And then her eye fell on Miss Vila and glanced quickly at Mr.
Buckingham, who was nervously fingering his stick. "Meanwhile," she
added, with a mischievous look, "I will ask you to remain with us, as
Mr. Wilding will be obliged to see you here. Lillie, you have the
gentleman's card. It seems awkward to wait for the formality of Henry's
introduction. Will you have the kindness to make us acquainted?"
Miss Vila gravely performed the ceremony.
"Your cousin is fortunate in finding friends in town, Mrs. Martindale,"
said Buckingham; "for a collegian coming here freshly, especially one in
a special course, is apt to be slow in breaking through the hedge which
divides the college from the town."
"Yes, he is quite fortunate," said his cousin. "I exercise an influence
over him. You know we exercise an influence over students, don't you?"
Buckingham laughed.
"I supposed that was what the town was for."
"When they are away from home and parents and all those refining
influences, we serve as substitutes. Henry is away, not so much from his
parents, who are dead, as from the lady to whom he is engaged. That is
why I feel bound to exercise an influence over him." Mrs. Martindale
made this explanation with a serious air, but Buckingham, whose eye
never stayed far from Miss Vila, detected that young lady casting a
reproachful, not to say indignant, glance at the speaker. Miss Vila,
indeed, made a motion as if to leave, but, with another quick blush, as
if she had betrayed a secret thought, settled again into her chair. To
tell the secret, she had a sudden misgiving that her reckless friend
might take it into her head to make ingenuous revelations concerning
her.
"I hope he finds his work agreeable," said Buckingham; not that he cared
a straw, but by way of keeping up his end of the conversation.
"Oh, I have no doubt he does, or he would come to see us oftener. I
mean," she explained hurriedly, "he would stay in his room less."
"He certainly takes his time now in coming down," thought the visitor.
There was, however, a movement in the passage, and Mrs. Martindale
darted out. She came back immediately, looking somewhat embarrassed.
"I am sorry," she faltered, "but I find I am mistaken. He is not in."
"I am afraid you are not exerting enough influence, Mrs. Martindale,"
said Buckingham pleasantly, but somewhat perplexed in his mind at the
length of time it had taken to make this discovery, and at the
hallucination which had seemed to possess his cousin's mind when she
announced him as about to appear. As for Miss Vila, she persistently
refused to look up. She scarcely looked up, indeed, when Mr. Buckingham
bowed himself out, though he looked eagerly at her, in hopes once more
of catching the full light of her eyes.
She did look up, however, when the door closed behind the visitor, and
she looked straight at Mrs. Martindale. That lady answered her look
with one tear and a good many words:
"Well, Lillie, if you knew how I felt at getting into such a scrape, you
wouldn't look at me as if you were an Avenging Conscience, or a Nemesis,
or any of those horrid furies. No; and you wouldn't look speechlessly
sorrowful, either. Of course I ought to have told him at once that Henry
did not live here, and I ought to have sent him next door instead of
sending Kate, and I ought not to have pretended that he was coming the
next moment; but of course I thought he was at home, and then when he
came I could have laughed it off; but he didn't come, and I was too
frightened to laugh it off. Oh, yes, I am a criminal of the deepest dye;
but he's introduced, Lillie, and you've introduced him to me, and we're
all--we're all introduced."
X.
THE REAL HERO.
When a pile of wood has been laid upon smouldering embers, a thin curl
of smoke crawls lazily up the chimney, another follows with like
indolence, and it looks after a while as if the wood would not burn at
all. Suddenly a little whiff of air enters the pile, when, presto! up
blazes the fire, and soon there is a famous glow.
It was somewhat thus with Mr. Austin Buckingham. He had been toying with
the fancy of his story, and especially of this maiden to whom his eyes
had become so wonted, and had allowed himself to look at her in so many
lights, that she had gradually come to be always before him. The figure
of the hero had as gradually disappeared: it was only by an effort that
he could revive it. Suddenly he had sat a long quarter of an hour with
the girl, he had heard her voice, he had seen her smile, he had felt the
graciousness of her near presence when he was not merely at hand, but
the direct object of her thought. What a world of difference there was
between sitting by her side in a crowded horse-car and sitting even
half a room-breadth's away, when they two were the only ones in the
room!
By all this experience, as much perhaps by what had gone before as by
what had followed suddenly after, Buckingham now stood revealed to
himself. He was ablaze with this new, tingling, searching ardor. When he
had entered the room and shut the door, he saw lying upon his table his
note-book, open as he had left it. He had been amusing himself, just
before he went out, with further suggestions for his story. He dipped
his pen into the ink and drew a bold, straight line across the page. He
stood looking at the leaf,--idle fancy above the line, a blank below it.
A knock at the door, and Henry Wilding entered. Buckingham greeted him
with a sudden excess of fervor which puzzled the young man.
"I was sorry to miss finding you," he began, and then checked himself.
"Not so very sorry either, since fortune made me acquainted with--your
cousin--and with Miss Vila," he added, after an embarrassed pause.
"I don't understand," said Wilding. "Have I missed a call from you?"
"Yes. I just came from your house. Your cousin at first thought you were
at home. Now I think of it, she--"
"But I don't live at my cousin's," said Wilding.
"Where do you live, then?"
"Next door to her house."
"Oh! then she sent out for you. That explains it." And so Mr.
Buckingham, intent on his own affairs, brushed away the duplicity of the
fair hostess. "But I was very glad to hear a piece of news about you
from her. Let me congratulate you. I did not know you were engaged." And
he shook Wilding's hand warmly. He was not so generous at the moment as
he appeared. In reality, he was shaking his own hand in anticipation.
Wilding responded with a good-natured laugh.
"I have sometimes wondered, Mr. Buckingham," he said, "how you, who
write stories of love and marriage, should remain unmarried."
"Let us put it the other way. How can I who am unmarried write such
stories? In truth, I have a dim sense that persons like you, who know
the matter by experience, must laugh inwardly at my innocent attempts at
realistic treatment."
"Why not, then, have the experience first?" said Wilding lightly.
"God forbid!" said Buckingham, with a somewhat unintelligible
seriousness. "If I were ever in love, it seems to me I should stop
writing love-stories."
Now, this was just what happened, for a time at least. To any one so
dead in love as Buckingham was at this time, all circumstances are
favorable. It needs but a given moment, and the hero is on hand ready to
seize it. The next night he could not ride out from the city; he must
walk. When he got beyond the bridge, he wondered that he saw no
horse-cars coming toward him. He remembered that he had seen none for
some time, but now he noticed a long line of them standing before him,
pointed outward. He heard the puff of a steam fire-engine, and saw that
travel by rail was stopped by a fire. The hose crossed the track, and
the incoming horse-cars were in a long line beyond it. He looked at the
cars which he had over-taken. Midway in the line stood the one he had
been accustomed to take. He caught sight of a familiar head bent over a
book. He stepped into the car and stood before Miss Vila. He bent
forward, and she looked up as he spoke:
"The cars are stopped by a fire. We may be delayed a long while. Why not
walk home from here? It is a fine night."
He spoke somewhat hurriedly. He did not know how appealingly he looked.
She did, however, and she closed her book and followed him.
The story, then, never was written, even though the heroine had been
found. Everything else had disappeared,--the hero, the mystery, the
plot. Nothing was left but the heroine and--love.
HORACE E. SCUDDER.
SHADOWS ALL.
Shadows all!
From the birth-robe to the pall,
In this travesty of life,
Hollow calm and fruitless strife,
Whatsoe'er the actors seem,
They are posturing in a dream;
Fates may rise, and fates may fall,
Shadows are we, shadows all!
From what sphere
Float these phantoms flickering here?
From what mystic circle cast
In the dim æonian Past?
Many voices make reply,
But they only rise to die
Down the midnight mystery,
While earth's mocking echoes call,
Shadows, shadows, shadows all!
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE.
ROSES OF YESTERDAY AND TO-DAY.
It always seemed to me, as a child, that the birds put their hearts more
wholly into their songs in that special little corner of Paradise on the
Hudson River than they did anywhere else. Not that it was really so very
little a corner, being small only in comparison with an entire Paradise,
composed of many such bits, that lines the shore of the beautiful
Hudson.
It was so great a delight to the child who knew little of country
pleasures to be called away from some task or commonplace "every-day"
pastime and to be told that there was an invitation to spend an
afternoon, or perhaps several days, at Professor Morse's place, "Locust
Grove."
There would be the drive, leaning back in the barouche (with a feeling
of easy importance lent by the consciousness of wondrous delights to
come) and looking up with a species of admiring awe at the herculean
form of the French coachman, who seemed to be concealing romantically
brigandish recollections behind his fiery black eyes and wide-spreading,
ferocious moustache. Along the dusty "South Road" we would go, under the
green lights and shadows of the maple-trees, over the two miles which
stretch between Poughkeepsie town and "Locust Grove,"--past "Eastman's
Park," with its smart decorations, past the small, unambitious houses,
draped with many-hued, old-fashioned roses, that straggled along the
dividing-line between the narrow restrictions of town and the fragrant
wideness of the country, where the air was cool with the breath of the
river, and the breezes brought suggestions of freshly-cut grass, just
blown locust-blossoms, and the thousand sweet, indefinable scents of the
woods.
On approaching the boundaries of "the Grove," the perfume of the
locust-flowers assumed due prominence, as the name of the place implies
they should, while their white clusters drooped from the heavily-loaded
branches till they fairly touched the high posts of the gate. And then
would come the drive up the dim avenue, flecked with patches of sunshine
that lay like fallen gold pieces in the dusk shadow, while if one
glanced upward or on either side one saw nothing save the arching
trees,--pines and locusts, and maples no less stately,--until a space
was reached where the grove was less dense and the view widened to a
stretch of velvet grass whitened with daisies lying soft on the tops of
the blades in a way to make one fancy a summer fall of snow. At the turn
of the avenue one caught a glimpse of the house, with its vine-wreathed
tower, generous piazzas, and hospitable _porte-cochère_, and in the
background, beyond the lawn, the river, with the blue hills on the
opposite shore veiled by a light, lace like haze, just enough of a haze
to lend mystery to the distance.
The loud clattering of the horses' shoes on the stone pavement under the
_porte-cochère_, which informed the occupants of the house that visitors
had come, seemed always to tell the youngest, most insignificant, yet
happiest of those visitors that the anticipated hour of many delights
had actually arrived. And of these delights there were to the heart of
the child a thousand and one such as could scarcely be realized or even
dreamed of at the home in town. There were the broad, shady piazzas to
be walked over with dainty footfalls, lest the grown people should be
disturbed. There was the mystic retreat within the circle of a group of
low-branching pines, the secret of which one penetrated by stepping down
from the front piazza at a certain place and there insinuating one's
self into a small opening, which only the initiated could discover,
among the trees. Here one had a little fragrant sanctum all one's own,
carpeted with pine needles, green and brown, and arched over by ceiling
and walls of thick branches, from out of which peeped startled robins,
who soon, finding that no harm was meant them, went on with their song.
Then there was the garden, fragrant and brilliant, which one might
explore when one had promised Thomas, the presiding genius, that one
would not touch his cherished sweets, for it "went to his heart" to see
a single blossom torn from its parent stem. And there were the
grape-houses, for which the place was famous far and near,--hot, and
odorous of moist soil and growing vines, among which white and purple
clusters hung temptingly heavy and low.
One especial pleasure was to walk along the gravelled path that skirted
the smooth, level stretch of lawn at the back of the house, and thus to
reach the brow of the hill overlooking the "farm" and the river. There
were seats on the edge of this bluff, and a large spring-board on which
one might ride and jump to one's heart's content. By following this path
still farther, and to the left, one soon deserted the well-kept lawn and
found one's self on a narrow, winding walk overhanging a deep, wooded
ravine, in the depths of which a little brook ran curving about among
the ferns and daisies; and presently, far out of sight of the house, in
shade so dense as to lend a certain pleasing enchantment, one came upon
a rustic summer-house, with odd, three-cornered-seats, and a table
surrounding the tree-trunk that supported the centre of the roof.
There were manifold other out-of-door enjoyments, such as visiting the
pigeon-house, and, as a rare favor, rioting in the scented hay in the
loft over the barn, visiting the gardener's wife (whose home was in that
part of the old Livingston mansion which its master and time had allowed
to stand), and being permitted to draw water from the ancient well,
about which hung so many stories of generations past. How exciting it
was, and with what delicious awe one listened, when the little lady who
was a fairy grandmamma instead of a fairy godmother in the household
told a certain story regarding this well! It was a story before the time
of her own birth, when two of her older sisters were very tiny girls.
One day, when the mother was busy in superintending some homely task
(such as the manufacturing of the "cream cheese," perhaps, for which she
was noted), the baby of two years toddled in and began to lisp over and
over the same broken words, "Tatie in 'ell, Tatie in 'ell." She had
repeated them many times, with increasing insistence, before the busy
mother realized that they possessed a meaning. "Tatie in 'ell, Tatie in
'ell," the little one said, pulling at her mother's gown, half crying as
she spoke; and then it dawned upon the latter that her baby had
something serious to tell. She yielded to the little importunate hands
upon her dress, and followed the child out of doors to the well and
there looked down. "Katie" was indeed in the well, as the lisping tongue
had tried to say, and, gazing into the darkness below, the mother could
see the frightened, pitiful little face turned up to her, while two
small hands convulsively grasped the edge of the great bucket. The
husband and father was away from home, all the men employed about the
place were working at a distance, and there was no time to lose: those
frail hands must soon relax their hold, and the child was sorely
terrified and begging to be saved. As the mother hesitated, in an agony
of doubt, out from the house came a stout, elderly serving-woman, who
had lived in the family for many years, and who was especially devoted
to little Kate. She had heard her mistress's cry, and, running to look
into the well, without even waiting to explain, she set about the
execution of a hazardous and original plan of rescue. Climbing over the
curb, she began to descend by striding the well and planting her feet
upon the rough, protruding stones of which the sides were formed. Not
one woman in a thousand could or would have done such a thing; but this
one was tall and strong, and brave as a lion with the might of her love
for little Kate. She saved the child, who had suffered no graver injury
than a thorough drenching and a fright which served as a warning for
herself and the children of her own and several generations to come.
Interesting as was this story and others told of the past, and
delightful as it was to play under the great trees, roaming at one's own
sweet will all about "the Grove," better than everything else was it to
be admitted into the "sanctum sanctorum" of the place,--Professor
Morse's study,--where the master sat among his books and treasures, his
kindly, clear-featured face and bright brown eyes, framed in by silver
hair and beard, shining out from the curtained dimness of the room.
There were many objects fascinating even to a child in that study, which
opened out of the family library with its store of books. The library
was very good, but the study was still better. There, under a glass
case, was the first telegraph-instrument that had ever been made. One or
two of Professor Morse's early paintings hung upon the wall, and
sometimes he would display a few sketches to the older members of the
party, who were naturally regardless of the fact that there was "a chiel
amang 'em, takin' notes." The crowning treat offered within the
study-walls, however, was to have the marvels of the Professor's immense
and powerful microscope displayed before our wondering gaze. There we
became acquainted with the rainbow-tinted plumes of the fly's wing and
the jewels that lie hidden from ordinary ken in the pollen and petals of
the simplest blossoms. And the master of it all, to whom the marvels
were as familiar as the common objects themselves, seemed to derive a
genuine pleasure from that which he bestowed upon his guests.
When Professor Morse purchased Locust Grove, before his second marriage,
he was not aware that it had belonged to the family of the lady who was
soon to become his wife. Indeed, it was not until some friend remarked,
"How delightful for you to take your bride to the old ancestral place
owned by her kindred for so many generations!" that he knew the home
would possess any associations, save those to be formed in the future,
for his _fiancée_. But no doubt at the beginning of their life there
Locust Grove was thus rendered doubly dear to both. The old Livingston
mansion was at that time standing, much nearer to the entrance-gates
than the more modern residence inhabited by the owner's family; and the
quaint well, with the stone curb, the water of which was so remarkable
for its purity that travellers came from a distance to ask the privilege
of drinking, formed an object of interest at least, if not of actual
beauty, before the old vine-grown porch. Gradually the house fell into
decay, and the greater portion was torn down, leaving but five or six
rooms, with their odd, hooded windows and strangely-fashioned fireplaces
and mantels, the porch, with its broad, shallow seats, and the
green-painted, "divided" front doors, to tell the tale of what once had
been the home of so much hospitality and happiness.
So all remained painted with unfading colors on the canvas of my memory,
each object as I had known and loved it when a child. And then the child
went far away and grew to womanhood, having looked on many places and
"things of beauty," but, while forgetting much that belonged to the old
days, never forgot Locust Grove. The scent of the new locust-blossoms,
the songs of the birds, and the beauty of the lights and shadows dancing
on the river were as vivid in recollection as they had been in
actuality; and after a severe and tedious illness it seemed that no
tonic could prove so effectual as a visit to that dear old place, not
seen for years, and which I had loved so well.
There is generally experienced a vague yet bitter disappointment in
returning to a spot hallowed by associations after an absence of any
appreciable length of time. It is wellnigh impossible for the reality to
equal what has through the filtering of fancy become scarcely more than
a remembered dream.
Nothing can be as it has been;
Better, so call it, only--not the same.
And yet Locust Grove in 1884 looked almost as unchanged as though it had
shared the slumbers of the "Sleeping Beauty" since 1871. Only, a certain
potent charm had fled with the presence of the departed master. It was
now but his pictured eyes and silver hair that lit up the dimness of the
room that had been sacred to him. The books and papers covering the desk
belonged to a later and more careless generation. The microscope stood
unused under its glass case, the sketches were lovingly laid away out of
sight, and altogether a subtile change could be detected in the
atmosphere. There were things, however, about the house which perhaps
had always been there, and yet which I looked upon now with a new and
keener appreciation. The picture of Professor Morse when a child of five
or six years, standing by his father, who is clad in the quaint robes
which then distinguished a Congregationalist divine, seemed to me one
that might interest others besides myself. Also the portrait of his
mother, with pearls in her puffed and powdered hair, and her beautiful
bare arms holding the older child, Sidney (a baby in oddly-fashioned
long robes), was charming to look at because of its intrinsic beauty as
well as the associations attached to it. And the life-size painting of
General Washington's mother,--said to be the only one of the kind in
existence,--which looked down from its broad frame over the dining-room
mantel, possessed a special fascination for me. One felt rather
insignificant with that scornful smile and those languid eyes brooding
over one as one sat engaged in the discussion of soup; and it was
impossible to keep from imagining that the stiff and stately dame in her
mathematically correct white and green draperies was drawing invidious
comparisons between the way one did one's hair and the way in which she
had considered it proper to arrange her abundant pale-brown locks.