Florida, that old-new land, with its deserted plantations, its skies of
Paradise, and its broad wastes open to the changeless sunshine. The old
house stood on the edge of the dry land, where the pine-barren ended
and the salt-marsh began; in front curved the tide-water river that
seemed ever trying to come up close to the barren and make its
acquaintance, but could not quite succeed, since it must always turn and
flee at a fixed hour, like Cinderella at the ball, leaving not a silver
slipper behind, but purple driftwood and bright seaweeds, brought in
from the Gulf Stream outside. A planked platform ran out into the marsh
from the edge of the barren, and at its end the boats were moored; for,
although at high tide the river was at our feet, at low tide it was far
away out in the green waste somewhere, and if we wanted it we must go
and seek it. We did not want it, however; we let it glide up to us twice
a day with its fresh salt odors and flotsam of the ocean, and the rest
of the time we wandered over the barrens or lay under the trees looking
up into the wonderful blue above, listening to the winds as they rushed
across from sea to sea. I was an artist, poor and painstaking. Christine
was my kind friend. She had brought me South because my cough was
troublesome, and here because Edward Bowne recommended the place. He and
three fellow sportsmen were down at the Madre Lagoon, farther south; I
thought it probable we should see him, without his three fellow
sportsmen, before very long.
"Who were the three women you have seen, Felipa?" said Christine.
"The grandmother, an Indian woman of the Seminoles who comes sometimes
with baskets, and the wife of Miguel of the island. But they are all
old, and their skins are curled: I like better the silver skin of the
señora."
Poor little Felipa lived on the edge of the great salt-marsh alone with
her grandparents, for her mother was dead. The yellow old couple were
slow-witted Minorcans, part pagan, part Catholic, and wholly ignorant;
their minds rarely rose above the level of their orange-trees and their
fish-nets. Felipa's father was a Spanish sailor, and, as he had died
only the year before, the child's Spanish was fairly correct, and we
could converse with her readily, although we were slow to comprehend the
patois of the old people, which seemed to borrow as much from the
Italian tongue and the Greek as from its mother Spanish. "I know a great
deal," Felipa remarked confidently, "for my father taught me. He had
sailed on the ocean out of sight of land, and he knew many things. These
he taught to me. Do the gracious ladies think there is anything else to
know?"
One of the gracious ladies thought not, decidedly. In answer to my
remonstrance, expressed in English, she said, "Teach a child like that,
and you ruin her."
"Ruin her?"
"Ruin her happiness--the same thing."
Felipa had a dog, a second self--a great gaunt yellow creature of
unknown breed, with crooked legs, big feet, and the name Drollo. What
Drollo meant, or whether it was an abbreviation, we never knew; but
there was a certain satisfaction in it, for the dog was droll: the fact
that the Minorcan title, whatever it was, meant nothing of that sort,
made it all the better. We never saw Felipa without Drollo. "They look a
good deal alike," observed Christine--"the same coloring."
"For shame!" I said.
But it was true. The child's bronzed yellow skin and soft eyes were not
unlike the dog's, but her head was crowned with a mass of short black
curls, while Drollo had only his two great flapping ears and his low
smooth head. Give him an inch or two more of skull, and what a creature
a dog would be! For love and faithfulness even now what man can match
him? But, although ugly, Felipa was a picturesque little object always,
whether attired in boy's clothes or in her own forlorn bodice and skirt.
Olive-hued and meager-faced, lithe and thin, she flew over the
pine-barrens like a creature of air, laughing to feel her short curls
toss and her thin childish arms buoyed up on the breeze as she ran, with
Drollo barking behind. For she loved the winds, and always knew when
they were coming--whether down from the north, in from the ocean, or
across from the Gulf of Mexico: she watched for them, sitting in the
doorway, where she could feel their first breath, and she taught us the
signs of the clouds. She was a queer little thing: we used to find her
sometimes dancing alone out on the barren in a circle she had marked out
with pine-cones, and once she confided to us that she talked to the
trees. "They hear," she said in a whisper; "you should see how knowing
they look, and how their leaves listen."
Once we came upon her most secret lair in a dense thicket of
thorn-myrtle and wild smilax--a little bower she had made, where was
hidden a horrible-looking image formed of the rough pieces of
saw-palmetto grubbed up by old Bartolo from his garden. She must have
dragged these fragments thither one by one, and with infinite pains
bound them together with her rude withes of strong marsh-grass, until at
last she had formed a rough trunk with crooked arms and a sort of a
head, the red hairy surface of the palmetto looking not unlike the skin
of some beast, and making the creature all the more grotesque. This
fetich was kept crowned with flowers, and after this we often saw the
child stealing away with Drollo to carry to it portions of her meals or
a new-found treasure--a sea-shell, a broken saucer, or a fragment of
ribbon. The food always mysteriously disappeared, and my suspicion is
that Drollo used to go back secretly in the night and devour it, asking
no questions and telling no lies: it fitted in nicely, however, Drollo
merely performing the ancient part of the priests of Jupiter, men who
have been much admired. "What a little pagan she is!" I said.
"Oh, no, it is only her doll," replied Christine.
I tried several times to paint Felipa during these first weeks, but
those eyes of hers always evaded me. They were, as I have said before,
yellow--that is, they were brown with yellow lights--and they stared at
you with the most inflexible openness. The child had the full-curved,
half-open mouth of the tropics, and a low Greek forehead. "Why isn't
she pretty?" I said.
"She is hideous," replied Christine; "look at her elbows."
Now Felipa's arms _were_ unpleasant: they were brown and lean, scratched
and stained, and they terminated in a pair of determined little paws
that could hold on like grim Death. I shall never forget coming upon a
tableau one day out on the barren--a little Florida cow and Felipa, she
holding on by the horns, and the beast with its small fore feet
stubbornly set in the sand; girl pulling one way, cow the other; both
silent and determined. It was a hard contest, but the girl won.
"And if you pass over her elbows, there are her feet," continued
Christine languidly. For she was a sybaritic lover of the fine linens of
life, that friend of mine--a pre-Raphaelite lady with clinging draperies
and a mediæval clasp on her belt. Her whole being rebelled against
ugliness, and the mere sight of a sharp-nosed, light-eyed woman on a
cold day made her uncomfortable.
"Have we not feet too?" I replied sharply.
But I knew what she meant. Bare feet are not pleasant to the eye
nowadays, whatever they may have been in the days of the ancient Greeks;
and Felipa's little brown insteps were half the time torn or bruised by
the thorns of the chaparral. Besides, there was always the disagreeable
idea that she might step upon something cold and squirming when she
prowled through the thickets knee-deep in the matted grasses. Snakes
abounded, although we never saw them; but Felipa went up to their very
doors, as it were, and rang the bell defiantly.
One day old Grandfather Bartolo took the child with him down to the
coast: she was always wild to go to the beach, where she could gather
shells and sea-beans, and chase the little ocean-birds that ran along
close to the waves with that swift gliding motion of theirs, and where
she could listen to the roar of the breakers. We were several miles up
the salt-marsh, and to go down to the ocean was quite a voyage to
Felipa. She bade us good-by joyously; then ran back to hug Christine a
second time, then to the boat again; then back.
"I thought you wanted to go, child?" I said, a little impatiently; for I
was reading aloud, and these small irruptions were disturbing.
"Yes," said Felipa, "I want to go; and still--Perhaps if the gracious
señora would kiss me again--"
Christine only patted her cheek and told her to run away: she obeyed,
but there was a wistful look in her eyes, and, even after the boat had
started, her face, watching us from the stem, haunted me.
"Now that the little monkey has gone, I may be able at last to catch and
fix a likeness of her," I said; "in this case a recollection is better
than the changing quicksilver reality."
"You take it as a study of ugliness?"
"Do not be hard upon the child, Christine."
"Hard? Why, she adores me," said my friend, going off to her hammock
under the tree.
Several days passed, and the boat returned not. I accomplished a fine
amount of work, and Christine a fine amount of swinging in the hammock
and dreaming. At length one afternoon I gave my final touch, and carried
my sketch over to the pre-Raphaelite lady for criticism. "What do you
see?" I said.
"I see a wild-looking child with yellow eyes, a mat of curly black hair,
a lank little bodice, her two thin brown arms embracing a gaunt old dog
with crooked legs, big feet, and turned-in toes."
"Is that all?"
"All."
"You do not see latent beauty, courage, and a possible great gulf of
love in that poor wild little face?"
"Nothing of the kind," replied Christine decidedly. "I see an ugly
little girl; that is all."
The next day the boat returned, and brought back five persons, the old
grandfather, Felipa, Drollo, Miguel of the island, and--Edward Bowne.
"Already?" I said.
"Tired of the Madre, Kitty; thought I would come up here and see you for
a while. I knew you must be pining for me."
"Certainly," I replied; "do you not see how I have wasted away?"
He drew my arm through his and raced me down the plank-walk toward the
shore, where I arrived laughing and out of breath.
"Where is Christine?" he asked.
I came back into the traces at once. "Over there in the hammock. You
wish to go to the house first, I suppose?"
"Of course not."
"But she did not come to meet you, Edward, although she knew you had
landed."
"Of course not, also."
"I do not understand you two."
"And of course not, a third time," said Edward, looking down at me with
a smile. "What do peaceful little artists know about war?"
"Is it war?"
"Something very like it, Kitty. What is that you are carrying?"
"Oh! my new sketch. What do you think of it?"
"Good, very good. Some little girl about here, I suppose?"
"Why, it is Felipa!"
"And who is Felipa? Seems to me I have seen that old dog, though."
"Of course you have; he was in the boat with you, and so was Felipa; but
she was dressed in boy's clothes, and that gives her a different look."
"Oh! that boy? I remember him. His name is Philip. He is a funny little
fellow," said Edward calmly.
"Her name is Felipa, and she is not a boy or a funny little fellow at
all," I replied.
"Isn't she? I thought she was both," replied Ned carelessly; and then he
went off toward the hammock. I turned away, after noting Christine's
cool greeting, and went back to the boat.
Felipa came bounding to meet me. "What is his name?" she demanded.
"Bowne."
"Buon--Buona; I can not say it."
"Bowne, child--Edward Bowne."
"Oh! Eduardo; I know that. Eduardo--Eduardo--a name of honey."
She flew off singing the name, followed by Drollo carrying his
mistress's palmetto basket in his big patient mouth; but when I passed
the house a few moments afterward she was singing, or rather talking
volubly of, another name--"Miguel," and "the wife of Miguel," who were
apparently important personages on the canvas of her life. As it
happened, I never really saw that wife of Miguel, who seemingly had no
name of her own; but I imagined her. She lived on a sand-bar in the
ocean not far from the mouth of our salt-marsh; she drove pelicans like
ducks with a long switch, and she had a tame eagle; she had an old horse
also, who dragged the driftwood across the sand on a sledge, and this
old horse seemed like a giant horse always, outlined as he was against
the flat bar and the sky. She went out at dawn, and she went out at
sunset, but during the middle of the burning day she sat at home and
polished sea-beans, for which she obtained untold sums; she was very
tall, she was very yellow, and she had but one eye. These items, one by
one, had been dropped by Felipa at various times, and it was with
curiosity that I gazed upon the original Miguel, the possessor of this
remarkable spouse. He was a grave-eyed, yellow man, who said little and
thought less, applying _cui bono?_ to mental much as the city man
applies it to bodily exertion, and therefore achieving, I think, a
finer degree of inanition. The tame eagle, the pelicans, were nothing to
him; and, when I saw his lethargic, gentle countenance, my own curiosity
about them seemed to die away in haze, as though I had breathed in an
invisible opiate. He came, he went, and that was all; exit Miguel.
Felipa was constantly with us now. She and Drollo followed the three of
us wherever we went--followed the two also whenever I staid behind to
sketch, as I often staid, for in those days I was trying to catch the
secret of the salt-marsh; a hopeless effort--I know it now. "Stay with
me, Felipa," I said; for it was natural to suppose that the lovers might
like to be alone. (I call them lovers for want of a better name, but
they were more like haters; however, in such cases it is nearly the same
thing.) And then Christine, hearing this, would immediately call
"Felipa!" and the child would dart after them, happy as a bird. She wore
her boy's suit now all the time, because the señora had said she "looked
well in it." What the señora really said was, that in boy's clothes she
looked less like a grasshopper. But this had been translated as above by
Edward Bowne when Felipa suddenly descended upon him one day and
demanded to be instantly told what the gracious lady was saying about
her; for she seemed to know by intuition when we spoke of her, although
we talked in English and mentioned no names. When told, her small face
beamed, and she kissed Christine's hand joyfully and bounded away.
Christine took out her handkerchief and wiped the spot.
"Christine," I said, "do you remember the fate of the proud girl who
walked upon bread?"
"You think that I may starve for kisses some time?" said my friend,
going on with the wiping.
"Not while I am alive," called out Edward from behind. His style of
courtship _was_ of the sledge-hammer sort sometimes. But he did not get
much for it on that day; only lofty tolerance, which seemed to amuse him
greatly.
Edward played with Felipa very much as if she was a rubber toy or a
little trapeze performer. He held her out at arm's length in mid-air, he
poised her on his shoulder, he tossed her up into the low myrtle-trees,
and dangled her by her little belt over the claret-colored pools on the
barren; but he could not frighten her; she only laughed and grew wilder
and wilder, like a squirrel. "She has muscles and nerves of steel," he
said admiringly.
"Do put her down; she is too excitable for such games." I said in
French, for Felipa seemed to divine our English now. "See the color she
has."
For there was a trail of dark red over the child's thin oval cheeks
which made her look unlike herself. As she caught our eyes fixed upon
her, she suddenly stopped her climbing and came and sat at Christine's
feet. "Some day I shall wear robes like the señora's," she said, passing
her hand over the soft fabric; "and I think," she added after some slow
consideration, "that my face will be like the señora's too."
Edward burst out laughing. The little creature stopped abruptly and
scanned his face.
"Do not tease her," I said.
Quick as a flash she veered around upon me. "He does not tease me," she
said angrily in Spanish; "and, besides, what if he does? I like it." She
looked at me with gleaming eyes and stamped her foot.
"What a little tempest!" said Christine.
Then Edward, man-like, began to explain. "You could not look much like
this lady, Felipa," he said, "because you are so dark, you know."
"Am I dark?"
"Very dark; but many people are dark, of course; and for my part I
always liked dark eyes," said this mendacious person.
"Do you like my eyes" asked Felipa anxiously.
"Indeed I do: they are like the eyes of a dear little calf I once owned
when I was a boy."
The child was satisfied, and went back to her place beside Christine.
"Yes, I shall wear robes like this," she said dreamily, drawing the
flowing drapery over her knees clad in the little linen trousers, and
scanning the effect; "they would trail behind me--so." Her bare feet
peeped out below the hem, and again we all laughed, the little brown
toes looked so comical coming out from the silk and the snowy
embroideries. She came down to reality again, looked at us, looked at
herself, and for the first time seemed to comprehend the difference.
Then suddenly she threw herself down on the ground like a little animal,
and buried her head in her arms. She would not speak, she would not look
up: she only relaxed one arm a little to take in Drollo, and then lay
motionless. Drollo looked at us out of one eye solemnly from his
uncomfortable position, as much as to say: "No use; leave her to me." So
after a while we went away and left them there.
That evening I heard a low knock at my door. "Come in," I said, and
Felipa entered. I hardly knew her. She was dressed in a flowered muslin
gown which had probably belonged to her mother, and she wore her
grandmother's stockings and large baggy slippers; on her mat of curly
hair was perched a high-crowned, stiff white cap adorned with a ribbon
streamer; and her lank little neck, coming out of the big gown, was
decked with a chain of large sea-beans, like exaggerated lockets. She
carried a Cuban fan in her hand which was as large as a parasol, and
Drollo, walking behind, fairly clanked with the chain of sea-shells
which she had wound around him from head to tail. The droll tableau and
the supreme pride on Felipa's countenance overcame me, and I laughed
aloud. A sudden cloud of rage and disappointment came over the poor
child's face: she threw her cap on the floor and stamped on it; she tore
off her necklace and writhed herself out of her big flowered gown, and,
running to Drollo, nearly strangled him in her fierce efforts to drag
off his shell chains. Then, a half-dressed, wild little phantom, she
seized me by the skirts and dragged me toward the looking-glass. "You
are not pretty either," she cried. "Look at yourself! look at yourself!"
"I did not mean to laugh at you, Felipa," I said gently; "I would not
laugh at any one; and it is true I am not pretty, as you say. I can
never be pretty, child; but, if you will try to be more gentle, I could
teach you how to dress yourself so that no one would laugh at you again.
I could make you a little bright-barred skirt and a scarlet bodice: you
could help, and that would teach you to sew. But a little girl who wants
all this done for her must be quiet and good."
"I am good," said Felipa; "as good as everything."
The tears still stood in her eyes, but her anger was forgotten: she
improvised a sort of dance around my room, followed by Drollo dragging
his twisted chain, stepping on it with his big feet, and finally winding
himself up into a knot around the chair-legs.
"Couldn't we make Drollo something too? dear old Drollo!" said Felipa,
going to him and squeezing him in an enthusiastic embrace. I used to
wonder how his poor ribs stood it: Felipa used him as a safety-valve for
her impetuous feelings.
She kissed me good night, and then asked for "the other lady."
"Go to bed, child," I said; "I will give her your good night."
"But I want to kiss her too," said Felipa.
She lingered at the door and would not go; she played with the latch,
and made me nervous with its clicking; at last I ordered her out. But on
opening my door half an hour afterward there she was sitting on the
floor outside in the darkness, she and Drollo, patiently waiting.
Annoyed, but unable to reprove her, I wrapped the child in my shawl and
carried her out into the moonlight, where Christine and Edward were
strolling to and fro under the pines. "She will not go to bed,
Christine, without kissing you," I explained. "Funny little monkey!"
said my friend, passively allowing the embrace.
"Me too," said Edward, bending down. Then I carried my bundle back
satisfied.
The next day Felipa and I in secret began our labors; hers consisted in
worrying me out of my life and spoiling material--mine in keeping my
temper and trying to sew. The result, however, was satisfactory, never
mind how we got there. I led Christine out one afternoon: Edward
followed. "Do you like tableaux?" I said. "There is one I have arranged
for you."
Felipa sat on the edge of the low, square-curbed Spanish well, and
Drollo stood behind her, his great yellow body and solemn head serving
as a background. She wore a brown petticoat barred with bright colors,
and a little scarlet bodice fitting her slender waist closely; a
chemisette of soft cream-color with loose sleeves covered her neck and
arms, and set off the dark hues of her cheeks and eyes; and around her
curly hair a red scarf was twisted, its fringed edges forming a drapery
at the back of the head, which, more than anything else, seemed to bring
out the latent character of her face. Brown moccasins, red stockings,
and a quantity of bright beads completed her costume.
"By Jove!" cried Edward, "the little thing is almost pretty."
Felipa understood this, and a great light came into her face: forgetting
her pose, she bounded forward to Christine's side. "I am pretty, then?"
she said with exultation; "I _am_ pretty, then, after all? For now you
yourself have said it--have said it."
"No, Felipa," I interposed, "the gentleman said it." For the child had a
curious habit of confounding the two identities which puzzled me then as
now. But this afternoon, this happy afternoon, she was content, for she
was allowed to sit at Christine's feet and look up into her fair face
unmolested. I was forgotten, as usual. "It is always so," I said to
myself. But cynicism, as Mr. Aldrich says, is a small brass field-piece
that eventually bursts and kills the artilleryman. I knew this, having
been blown up myself more than once; so I went back to my painting and
forgot the world. Our world down there on the edge of the salt-marsh,
however, was a small one: when two persons went out of it there was a
vacuum.
One morning Felipa came sadly to my side. "They have gone away," she
said.
"Yes, child."
"Down to the beach to spend all the day."
"Yes, I know it."
"And without me!"
This was the climax. I looked up. Her eyes were dry, but there was a
hollow look of disappointment in her face that made her seem old; it was
as though for an instant you caught what her old-woman face would be
half a century on.
"Why did they not take me?" she said. "I am pretty now: she herself said
it."
"They can not always take you, Felipa," I replied, giving up the point
as to who had said it.
"Why not? I am pretty now: she herself said it," persisted the child.
"In these clothes, you know: she herself said it. The clothes of the son
of Pedro you will never see more: they are burned."
"Burned?"
"Yes, burned," replied Felipa composedly. "I carried them out on the
barren and burned them. Drollo singed his paw. They burned quite nicely.
But they are gone, and I am pretty now, and yet they did not take me!
What shall I do?"