious
expression of some kind in his face. Gradually, irksomely, but surely
and steadily, it developed, and at last it took definite form as a
pretty successful wink. The sufferer fell back exhausted with his
labor, but bathed in glory. Now entered a personal friend of No. 2,
the despoiled soldier. No. 2 pleaded with him with eloquent eyes, till
presently he understood, and removed the coffin from under No. 1's bed
and put it under No. 2's. No. 2 indicated his joy, and made some more
signs; the friend understood again, and put his arm under No. 2's
shoulders and lifted him partly up. Then the dying hero turned the dim
exultation of his eye upon No. 1, and began a slow and labored work with
his hands; gradually he lifted one hand up toward his face; it grew weak
and dropped back again; once more he made the effort, but failed again.
He took a rest; he gathered all the remnant of his strength, and this
time he slowly but surely carried his thumb to the side of his nose,
spread the gaunt fingers wide in triumph, and dropped back dead. That
picture sticks by me yet. The “situation” is unique.
The next morning, at what seemed a very early hour, the little white
table-waiter appeared suddenly in my room and shot a single word out of
himself “Breakfast!”
This was a remarkable boy in many ways. He was about eleven years old;
he had alert, intent black eyes; he was quick of movement; there was
no hesitation, no uncertainty about him anywhere; there was a military
decision in his lip, his manner, his speech, that was an astonishing
thing to see in a little chap like him; he wasted no words; his answers
always came so quick and brief that they seemed to be part of the
question that had been asked instead of a reply to it. When he stood
at table with his fly-brush, rigid, erect, his face set in a cast-iron
gravity, he was a statue till he detected a dawning want in somebody's
eye; then he pounced down, supplied it, and was instantly a statue
again. When he was sent to the kitchen for anything, he marched upright
till he got to the door; he turned hand-springs the rest of the way.
“Breakfast!”
I thought I would make one more effort to get some conversation out of
this being.
“Have you called the Reverend, or are--”
“Yes s'r!”
“Is it early, or is--”
“Eight-five.”
“Do you have to do all the 'chores,' or is there somebody to give you
a--”
“Colored girl.”
“Is there only one parish in this island, or are there--”
“Eight!”
“Is the big church on the hill a parish church, or is it--”
“Chapel-of-ease!”
“Is taxation here classified into poll, parish, town, and--”
“Don't know!”
Before I could cudgel another question out of my head, he was below,
hand-springing across the back yard. He had slid down the balusters,
headfirst. I gave up trying to provoke a discussion with him. The
essential element of discussion had been left out of him; his answers
were so final and exact that they did not leave a doubt to hang
conversation on. I suspect that there is the making of a mighty man or
a mighty rascal in this boy--according to circumstances--but they are
going to apprentice him to a carpenter. It is the way the world uses its
opportunities.
During this day and the next we took carriage drives about the island
and over to the town of St. George's, fifteen or twenty miles away. Such
hard, excellent roads to drive over are not to be found elsewhere out
of Europe. An intelligent young colored man drove us, and acted as
guide-book. In the edge of the town we saw five or six mountain-cabbage
palms (atrocious name!) standing in a straight row, and equidistant from
each other. These were not the largest or the tallest trees I have ever
seen, but they were the stateliest, the most majestic. That row of
them must be the nearest that nature has ever come to counterfeiting
a colonnade. These trees are all the same height, say sixty feet;
the trunks as gray as granite, with a very gradual and perfect taper;
without sign of branch or knot or flaw; the surface not looking like
bark, but like granite that has been dressed and not polished. Thus all
the way up the diminishing shaft for fifty feet; then it begins to take
the appearance of being closely wrapped, spool-fashion, with gray
cord, or of having been turned in a lathe. Above this point there is an
outward swell, and thence upward for six feet or more the cylinder is a
bright, fresh green, and is formed of wrappings like those of an ear
of green Indian corn. Then comes the great, spraying palm plume, also
green. Other palm trees always lean out of the perpendicular, or have a
curve in them. But the plumb-line could not detect a deflection in any
individual of this stately row; they stand as straight as the colonnade
of Baalbec; they have its great height, they have its gracefulness, they
have its dignity; in moonlight or twilight, and shorn of their plumes,
they would duplicate it.
The birds we came across in the country were singularly tame; even that
wild creature, the quail, would pick around in the grass at ease while
we inspected it and talked about it at leisure. A small bird of the
canary species had to be stirred up with the butt-end of the whip before
it would move, and then it moved only a couple of feet. It is said that
even the suspicious flea is tame and sociable in Bermuda, and will allow
himself to be caught and caressed without misgivings. This should be
taken with allowance, for doubtless there is more or less brag about it.
In San Francisco they used to claim that their native flea could kick a
child over, as if it were a merit in a flea to be able to do that; as if
the knowledge of it trumpeted abroad ought to entice immigration. Such a
thing in nine cases out of ten would be almost sure to deter a thinking
man from coming.
We saw no bugs or reptiles to speak of, and so I was thinking of saying
in print, in a general way, that there were none at all; but one
night after I had gone to bed, the Reverend came into my room carrying
something, and asked, “Is this your boot?” I said it was, and he said he
had met a spider going off with it. Next morning he stated that just at
dawn the same spider raised his window and was coming in to get a shirt,
but saw him and fled.