CHAPTER XXVIII.

FAREWELL!

"Yes, it is true," the young man said next morning to his cousin:

"this is the last time I shall see her for many a day." He was

standing with his back to her, moodily staring out of the window.

"Well, Harry," his cousin said, gently enough, "you won't be hurt if I

say it is a very good thing? I am glad to see you have so much

patience and reasonableness. Indeed, I think Miss Rosewarne has very

much improved you in that respect; and it is very good advice she has

given you now."

"Oh yes, it is all very well to talk!" he said, impatiently. "Common

sense is precious easy when you are quite indifferent. Of course she

is quite indifferent, and she says, 'Don't trouble me,' What can one

do but go? But if she was not so indifferent--" He turned suddenly:

"Jue, you can't tell what trouble I am in. Do you know that sometimes

I have fancied she was not quite as indifferent--I have had the

cheek to think so from one or two things she said--and then, if that

were so, it is enough to drive one mad to think of leaving her. How

could I leave her, Jue? If any one cared for you, would you quietly

sneak off in order to consult your own comfort and convenience? Would

you be patient and reasonable then?"

"Harry, don't talk in that excited way. Listen! She does not ask you

to go away for your sake, but for hers."

"For her sake?" he repeated, staring. "If she is indifferent how can

that matter to her? Well, I suppose I am a nuisance to her--as much as

I am to myself. There it is: I am an interloper."

"My poor boy," his cousin said with a kindly smile, "you don't know

your own mind two minutes running. During this past week you have been

blown about by all sorts of contrary winds of opinion and fancy.

Sometimes you thought she cared for you--sometimes no. Sometimes you

thought it a shame to interfere with Mr. Roscorla; then again you grew

indignant and would have slaughtered him. Now you don't know whether

you ought to go away or stop to persecute her. Don't you think she is

the best judge?"

"No, I don't," he said. "I think she is no judge of what is best for

her, because she never thinks of that. She wants somebody by her to

insist on her being properly selfish."

"That would be a pretty lesson."

"A necessary one, anyhow, with some women, I can tell you. But I

suppose I must go, as she says. I couldn't bear meeting her about

Eglosilyan and be scarcely allowed to speak to her. Then when that

hideous little beast comes back from Jamaica, fancy seeing them walk

about together! I must cut the whole place. I shall go into the army:

it's the only profession open to a fool like me; and they say it won't

be long open, either. When I come back, Jue, I suppose you'll be Mrs.

Tressider."

"I am very sorry," his cousin said, not heeding the reference to

herself: "I never expected to see you so deep in trouble, Harry. But

you have youth and good spirits on your side: you will get over it."

"I suppose so," he said, not very cheerfully; and then he went off to

see about the carriage which was to take Wenna and himself for their

last drive together.

At the same time that he was talking to his cousin, Wenna was seated

at her writing-desk answering Mr. Roscorla's letter. Her brows were

knit together: she was evidently laboring at some difficult and

disagreeable task.

Her mother, lying on the sofa, was regarding her with an amused look:

"What is the matter, Wenna? That letter seems to give you a deal of

trouble."

The girl put down her pen with some trace of vexation in her face:

"Yes indeed, mother. How is one to explain delicate matters in a

letter? Every phrase seems capable of misconstruction. And then the

mischief it may cause!"

"But surely you don't need to write with such care to Mr. Roscorla?"

Wenna colored slightly, and hesitated as she answered, "Well, mother,

it is something peculiar. I did not wish to trouble you, but, after

all, I don't think you will vex yourself about so small a thing. Mr.

Roscorla has been told stories about me. He is angry that Mr. Trelyon

should visit us so often. And--and--I am trying to explain. That is

all, mother."

"It is quite enough, Wenna; but I am not surprised. Of course, if

foolish persons liked to misconstrue Mr. Trelyon's visits, they might

make mischief. I see no harm in them myself. I suppose the young man

found an evening at the inn amusing; and I can see that he likes you

very well, as many other people do. But you know how you are situated,

Wenna. If Mr. Roscorla objects to your continuing an acquaintance with

Mr. Trelyon, your duty is clear."

"I do not think it is, mother," Wenna said, an indignant flush of

color appearing in her face. "I should not be justified in throwing

over any friend or acquaintance merely because Mr. Roscorla had heard

rumors: I would not do it. He ought not to listen to such things: he

ought to have greater faith in me. But at the same time I have asked

Mr. Trelyon not to come here so often--I have done so already; and

after to-day, mother, the gossips will have nothing to report."

"That is better, Wenna," the mother said. "I shall be sorry myself to

miss the young man, for I like him, but it is better you should attend

to Mr. Roscorla's wishes. And don't answer his letter in a vexed or

angry way, Wenna."

She was certainly not doing so. Whatever she might be thinking, a

deliberate and even anxious courtesy was visible in the answer she was

sending him. Her pride would not allow her to apologize for what had

been done--in which she had seen no wrong--but as to the future she

was earnest in her promises. And yet she could not help saying a good

word for Trelyon.

"You have known him longer than I," she wrote, "and you know what his

character is. I could see nothing wrong in his coming to see my family

and myself; nor did you say anything against him while you saw him

with us. I am sure you believe he is straightforward, honest and

frank; and if his frankness sometimes verges upon rudeness, he is of

late greatly improved in that respect, as in many others, and he is

most respectful and gentle in his manners. As for his kindness to my

mother and myself, we could not shut our eyes to it. Here is the

latest instance of it, although I feel deeply ashamed to tell you the

story. We were returning in a small boat, and I was carelessly letting

my hand drag through the water, when somehow the ring you gave me

dropped off. Of course, we all considered it lost--all except Mr.

Trelyon, who took the trouble to go at once all the way to Plymouth

for a dredging-machine, and the following afternoon I was overjoyed to

find him return with the lost ring, which I had scarcely dared hope to

see again. How many gentlemen would have done so much for a mere

acquaintance? I am sure if you had been here you would have been

ashamed of me if I had not been grateful to him. Now, however, since

you appear to attach importance to these idle rumors, I have asked Mr.

Trelyon--"

So the letter went on. She would not have written so calmly if she had

foreseen the passion which her ingenuous story about the

dredging-machine was destined to arouse. When Mr. Roscorla read that

simple narrative, he first stared with astonishment as though she were

making some foolish joke. Directly he saw she was serious, however,

his rage and mortification were indescribable. Here was this young

man, not content with hanging about the girl so that neighbors talked,

but actually imposing on her credulity, and making a jest of that

engaged ring which ought to have been sacred to her. Mr. Roscorla at

once saw through the whole affair--the trip to Plymouth, the

purchasing of a gypsy-ring that could have been matched a dozen times

over anywhere, the return to Penzance with a cock-and-bull story about

a dredging-machine. So hot was his anger that it overcame his

prudence. He would start for England at once. He had taken no such

resolution when he heard from the friendly and communicative Mr.

Barnes that Mr. Trelyon's conduct with regard to Wenna was causing

scandal, but this making a fool of him in his absence he could not

bear. At any cost he would set out for England, arrange matters more

to his satisfaction by recalling Wenna to a sense of her position; and

then he would return to Jamaica. His affairs there were already

promising so well that he could afford the trip.

Meanwhile, Wenna had just finished her letter when Mr. Trelyon drove

up with the carriage, and shortly afterward came into the room. He

seemed rather grave, and yet not at all sentimentally sad. He

addressed himself mostly to Mrs. Rosewarne, and talked to her about

the Port Isaac fishing, the emigration of the miners and other

matters. Then Wenna slipped away to get ready.

"Mrs. Rosewarne," he said, "you asked me to find out what I could

about that red-faced person, you know. Well, here is an advertisement

which may interest you. I came on it quite accidentally last night in

the smoking-room of the hotel."

It was a marriage advertisement, cut from a paper about a week old.

The name of the lady was "Katherine Ann, widow of the late J.T.

Shirley, Esq., of Barrackpore."

"Yes, I was sure it was that woman," Mrs. Rosewarne said eagerly. "And

so she is married again?"

"I fancied the gay young things were here on their wedding-trip,"

Trelyon said carelessly. "They amused me. I like to see turtle-doves

of fifty billing and cooing on the promenade, especially when

one of them wears a brown wig, has an Irish accent and drinks

brandy-and-water at breakfast. But he is a good billiard-player--yes,

he is an uncommonly good billiard-player. He told me last night he had

beaten the Irish secretary the other day in the billiard-room of the

House of Commons. I humbly suspect that was a lie. At least, I can't

remember anything about a billiard-table in the House of Commons, and

I was two or three times through every bit of it when I was a little

chap with an uncle of mine, who was a member then; but perhaps they've

got a billiard-table now. Who knows? He told me he had stood for an

Irish borough, spent three thousand pounds on a population of two

hundred and eighty-four, and all he got was a black eye and a broken

head. I should say all that was a fabrication too; indeed, I think he

rather amuses himself with lies--and brandy-and-water. But you don't

want to know anything more about him, Mrs. Rosewarne?"

She did not. All that she cared to know was in that little strip of

printed paper; and as she left the room to get ready for the drive she

expressed herself grateful to him in such warm tones that he was

rather astonished. After all, as he said to himself, he had had

nothing to do in bringing about the marriage of that somewhat gorgeous

person in whom Mrs. Rosewarne was so strangely interested.

They were silent as they drove away. There was one happy face amongst

them, that of Mrs. Rosewarne, but she was thinking of her own affairs

in a sort of pleased reverie. Wenna was timid and a trifle sad: she

said little beyond "Yes, Mr. Trelyon," and "No, Mr. Trelyon," and even

that was said in low voice. As for him, he spoke to her gravely and

respectfully: it was already as if she were a mere stranger.

Had some of his old friends and acquaintances seen him now, they would

have been something more than astonished. Was this young man, talking

in a gentle and courteous fashion to his companion, and endeavoring to

interest her in the various things around her, the same daredevil lad

who used to clatter down the main street of Eglosilyan, who knew no

control other than his own unruly wishes, and who had no answer but a

mocking jest for any remonstrance?

"And how long do you remain in Penzance, Mr. Trelyon?" Mrs. Rosewarne

said at length.

"Until to-morrow, I expect," he answered.

"To-morrow?"

"Yes: I am going back to Eglosilyan. You know my mother means to give

some party or other on my coming of age, and there is so little of

that amusement going on at our house that it needs all possible

encouragement. After that I mean to leave Eglosilyan for a time."

Wenna said nothing, but her downcast face grew a little paler: it was

she who was banishing him.

"By the way," he continued with a smile, "my mother is very anxious

about Miss Wenna's return. I fancy she has been trying to go into that

business of the sewing club on her own account; and in that case she

would be sure to get into a mess. I know her first impulse would be to

pay any money to smooth matters over, but that would be a bad

beginning, wouldn't it?"

"Yes, it would," Wenna said, but somehow, at this moment, she was less

inclined to be hopeful about the future.

"And as for you, Mrs. Rosewarne," he said, "I suppose you will be

going home soon, now that the change seems to have done you so much

good?"

"Yes, I hope so," she said, "but Wenna must go first. My husband

writes to me that he cannot do without her, and offers to send Mabyn

instead. Nobody seems to be able to get on without our Wenna."

"And yet she has the most curious fancy that she is of no account to

anybody. Why, some day I expect to hear of the people in Eglosilyan

holding a public meeting to present her with a service of plate and an

address written on parchment with blue and gold letters."

"Perhaps they will do that when she gets married," the mother said,

ignorant of the stab she was dealing.

It was a picturesque and pleasant bit of country through which they

were driving, yet to two of them at least the afternoon sun seemed to

shine over it with a certain sadness. It was as if they were bidding

good-bye to some beautiful scene they could scarcely expect to

revisit. For many a day thereafter, indeed, Wenna seemed to recollect

that drive as though it had happened in a dream. She remembered the

rough and lonely road leading up sharp hills and getting down into

valleys again, the masses of ferns and wild-flowers by the stone

walls, the wild and undulating country, with its stretches of yellow

furze, its clumps of trees and its huge blocks of gray granite. She

remembered their passing into a curious little valley, densely wooded,

the winding path of which was not well fitted for a broad carriage and

a pair of horses. They had to watch the boughs and branches as they

jolted by. The sun was warm among the foliage: there was a resinous

scent of ferns about. By and by the valley abruptly opened on a wide

and beautiful picture. Lamorna Cove lay before them, and a cold fresh

breeze came in from the sea. Here the world seemed to cease suddenly.

All around them were huge rocks and wild-flowers and trees; and far up

there on their left rose a hill of granite, burning red with the

sunset; but down below them the strange little harbor was in shadow,

and the sea beyond, catching nothing of the glow in the west, was gray

and mystic and silent. Not a ship was visible on that pale plain; no

human being could be seen about the stone quays and the cottages; it

seemed as if they had come to the end of the world, and were its last

inhabitants. All these things Wenna thought of in after days, until

the odd and plain little harbor of Lamorna, and its rocks and bushes

and slopes of granite, seemed to be some bit of Fairyland, steeped in

the rich hues of the sunset, and yet ethereal, distant and

unrecoverable.

Mrs. Rosewarne did not at all understand the silence of these young

people, and made many attempts to break it up. Was the mere fact of

Mr. Trelyon returning to Eglosilyan next day anything to be sad about?

He was not a school-boy going back to school. As for Wenna, she had got

back her engaged ring, and ought to have been grateful and happy.

"Come now," she said: "if you propose to drive back by the Mouse Hole,

we must waste no more time here. Wenna, have you gone to sleep?"

The girl started as if she really had been asleep: then she walked

back to the carriage and got in. They drove away again without saying

a word.

"What is the matter with you, Wenna? Why are you so downcast?" her

mother said.

"Oh, nothing," the girl said hastily. "But--but one does not care to

talk much on so beautiful an evening."

"Yes, that is quite true," said Mr. Trelyon, quite as eagerly, and

with something of a blush: "one only cares to sit and look at things."

"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs. Rosewarne with a smile: she had never before

heard Mr. Trelyon give expression to his views upon scenery.

They drove round by the Mouse Hole, and when they came in sight of

Penzance again, the bay and the semicircle of houses and St. Michael's

Mount were all a pale gray in the twilight. As they drove quietly

along they heard the voices of people from time to time: the occupants

of the cottages had come out for their evening stroll and chat.

Suddenly, as they were passing certain huge masses of rock that sloped

suddenly down to the sea, they heard another sound--that of two or

three boys calling out for help. The briefest glance showed what was

going on. These boys were standing on the rocks, staring fixedly at

one of their companions, who had fallen into the water and was wildly

splashing about, while all they could do to help him was to call for

aid at the pitch of their voices.

"That chap's drowning," Trelyon said, jumping out of the carriage.

The next minute he was out on the rocks, hastily pulling of his coat.

What was it he heard just as he plunged into the sea?--the agonized

voice of a girl calling him back?

Mrs. Rosewarne was at this moment staring at her daughter with almost

a horror-stricken look on her face. Was it really Wenna Rosewarne who

had been so mean? and what madness possessed her to make her so? The

girl had hold of her mother's arm with both her hands, and held it

with the grip of a vice, while her white face was turned to the rocks

and the sea. "Oh, mother!" she cried, "it is only a boy, and he is a

man; and there is not another in all the world like him!"

"Wenna, is it you who are speaking, or a devil? The boy is drowning."

But he was drowning no longer. He was laid hold of by a strong arm,

dragged in to the rocks, and there fished out by his companions. Then

Trelyon got up on the rocks and calmly looked at his dripping clothes.

"You are a nice little beast, you are!" he said to the small boy, who

had swallowed a good deal of salt water, but was otherwise quite

unhurt. "How do you expect I am going home in these trousers? Perhaps

your mother'll pay me for a new pair, eh? And give you a jolly good

thrashing for tumbling in? Here's half a crown for you, you young

ruffian! and if I catch you on these rocks again, I'll throw you in

and let you swim for it: see if I don't."

He walked up to the carriage, shaking himself, and putting on his coat

as he went with great difficulty: "Mrs. Rosewarne, I must walk back: I

can't think of--"

He uttered a short cry. Wenna was lying as one dead in her mother's

arms, Mrs. Rosewarne vainly endeavoring to revive her. He rushed down

the rocks again to a pool and soaked his handkerchief in the water:

then he went hurriedly back to the carriage and put the cold

handkerchief on her temples and on her face.

"Oh, Mr. Trelyon, do go away or you will get your death of cold," Mrs.

Rosewarne said. "Leave Wenna to me. See, there is a gentleman who will

lend you his horse, and you will get to your hotel directly."

He did not even answer her. His own face was about as pale as that of

the girl before him, and hers was that of a corpse. But by and by

strange tremors passed through her frame: her hands tightened their

grip of her mother's arm, and with a sort of shudder she opened her

eyes and fearfully looked around. She caught sight of the young man

standing there: she scarcely seemed to recognize him for a moment. And

then, with a quick nervous action, she caught at his hand and kissed

it twice, hurriedly and wildly: then she turned to her mother, hid her

face in her bosom and burst into a flood of tears. Probably the girl

scarcely knew all that had taken place, but her two companions, in

silence and with a great apprehension filling their hearts, saw and

recognized the story she had told.

"Mr. Trelyon," said Mrs. Rosewarne, "you must not remain here."

Mechanically he obeyed her. The gentleman who had been riding along

the road had dismounted, and, fearing some accident had occurred, had

come forward to offer his assistance. When he was told how matters

stood, he at once gave Trelyon his horse to ride in to Penzance; and

then the carriage was driven off also at a considerably less rapid

pace.

That evening, Trelyon, having got into warm clothes and dined, went

along to ask how Wenna was. His heart beat hurriedly as he knocked at

the door. He had intended merely making the inquiry and coming away

again, but the servant said that Mrs. Rosewarne wished to see him.

He went up stairs and found Mrs. Rosewarne alone. These two looked at

each other: that single glance told everything. They were both aware

of the secret that had been revealed.

For an instant there was dead silence between them, and then Mrs.

Rosewarne, with a great sadness in her voice, despite its studied

calmness, said, "Mr. Trelyon, we need say nothing of what has

occurred. There are some things that are best not spoken of. But I

can trust to you not to seek to see Wenna before you leave here. She

is quite recovered--only a little nervous, you know, and frightened.

To-morrow she will be quite well again."

"You will bid her good-bye for me?" he said.

But for the tight clasp of the hand between these two, it was an

ordinary parting. He put on his hat and went out. Perhaps it was the

cold sea-air that made his face so pale.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

LA MADONNA DELLA SEDIA.

A TRADITION.

Raphael. Still in this free, clear air that vision floats

Before my brain. I may nor banish it

Nor grasp it. 'Tis too fine, too spirit-like,

To offer as the type of motherhood.

Color and blood and life and truth it lacks.

Gods! can it be that our imaginings

Excel your handiwork? Must life seem dull,

Must earth seem barren and unbeautiful,

For ever unto him who can create

This rarer world of delicate phantasy?

I lift mine eyes, and nothing real responds

To those ideal forms. God pardon me!

There in the everlasting sunshine sits

The Mother with the Infant at her breast.

Hence, ghostly shadows! let me learn to draw

Mine inspiration from the common air.

A peasant-woman auburn-haired, large-eyed,

Within the shade of overhanging boughs

Suckles her babe, and sees her eldest born

Gambol upon the grass: the elf has wrought

With two snapt boughs the semblance of a cross,

And proudly holds the sacred symbol high

Above his head to win his mother's praise.

Mine art may haply reproduce that wealth

Of brilliant hues--the dusk hair's glimmering gold,

The auroral blush, the bare breasts shining white

Where the babe's warm rose-face is pressed against

That fount of generous life; but ah! what craft

May paint the unearthly peace upon her brow,

The holy love that from her dark moist orbs

Beams with no lesser glory than the eyes

Of the Maid-Mother toward her heaven-born Child.

_Little Boy with the Cross_.

Oh, mother, such a stranger comes this way!

I saw him as I climbed the olive tree

To break the branches for my crucifix--

tall, fair youth with floating yellow curls.

Is he an angel?

_Maria_. Silly darling, peace!

No longer dwell the angels on the earth,

And see, he comes.

_Raphael_. Madonna mia, hail!

God bless thee and thy cherubim!

_Maria_. Amen!

God bless thee also for the pious wish!

No cherubim are these, but, Heaven be thanked,

Two healthy boys. Pray, sit and rest with us:

The heat has been too fierce for wayfarers,

And 'neath these shady vines the afternoon

Is doubly fresh.

_Raphael_. Thanks, 'tis a grateful air:

The weariness of travel it uplifts

From heavy brow and body with its breath,

Delicious as cool water to the touch.

_Maria_. Bernardo, climb yon trunk again and pluck

Some ripened clusters for this gentleman.

_Raphael_. Ah, 'tis a radiant child: what full, lithe limbs!

What cream-white dimpling flesh! what golden lights

Glance through the foliage on his crisp-curled head!

What rosy shadows on the naked form

Against gray olive leaves and blue-green vine!

And see, where now the bright, round face peers down,

And smiles and nods, and beckons us as one

Who leaneth out of heaven.

_Maria_. A wanton imp,

And full of freaks. I marvel much thereat,

Since I have named him from a holy saint,

Who bode among us many years, and gave

His dying blessing unto me and mine.

_Raphael_. The child could be no other than he is

Without some loss, mother. But what saint

Had here his hermitage?

_Maria_. Nay, pardon me,

'Twas but my reverent love that sainted him;

Yet was he one most worthy of the crown,

If austere life of white simplicity,

Large charity and strict self-sacrifice

Can sanctify a mortal.

_Raphael_. Yet I see

No convent nigh.

_Maria_. Nay, sir, no convent his.

Beyond our comfortable homes he dwelt,

Not lonely though alone: 'neath yonder hill

His hut was reared; a tall full-foliaged oak

O'ershadowed it. 'Tis not so long agone

Since he was here to comfort, help and heal,

Yet now no earthly trace of him remains.

Spring freshets from the hills have washed away

The last wrecked fragments of his hermitage,

And though I pleaded hard, I could not save

The oak, his dear dumb daughter, from the axe,

Albeit 'twas she preserved him unto us.

Forgive me, sir, my chatter wearies you,

Here be the grapes my boy has plucked: they sate

Both thirst and hunger, pray refresh yourself.

_Raphael_. Dear mother, it is rest to hear thee speak.

'Tis not my hale young limbs that are forespent,

But an outwearied spirit, seeking peace,

Hath found it in thy voice. Speak on, speak on.

What of this holy saint? how chanced the tree

To save his life?

_Maria_. Ah, 'twas a miracle.

Through summer's withering heats and blighting droughts

His own hands gave the thirsty roots to drink.

In spring the first pale growth of tender green

Thrilled him with scarcely less delight than mine

At my babe's earliest glance of answering love.

Daily he fed the tame free birds that went

Singing among its boughs; he tended it,

He watched, he cherished, yea he talked to it,

As though it had a soul. God gave to him

Two daughters, he was wont to say--one mute,

And one who spake, the oak tree and myself.

A child, scarce older than my Bernard now,

I nestled to the quaint, kind hermit's heart,

And grew to girlhood with my hand in his.

I loved to prank his wretched cell with flowers.

Twisting bright weeds around his crucifix,

Or trailing ivy wreaths about his door.

One winter came when half my father's vines

Were killed with frost; the valley was as white

As yonder boldest mountain-top; the air

Cut like a knife; the brooks were still and stiff;

The high drifts choked the hollows of the hills.

When spring approached and swollen brooks ran free.

And in the ponds the blue ice cracked and brake,

The hard snows melted and the bladed green

Put forth again, then from the mountain-slopes,

The avalanches rolled; the streams o'erflowed;

The fields were flooded; flocks were swept away,

And folk fared o'er the pasture-ground in boats.

Two days and nights the sun and stars seemed drowned,

The air was thick with water, and the world

Lay ruined under rain and sliding snows.

Then day and night my thoughts were with the saint

Whose poor hut clung to yonder treacherous slope:

My dreams, my tears, my prayers were all for him.

Not till the flood subsided, and again

A watery sun shone forth, my prayers prevailed

Upon my father, and he went with me

To seek the holy man. "Just God!" he cried,

And I, with both hands pressed against mine eyes,

Burst into sobs. No hermitage was there:

Naught save one broken, tottering wall remained

Beneath the unshaken, firmly-rooted oak.

Then from the branches came a faint, thin voice,

"My children, I am saved!" and looking up,

We found him clinging with what strength was left

Unto the boughs. We led him home with us,

Starving and sick, and chilled through blood and bone.

Our tenderest care was needed to revive

The life half spent, and soon we learned the tale

Of his salvation. He had climbed at first

Unto his roof, but saw ere long small chance

For that frail hut to stand against the storm.

It rocked beneath him as a bark at sea,

The hard wind beat upon him, and the rain

Drenched him and seemed to scourge him as with flails.

He gave himself to God; composed with prayer

His spirit to meet death; when overhead

The swaying oak-limbs seemed to beckon him

To seek the branches' shelter and support.

His prayer till death was that the Lord would bless

His daughters, and distinguish them above

All children of the earth. For me his suit

Hath well prevailed, thank God! A happy wife,

A happy mother, I have naught to ask:

My blessings overflow.

_Raphael_. Thanks for thy tale,

Most gracious mother. See thy babe is lulled

To smiling sleep.

_Maria_. Yea, and the silence now

Awakens him. Ah, darling rogue, art flushed

With too much comfort? So! let the cool air

Play with thy curls and fan the plump, hot cheek.

_Raphael_. Hold, as the child uplifts his cherub face,

Opens his soft small arms to stroke thy cheek,

Crowing with glee, while the slant sunbeams light

A halo of gold fire about thy hair,

I see again a canvas that is hung

Over the altar in our church at home.

"_Mater amabilis_," yet here be traits,

Colors and tones the artist never dreamed.

Sweet mother, let me sketch thee with thy babe:

So rare a picture should not pass away

With the brief moment which it illustrates.

_Maria_. Art thou a painter too, Sir Traveler?

Where be thy brush and colors?

_Raphael_. Ah, 'tis true,

Naught have I with me. What is this? 'twill serve

My purpose.

_Maria_. 'Tis the cover of a cask,

Made of the very oak whereof I spake:

My father for his wine-casks felled the tree.

_Raphael_. A miracle! the hermit's daughters thus

Will be remembered in the years to come.

My pencil will suffice to scratch the lines

Upon the wood: my memory will hold

The lights, the tints, the golden atmosphere,

The genius of the scene--the mother-love.

EMMA LAZARUS.

EARLY TRAVELING EXPERIENCES IN INDIA.

In August, 1849, when I had been living at Calcutta nearly three

years, I was warned by my doctor that I must go on a sea-voyage or

else to the Himalaya Mountains, if life was an object with me. Such it

was, and very keenly. The four-and-twenty years of it which I had

divided between study and rollicking had approved themselves, like

this poor old world when it was new, "very good," and I had a strong

objection to parting with it on so short an acquaintance. True, my

hepatic apparatus, as the doctors grandly call the liver, had got

miserably out of gear, though I was a water-drinker, and though I had

a wholesome horror of tropical sunshine. But I had a good

constitution, and I had the word of the medical faculty for it that

many a man with not half so good a one as mine had pulled through a

much worse condition than I was in. To go away somewhere, however, was

proposed as my only alternative to migrating down to the hideous

cemetery among the bogs and jackals of Chowringhee. But where should I

go? After having been shot once and drowned twice when a boy, I had

been ship-wrecked at the mouth of the sacred and accursed Ganges, and

had just escaped with my life and Greek lexicon. Shooting--and I may

throw in hanging--I felt proof against, and as for drowning, I had no

fear of that. Nevertheless, I had been very near five months in coming

out from Boston under the blundering seamanship of Captain Coffin

(ominous cognomen!), and salt water, hard junk and weevilly biscuit

were as unattractive to me in possible prospect as they were in

retrospect. The sea I had weighed in the balance and had found it much

wanting. I would, then, go to the Himalayas.

So I prepared to make for Simla, which, however, I never saw, nor had

occasion to see, my liver complaint seeming to have been left behind,

with my good wishes, in the City of Palaces. In the early days of

Indian civilization to which I refer the most convenient way of

journeying on high-roads was by palanquin. One of the black

packing-cases so called was purchased, and an arrangement entered

into, after the custom of the country, with the post-office to have

relays of bearers provided on the road at stated times and places.

Thus, I was to go as far as Ghazeepore, where I had a friend living,

and there I was to give due notice if I wished to proceed farther.

Traveling in India has so frequently been a subject of description

that I shall not describe it anew. I allow myself, however, to say

that if, before venturing on it, you lay in a stock of boiled tongues,

sardines, marmalade, and tea and sugar, you could not do better by way

of forestalling starvation and repentance. Every day I stopped once or

twice at a travelers' bungalow, or rest-house; and I managed,

notwithstanding that my stock of Urdû was scanty, to make my wants

understood. That a great part of the copious monologue which my

purveyors expended, as we settled the details of breakfast or dinner,

was lost on me, did not seem, in the final result, to matter in the

least. What I needed I asked for, and then listened attentively for

the barbaric representative of "yes" or "no" in the Babel of sounds

that followed, neglecting the flux of verbiage that engulfed it with

the same lofty indifference which a mathematician professes toward

infinitely small quantities. With a view to avoiding cross-purposes

there is nothing like economy of speech. But how my tawny hosts could

contrive to realize such a fortune of talk out of their very meagre

capital of subject-matter excited my never-ending wonder. They could

provide forlorn pullets, certainly from the same farmyard with the

lean kine of Egypt, and to these they could add, what was much better

left unadded, a villainous species of unleavened bread, a sort of

hoecake, not at all improved--precisely like the run of travelers--by

leaving home and wandering in the Orient. And this was about all they

could provide. But, I repeat, how could expatiate on them! And how

bespattered one with compound epithets of adulation!

A friend of mine, a lady, when fresh in the country once compromised

herself rather astonishingly by lending an ear to their multiloquence,

instead of resolutely refusing her attention to all communication but

that consisting of "yea, yea," and "nay, nay." She had noted down, in

her tablets, the Urdû wherewith to ask whether a thing is procurable,

and to order it, if procurable, to be forthcoming, with the

appropriate outlandish words for "pullet" and "hoecake," and also

those for straightforward answers, affirmative and negative. She was

certain that with this lingual accoutrement she could not possibly be

taken at a disadvantage. The experience of a few hours, however,

unsettled her self-confidence very considerably. She alights at a

wayside hostelry. Khudâbakhsh, the chief servant in attendance,

arrayed in more or less fine linen, without the purple, surmounted by

a turban after the likeness of Saturn and his rings in a pictorial

astronomy-book, presents himself, and worships her with lowly

salutations. "Is a fowl to be had?"--"Gharîb-parwar," is the prompt

reply.--"Is hoecake to be had?"--"Dharm-antâr," officiously cuts in

Khudâbakhsh's mate, a low-caste Hindoo; and the principal thinks it

unnecessary to respond to the question a second time. Now, what is to

be done? What do they mean? Have they fowl and hoecake? Have they not

fowl and hoecake? Here, to be sure, is a very _bivium_ of

perplexities. The lady at last, with quiet nonchalance, demands the

production of a gharîb-parwar and a dharm-antâr, thus unconsciously

ordering a "cherisher of the poor" and an "incarnation of justice,"

the pretty appellations used to designate herself. "Queer things for

breakfast!" Khudâbakhsh and his mate mentally reflect, exchanging

glances, but without moving a muscle. Breakfast is served, and my

friend sees before her just what she meant to order. On one dish reeks

the bony contour of a chicken, grinning thankfulness for extinction at

every joint, and on a second dish towers a pile of things like small

wooden trenchers pressed flat. Of course she has been puzzled, she

self-flatteringly concludes, by some less common names of the very

common viands which lie displayed before her. By and by, however, she

discovers that gharîb-parwar and dharm-antâr are not articles of

gastronomic indulgence, at least beyond the borders of those islands

of the blest where slices of cold missionary come on with the dessert.

When fully aware of her little blunder she marvels, and not

unreasonably, that any one should address a lady as "cherisher of the

poor" or as "incarnation of justice," rather than as plain "madam;"

and she thinks it equally strange that any one should so beat about

the bush as to substitute polysyllables of compliment for _hân_, the

much more expeditious equivalent of "yes."

Everything went on smoothly and monotonously enough till I was within

twenty miles, roughly computed, of Ghazeepore. At this point, on

reaching the end of a stage, my bearers woke me to say there was no

relay waiting for them. It may have been midnight. I told them to set

me down, to make up a fire and to go to sleep around it, but keeping

watch, turn and turn about, each for an hour. Matters being thus

disposed, I shut and hooked the palanquin doors, readjusting my

blankets, and was soon dreaming of another hemisphere. At sunrise no

new bearers had yet shown themselves. My men belonged to the region we

were in, and I learned from them that the nearest European dwelt only

eight miles distant. I bargained with them to take me to his bungalow.

The unexpected wages which they were promised being liberal, they

trotted off with unwonted briskness. In due course the bungalow loomed

in sight, and as I approached it a burly figure, in shirt-sleeves and

with arms akimbo, appeared in the verandah, his eyes turned in the

direction of his unlooked-for visitor. "God bless you, Hugh Maxwell!

I'm devilish glad to see you," shouted the burly figure, benedictory,

but even in benediction not oblivious of the Old Teaser. "I wish to

Goodness I was Hugh Maxwell!" I returned, stepping to the ground. "Oh,

never mind," rejoined the hearty indigo-planter, perceiving his

mistake and offering me his hand. "There is just time for a bath

before breakfast," he added; and a good tubbing, in sufficient light

to see and evade creeping things by, was far from unacceptable. I

stayed with my good-natured host two days and nights, picking up, in

the mean while, much curious information touching the cultivation and

manufacture in which he was occupied. Like most persons of his

calling, he was an ardent sportsman. The early hours of the morning he

gave almost daily to a stroll with his gun; and the first evening I

passed with him he invited me, in startlingly piebald phraseology, to

accompany him on the morrow. "Be up by _top dage_," said he: "we will

have _chhotî hâzirî_, and then a _chal_ over the _khets_ for some

_shikâr_" Why he did not prefer to say "gun-fire," "tea and toast,"

"run," "fields," and "game," probably he could not have told himself.

His way of peppering his English with Urdû was characteristic of his

class, and till I got accustomed to it I found it somewhat perplexing.

If he had known me all his life he could not have been more friendly.

Yet his kindness and hospitality were not exceptional things in the

India of a quarter of a century ago. All is changed there now--whether

much for the better I am skeptical. Twenty-two hours after they were

due my missing bearers made their appearance. Arrived at Ghazeepore, I

addressed a complaint to the postmaster-general. Thereupon two sides

of a large sheet of paper were spread for me with base official

circumlocution, through the darkness of which I groped out, after some

labor, the audacious libel that the blame, if there were any, rested

entirely with myself. This stuff, signed by the functionary aforesaid,

but doubtless concocted without his privity by one of his graceless

subordinates, I knew to be the only satisfaction I was to look for. A

request for revision of judgment would have been received with silent

scorn, and appeal there was none. Digesting my disgust as best I

could, I lighted my cheroot with the mendacious foolscap and blushed

for my species.

Let us pass on to the beginning of 1851. Having then been stationary

at Benares for a whole year, I was longing for a little variety. Oude,

deservedly called the Garden of India, was, by all accounts, well

worth visiting. I resolved to visit it. But not merely was independent

exploration in that kingdom attended with risk: in strict propriety,

one had no business there except by royal authority, which royal

authority, as concerned a traveler, strongly recommended itself to

respectful consideration from including a guard, and that free of

expense. An acquaintance of mine wrote a letter for me to the Resident

at Lucknow, Sir Henry Sleeman. The royal authority was obtained, and

the guard inclusive was to meet me on the Oude frontier. Tents were

borrowed; servants and camels were hired; long consultations were held

with old stagers in the marching line. The canvas which was to shelter

me for six weeks was built up in front of my house, and already I felt

myself half a nomad. The last evening was spent with veterans in the

ways of camping out, and at three o'clock the next morning I mounted

my horse and began my journey. My road lay through Jaunpoor, and here

I encountered a violent thunderstorm in the middle of the night, with

floods of rain. At the cost of being almost drowned out and blown

away, I learned the expediency of trenching one's tabernacle, and the

wisdom of putting one's confidence in none but brand-new cordage. In

the city of Jaunpoor there is not much to arrest notice, saving its

very durable bridge, dating from the time of Akbar, and the Atâlâ

Masjid, a mosque deformed from a rather ancient Hindoo temple; and the

rest of the district of Jaunpoor which my route lay through was

altogether uninteresting. The borders of the district crossed, after

traversing a narrow strip of Oude I came again to British territory.

This fragment formed a perfect island, so to speak, the domains of the

nawab hemming it in on every side. The one European inhabitant of this

isolated but fertile spot was an indigo-planter, near whose bungalow

and factory I encamped for a night. His establishment was of long

standing, but he had no neighbor within many miles, and there was that

about the place which filled me with a sense of utter dreariness and

depression. Hard by the house was a burial-ground, and wholly by that

house it had been peopled with all its many tenants. Saddening were

the brief and almost unvaried histories recorded on its unpretending

monuments. There was a name, and then a date, and then that word at

the bare mention of which there are few old Indians who, as it calls

up memories of bygone shocks and griefs, can refrain from a sickening

shudder--"cholera." Among all who rested there in peace, so far away

from every reminder of childhood and of home, not one had passed the

prime of life. It was easy to picture to one's self the last gloomy

hours of those hapless exiles, stricken down by the fell scourge in

the pride of their strength, and perhaps at the full tide of their

prosperity, with none to succor, and with no hope from the first but

that they must perish. Nor was this quite all. How could their sole

companions, their servants, people of the country, and bound to their

masters by none but the mercenary tie of a hireling, soothe their

dying moments with any genuine sympathy, or supply in the dread

travail of mortality the room of a friend, or even of a

fellow-countryman? This is no baseless sketch of fancy. Familiar facts

dispense with all need to draw on the imagination in outlining the end

of one who meets a destiny like theirs. The planter suddenly finds

himself ill; he rapidly grows worse; a few hours of agony in his

solitude, and all is over. Tidings of the event are carried to the

nearest factory, and then to another and another. Two or three of his

former acquaintances ride over to his bungalow, knock up a rude

coffin, mumble a few sentences about "the resurrection and the life,"

"our dear brother here departed," and "ashes to ashes, dust to dust,"

bury him out of sight, and set up a decent stone over his grave. His

place is filled again in a few weeks or months, and his successor,

regardless of warnings, toils on in the old routine, possibly to share

his miserable fate.

As I have said above, a guard was directed to await me on the Oude

borders. Various, conflicting, and all of them wide of the mark, were

my speculations on its outward and visible form, and the martial

equipment by which it was to strike terror in all beholders. Was it to

consist of horse or of foot? and of how many men? and so forth. The

mystery was resolved at the time and place appointed. A camel--a

picked sample, seemingly, for general ugliness and the vicious way it

writhed its mouth--shambled up to my tent. Its rider, who in all

specialties of repulsiveness tallied with the beast to a hair, impaled

a letter on the tip of his spear and handed it down. It was from the

Resident at Lucknow. In its unpromising bearer I beheld my guard. If

the look of a thorough ruffian, much unwashed, with the spear just

mentioned, a matchlock, and an assortment round his waist of what

resembled carving-knives and skewers, was to be my sufficient defence

in time of trouble, I was well provided for. However it was to be

explained, no harm came to me anywhere on my march. But my guard, if

he looked zealously after my interests, looked full as zealously after

his own. For what I knew he was licensed, as a servant of the state,

to billet himself at free quarters on his royal master's subjects: at

any rate, so he did. But, greatly to his vexation, I would not hear of

his compelling the shopkeepers with whom my butler had daily dealings

in buying necessaries for me to provision my camp at their own charge.

The man was for carrying things with a high hand; and at the period of

which I am writing to do so was in Oude wellnigh the universal rule.

Justice was fast dying out in the land, and violence already reigned

prevalent in its stead. The taxes, exorbitant as apportioned at the

court, were farmed by merciless wretches who made them more exorbitant

still, and who collected them, for the most part, at the point of the

sword. Open robbery, deadly brawls and private assassination had

become matters of perpetual occurrence. There was scarcely a day

during my tour that I was not in the close vicinity of fatal

skirmishes, and that I did not fall in with parties carrying away from

them the dead or wounded. Obviously, this state of affairs could not

exist for any very long duration. The nawab was advised, warned, and

then menaced with deposal, provided things were not righted in his

dominions, radically and speedily, to the satisfaction of the East

India Company. Harsh measures, equally with mild, were, however,

altogether wasted on him. Personally, he was a groveling debauchee,

exhausted alike in mind and in body to sheer imbecility; and his

courtiers and counselors were little better than himself. To anarchy,

insurrection seemed inevitably imminent. It was precluded by

annexation, and the kingdom of Oude, not an hour in advance of its

deserts, took its place in finished history.

Game of a humbler description I met with in abundance everywhere in

Oude, but I had hunted the tiger with the rajah of Benares, and since

then had conceived a disdain of feathered things, bustards excepted.

Moreover, I had lately bought a superb double-barreled Swiss rifle, as

yet untested in real work. With inviting jungles constantly within

easy reach, not to experiment with this lordly implement on something

bigger than a wild pig demanded abnegation beyond my philosophy. I had

no companion, but then I would control my impetuosity, do nothing

rash, and, if I could, keep out of the way of temptation. One day,

therefore, breakfast despatched, I shouldered my lovely Switzer, and

struck off at random across the open. Woodland was not far to seek,

and before I had been away an hour I was in the heart of a dense

jungle. Ordinary deer and "such-like" I might have shot at will, but I

happened to be in an exclusive mood of mind, and was determined to

drop a blue-cow, if anything. But let not my Occidental reader

reproach me with having meditated such an atrocity as bovicide. I have

literally translated the Hindoo _nîl gâe_, the misleading name given

in India to the white-footed antelope, sometimes called also _rojh_.

At last my slaughterous appetite was gratified, and a blue-cow bore

witness to the merit of my rifle, if not to my marksmanship. It had

cost me a tiresome search, and, being a shy animal, much stealthy

tracking. Yet when the beautiful creature lay stretched at my feet it

seemed as if I had been guilty of wanton cruelty, and I wished my aim

had miscarried, proud as I had just before been of having done

execution at what looked to be an impracticably long range. Not

improbably I tried to extenuate my inhumanity by the argument that if

I had not killed it somebody else would have done so. Be this how it

may, I could never bring myself to shoot another, though I had many a

fair chance. All things considered, then, I am disposed to strike a

balance in my favor.

However, a little while previously I had done a bit of bloodshed which

could not have lain on the very tenderest of consciences. The

circumstances were these: Near my camp was a patch of sugar-cane,

which I noticed bore marks of visitation by some creature with a taste

for sweets. The neighborhood, I ascertained, was infested with wild

hogs. In the afternoon I surveyed the fields adjoining the sugar-cane,

and made my dispositions against night. The moon was at the full. As

soon as it rose I took my rifle and repaired to a position selected

with reference to a certain tree. This tree had a low--but not too

low--horizontal branch, strong enough, as proved by experiment, to

bear my weight. Presently, an unmistakable concert of snorting and

grunting announced the approach of swine. I picked out their fugleman,

a well-grown boar, and fired. He was only wounded, and immediately

gave chase after me. I might discharge my second barrel at him, but

suppose I should miss? Perched out of his reach, I might miss him

with impunity, and load again. All this I had pondered beforehand. So

I started for my tree, which I reached some ten seconds sooner than

the boar, swung myself up on its low branch, and there took my seat.

The boar rushed furiously to and fro, raging like the heathen of the

Psalmist, and also, like the Psalmist's people--not a well-ordered

democracy like ours, of course--imagining a vain thing. Again and

again he quixotically charged the bole of the tree, no doubt thinking

it to be myself in a new shape. A fine classical boar he must have

been, with his poetic faith in instantaneous metamorphosis. His

classicality, however, what with his unmannerly savageness and my own

suspension between heaven and earth, I did not feel bound to respect.

So, without the slightest emotion of sentimentality, I put a ball

through his head.

Let us now hark back to the blue-cow, beautiful and breathless.

Satisfied, for the nonce, with my prowess in laying it low, I plunged

into the forest, just to explore. I must have rambled several miles,

when I suddenly came upon an impervious barrier of quickset. Following

its course a little way, I found that it curved, and at one point I

espied through it a broad ditch filled with water, and a wall beyond.

By and by I reached a gap in the barrier, and a drawbridge leading up

to a large gate. I crossed the bridge, knocked at the gate, parleyed

with an invisible porter, and was admitted. My visit was evidently

viewed with a mixture of dislike and suspicion, but with no sign of

alarm when it was seen that I was really unaccompanied, as, while

still outside, I had said I was. Looking around, I perceived that I

was in a substantial fortress. Eight or ten ruffianly fellows came

about me and wished to know what I wanted. I asked who lived there,

and they informed me, adding an expression of surprise at my putting

such a question. Was their master at home? He was. And could I see

him? They would let me know directly. On this I was conducted to a

small room, and left there, The roughs paced backward and forward

before the door, casting glances at me which I fancied to be sinister.

In a few minutes their chief, a stalwart, brawny biped, swaggered in,

twirling his moustaches, clanking his sword, and studying to seem

truculent. He, no less than his men, was at a loss to know what I

could have come there for. So I told him the unvarnished facts of the

case, and paused for his reply. He had none to make. The latest news

from Lucknow he inquired for, indeed, but as I had come from the

opposite direction, and withal did not know the latest news of the

capital from the stalest, I could contribute nothing to his

enlightenment. Besides my rifle, I had in my belt a pair of loaded

pistols. He desired to look at them, but took in good part enough my

objection that I never trusted them in any hands but my own. We went

on talking for a little while, when he called for betel and pan. This

meant that I might go. I helped myself, took leave and recrossed the

drawbridge. It was a notorious freebooter, a Hindoo Robin Hood, that I

had dropped upon. But why did he not tumble me into his ditch and

enrich his armory with my rifle and pistols? It may be that prudence

operated, in his letting me go free, as a check on his lust for a very

small gain. Despite the then disordered condition of the country--or,

in some instances, by very reason of it--people of his stamp were

every here and there called to a summary reckoning. A bandit would

know the haunts of other bandits, and either to conciliate the

government or in the hope of reward occasionally betrayed or slew a

fellow-outlaw. While in Oude, one morning just after breakfast I was

told there was something to show me in a basket. The cover was

removed, and there I saw sixteen human heads. Their late proprietors

were a famous brigand and his merry men, only looking quite the

reverse of merry in the grim ghastliness of decapitation. I scarcely

recovered my appetite before tiffin.

By an odd concurrence of circumstances, when near Fyzabad I was for

three days thrown on the hospitality of a wealthy Mohammedan. Nothing

could have exceeded his kindness, but the peculiar nature of the

entertainment he gave me may be conjectured when I mention that he had

not such a thing as a chair, table, knife, fork or spoon to his name.

Perforce, I had to dine sitting on the floor and with the sole aid of

my fingers. However, I accepted my fate without a murmur, and soon

learned to feed after the fashion of Eden as deftly as if I had been

bred to it. Hindoo cookery I could rarely screw up my courage so

heroically as to venture upon. Even the odor of my Calcutta washerman,

redolent with the fragrance of castor oil, was too much for my

unchastised squeamishness; and as to assafoetida, the favorite

condiment of our Aryan cousins, I was so uncatholic as to bring away

from India the same aversion to it that I had carried out there. But a

Mohammedan has, with some unimportant reservations, highly rational

notions as concerns the eatable and the drinkable. His endless variety

of kabobs and pilaus is worthy of all commendation; and his sherbets,

which refresh without a sting or a resipiscent headache next morning,

are no doubt the style of phlegm-cutters and gum-ticklers which one

had better patronize pretty exclusively while between the tropics. The

gentleman of the circumcision whom I had for host was, I suspect,

something of an epicure, and his cooking was such as I found eminently

toothsome. My dinner was on the floor at the polite hour of eight,

after which he would come to me for a short talk and to chant a little

Persian poetry. At nine he was due in his harem, which, he gave me to

understand, was a populous establishment.

For my special service he detailed, to my surprise, not a man, but a

young woman, who, I take it, was in bonds. Under considerate Hindoo

and Mohammedan masters slavery is, however, the lightest of hardships,

and the damsel appropriated to wait on me, if she were not a slave,

could not have been lighter-hearted. A student of all the natural

products of the East, I did not neglect while there to bestow a proper

share of study on Indian womankind; and as my Fyzabad abigail was a

noteworthy specimen of her species, I may as well gratify the

curiosity of the untraveled to know what she was like. Such as she was

the queen of Sheba would perhaps have been if scoured very bright and

pared shapely. Her name was Dilrubâ, which signifies, being

interpreted, "Heart-ravisher." She may have been seventeen or

eighteen; she was of a good height and elegantly proportioned, with a

well-set neck, sloping shoulders, and fine bust; and her carriage had

that stately and sylph-like grace which no words can depict, and which

is found nowhere on earth but among the Orientals. Her hands and feet

were exquisitely small and symmetrical. Her arms, which were bare

to the shoulder, displayed everything of fullness, rotundity and

lines of beauty that could be desired. Their hue and delicacy

of texture would have reminded a connoisseur of brownish satin.

Her waist, tight-cinctured, was--which is the highest praise--not

ultra-fashionable, and the undulations of her gauzy drapery disclosed,

as she receded, enough of ankle and crural adjacency to furnish hints

of improvement to most classical sculptors. Her lips, I regret to say,

were too liny, and not of the true ruby tint, but with the exception

of her mouth all her features were, not to say more, good. As to her

eyes, I should do injustice by any attempt to describe them. An object

must be susceptible of calm and dispassionate contemplation if one

would analyze it afterward without complete disaster. A very

irresistible little piece of orientality she must indeed have been,

perchance the reader will conclude. And yet, if the reader is a man

and a brother--that is to say, a brother white man--I answer him he is

altogether in too great a hurry. He has forgotten her color; and color

is a matter which we narrow--minded dwellers in the North find it

impossible to be liberal about. Not by five-and-twenty shades, at the

least, did the trim creature resemble any lily of the valley but a

very dark one; and of the rose she was totally unsuggestive. If I had

been so cosmopolitan as to make love to her, she could not have

called up a blush to save her pretty little soul and body. She might

have turned green or yellow, for aught I know, but by no possibility

could she have done what she ought to have done.

At Fyzabad there is but little to see, and that little is rather

uninteresting. What impressed me there, more than anything else, was a

particular private dwelling, and especially a certain room in it. The

edifice to which I refer belonged to an opulent Mohammedan, and had

been erected by an English architect. Being constructed pretty closely

on the model of a mansion in Belgravia, it was wholly unsuited in a

hot climate to any purpose except that of torture. In all probability,

its constructor, as he roasted over his work, omitted of set intention

to fit it up with fireplaces. In this omission, however, there was a

breach of contract, for in all its details the building was to be

thoroughly English. The defect was pointed out at the last moment, and

strict injunctions were given to repair it. Fireplaces there must be,

and a full complement of them. The matter was finally compromised by

providing a single small square room at the top of the house with one

in each of its side walls. In the same spirit of determination not to

come short of the mark, a rich Bengalee baboo whom I once knew

furnished his drawing-room, a large apartment, with thirty-two round

tables and an equal number of musical boxes.

A great deal more might be said of Oude as I saw it, but the region,

since it became English territory, has been so often and so fully

described that I forbear to dwell on it. At Lucknow, its capital, I

spent a week as guest of Sir Henry Sleeman, with whom, from that time

to the end of his life, I was in constant correspondence. That Sir

Henry was a man altogether out of the common must be evident from his

various publications. I came to know his mind on most subjects very

intimately. In every respect he was original and peculiar, and but for

a rooted aversion to anything like Boswellism I might here depict a

character such as one seldom meets with in these days. To his personal

influence it was largely owing that for many a long year the

annexation of Oude to the Indian empire was suspended in disastrous

balance.

FITZEDWARD HALL.

ONCE AND AGAIN.

Once and again I have nestled in the lap of a small village and

wondered at the necessity of any world beyond my peaceful horizon.

Once and again, after long years, I have entered the old school-room

with the fearful and impatient heart of a boy: I have paced the

play-ground and gone to and fro in the village streets singing, but

the song I once sang came not again to my lips, for it no longer

suited the time or the occasion.

I thought to take up the thread of life where I had dropped it near a

score of years before, and complete the web which fancy had

embroidered with many a flower of memory and hope and love. I had

forgotten that the loom weaves steadily and persistently whether my

hand be on it or not, and that I can never mend the rent in the fabric

I so long neglected.

My record elsewhere is replete with numerous accidents by flood and

field--with the epochs of meetings and marryings, of births and

deaths. Meanwhile, the friends who had held fast to me through all

these changes wrote ever in the selfsame vein, and plotted for my

return with such even and sturdy faith that I had grown to look upon

them as having drunk at the fountain of immortal youth.

Of course the delectable spring gushed out of the heart of one of

those dear old hills that walled in the village, for how else could

they have quaffed it? The bones of more than two centuries pave the

highway between New England and California. As jubilant as young

Lochinvar, I came out of the West one summer dawn, and took train for

Heartsease. I had resolved to compass in a single week the innumerable

landmarks that dot mountain and desert and prairie--to leap as it were

from sea to sea, from the present to the past, from manhood to early

youth.

Is it any wonder that I forestalled the time, and was a day and a

night distant before inquiring friends discovered my flight? Is it any

wonder that the shrieking and swaying train seemed slow to me, for

already my spirit had folded its swift wings in the nest-like village

of Heartsease? I had, moreover, by this brilliant manoeuvre, left the

bitter cup of parting untasted--but nothing more serious than

this--and seemed to have won a whole day from the clutches of Time,

who deals them out so stingily to the expectant and impatient watcher.

San Francisco faces the sunrise, but there is a broad glittering bay

and a coast range with brawny bare shoulders between them: I sailed

over the flashing water, rode under the mountains and threaded three

tunnels before I began to realize that I was a fugitive from home. It

was midsummer; the car-windows were half open; whiffs of warm wind

blew in upon me scented with bay-leaves and sage. For a moment I

forgot Heartsease and the home of my youth, and turned tenderly to

take a last farewell of the beloved land of my adoption. The corn was

cut and stacked in long dusty rows: it looked like a deserted camp;

the grain was down; small squirrels skipped lightly over the shining

stubble, whisking their bushy tails like puffs of smoke. It seemed to

me that no fairer land ever baked in summer's sunshine. Even the

parched earth, with its broken and powdered crust, was lovely in my

eyes. Small day-owls sat in the corners of the fences, when there were

any fences to sit in, and nodded to me from behind their feather

masks: all the birds of the air taunted me with heads on one side and

drooping wings. I might escape trusting humanity and steal away

betimes, but these airy messengers waylaid me and chirped a sarcastic

adieu from every field we crossed.

In the compulsory solitude of travel a man is thrown back upon

himself: at any rate, I am, and with waning courage and a growing

regret I sank into a corner of my seat by the window, and glowered at

the interminable slices of landscape that slid past me on both sides

of the rocking train. Have you ever noted the refrain of the flying

wheels as they hurry from town to town? There is a sharp shriek from

the locomotive, and a groan from one end of the train to the other, as

if every screw were rheumatic and nothing but a miracle held it in its

place. Then the song begins, very slowly at first, and in the old

familiar strain: "Ko--ka--chi--lunk, ko--ka--chilunk, koka--chilunk,

kokachilunk," repeated again and again, varied only when the short

rails are crossed, where it adds a few extra syllables in this style:

"Kokachilunk--chilunk, chilunk," growing faster and faster every

moment until the utmost speed is attained: it then soars into this

impressive refrain: "Lickity-cut, lickity-cut, lickity-cut,

lickity-cut," repeated as often and as rapidly as possible. All the

world goes by in two dizzy landscapes, yet the song is unvaried until

you approach a town with a straggling and unfinished edge, where the

houses are waltzing about as if they had not yet decided upon any

permanent location. Here you slacken speed and drop into a third

movement, as monotonous as the others and far more drowsy, for it

suggests all that is soothing and nerve-relaxing and sleep-begetting.

It is "Killi-kinick, killi--kinick, killi--kin--nick; eh! ah! bang!" A

long groan from the wheels, a deep sigh from the locomotive, and you

are stockstill at some inland hamlet that knows no emotion greater

than that occasioned by your arrival.

To this dull accompaniment I climbed out of the golden lowlands, the

basins of the San Joaquin and the Sacramento, into the silver

mountains where the full moon was just rising. The train seemed to

soar through space; we passed from cliff to cliff, above dark ravines,

on bridges like spider-webs; we whirled around sharp corners as if we

had started for some planet, but thought better of it and clung to

earth, with our hair on end and half the breath out of our bodies. We

were continually ascending; the locomotive panted hideously; every

throb of the powerful machine sent a shudder through the whole length

of the train.

Again and again we paused: it seemed that we could not go farther

without rest. Sometimes we hung on the edge of a chasm in whose

fathomless shadow were buried a forest and a stream, both of which

sent upward to us a fragrant and melodious greeting; sometimes we

rested under a mighty mountain, whose adamantine brow scowled upon us,

and we were glad when we once more resumed the toilsome ascent of the

Sierras and escaped unharmed from that giant's lair.

Once we tarried on the brink of a wild cañon. Midnight and silence

seemed to slumber there: the moon flooded one half the mysterious gulf

with light, revealing a slender waterfall whose plash was faintly

heard: it served only to make the silence more profound. Near at hand

the torn and ragged earth, robbed of its treasure, looked painful even

in that softening light. On the dark side of the cañon, in among the

trees, a flame danced. I saw the gaunt forms of rough-clad men

gathered about the camp-fire, and beyond them a rude cabin of

un-barked logs, looking cheerful enough in the rosy light.

There was nothing lovelier than this or more characteristic in the

glorious ride over the Sierras--not even the lake, above whose green

shores we rushed with half a mountain between us; nor the ice-gorges,

nor the black forests, nor the chaos of rock and ravine that has

defied the humanizing touch of time. I felt the burden of the

mountains then, and it is for ever associated with a memory of the

high Sierras, caught and fixed as we swept onward into the wild, wide

snow-lands.

The burden of the mountains: There shall come a day when the ravine

for the silver is drained and the gold-seekers turn from thee

disconsolate, but thy years are unnumbered and thy strength unfailing:

the grass shall cover thy nakedness and the pine-boughs brood over

thee for ever and ever; the clouds shall visit thee and the springs

increase; the snows shall gather in the clefts of thy bosom; thy

breasts shall give nourishment, thy breath life to the fainting, and

the sight of thy face joy. The people shall go up to thee and build in

thy shadow; their flocks shall feed in peace: out of thy days shall

come fatness, and out of thy nights rest, for thou hast that within

thee more precious than silver, yea, better than much fine gold.

When the burden was past I looked out into the night. A soft wind was

stirring; I scented the balsam of the piny woods; the moon had

descended beyond the crest of the mountain, and above me the sky was

flooded with pale and palpitating stars. We slid out of the mountains

into the broad Humboldt desert one cloudless day: it was like getting

on the roof of the world--the great domed roof with its eaves sloping

away under the edges of heaven, and whereon there is nothing but a

matting of sagebrush, looking like grayish moss, and a deep alkali

dust as white and as fine as flour.

There were but two features in the landscape on which to fix the eye,

and these were infrequent--the dusty beds of the dead rivers and the

wind-sculptured rocks. It was the abomination of desolation: the air

was thin, but spicy; the sky was bare. When we had followed with eager

glance the shadow-like gazelle in his bounding flight, and brought the

heavy-headed buffalo to a momentary stand, with his small evil eye

fixed upon us, he wheeled suddenly and disappeared in a cloud of dust;

and we were alone in the desert.

Those mellow hours by the inland sea, where sits the Garden City, with

its wide grass-grown streets and its vine-veiled cottages basking in

summer sunshine, were precious indeed! We had ample opportunity for

developing philosophy, sentiment and politics at one sitting. Coming

out of the fair and foul refuge of the fleshly saints, I thought of

the wisdom of the French poet who once said to me, "Oui, monsieur:

life is an oasis in which there is many a desert." In the unfruitful

shoots of those thorn-bearing vines and withered fig trees I learned

the burden of the desert: Though it blossom as the rose, if it yield

not honey it shall be laid waste; though it deck itself with beauty,

though it sing with the voice of the charmer, its fairness is a mock

and its song is the song of the harlot. Harbor it not in your hearts.

Let it be purged of uncleanness, let the stain be washed from it.

Though the builders build cunningly, they have builded in vain. There

is blood on their lintels, and their hearts are full of lust. He that

sits in the seat of the scornful and is girded about with pride, let

him fall as the tree falls, even the king of the forest, for there is

rottenness at the core.

Like pilgrims in the earthly paradise we ploughed the long grass of

the prairies; like a fiery snake our train trailed over the flowering

land; its long undulations were no impediment; the grassy billows

parted before us; we cleft the young forests that have here and there

sprung up at the call of patient husbandry; myriads of wild-fowl

wheeled over the fragrant and boundless fields; every flower in the

floral calendar seemed at home in those meadow-lands of the world: the

sunset was not more glorious than the gentle slopes that swept to our

feet like a long wave of the sea, and then broke in a foam of flowers.

Not only was the delicious day promise-crammed, but the night, loud

with the chirp of the cricket and the cry of the sentinel owl, seemed

the realization of some splendid dream.

Out of the redundant and prophetic life of that land I heard a

prophecy, and the prophecy was the burden of the prairies. It is the

chant of the future, full of life and hope. I see now rows of men and

women, the toilers of the earth; they have planted forests and the

strong wind is stayed; they have broken the soil and the grain is

breast-high; they are merry, for they are free, and their stores

increase with the years. Wine and oil are their portion, and fat kine

and all manner of cunning workmanship; their cities are greater and

better than the old cities, for they are builded on virgin soil; and

the day shall come when the jubilee of the prairies will assemble the

hosts from the borders of the two seas, and they will hear their

praises sung and receive tribute, for the strength of the land is

theirs.

And we came into other countries that were full of people, and of

cities great and small. A thousand strange faces were turned upon us

as we shot past the open doors of houses wherein the table was spread

for the domestic meal. We hailed the field-laborers and the

town-artisans at their toil, and every hour plunged deeper and deeper

into the old civilization of the East, which in some respects differs

greatly from that of our breezy West. It was time to be thinking on my

journey's end and its probable results. I seemed to read it all

beforehand: Ellen would greet me at the gate of the parsonage on the

edge of Heartsease, looking just as she looked when I parted with her

long, long years before. Ellen had not changed with time: she had

written me the same sweet, placid, sympathetic letters from the

beginning, and the beginning was when, a mere child, I had worn out my

heart with longing for home, and had at last been welcomed back over

the two seas and across the slender chain of flowers that binds the

two Americas together--back to the land I love, California. Ellen

would lead me in all the old paths; we would see the garden in which,

as a beautiful boy, I more than once sought her to confess some grief,

knowing there was no ear so willing as hers, no heart tenderer, no

counsel more comforting. We would row up the stream that runs under

the hill by the willows, and strand in the same shallow nook, in honor

of the festal Saturdays dead and gone. We would gather the old friends

about us, and eat very large apples by the study-window; we would

hunt nests in the hayloft and acorns in the wood; the school-room

would take us back again, and all the half-obliterated memories of the

past would glow with fresher color. A hundred hands would be stretched

out to me, and I would recognize the clasp of each. Ah, happy day when

I again returned to Heartsease and found the lost thread of my youth

unbroken, and I had only to weave on and complete the fabric so long

neglected!

There were a dozen trains to enter and get out of before I could be

whirled across the country to Heartsease. Now that Heartsease was

easily attainable, all the restless world would be fleeing thither,

and it would no longer be worthy of its name. I felt my way from town

to town, pausing an hour here, another hour there, in an impatient

mood, for the last train was behind time, and I feared I should not

arrive in the village at the moment of all others I most desired to.

Why should I not come at sunset to the parsonage--one from the land of

the sunset wearing, as it were, his colors on his heart? The hour is

so mysterious and pathetic--the very hour to step in upon the village,

for so you can gloat over it all night, before the sun has laid the

whole truth bare to you on the following morning. And moreover I had

not written Ellen of my intended visit: why should I, when she had

been looking for me these ten years at least? Why should I say, "At

last I am coming," when a thousand things might have prevented me? Was

it not better to walk up the long road from the station at twilight,

pass silently through the quiet, familiar streets, and then, as I

approached the gate of the parsonage, discover a form waiting there as

if expecting some one, but whom it was hard to say? Drawing nearer, I

would recognize the form, slender and graceful, and then the face,

placid and pale, with the soft hair drawn smoothly over the temples

and the thin hands folded in peace. Oh yes, it was much better thus.

At the last change of trains, ten miles from Heartsease, a heavy

summer shower was drenching the town; the very rain was hot, and the

earth steamed lustily. I feared, my plan was spoiled, my meeting at

the gate after long years of patient and hopeful waiting. But the rain

passed over, and I was again under way. Now every inch of the land was

familiar: I recognized old houses and barns and strips of fence and

streams that had not been in my mind once in all these years. I knew

every block of forest that had been left on the border of the upland

fields, and all the meadows, marshy or dry: the very faces of the

people seemed to recall some one I had known before. The hills were

like lessons learned by heart; and now I came upon the actual haunts

of my school-boy days--the wood where we gave our picnics; the red

house, a little out of the village, where one of the boys

lived--strangely enough, the house I remembered, but the boy's looks

and name had gone from me--and then the train stopped. I felt a

tingling sensation, as if the blood were coming to the surface all

over me.

A switchman, and a stranger, waved us welcome with a yard of flaming

bunting. I hurried out of the car and alighted within half a mile of

Heartsease. On the platform, where I had parted with my schoolmates

fifteen years before, I waited till the train had passed onward and

out of sight. I was alone: the switchman asked no odds of me, but

furled his bunting and immediately withdrew. For a moment I looked

about me in bewilderment. I think I could have turned back had I been

encouraged to do so, for I felt half guilty in thus surprising my

friends. A moment later I plucked up heart and struck into the road

that leads up to the village.

The road has a margin of grass and weeds, and there are meadows on

both sides. I walked in the very middle of it, with my portmanteau in

my hand, and looked straight ahead. Before me lay the village, a

cluster of white houses embowered in trees. It was sunset; the rain

had washed the leaves and laid the dust in the road; the air was

exquisitely fragrant and of uncommon softness; the white spire of the

village church, flanked by a long line of poplars, was gilded with a

sunbeam, but the lowly roofs of the villagers were bathed in the

radiant twilight that had deepened under the western hills. Cattle

were lowing in the meadows; the crickets chirped everywhere; a barbed

swallow clove the air like an arrow whose force is nigh spent; and a

child's voice rang out on the edge of the village as clear as a

clarion. I paused and laughed aloud. I was mad with joy; an exquisite

thrill ran through me; it seemed to me that the most delicious moment

of my life had come.

I entered the village a boy again, with all the wild ambition of a boy

and with a boy's roguish spirit. I resolved to play upon them at the

parsonage. If Ellen were not at the gate waiting for me, I would enter

as a stranger and remain a season before throwing off disguise. I

would cunningly lead the conversation from topic to topic until we

came naturally to the past, and there in the past my shadow would

appear, and then at the right moment I would throw myself at Ellen's

feet and bury my head in her lap and weep for very joy.

These dreams beguiled me as I drew near the village. My step was

buoyant; I scarcely felt the weight of my portmanteau; I was drunk

with expectation and delight. In the village I found the streets and

houses and signs for the most part unchanged, but I looked in vain for

a familiar face. A few lads were playing about "the corners," and when

I saw them it suddenly occurred to me that all those youngsters under

fifteen were not born when I was a school-boy in Heartsease. I turned

away from them with a feeling of unutterable disappointment. Why

should not all my playmates be married or dead or have moved out of

the village if changes had come to it? I had not thought much of

change in this connection, and it was a hard blow.