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[Illustration: "He stepped forward with a smile." For Percival. Page 420.]
LIPPINCOTT'S MAGAZINE
OF
_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
OCTOBER, 1877.
Vol XX--No. 118
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by J.B. LIPPINCOTT
& CO., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
CHESTER AND THE DEE.
TWO PAPERS.--I.
[Illustration: THE DEE ABOVE BALA.]
The history of Chester is that of a key. It was the last city that gave up
Harold's unlucky cause and surrendered to William the Conqueror, and the
last that fell in the no less unlucky cause of the Stuart king against the
Parliamentarians. In much earlier times it was held by the famous Twentieth
Legion, the _Valens Victrix_, as the key of the Roman dominion in the
north-west of Britain, and at present it has peculiarities of position, as
well as of architecture, which make it unique in England and a lodestone to
Americans. Curiously planted on the border of the newest and most bustling
manufacturing district in England, close to the coalfields of North Wales,
the mines of Lancashire, the quays of its sea-rival Liverpool and the mills
of grimy, wealthy Manchester, it still exercises, besides its artistic and
historic supremacy, a _bonâ fide_ ecclesiastical sway over most of these
new places. It is the first ancient city accessible to American travellers,
many of whom have given practical tokens of their affectionate remembrance
of it by largely subscribing to the fund for the restoration of the
cathedral, a work that has already cost some eighty thousand pounds.
[Illustration: CAER-GAI.]
The neighborhood of Chester is as suggestive of antiquity and foreigners as
the city itself. Volumes might be written about the quaint, Dutch-like
scenery of the low rich land reclaimed from the sea; the broad, sandy
estuary of the Dee, with the square-headed peninsula, the Wirrall, which
divides this quiet river from the noisy Mersey; the Hoylake, Parkgate and
Neston fisher-folk on the sandy shores, with their queer lives, monotonous
scratching-up of mussels and cockles, a never-failing trade, their terms of
praise--"the biggest scrat," for instance, "in all the island," being the
form of commendation for the woman who can with her rake at the end of a
long pole scratch up most shellfish in a given time; the low, fertile green
pastures, the creamy cheese and the eight yearly cheese-fairs. The city
itself is the most foreign-looking in all England, and the inhabitants have
the good taste to be proud of this. The river Dee--Milton's "wizard
stream"--celebrated both by English and Welsh bards, is not seen to as much
advantage under the walls of the Roman "camp" (_castra_=Chester) as
elsewhere, but its bridges serve to supply the want of fine scenery,
especially the Old Bridge, which crosses the river just at its bend, and
whose massive pointed arches took the place, when they were first built, of
a ferry by which the city was entered at the "Ship Gate," whence now you
look over "the Cop" or high bank on the right side of the stream, and view,
as from a dike in Holland, the reclaimed land stretching eight miles beyond
Chester, though the resemblance ceases at Saltney, where behind the
iron-works tower the Welsh hills--Moel-Famman conspicuous above the
rest--that bound the Vale of Clwyd.
The Dee is more a Welsh than an English river. It rises in the bleak
mountain-region of Merionethshire, the most intensely Welsh of all
counties, above Bala Lake, which is commonly but incorrectly called its
source. Thence it flows through the Vale of Llangollen, famous in poetry,
and waters the meadows of Wynnestay, the splendid home of one of Wales's
most national representatives, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, and only beyond
that does it become English by flowing round and into Cheshire. On a very
tiny scale the Dee follows something of the course of the Rhine: three
streamlets combine to form it; these unite at the village of Llanwchllyn,
and the river flows on, a mere mountain-torrent, past an old farmhouse,
Caer-gai, lying on a desolate moor at the head of Bala Lake, and through
the lake itself, after which its scenery alternates, like the Rhine's below
Constance, between rocky gorges and flat moist meadows dotted with hamlets,
churches and towns. Bala--otherwise Lin-Jegid and Pimblemere ("Lake of the
Five Parishes")--has some traditional connection with the great British
epic, or rather with its accessories--the _Morte d'Arthur_--of which
Tennyson has availed himself in _Enid_, mentioning that Enid's gentle
ministrations soothed the wounded Geraint
As the south-west that blowing Bala Lake,
Fills all the sacred Dee.
Arthur's own home, according to Spenser, was at the source of the Dee:
Vortigern's castle was near by on the head-waters of the Conway; and "under
the foot of Rauran's mossy base" was the dwelling of old Timon, where
Merlin came and gave to his care the wonderful infant who was to become the
Christian Hercules of Britain. "Rauran" is the mountain which in Welsh is
Arran-Pon-Llin, and which with its rocky shelves overlooks the yews of
Bala's churches and the unaccustomed shade trees which the little town
boasts in its principal streets. The lake, quiet and hardly visited as it
is now, has great resources which are likely to be called upon in the
future, and a survey was made ten years ago with a view of supplying
Liverpool, Manchester, Blackburn, Birkenhead, etc. with water whenever a
fresh demand for it should arise. This would imply the building of a
breakwater at the narrow outlet of the lake, the damming up of a few
mountain passes, and the "impounding" of a tributary of the Dee below the
lake--the Tryweryn, which has an extensive drainage-area; but these works
are still only projected.
[Illustration: BALA.]
There is scarcely an English brook that has not some historical
associations, some poetical reminiscences, some attractions beyond those of
scenery. Wherever water, forest and meadow were combined, an abbey was
generally planted. Bala Lake, with its fishing-rights, once belonged to the
Cistercian abbey of Basingwerk, while the Dee just above Llangollen was the
property of the abbey of Valle Crucis, whose beautiful ruins still stand on
its banks. Before we reach them we pass by the country of the Welsh hero,
Owen Glendower, from whom are descended many of the families of this
neighborhood and others--the Vaughans, for instance; by Glendower's prison
at Corwen, and the Parliament House at Dolgelly, where he signed a treaty
with France, and where the beautiful oak carving of the roof would alone
repay a visitor for his trouble in getting there. The Dee is for the most
part wanting in striking natural features, but here and there steep rocks
enclose its foaming waters; deep banks covered with trees break the rugged
shore-line; a village, such as Llanderfel with a tumbledown bridge, lies
nestled in the valley; and coracles shoot here and there over the stream.
These primitive boats, basketwork covered with hides, or, as used now,
canvas coated with tar, are propelled by a paddle, and are much used for
netting salmon. Near Bangor the fishermen are so skilful that they
generally win in the coracle-races got up periodically by enthusiastic
revivalists of old national sports.
[Illustration: REMAINS OF VALLE CRUCIS ABBEY.]
Llangollen Vale has a beauty of its own, the family likeness of which to
that of all valleys in the hearts of mountains makes it none the less
welcome. The picturesqueness of thatched houses and a dilapidation of
masonry which only age makes beautiful marks the difference between this
valley and the Alpine ones with their trim, clean toy houses, or the
Transatlantic ones with their square, solid, black log huts and huge
well-sweeps; otherwise the fresh greenery, the purple mountain-shadows, the
subdued sounds, no one knows whence, the sense of peace and solitude, are
akin to every other beautiful valley-scene of mingled wildness and
cultivation. A traveller can hardly help making comparisons, yet much
escapes him of the peculiar charm that hangs round every place, and is too
subtle to disclose itself to the eye of a mere passer. You must live at
least six months in one place before its true character unfolds: the broad
beauties you see at once, but it needs the microscope of habit to find out
the rarest charms. Therefore it is much easier to descant on the tangible,
striking beauty of Valle Crucis Abbey than on the aggregate loveliness of
Llangollen Vale; and perhaps it is this lack of familiarity that leads
novelists, poets and others to dwell so much more and with such detail on
buildings than on natural scenery. It may not be given them to understand
upon how much higher a plane of beauty stands a bed of ferns on a rocky
ledge, a clump of trees even on a flat meadow, and especially a tangled
forest-scene or a view of distant mountains in a sunset glow, or the
surface of water undotted by a sail, than the highest effect of man-made
beauty, be it even York Minster or the Parthenon. What man does has value
by reason of the meaning in it, and of course man cannot but fall short of
the perfection of his own meaning; whereas Nature is of herself perfection,
and perfection in which there is no effort. Valle Crucis is hardly a rival
of Fountains or Rivaulx. The Cistercians in the beginning of their
foundation were reformers, ascetic, and essentially agriculturists. Their
great leader, Bernard of Clairvaux, the advocate of silence and work, once
said, "Believe me, I have learnt more from trees than ever I learnt from
men." But decay came even into this community of farmer-monks, and the
praise and panegyric of the abbey, as handed down to us by a Welsh poet,
betray unconsciously things hardly to the credit of a monastic house, for
the abbot, "the pope of the glen," he tells us, gave entertainments "like
the leaves in summer," with "vocal and instrumental music," wine, ale and
curious dishes of fish and fowl, "like a carnival feast," and "a thousand
apples for dessert."
[Illustration: OWEN GLENDOWER'S PRISON.]
[Illustration: THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE, DOLGELLY.]
The river-scenery changes below Llangollen, and gives us first a glimpse of
a wooded, narrow valley, then of the unsightly accessories of the great
North Wales coalfield, after which it enters upon a typically English
phase--low undulating hills and moist, rich meadows divided by luxuriant
hedges and dotted with single spreading trees. The hedgerow timber of
Cheshire is beautiful, and to a great extent makes up for the want of
tracts of wooded land. This country is not, like the Midland counties and
the great Fen district, violently or exclusively agricultural, and these
hedges and trees, which are gratefully kept up for the sake of the shade
they afford to the cattle, show a very different temper among the farmers
from that utilitarianism which marks the men of Leicester shire, Lincoln,
Nottingham, Norfolk, or Rutland. There even great land-owners are often
obliged to humor their tenants, and keep the unwelcome hedges trimmed so as
not to interpose two feet of shade between them and the wheat-crop; and as
often as possible hedges are replaced by ugly stone walls or wooden fences.
It is only in their own grounds that landlords can afford to court
picturesqueness, and in this part of the country the American who is said
to have objected to hedges because they were unfit for seats whence to
admire the landscape, might safely sit down anywhere; only, as matters are
seldom perfectly arranged, there is very little to admire but a flat
expanse of wheat, barley and grass. This part of Cheshire has hardly more
diversity in its river-scenery, but the mere presence of trees and green
arbors makes it a pleasant picture, while here and there, as at Overton
(this is Welsh, however, and belongs to Flintshire), a church-tower comes
in to complete the scene. Here the Dee winds about a good deal, and
receives its beautiful, dashing tributary, the Alyn, which runs through the
Vale of Gresford and waters the park of Trevallyn Old Hall, one of the
loveliest of old English homes. Its pointed gables and great clustering
stacks of chimneys, its mullioned and diamond-paned windows, its
finely-wooded park, all realize the stranger's ideal of the antique
manor-house. This neighborhood is studded with country-houses in all styles
of architecture, from the characteristic national to the uncomfortable and
cold foreign type. Houses that were meant to stand in ilex-groves under a
purple sky and a sun of bronze look forlorn and uninviting under the gray
sky of England and amid its trees leafless for so many months in the year:
home associations seem impossible in a porticoed house suggestive of
outdoor living and the relegation of chambers to the use of a mere refuge
from the weather. For many of these places are no more than villas
enlarged, and might be set down with advantage to themselves in the
Regent's Park in London, the very acme of the commonplace. On the other
hand, all the traditional associations that go with an English hall
presuppose a national style of architecture. Even florid Tudor, even sturdy
"Queen Anne," can stand juxtaposition with groups of horses, dogs and
huntsmen; Christmas cheer and Christmas weather set them off all the
better; leafless trees are no drawback; the house looks warmer, coseyer,
more home-like, the worse the blast and rush without. A roaring fire is
natural to the huge hall fireplace, while in a mosaic-paved "ante-room" or
a frescoed "saloon" it looks foreign and out of place. Many an odd Welsh
and English house has unfortunately disappeared to make room for a cold,
unsuccessful monstrosity that reminds one of a mammoth railway-station or a
new hotel; and when Welsh names are tacked on to these absurd dwellings the
contrast is as painful as it is forcible. Such, for instance, is
Bryn-y-Pys, on the Dee--a house you might guess to belong to a Liverpool
merchant who had trusted to a common builder for a comfortable home.
Overton Cottage, on the other side, fills in with its walks and plantations
an abrupt bend of the river, and the view from the up-going road at its
back is very lovely, though the scene is purely pastoral. Overton
Churchyard is one of the "seven wonders" of North Wales: it has a very trim
and stately appearance, not that ragged, free if melancholy,
outspreadedness which distinguishes many country cemeteries, that
unpremeditated luxuriance of creepers and flowers, blossoming bushes and
grasses, that make up at least half of one's pleasant reminiscences of such
places. How much more interesting to find an old tomb or quaint "brass"
under the temple of a wild rosebush or in the firm clasp of an ivy-root
than to walk up to it and read the inscription newly scraped and cleaned by
the voluble attendant who volunteers to show you the place! The great elms
by Overton Church and the half-timbered and thatched houses crowding up to
its gates somewhat make up for the splendor of the coped wall and new
monuments in the churchyard. A scene wholly old is the Erbistock Ferry,
which one might mistake for a rope-ferry on the Mosel. The cottage looks
like the dilapidated lodge of an old monastery, and here, at least, is no
trimness. Two walls with a flight of steps in each enclose a grass terrace
between them, and trees and bushes straggle to the edge of the river,
hardly keeping clear of the swinging rope. Coracles are sometimes used for
ferrying--also punts. Bangor is a familiar name to students of church
history, and to those who are not, the startling tale of the massacre of
twelve hundred British monks by the Saxon and heathen king of Northumbria,
who conquered Chester and invaded Wales in the seventh century, is repeated
by the local guides. At present, Bangor is interesting to anglers and to
lovers of curiosities--to the former as a good salmon-ground, and to the
latter for the quaint verses, which, though trivial in themselves, borrow a
value from the date of their inscription and the "laws" to which they
refer. They are on the wall of the lower story of the bell-tower:
[Illustration: IN THE VALE OF LLANGOLLEN.]
If that to ring you would come here,
You must ring well with hand and ear;
But if you ring in spur or hat,
Fourpence always is due for that;
But if a bell you overthrow,
Sixpence is due before you go;
But if you either swear or curse,
Twelvepence is due; pull out your purse.
Our laws are old, they are not new;
Therefore the clerk must have his due.
If to our laws you do consent,
Then take a bell: we are content.
[Illustration: LLANGOLLEN.]
Farndon Bridge and Wrexham Church (the latter looks like a small cathedral
to the unpractised eye) are the last Welsh points of attraction before the
Dee becomes quite an English river. Malpas (_mauvais pas_ = "bad step"), on
the English bank, is significantly so-called from its situation as a border
town: the rector, too, might consider it not ill named, as regards the odd
partition of the church tithes, which has been in force from time
immemorial, and has given rise to an explanatory legend concerning a
travelling king whom the resident curate wisely entertained in the absence
of the rector, receiving for his guerdon a promise of an equal share in the
income, not only for himself, but for all future curates. In the upper
rectory (the lower is the curate's house) was born Bishop Heber in 1783,
and in the early years of this century, before missionary meetings were as
common as they are now, the young clergyman wrote on the spur of the
moment, with only one word corrected, the well-known hymn, "From
Greenland's Icy Mountains." A missionary sermon was announced for Sunday at
Wrexham, the vicarage of Heber's father-in-law, Shirley, and the want of a
suitable hymn was felt. He was asked on Saturday to write one, and did so,
seated at a window of the old vicarage-house. It was printed that evening,
and sung the next day in Wrexham Church. The original manuscript is in a
collection at Liverpool, and the printer who set up the type when a boy was
still living at Wrexham within the last twenty years.
[Illustration: CHESTER, FROM THE ALDFORD ROAD.]
The river now makes a turn, sweeping along into English ground and making
almost a natural moat round Chester, the great Roman camp whose form and
intersecting streets still bear the stamp of Roman regularity, and whose
history long bore traces of the influence of Roman inflexibility mingled
with British dash. The view of the city is fine from the Aldford road (or
Old Ford, where a Roman pavement is sometimes visible in the bed of the
stream), with the cathedral and St. John's towering over the peaks and
gables that shoot up above the walls. The mention of the ford brings to
mind a famous crossing of the river during the civil wars. It was just
before the battle of Rowton Moor, which Charles I. watched from the tower
that now bears his name; and Sir Marmaduke Langdale, one of his leal
soldiers, wishing to send the king notice of his having crossed the Dee at
Farndon Bridge and pressing on the Parliamentarians, bade Colonel Shakerley
convey the message as speedily as possible. The latter, to avoid the long
circuit by the bridge, galloped to the Dee, took a wooden tub used for
slaughtering swine, employed "a batting-staff, used for batting of coarse
linen," as an oar, put his servant in the tub, his horse swimming by him,
and once across left the tub in charge of the man while he rode to the
king, delivered his message and returned to cross over the same way.
[Illustration: CORACLES.]
Eaton and Wynnestay are the grandest of the Dee country-seats, though not
the most interesting as to architecture. The former, like many Italian
houses, has its park open to the public, and is an exception to the
jealously-guarded places in most parts of England, but its avenues, rather
formal though very magnificent, are approached by lodges. The Wrexham
avenue leads to a farmhouse called Belgrave, and here is the
christening-point of the new, fashionable London of society, of novelists
and of contractors. Another like avenue leads to Pulford, where there is
another lodge: a third leads from Grosvenor Bridge to the deer-park, and a
fourth to the village of Aldford. The hall is an immense pile, strikingly
like, at first glance, the Houses of Parliament, with the Victoria Tower
(this in the hall is one hundred and seventy feet high, and built above the
chapel), and the style is sixteenth-century French, florid and costly. The
plan is perhaps unique in England, and comfort has been attained, though
one would hardly believe it, such size seeming to swamp everything except
show. The description of the house, as given by a visitor there, reads like
that of a palace: "The hall is an octagonal room in the centre of the house
about seventy-five feet in length and from thirty to forty broad: on each
side, at the end farthest from the entrance, are two doors leading into
anterooms--one the ante-drawing-room, and the other the ante-dining-room;
each is lighted by three large windows, and is thirty-three feet in length:
they are fine rooms in themselves, and well-proportioned. From these lead
the drawing-room and the dining-room respectively, both exceedingly grand
rooms, ingenious in design and shape, each with two oriel windows and
lighted by three others and a large bay window: this suite completes the
east side. The south is occupied by the end of the drawing-room and a vast
library--all _en suite_. The library is lighted by four bay windows, three
flat ones and a fine alcove, and the rest of the main building to the west
is made up of billiard- and smoking-rooms, waiting-hall, groom-of-chambers'
sitting- and bed-rooms, and a carpet-room, besides the necessary
staircases. This completes the main building, and a corridor leads to the
kitchen and cook's offices: this corridor, which passes over the upper
part of the kitchen, branches off into two parts--one leading to an
excellently-planned mansion for the family and the private secretary, and
another leading to the stables, which are arranged with great skill. The
pony stable, the carriage-horse stable, the riding horses, occupy different
sides, and through these are arranged, just in the right places, the rooms
for livery and saddle grooms and coachmen. The laundry, wash-house,
gun-room and game-larder occupy another building, which, however, is easily
approached, and the whole building, though it extends seven hundred feet in
length, is a perfect model of compactness. Great facilities are given to
any one who desires to see it." The mention of a "mansion for the family"
shows how the associations of a home are lost in this wilderness of
magnificence: indeed, I remember a remark of a person whose husband had
three or four country-houses in England and Scotland and a house in London,
that "she never felt at home anywhere."
[Illustration: CHESTER CATHEDRAL AND CITY WALL.]
The farms in this neighborhood are mostly small, the average being seventy
acres, and some are still smaller, though when one gets down to ten, one is
tempted to call them gardens. Grazing and dairy-work are the chief
industries. Farther inland, beyond the manufacturing town of Stockport, is
a house of the Leghs, an immense building, more imposing than lovely in its
exterior, but one of the most individual and pleasant houses in its
interior as well as in its human associations. It has been altered at
various times, and bears traces, like a corrected map, of each new phase of
architecture for several hundred years. The four sides form a huge
quadrangle, entered by foreign-looking gateways, and the rooms all open
into a wide passage that runs round three sides of the building, and is a
museum in itself. Old and new are just enough blended to produce comfort,
and the stately, old-English look of the drawing-room, with its dark
panelling and tapestry, is a reproach to the pink-and-white,
plaster-of-Paris style of too many remodelled houses. Outside there is a
garden distinguished by a heavy old wall overrun with creepers, dividing
two levels and making a striking object in the landscape; and beyond that,
where the country grows bleak and begins to remind one of moors, there are
the last survivors of a unique breed of wild cattle, which, like the
mastiffs at the house, bear the name of the place. The name of another
Cheshire house, formerly belonging to the Stanleys, and now to Mr.
Gladstone, is probably familiar to American readers--Hawarden Castle. The
present house must trust entirely to associations for its interest, having
been built in 1809, before much taste was applied to restore old places,
but the old castle in the park dates from the middle of the thirteenth
century. The park is not unlike that of Arundel, but the views from the
ruin are finer and more varied. The counties of Caernarvon, Denbigh, Flint,
Cheshire and Lancashire are spread out around it, and the ruin itself is
beautiful and extensive.
The road from Hawarden to Boughton is exceedingly grand: we come upon one
of the widest panoramas of the Dee and one of the most typical of English
country scenes. A vast sweep of country unsurpassed in richness spreads
along the river on the Cheshire side: sixty square miles of fields and
pastures are in sight, with elms, sycamores and formal rows of Lombardy
poplars. Wherever the trees cluster in a grove they usually mark the site
of a country-house or a cherished ruin, like this one of old Hawarden,
where one enormous oak tree sweeps its branches on the ground on every
side, and forms a canopy whence you can peer out, as through the delicate
tracery of a Gothic window, at the landscape beyond. The mouth of the Dee
is visible from this road, whence at low water it seems reduced to a huge
sandbank, through which the tired river trickles like a brook. The dun sky
and yellow sands and gray sea, with the island of Hilbree, a counterpart of
Lindisfarne both in its legend of a recluse and its continual alternation
twice a day between the state of an island and a peninsula, make a picture
pleasant to look back upon. Hence too come the shoals of cockles and
mussels that go to delight Londoners. Then the open-sea fishing, the lithe
boats that seem all sail, the wide waste of waters, with the point of Air
and the Great Orme's Head walling it in on the receding Welsh coasts, the
remembrance of the shipwreck a little beyond the mouth of the Dee which led
to Milton's poem of _Lycidas_ (containing the phrase "wizard stream" which
has become peculiar to the Dee),--all claim our notice, and it seems
impossible that we are so few miles from Manchester and so far from the
historic, romantic times of old.
LADY BLANCHE MURPHY.
[Illustration: OVERTON CHURCH.]
FOR ANOTHER.
Sweet--sweet? My child, some sweeter word than sweet,
Some lovelier word than love, I want for you.
Who says the world is bitter, while your feet
Are left among the lilies and the dew?
Ah? So some other has, this night, to fold
Such hands as his, and drop some precious head
From off her breast as full of baby-gold?
I, for her grief, will not be comforted.
S.M.B. PIATT.
AMONG THE KABYLES.
CONCLUDING PAPER.
[Illustration: ROMAN SEPULCHRE AT TAKSEBT.]
Few countries twenty-five leagues long by ten wide have such an assortment
of climates as Grand Kabylia. From the Mediterranean on the north to the
Djurjura range on the south, a distance of two hours' ride by rail if there
were a railway, the ascent is equal to that from New York Bay to the summit
of Mount Washington. The palm is at home on the shore, while snow is
preserved through the summer in the hollows of the peaks. This epitome of
the zones is more condensed than that so often remarked upon on the eastern
slope of Mexico, although it does not embrace such extremes of temperature
as those presented by Vera Cruz and the uppermost third of Orizaba. The
country being more broken, the lower and higher levels are brought at many
points more closely together than on the Mexican ascent. It happens thus
that semi-tropical and semi-arctic plants come not simply into one and the
same landscape, but into actual contact. Each hill is a miniature Orizaba,
so far as it rises, and hundreds of abrupt hills collected in a space
comparatively so limited so dovetail the floras of different levels as in a
degree to cause them to coalesce and effect a certain mutual adaptation of
habits. Good neighborhood has established itself rather more completely
among the vegetable than with the human part of the inhabitants.
What more amiable example of give-and-take than the intertwining of birch
and orange, the thin ghostly sprays of the hyperborean caressing the
fragrant leaf and golden globes of the sub-tropical? This, and other
conjunctions less eloquent of contrast, may be seen on the headland of
Zeffoun or Cape Corbelin. They stand out from a prevailing background of
the familiar forest trees of temperate Europe and America--the ash, elm,
beech, oak, fir and walnut. The orchards, above those of oranges and
lemons, are of figs and olives. The cork-oak covers considerable tracts,
but is less attended to than in Spain. A non-European aspect is imparted by
the tufts of cactus and aloes which abound in the most arid localities.
[Illustration: THE DJURJURA RANGE.]
Wherever intelligent farming is met with in Northern Africa it is a safe
assertion that the Kabyles are either on the spot or not far off. Like
other farmers, they are conservative and adhere to old rules or fancies,
which in some cases verge upon superstition. The practice of fertilizing
fig trees by hanging them with fruits of the wild fig is one of those which
it is difficult to class--whether with the visionary or the practical. Be
that as it may, people who know nothing about figs except to eat them have
no right to a say in the matter. Tradition and experience are in favor of
the Kabyle. He does what has been done since Aristotle, Theophrastus and
Pliny, all of whom insist on "caprification" as essential to a large crop
of figs adapted to drying. He will go or send many miles to procure the
wild fruit if it does not grow in his neighborhood, and the traffic in it
reaches a value of some thousands of dollars annually, trains of thirty,
fifty and sixty mule-loads passing from one tribe to another. As with other
valuable things, this inedible fruit is food for quarrelling. The tribe
which is rich in the _dokhar_, or wild fig, is fortunate, and especially so
if its neighbors have none or if their crop of it fails. It is then able to
"bull the market," and proceeds to do so with a promptness and vim that
would turn a Wall street operator blue with envy. But it is compelled to
take account of troubles in its path unknown at the Board. The party who is
"short" on dokhar may be "long" on matchlocks. If so, the speculation is
apt to come to an unhappy end. A sudden raid will capture the stock and at
once equalize the market. To many communities figs are at once meat and
pocket-money. To lose the harvest is not to be thought of. The aspect of
the means of preventing such a disaster is altogether a secondary
consideration. Dokhar at all hazards is the cry of men, women and children.
The comparative cessation of fig-wars is one of the blessings due to French
rule.
[Illustration: ROAD ACROSS THE DJURJURA AT MOUNT TIROURDA.]
What we deem the fruit of the fig is, it will be remembered, only the husk,
the apparent seeds being the true fruit and--before ripening--the blossom.
A small fly establishes itself in the interior of the wild fig, escaping in
great numbers when the fruit is ripe. This happens before the ripening of
the improved fig, and the fly is supposed to carry the wild pollen to the
flowers of the latter. A single insect, say the Kabyles, will perfect
ninety-nine figs, the hundredth becoming its tomb. Some varieties of figs
do not need caprification, but they are said to be unsuitable for drying or
shipment.
The Italian practice of touching the eye of each fig, while yet on the
tree, with a drop of olive oil seems opposed to the African plan; since the
oil would certainly exclude the insect. And there are no better figs in the
world than those of the Southern States of the Union, which are not
treated in either way, and receive the least possible cultivation of any
kind. Those States, if it be true that the difference in the yield of a
"caprified" and non-caprified tree is that between two hundred and eighty
and twenty-five pounds, cannot do better than borrow a leaf from the Kabyle
book, should it only be a fig-leaf to aid in clothing the nakedness of bare
sands and galled hillsides. The United States Department of Agriculture
should by all means introduce the dokhar. Some of our agricultural
machinery would be an exchange in the highest degree beneficial to the
other side.
[Illustration: THE PEAK OF TIROURDA.]
Long before the French occupation the Kabyles had maintained a regulation
which is, we believe, peculiar in Europe to France--the _ban_, or
legally-established day for the beginning of the vintage and the harvest of
other fruits. The cultivator may repose under his own vine and fig tree,
but he shall not until the word is given by the proper authority put forth
his hand to pluck its luscious boon, though perfectly mature or past
maturity. Exceptions are made in case of invalids and distinguished guests,
and doubtless the hale schoolboy decrees an occasional dispensation in his
own favor. The birds share his defiance of the law, and both are abetted by
a third group of transgressors, the monkeys.
Africans of this last-named race are in some localities extremely numerous,
and they do not restrict their foraging parties to succulent food. Grain
is very acceptable to them, and has the advantage of keeping better than
fruit, the art of drying which they have not yet mastered any more than the
Bushmen or the Pi-Utes. They establish granaries in the crevices of the
rocks; and these reserves of provision are sometimes of such magnitude as
to make exploring expeditions on the part of the plundered Kabyles quite
remunerative.
[Illustration: DJEMA-SAHRIDJ.]
These most ancient of all the devastators which have successively descended
upon Barbary are baboons of small size. They have no tails, that ancestral
organ having dwindled to a wart the size of a pea. This approach to the
form of man is aided by another point of personal resemblance--long
whiskers. That the tail should have been worn off against the rocks, or in
climbing the fences to get at orchards and melon-patches, is easily
conceivable. How the evolutionists account for the retention of the beard
does not yet appear. The females carry their young as adroitly and
carefully as do the Kabyle women, and ascend the rocks with them with much
greater activity. A young monkey has a less neglected look than a young
Kabyle. His ablutions cannot be less frequent. Tourists complain that all
Kabylia does not boast a single bath-house--a privation the more striking
to one who has to pick his way often for miles among the ruins of Roman
aqueducts, tanks and baths, the great basin in cut stone at Djema-Sahridj,
which gives name to the place, being a noted example of these works.
[Illustration: A DISH-FACTORY.]
As the vultures, dogs, negroes, Jews and jackals keep exact memoranda of
the market-days, so the baboons are always on hand at harvest. Ranged in
long ranks on an amphitheatre of cliffs, stroking gravely their long white
beards like so many reverend _episcopi_ or "on-lookers" confident of their
tithes, they calmly contemplate the toilers in the vale below. Swift was
not more certain of his "tithe-pig and mortuary guinea." Sunset comes
sooner below than above. The reapers are early home, and the peaks are
still purple when the marauders pour down upon the fields, and their share
of the work is done with a neatness unsurpassable by reiver, ritter or
kateran. The monkey-tax thus collected is quite a calculable percentage of
the crop, and few taxes are more regularly paid. As it goes to
non-producers, its reduction is an object constantly kept in view. The
wretched guns of the natives are, however, but a feeble instrument of
reform. The chassepot may succeed after having finished the rest of its
task, and dispose of the baboons after the settlement of the men. The
former, though not incomparably smaller than the French conscript after a
protracted war, will never be made to bear arms. He is therefore useless to
modern statesmen, and needs to be got rid of.
While the barn is defrauded by these little vegetarians, the barnyard is
laid under tribute by a family of equally unauthorized flesh-eaters--the
panthers. If this large spotted cat, known in other parts of the world as
ounce, jaguar, leopard and chetah, has any choice of diet, it is for veal.
But his appreciation of kid is none the less lively. Lamb, in season, comes
well to him also. As there are many panthers, each of them of "unbounded
stomach," and they can find little to eat in the way of wild quadrupeds,
the destruction they must cause among domestic animals is seen to be
serious. In the Mokuéa neighborhood each village has its panther-killer, an
enterprising man set apart for a profession which sometimes becomes
hereditary. One of these boasts of having killed thirty-six panthers. His
father before him had bagged seventy-five, and he hoped before pulling his
final trigger to have done as well. This expectation was a just one, as at
twenty-eight he had already nearly halved the paternal count. The method of
hunting is very simple. The sportsman fixes a bleating little victim from
the herd at the foot of a tree, and climbs with his flint gun into the
branches. Had the North African beast the arboreal habits of the South
African tree-leopard or the American jaguar, this proceeding would be less
effectual with him. But he can neither climb nor reflect like his
countryman the monkey, and is picked off like a beef. One finds it
difficult to get up sympathy for an animal so little able to take care of
himself, or to suppose that panthers could have furnished a particularly
high-spiced ingredient to the enjoyments of the Roman arena. An English
bull-dog, if less picturesque, would have been far more fruitful of
fighting.
Products edible neither to the wild beast nor the tooth of time are the
Kabyle vases in clay. The amphoræ in common use by the women for carrying
water are generally of graceful forms, comparing well in design with many
of the archaic vases of Greece and the Levant. The patterns vary somewhat
with the locality, but there is a resemblance which speaks of a common
origin and taste. Those of the Beni-Raten all come to a blunt point at the
bottom, and will not stand unsupported. The jar is made to rest upon the
girdle of the bearer, while she supports it upon her back by one or both of
the handles. Among the tribes nearer the Djurjura the jar has a broader and
hollowed bottom, fitted to rest upon the head of the woman. It must
therefore be less elongated and more rotund to admit of her reaching the
handles for the purpose of balancing it. These jars weigh, filled with
water, sixty pounds. In carrying one of them a Kabyle woman, it may easily
be supposed, is not in a condition to study lightness of step or grace of
carriage. Yet this heavy task, to which she begins to accustom herself at
the age of twelve, does not appear to injure her figure or health. Such a
result is more often due to violent and exceptional strains than to
habitual exertion even greater in extent. The muscles are not less
susceptible of education than the mind. Whatever brings out the full power
of either without suddenly overtasking is healthy and beneficial.
It has been remarked that the most usual size of the Kabyle water-jar is as
nearly as possible identical with the amphora kept for a standard measure
in the Capitol at Rome. This coincidence may well be due rather to a
correspondence in the average strength of the carriers than to a common
system of authorized measures. In decoration the Kabyle vases approach the
Arabic more than the Roman style. But the feeling, both in form and
coloring, is decidedly more artistic than in the similar ware of Northern
Europe.
Very ancient influences are manifest, too, in the work of the Kabyle
silversmiths. Their diadems, ear-drops, bracelets and anklets remind one
of the forms unearthed at Hissarlik and in Cyprus. In outline and chasing
the rectangular, mathematical and monumental rules at the expense of the
flowing and floriated. A certain pre-Phidian stiffness of handling seems to
hamper the workman, as though twenty-three hundred years had been lost for
him.
[Illustration: THE BOUDOIR AND KITCHEN.]
That there should be so much of hopeful force left in the Kabyle, artisan,
agriculturist or adventurer, is creditable to him, and suggests "an
original glory not yet lost." He obstinately refuses to accept the sheer
professional vagabondism of the Arab, confident, as it were, that the world
has in reserve better use for him than that. "Day-dawn in Africa" will
probably gild his hills sooner than the tufted swamps of Guinea or the
slimy huts of the Nile. A class of missionaries quite different from the
Livingstones and the Moffatts have devoted themselves to his improvement.
They approach him in a different way, and begin on his commercial and
industrial side, not on the spiritual. The latter does not appear to be by
any means so accessible. Unlike the Ashantees, the Kafirs and the M'pongwe,
he was a Christian once, and may become one again. But he is not going to
be evangelized on the hurrah system; and that fact his new rulers, with all
their alleged defects as reformers and colonizers, have sense enough to
recognize. The new faith must push its way in the rear of works. Peace,
good government, good roads, better implements and methods of labor will
promote the enlightenment necessary to its success.
Bougie, the port of Eastern Kabylia, lying under Cape Carbon, has one
Catholic church, standing in the midst of new streets, squares and public
constructions indicative of prosperity wrought by the French régime. It is
still in need of easy communication with the interior, having but one
road--one more than in the time of the Turks. Wax is the chief commodity
traversing that line of traffic. That circumstance has, however, nothing to
do with the name of the town. The name was there when the French came, as
was the wax, and very little else but ruins. If the present state of
improvement has been effected with so little aid from good roads, what
would not a number of them accomplish? A railway running to the other end
of the province longitudinally through its centre would have but one ridge
to overcome, and would find a very fair business ready for it. The railway
and vandalism, in the proverbial sense of the word, could not coexist.
When the Vandals buy railway-tickets and ship fat oxen on fast stock-trains
the African world will move. Nobody ever heard of chronic war between two
adjacent railroad-stations, or of a gang of raiders dressed only in shirts
and armed with spears and matchlocks going out on the morning mail for a
day's shooting among their fellow-countrymen in the next county.
Let us quote a sketch of the region lying a few leagues west and north-west
of Bougie:
"Near Tarourt we found thermal springs. An open park-like country,
beautiful with trees and turf, is defaced only by charred spots where the
cork-woods have been burned by the natives to effect clearings much less in
extent than the space thus denuded. Ten acres of cork trees will be
thoughtlessly burned to make one of fig-orchard. And this evil rather
increases than lessens, prevention being difficult by reason of the want of
good roads for reaching the delinquents.... In six hours' march we reached
Toudja, at the foot of Mount Arbalon, in the most delicious oasis
imaginable. The soil, threaded by clear and cool rivulets which spring in
abundance from the rocks forming the base of the mountain, is wonderfully
fertile. We are surrounded by more than a square league of tufted verdure,
composed in great part of orange and lemon groves, mingled with some palms
and immense carob trees. The houses are well built, and even show fancy in
their designs. Vines bending with enormous clusters of grapes festoon
themselves from tree to tree, tasselling the topmost branches with fruit
and tendrils. It is not uncommon to see four or five large trees taken
possession of by a single vine, its trunk as large as the body of a man.
The grapes are mostly of a light-red color, large and sweet."
[Illustration: REPOSE.]
All this indicates that France did not deceive herself as to the
capabilities of Algeria, and that her conquest of it was inspired by
considerations more solid than the glory she has been accused of
recognizing as an all-sufficient motive. She has made the country much
more valuable to the commerce of the world than any other part of Barbary.
Had she done nothing more with it than hold it prostrate and put an end to
its existence as a den of pirates, she would by that alone have earned the
gratitude of the nations. She has done a great deal more. European
civilization has discovered a penetrable spot in the dense armor of
African barbarism. It has effected a lodgment in the darkest and most
hopeless of the continents. Should the movement fail, like so many before
it, to extend itself, and become localized after a period of promise, the
cause must be sought mainly in natural obstacles almost impossible to be
overcome.
To have lifted the dead, brutal weight of Ottoman tyranny from any corner
of the broad territory it blasts is to deserve well of humanity. Still
stronger is the case when the rescued territory is fertile, beautiful, and
inhabited by a race worthy of a better fate than the bondage against which
it had never ceased to struggle.
France has not been guiltless of acts of severity, always attendant, in a
greater or less degree, on violent political changes. It is not doubtful,
nevertheless, that by repressing the endless turbulence of the tribes and
driving out a foreign rule that knew no law but force, she has saved many
more lives than she has taken. A genius for organization was never denied
her. Organization was the first thing wanted in Algeria.
EDWARD C. BRUCE.
"FOR PERCIVAL."
CHAPTER I.
THORNS AND ROSES.
It was a long, narrow and rather low room, with four windows looking out on
a terrace. Jasmine and roses clustered round them, and flowers lifted their
heads to the broad sills. Within, the lighted candles showed furniture that
was perhaps a little faded and dim, though it had a slender, old-fashioned
grace which more than made amends for any beauty it had lost. There was
much old china, and on the walls were a few family portraits, of which
their owner was justly proud; and in the air there lingered a faint
fragrance of dried rose-leaves, delicate yet unconquerable. Even the full
tide of midsummer sweetness which flowed through the open windows could not
altogether overcome that subtle memory of summers long gone by.
The master of the house, with a face like a wrinkled waxen mask, sat in his
easy-chair reading the _Saturday Review_, and a lady very like him, only
with a little more color and fulness, was knitting close by. The light
shone on the old man's pale face and white hair, on the old lady's
silver-gray dress and flashing rings: the knitting-pins clicked, working up
the crimson wool, and the pages of the paper rustled with a pleasant
crispness as they were turned. By the window, where the candlelight faded
into the soft shadows, stood a young man apparently lost in thought. His
face, which was turned a little toward the garden, was a noteworthy one
with its straight forehead and clearly marked, level brows. His features
were good, and his clear olive complexion gave him something of a foreign
air. He had no beard, and his moustache was only a dark shadow on his upper
lip, so that his mouth stood revealed as one which indicated reserve,
though it was neither stern nor thin-lipped. Altogether, it was a pleasant
face.
A light step sauntering along the terrace, a low voice softly singing
"Drink to Me only with Thine Eyes," roused him from his reverie. He did not
move, but his mouth and eyes relaxed into a smile as a white figure came
out of the dusk exactly opposite his window, and singer and song stopped
together. "Oh, Percival! I didn't know you had come out of the
dining-room."
"Twenty minutes ago. What have you been doing?"
"Wandering about the garden. What could I do on such a perfect night but
what I have been doing all this perfect day?"
She stood looking up at him as she spoke. She had an arch, beautiful
face--the sort of face which would look well with patches and powder. Only
it would have been a sin to powder the hair, which, though deep brown, had
rich touches of gold, as if a happy sunbeam were imprisoned in its waves.
Her eyes were dark, her lips were softly red: everything about Sissy
Langton's face was delicate and fine. She lifted her hand to reach a spray
of jasmine just above her head, and the lace sleeve above fell back from
her pretty, slender wrist: "Give it to me. Percival! do you hear? Oh, what
a tease you are!" For he drew it back when she would have gathered it. Mrs.
Middleton was heard making a remark inside.
"You don't deserve it," said Percival. "Here is my aunt saying that the hot
weather makes you scandalously idle."
"Scandalously idle! Aunt Harriet!" Sissy repeated it in incredulous
amusement, and the old lady's indignant disclaimer was heard: "Percival!
Most unusually idle, I said."
"Oh! most unusually idle? I beg your pardon. But doesn't that imply a
considerable amount of idleness to be got through by one person?"
"Yes, but you helped me," said Sissy.--"Aunt Harriet, listen. He stood on
my thimble ever so long while he was talking this afternoon. How can I work
without a thimble?"
"Impossible!" said Percival. "And I don't think I can get you another
to-morrow: I am going out. On Thursday I shall come back and bring you one
that won't fit. Friday you must go with me to change it. Yes, we shall
manage three days' holiday very nicely."
"Nonsense! But it _is_ your fault if I am idle."
"Why, yes. Having no thimble, you are naturally unable to finish your book,
for instance."
"Oh, I sha'n't finish that: I don't like it. The heroine is so dreadfully
strong-minded I don't believe in her. She never does anything wrong; and
though she suffers tortures--absolute agony, you know--she always rises to
the occasion--nasty thing!"
"A wonderful woman," said Percival, idly picking sprays of jasmine as he
spoke.
Sissy's voice sank lower: "Do you think there are really any women like
that?"
"Oh yes, I suppose so."
She took the flowers which he held out, and looked doubtfully into his
face: "But--do you _like_ them, Percival?"
"Make the question a little clearer," he said. "I don't like your ranting,
pushing, unwomanly women who can talk of nothing but their rights. They are
very terrible. But heroic women--" He stopped short. The pause was more
eloquent than speech.
"Ah!" said Sissy, "Well--a woman like Jael? or Judith?"
He repeated the name "Judith." "Or Charlotte Corday?" he suggested after a
moment.
It was Sissy's turn to hesitate, and she compressed her pretty lips
doubtfully. Being in the Old Testament, Jael must of course come out all
right, even if one finds it difficult to like her. Judith's position, is
less clear. Still, it is a great thing to be in the Apocrypha, and then
living so long ago and so far away makes a difference. But Charlotte
Corday--a young Frenchwoman, not a century dead, who murdered a man, and
was guillotined in those horrible revolutionary times,--would Percival say
_that_ was the type of woman he liked?
"Well--Charlotte Corday, then?"
"Yes, I admire her," he said slowly. "Though I would rather the heroism did
not show itself in bloodshed. Still, she was noble: I honor her. I dare say
the others were too, but I don't know so much about them."
"What a poor little thing you must think me!" said Sissy. "I could never do
anything heroic."
"Why not?"
"I should be frightened. I can't bear people to be angry with me. I should
run away, or do something silly."
"Then I hope you won't be tried," said Percival.
She shook her pretty head: "People always talk about casting gold into the
furnace, and it's coming out only the brighter and better. Things are not
good for much if you would rather they were not tried."
Her hand was on the window-frame as she spoke, and the young man touched a
ring she wore: "Gold is tried in the furnace--yes, but not your pearls.
Besides, I'm not so sure that you would fail if you were put to the test."
She smiled, well pleased, yet unconvinced.
"You think," he went on, "that people who did great deeds did them without
an effort--were always ready, like a bow always strung? No, no, Sissy: they
felt very weak sometimes. Isn't there anything in the world you think you
could die for? Even if you say 'No' now, there may be something one of
these days."
The twilight hid the soft glow which overspread her face. "Anything in the
world you could die for?" Anything? Anybody? Her blood flowed in a strong,
courageous current as her heart made answer, "Yes--for one."
But she did not speak, and after a moment her companion changed the
subject. "That's a pretty ring," he said.
Sissy started from her reverie: "Horace gave it me. Adieu, Mr. Percival
Thorne: I'm going to look at my roses."
"Thank you. Yes, I shall be delighted to come." And Percival jumped out.
"Don't look at me as if I'd said something foolish. Isn't that the right
way to answer your kind invitation?"
"Invitation! What next?" demanded Sissy with pretty scorn. And the pair
went off together along the terrace and into the fragrant dusk.
A minute later it occurred to Mrs. Middleton to fear that Sissy might take
cold, and she went to the window to look after her. But, as no one was to
be seen, she turned away and encountered her brother, who had been watching
them too. "Do they care for each other?" he asked abruptly.
"How can I tell?" Mrs. Middleton replied. "Of course she is fond of him in
a way, but I can't help fancying sometimes that Horace--"
"Horace!" Mr. Thorne's smile was singularly bland. "Oh, indeed! Horace--a
charming arrangement! Pray how many more times is Mr. Horace to supplant
that poor boy?" His soft voice changed suddenly, as one might draw a sword
from its sheath. "Horace had better not cross Percival's path, or he will
have to deal with me. Is he not content? What next must he have?"
Mrs. Middleton paused. She could have answered him. There was an obvious
reply, but it was too crushing to be used, and Mr. Thorne braved it
accordingly.
"Better leave your grandsons alone, Godfrey," she said at last, "if you'll
take my advice; which I don't think you ever did yet. You'll only make
mischief. And there is Sissy to be considered. Let the child choose for
herself."
"And you think she can choose--_Horace?_"
"Why not?"
"Choose Horace rather than Percival?"
"I should," said the old lady with smiling audacity. "And I would rather
she did. Horace's position is better."
Mr. Thorne uttered something akin to a grunt, which might by courtesy be
taken for a groan: "Oh, how mercenary you women are! Well, if you marry a
man for his money, Horace has the best of it--if he behaves himself. Yes, I
admit that--_if he behaves himself_"'
"And Horace is handsomer," said Mrs. Middleton with a smile.
"Pink-and-white prettiness!" scoffed Mr. Thorne.
"Nonsense!" The color mounted to the old lady's forehead, and she spoke
sharply: "We didn't hear anything about that when he was a lad, and we were
afraid of something amiss with his lungs: it would have been high treason
to say a syllable against him then. And now, though I suppose he will
always be a little delicate (you'd be sorry if you lost him, Godfrey), it's
a shame to talk as if the boys were not to be compared. They are just of a
height, not half an inch difference, and the one as brave and manly as the
other. Horace is fair, and Percival is dark; and you know, as well as I do,
that Horace is the handsomer."
Mr. Thorne shifted his ground: "If I were Sissy I would choose my husband
for qualities that are rather more than skin-deep."
"By all means. And still I would choose Horace."
"What is amiss with Percival?"
"He is not so frank and open. I don't want to say anything against him--I
like Percival--but I wish he were not quite so reserved."
"What next?" said Mr. Thorne with a short laugh. "Why, only this morning
you said he talked more than Horace."
"Talked? Oh yes, Percival can talk, and about himself too," said Mrs.
Middleton with a smile. "But he can keep his secrets all the time. I don't
want to say anything against him: I like him very much--"
"No doubt," said Mr. Thorne.
"But I don't feel quite sure that I know him. He isn't like Horace. You
know Horace's friends--"
"Trust me for that."
"But what do you know of Percival's? I heard him tell Sissy he would be out
to-morrow. Will you ever know where he went?"
"I sha'n't ask him."
"No," she retorted, "you dare not! Isn't it a rule that no one is ever to
question Percival?"
"And while I'm master here it shall be obeyed. It's the least I can do. The
boy shall come and go, speak or hold his tongue, as he pleases. No one
shall cross him--Horace least of all--while I'm master here, Harriet; but
that won't be very long."
"I don't want you to think any harm of Percival's silence," she answered
gently. "I don't for one moment suppose he has any secrets to be ashamed
of. I myself like people to be open, that is all."
"If I wanted to know anything Percival would tell me," said Mr. Thorne.
Mrs. Middleton's charity was great. She hid the smile she could not
repress. "Well," she said, "perhaps I am not fair to Percival, but,
Godfrey, you are not quite just to Horace."
He turned upon her: "Unjust to Horace? _I?_"
She knew what he meant. He had shown Horace signal favor, far above his
cousin, yet what she had said was true. Perhaps some of the injustice had
been in this very favor. "Here are our truants!" she exclaimed. She and her
brother had not talked so confidentially for years, but the moment her eyes
fell on Sissy her thoughts went back to the point at which Mr. Thorne had
disturbed them: "My dearest Sissy, I am so afraid you will catch cold."
"It can't be done to-night," said Percival. "Won't you come and try?" But
the old lady shook her head.
"All right, auntie! we won't stop out," said Sissy; and a moment later she
made her appearance in the drawing-room with her hands full of roses, which
she tossed carelessly on the table. Mr. Thorne had picked up his paper, and
stood turning the pages and pretending to read, but she pushed it aside to
put a rosebud in his coat.
"Roses are more fit for you young people than for an old fellow like me,"
he said, "Why don't you give one to Percival?"
She looked over her shoulder at young Thorne. "Do you want one?" she said.
He smiled, with a slight movement of his head and his dark eyes fixed on
hers.
"Then, why didn't you pick one when we were out? Now, weren't you foolish?
Well, never mind. What color?"
"Choose for him," said Mr. Thorne.
Sissy hesitated, looking from Percival's face to a bud of deepest crimson.
Then, throwing it down, "No, you shall have yellow," she exclaimed: "Laura
Falconer's complexion is something like yours, and she always wears yellow.
As soon as one yellow dress is worn out she gets another."
"She is a most remarkable young woman if she waits till the first one is
worn out," said Percival.
"Am I to put your rose in or not?" Sissy demanded.
He stepped forward with a smile, and looked darkly handsome as he stood
there with Sissy putting the yellow rose in his coat and glancing archly up
at him.
Mr. Thorne from behind his _Saturday Review_ watched the girl who might,
perhaps, hold his favorite's future in her hands. "Does he care for her?"
he wondered. If he did, the old man felt that he would gladly have knelt to
entreat her, "Be good to my poor Percival." But did Percival want her to be
good to him? Godfrey Thorne was altogether in the dark about his grandson's
wishes in the matter. He tried hard not to think that he was in the dark
about every wish or hope of Percival's, and he looked up eagerly when the
latter said something about going out the next day. He remembered which
horse Percival liked, he assented to everything, but he watched him all the
time with a wistful curiosity. He did not really care where Percival went,
but he would have given much for such a word about his plans as would have
proved to Harriet, and to himself too, that his boy _did_ confide in him
sometimes. It was not to be, however. Young Thorne had taken up the local
paper and the subject dropped. Mr. Thorne may have guessed later, but he
never knew where his roan horse went the next day.