IV

_February 23._ After you were gone I fled to my room, crawling under

the window-seat, much as a mortally wounded animal tries to hide

itself. Here my father found me many hours later, speechless and

shivering. He drew me from my retreat, and I still remember the sting

of the brandy as he poured it down my throat. Afterwards the doctor

came, to do nothing; but all that night my father sat beside me, and

towards morning he broke down my silence, and we talked together over

the light which had gone out of our lives, till I fell asleep. He told

me that the death of your two aunts had made you a great heiress, and

rendered your continuance with us, in our poverty, impossible. “She’s

gone away out of our class, Donald,” my father said sadly, “and in the

change of circumstances her mother wouldn’t have made me her guardian.

It was better for all of us to let her uncle take her back to New

York.” Even in my own grief I felt his sorrow, and though he did not

dodge my questions, I could see how the subject pained him, and avoided

it thenceforth. How strangely altered my life would have been if I had

insisted on knowing more!

The doctor came several times afterwards, for I did not rally as I

should have done, and at last he ordered a year’s cessation of studies

and plenty of exercise. It was a terrible blow to me at the time, for I

was on the point of entering the University of Leipzig; but now I can

see it was all for the best, since the time given to our tours through

Spain and Italy was well spent, and the delay made me better able to

get the full value of the lectures. Moreover, that outdoor life added

three inches to the height and seventeen pounds to the weight of the

hitherto puny boy. For a time my father made my health his care, and

insisted on my walking and fencing daily; but after that long holiday

he need not have given it a thought, for I grew steadily to my present

height, and while always of slender build, I can outwalk or outwork

many a stockier man.

My university career was successful; it could hardly have failed to be,

with my training. I fear that I became over-elated with my success, not

appreciating how much it was due to my father’s aid and to the kindness

of two of my instructors. For my Ph. D. I made a study of the great

race movements of the world, in which my predilection for philology,

ethnology, and history gave me an especial interest. I so delighted my

professor of philology by my enthusiasm and tirelessness that he stole

long hours from the darling of his heart to aid me. (I need hardly add

that I do not allude to Frau Jastrow, but to his Verb-Roots of

Fifty-Two Languages and Dialects of Indo-Germanic Origin, to be

published some day in seventeen volumes, quarto.) He even brought me

bundles of his manuscript to read and criticise. Our relations were as

intimate as were possible between a professor and a student, and

despite his reputation for ill temper the only evidence he ever gave me

of it was a certain querulousness over the gaps in human knowledge.

My doctor’s thesis on A Study of the Influence of Religion in the

Alienation and Mixture of Races—which, with a vanity I now laugh over,

I submitted not merely in Latin, but as an original work in four other

languages—was not only the delight of both my dear professors, but was

well considered outside the university. At Jastrow’s urging, poor

Buchholtz printed editions in all five languages; and as only the

German had any sale worth mentioning, he ever after looked gloomy at a

mere allusion to the title. But though it earned me no royalties, it

won me the Kellermann prize, given every fifth year for the best

original work on an historical subject.

On our first arrival in Leipzig my father sought literary employment

from the great publishers of that city of books, and soon obtained all

the “review” and “hack” writing that he wished. He encouraged me to

help him in the work, and in my training probably lay his chief

inducement, for he was paid at starvation rates in that land of hungry

authors. The labor quickly taught me the technical part of authorship,

the rock which has wrecked so many hopes. Our work brought us, too, the

acquaintance of many literary men, and thus gave us our pleasantest

society, and one peculiarly fitted to develop me. Furthermore, we

secured command of the unlimited books stored on the publishers’

shelves, which we used as freely as if they were our own private

library.

Very quickly I began to do more than help my father in his work; I

myself tried to write. He put many a manuscript in the fire, after

going over the faults with me, but finally I wrote something that he

let me send to an editor. His admirable judgment must have been warped

by his fatherly love, for the article was rejected. A like fate befell

many others, but at last one was accepted, and I do not know which of

us was the more delighted when it was published in the “Zeitschrift für

Deutsche Philologie.” By my father’s advice it was signed with a

pseudonym; for he pointed out that I was still too young for editors

who knew me to give my manuscript a reading, and that a German name

would command greater respect from them than an English one.

I received twenty marks for that first article, and spent it in secret

the next day. Had you known of my pleasure in the gift, and the hopes

that went with it, I think you would have sent a line of acknowledgment

to the hungry-hearted fellow who, after four years of separation, still

longed for a token from you. Three times had I written, without

response, but I thought the beauty of the photograph would so appeal to

you that it must bring me back a word from you, and lived in the hope

for six months. My father joked me genially about what I had done with

that vast wealth, pretending at moments that he believed it had been

avariciously hoarded, and at other times that it had been squandered in

riotous living, till one day, when all hope of acknowledgment had died,

his chaff wrung from me an exclamation of pain, suppressed too late to

be concealed from him. So closely attuned had we become that he

understood in an instant what it meant, and, laying his hand on my

shoulder, he appealed, “Forgive me, my boy! I have been very cruel in

my thoughtlessness!”

Nothing more was said then, but later that evening, when we rose from

our work, he asked, “She never replied?” and when I shook my head, the

saddest look I ever saw in him came upon his face. He seemed about to

speak impulsively, faltered, checked himself, and finally entreated,

“Bear up, Donald, and try to forget her.” I could only shake my head

again, but he understood. “She’s feminine quicksilver,” he groaned,

“and I can’t get the dear girl out of my blood, either.” We gripped

each other’s hands for a moment, and I said, “Good-night, father,” and

he replied, “God help you, my boy.” How happy we should have been could

we have bidden you, “Good-night, Maizie!”

V

_February 24._ I cannot clearly fix the time when first I decided upon

a life of letters, and presume it was my father’s influence which

determined me. After the publication of my first article, all the time

I could spare from my studies was devoted to writing. Most of it was

magazine work, but two text-books were more ambitious flights.

Undertaken at my father’s suggestion, the books were revised by him,

till they should have been published with his name, and not my

pseudonym, on the title-page. This I urged, but he would not hear of

it, insisting that his work was trivial compared with mine. I

understand his motive now, and see how wise and loving he was in all

his plans. Thanks to his skill in clarifying knowledge and fitting it

to the immature mind, both books attained a large sale almost

immediately on their publication.

My father’s abnegation went further, and occasioned the only quarrel we

ever had. After the publication of several of my articles, in reading

the Deutsche Rundschau I found an interesting critique signed with the

name I had adopted as a pseudonym. I laughingly called my father’s

attention to it, yet really feeling a little sore that the credit of my

work should go to another, for the first literary offspring are very

dear to an author’s heart. From that time I was constantly meeting with

the name, but stupidly failed to recognize my father’s brilliant,

luminous touch till the publication of another article of my writing

revealed the truth to me; for at the end of this I found again my

pseudonym, though I had signed my own name. On my sending an indignant

letter to the editor, he returned me the revised proof of my article,

at the bottom of which “Donald Maitland” was struck out, and “Rudolph

Hartzmann” substituted. My father had made the change in the last

revision, and had returned the sheets without letting me see them.

In a moment the veil was gone from my eyes, and, grieved and angry, I

charged him with the deception. I do not like to think of what I said

or of the gentleness with which he took it. The next day, when I was

cooler, he pleaded with me to let him continue signing the name to his

articles; but I insisted that I would not permit the double use, and

the only concession he could win from me was that I would still keep

the name provided he refrained from using it again. How could I resist

his “Don, I never asked anything but this of you. I am an old man with

no possibility of a career. You are all I have to love or work for in

this world. Let me try to help you gain a name.” Oh, father, if I had

only understood, I would not have been so cruel as to deny your

request, but would have sacrificed my own honesty and allowed the lie

rather than have refused what now I know to have been so dear a wish. I

even resented what I thought a foolish joke of his, when he registered

us constantly at hotels as “Rudolph Hartzmann and father.” It is poetic

justice that in time I should stoop to so much greater dishonesty than

that which I was intolerant of in him.

Owing as much to his articles as to those I subsequently wrote, my

pseudonym became a recognized one in the world of letters, and my work

soon commanded a good price. Furthermore, considerable interest was

excited as to the author. There is a keen delight in anonymous

publication, for one does not get the one-sided chatter that

acknowledged authors receive, and often I have sat in the midst of a

group of littérateurs and scholars and heard my articles talked over. I

was tempted even to discuss one,—disparaging it, of course,—and can

remember the way my father hid his laughter when a member of the party

said, “Maitland, you ought to write an article refuting Hartzmann, for

you’ve got the knowledge to do it.” It amuses me to think how vain and

elated I became over what now I see was only ’prentice work. I am glad

you did not know me in those years of petty victory, and that before we

met I had been saddened and humbled.

Some one at Mr. Whitely’s dinner, this winter, asked what was a

sufficient income, and you, Maizie, gravely answered, “A little more

than one has,” which made us all laugh. If you had not been the quicker

and the wittier, and thus forestalled me, I should have said, “Enough

to satisfy the few or many wishes each person creates within himself

which money can satisfy.” Thanks to my prize, my writings, and the

profits of my text-books, I obtained this. In fact, the three so

lengthened my purse that I fancy few millionaires have ever felt so

truly rich; for I was enabled to gratify my greatest wish. In our

visits to Spain, Italy, and Constantinople, I had garnered all that I

could find bearing on the two great race movements of the Moors and

Turks, which so changed the world’s history; but I had discovered that

I needed more than the documentary materials to write clearly of them.

I longed to go to their source, and then follow the channels along

which those racial floods had rushed, till, encountering the steel

armor and gunpowder of Europe, they had dashed in scattered spray,

never to gather force again. In my eagerness I had been for making the

attempt before, but my father had urged our limited means and the

shortness of my university vacations as bars to my wishes. My degree

removed the one objection, and my earnings and prize the other. Few

persons would care to undertake the travel we planned with the pittance

we had earned, but it was enough for us. How fortunate it is for me

that my student life and travels trained me to absolute self-denial and

frugality! Otherwise these last three years of closest economy and

niggardliness would have been hard to bear.

By the influence of Professor Humzel, working first through his former

pupil, Baron Weiseman, secondly through Giers, and thirdly through I

know not whom, we secured permission to join a Russian surveying party,

and thus safely and expeditiously reached the mountains of the Altai

range. We did not stay with the party after they began their work, but

assuming native dress we turned southward; plunging instantly among the

medley of peoples and tongues which actually realizes the mythical

Babel. Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit I had mastered in varying

degrees, and they were an “open sesame” to the dialects we encountered,

while the hot sun and open-air life soon colored us so deeply that we

passed for men of a distant but not alien race. Following nature’s

routes, once man’s only paths, we wandered leisurely: to Tashkend on

horseback, to Bokhara on foot, by boat down the Amoo to Khiva, and on

to Teheran, then by caravan to Bagdad, up the Euphrates, gradually

working through Asia Minor. Stopping at Smyrna for a brief rest, we

took boat to Cyprus, from thence crossed to Damascus, and from

Jerusalem traveled along the caravan route to Mecca. Passing over the

Red Sea to Egypt, we skirted the south coast of the Mediterranean, till

we reached the Pillars of Hercules.

You ought to have made that pilgrimage. In speaking of my book you

expressed the wish that you might make such a trip, and those years

would have been as great a playtime to you as to us. You could have

borne the exposure, rough though the life was, and it would have been

as compound oxygen to your brave and venturesome nature. I confess I do

not like to think of that dazzlingly pure skin burned to any such

blackness as I saw in my mirror on reaching the end of our journeyings;

for truly no better Arab in verisimilitude strolled about the native

quarter of Tangier in May, 1886, than Donald Maitland.

My long study of those older races and three years’ life spent among

them have not made me accept their dogma of fatalism, yet I must

believe that something stronger than chance produced our meeting in

that Moorish town. Down streams, over mountains, and across deserts,

seas, and oceans, our paths had converged; on foot, mounted, by rail or

boat, we came together as if some hidden magnet were drawing us both. A

thousand chances were against our meeting, even when we were in the

same town; for you were housed in the best hotel, while we lodged in a

little Jewish place in the Berber quarter. In another day my father and

I should have crossed to Spain, without so much as a visit to the

European section. But for that meeting I should have returned to

Leipzig, and passed a contented life as a Herr Doctor and Professor;

for though my heart was still warm with love of you, it had been denied

and starved too long to have the strength to draw me from the path my

head had marked out. Yet I would not now accept the unemotional and

peaceful career I had planned in lieu of my present life; for if my

love is without hope, it is still love, and though you turned me away

from your door with far less courtesy than you would shut out a beggar,

yet I am near you and see you constantly, and that is worth more to me

than peace. Good-night, my love. God bless you.