LIPPINCOTT's MAGAZINE
OF
_POPULAR LITERATURE AND SCIENCE_.
Vol XII, No. 28.
JULY, 1873
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE NEW HYPERION [Illustrated] By EDWARD STRAHAN.
I.--Preambulary.
FROM PHILADELPHIA TO BALTIMORE [Illustrated] By ROBERT MORRIS COPELAND.
CHARITY CROSS By MARGARET MASON.
BERRYTOWN by REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.
Chapter XI.
Chapter XII.
Chapter XIII.
Chapter XIV.
Chapter XV.
STRANGE SEA INDUSTRIES AND ADVENTURES By WILL WALLACE HARNEY.
POSEY'S NUGGET By LOUIS A. ROBERTS.
FRANCESCA'S WORSHIP By MARGARET J. PRESTON.
OUR HOME IN THE TYROL By MARGARET HOWITT.
Chapter V.
Chapter VI.
WITH THE AMERICAN AMBULANCE CORPS AT PARIS By RALPH KEELER.
THE HUMMING-BIRD By JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON.
A PRINCESS OF THULE BY WILLIAM BLACK.
Chapter X.--Fairy-land.
Chapter XI.--The First Plunge.
SOME PASSAGES IN SHELLEY'S EARLY HISTORY By JANUARY SEARLE.
CHANGES By EMMA LAZARUS.
OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.
A Sleeping-car Serenade By W.G.B.
Fables For The Youth By SARSFIELD YOUNG.
A Picture With A History.
Hints For Novel-Writers.
NOTES.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
Books Received.
ILLUSTRATIONS
VIEW OF THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER AND WEST PHILADELPHIA.
SHARON HILL.
GLENOLDEN.
RIDLEY PARK.
CRUM LYNNE FALLS.
DISTANT VIEW OF LANDSCAPE, SHOWING MILITARY INSTITUTE AT CHESTER.
CROZER SEMINARY.
VIEW OF CHESTER.
RESIDENCE OF MR. F.O.C. DARLEY.
VIEW OF DELAWARE RIVER NEAR CLAYMONT.
VIEW AT CLAYMONT: CREEK AND BRIDGE.
PRINCIPIO.
BRIDGE OVER THE SUSQUEHANNA AT HAVRE DE GRACE.
MOUNT ARARAT'S PROFILE ROCK.
PORT DEPOSIT.
FORT MCHENRY.
THE BRITISH SHELL.
THE NEW HYPERION.
FROM PARIS TO MARLY BY WAY OF THE RHINE.
[The author's vignettes neatly copied by Gusatave Doré.]
I.--PREAMBULARY.
[Illustration]
The behavior of a great Hope is like the setting of the
sun. It splashes out from under a horizontal cloud, so diabolically
incandescent that you see a dozen false suns blotting the heavens with
purple in every direction. You bury your eyes in a handkerchief, with
your back carefully turned upon the west, and meantime the spectacle
you were waiting for takes place and disappears. You promise yourself
to nick it better to-morrow. The soul withdraws into its depths. The
stars arise (offering two or three thousand more impracticable suns),
and the night is ironical.
[Illustration]
Having already conquered, without boasting, a certain success before
the reading public, and having persuaded an author of renown to sign
his name to my bantling, my Expectation and Hope have long been to
surpass that trifling production. You may think it a slight thing to
prepare a lucky volume, and, tapping Fame familiarly on the shoulder,
engage her to undertake its colportage throughout the different
countries of the globe. My first little work of travel and geography
had exceeded my dreams of a good reception. It had earned me several
proposals from publishers; it had been annotated with "How true!" and
"Most profound!" by the readers in public libraries; its title had
given an imaginative air to the ledgers of book-sellers; and it had
added a new shade of moodiness to the collection of Mudie. The man
who hits one success by accident is always trying to hit another by
preparation. Since that achievement I have thought of nothing but the
creation of another impromptu, and I have really prepared a quantity
of increments toward it in the various places to which my traveling
existence has led me. That I have settled down, since these many years
past, at the centre and capital of ideas would prove me, even without
the indiscretions of that first little book, an American by birth. I
need not add that my card is printed in German text, Paul Fleming,
and that time has brought to me a not ungraceful, though a
sometimes practically retardating, circumference. Beneath a mask of
cheerfulness, and even of obesity, however, I continue to guard
the sensitive feelings of my earlier days. Yes: under this abnormal
convexity are fostered, as behind a lens, the glowing tendencies of my
youth. Though no longer, like the Harold described in Icelandic verse
by Regner Hairy-Breeches, "a young chief proud of my flowing locks,"
yet I still "spend my mornings among the young maidens," or such of
them as frequent the American Colony, as we call it, in Paris. I still
"love to converse with the handsome widows." Miss Ashburton, who
in one little passage of our youth treated me with considerable
disrespect, and who afterward married a person of great lingual
accomplishments, her father's late courier, at Naples, has been
handsomely forgiven, but not forgotten. A few intelligent ladies,
of marked listening powers and conspicuous accomplishments, are
habitually met by me at their residences in the neighborhood of the
Arc de Triomphe or at the receptions of the United States minister.
These fair attractions, although occupying, in practice, a
preponderating share of my time, are as nothing to me, however, in
comparison with that enticing illusion, my Book.
[Illustration]
The scientific use of the imagination in treating the places and
distances of Geography is the dream of my days and the insomnia of my
nights.
Every morning I take down and dust the loose sheets of my coming book
or polish the gilding of my former one. It is in my fidelity to these
baffling hopes--hopes fed with so many withered (or at least torn and
blotted) leaves--rather than in any resemblance authenticable by a
looking-glass, that I show my identity with the old long-haired and
nasal Flemming.
[Illustration]
Yet, though so long a Parisian, and so comfortable in my theoretic
pursuit of Progressive Geography, my leisure hours are unconsciously
given to knitting myself again to past associations, and some of my
deepest pleasures come from tearing open the ancient wounds. Shall
memory ever lose that sacred, that provoking day in the Vale of
Lauterbrunnen when the young mechanic in green serenaded us with his
guitar? It had for me that quite peculiar and personal application
that it immediately preceded my rejection by Miss Mary. The Staubbach
poured before our eyes, as from a hopper in the clouds, its Stream
of Dust. The Ashburtons, clad in the sensible and becoming fashion
of English lady-tourists, with long ringlets and Leghorn hats, sat
on either side of me upon the grass. And then that implacable youth,
looking full in my eye, sang his verses of insulting sagacity:
She gives thee a garland woven fair;
Take care!
It is a fool's-cap for thee to wear;
Beware! beware!
Trust her not,
She is fooling thee!
Meeting him two or three times afterward as he pursued his
apprentice-tour, I felt as though I had encountered a green-worm.
And I confess that it was partly on his account that I made a vow,
fervently uttered and solemnly kept, never again to visit Switzerland
or the Rhine. Miss Ashburton I easily forgave. The disadvantage, I
distinctly felt, was hers, solely and restrictedly hers; and I should
have treated with profound respect, if I had come across him, the
professional traveler who was good enough to marry her afterward.
But these bitter-sweet recollections are only the relief to my
studies. It is true they are importunate, but they are strictly kept
below stairs.
Nor would any one, regarding the stout and comfortable Flemming,
suspect what regrets and what philosophies were disputing possession
of his interior. For my external arrangements, I flatter myself that I
have shaped _them_ in tolerable taste.
My choice of the French capital I need not defend to any of my
American readers. To all of you this consummation is simply a matter
of ability. I heartily despise, as I always did, all mere pamperings
of physical convenience. Still, for some who retain some sympathy with
the Paul Flemming of aforetime, it may be worth while to mention the
particular physical conveniencies my soul contemns. I inhabit, and
have done so for eight years at least, a neat little residence of
the kind styled "between court and garden," and lying on the utmost
permissible circumference of the American quarter in Paris--say on the
hither side of Passy. For nearly the same period I have had in lease a
comical box at Marly, whither I repair every summer. My town-quarters,
having been furnished by an artist, gave me small pains. The whole
interior is like a suite of rooms in the Hôtel Cluny. The only
trouble was in bringing up the cellar to the quality I desired and
in selecting domestics--points on which, though careless of worldly
comfort in general, I own I am somewhat particular.
[Illustration]
No gentleman valets for me--rude creatures presuming to outdress their
masters. What I wanted was the Corporal Trim style of thing--bald,
faithful, ancient retainer. After a world of vexation I succeeded in
finding an artless couple, who agreed for a stipulation to sigh when I
spoke of my grandfather before my guests, and to have been brought up
in the family.
But I am wandering, and neglecting the true vein of sentiment which
so abounds in my heart. All my pleasure is still in mournful
contemplation, but I have learned that the feelings are most refined
when freed from low cares and personal discomforts. I was going to
cite a letter I wrote to my oldest friend, the baron of Hohenfels. It
was sketched out first in verse, but in that form was a failure:
* * * * *
"15th MARCH.
"The snow-white clouds beyond my window are piled up like Alps. The
shades of B. Franklin and W. Tell seem to walk together on those
Elysian Fields; for it was here (or sufficiently nigh for the purpose)
that in days gone by our pure patriot dwelt and flirted with Madame
Helvetius; and yonder clouds so much resemble the snowy Alps that they
remind me irresistibly of the Swiss. Noble examples of a high purpose
and a fixed will! Do B. and W. not move, Hyperion-like, on high? Were
_they_ not, likewise, sons of Heaven and Earth?
[Illustration]
"I wish I knew the man who called flowers 'the fugitive poetry of
Nature.' That was a sweet carol, which I think I have quoted to you,
sung by the Rhodian children of old in spring, bearing in their hands
a swallow, and chanting 'The swallow is come,' with some other
lines, which I have forgotten. A pretty carol is that, too, which the
Hungarian boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing to the returning
stork in spring, what time it builds its nests in the chimneys and
gracefully diverts the draft of smoke into the interior. What a
thrill of delight in spring-time! What a joy in being and moving!
Some housekeepers might object to that, and say that there was but
imperfect joy in moving; but I am about to propose to you, as soon as
I have taken a little more string, a plan of removal that will suit
both us and the season. My friend, the time of storms is flying
before the pretty child called April, who pursues it with his blooming
thyrsus. Breathing scent upon the air, he has already awakened some
of the trees on the boulevards, and the white locust-blossoms in the
garden of Rossini are beginning to hang out their bunches to attract
the nightingales. He calls to the swallows, and they arrive in clouds.
"He knocks at the hard envelope of the chrysalis, which accordingly
prepares to take its chance for a precarious metamorphosis--into the
wings of the butterfly or into the bosom of the bird. How very sweet!
"Strange is the lesson, my friend, which humanity teaches itself from
the larva. Even so do I, methinks, feed in life's autumn upon the
fading foliage of Hope, and, still feeding and weaving, turn it at
last into a little grave. A neat image that, which, by the by, I stole
from Drummond of Hawthornden. Do you recollect his verse?--but
of course I should be provoked if I thought you did--
For, with strange thoughts possessed,
I feed on fading leaves
Of hope--which me deceives,
And thousand webs doth warp within my breast.
And thus, in end, unto myself I weave
A fast-shut prison. No! but even a Grave!
"To pursue my subject: April, having thus balanced the affairs of the
bird and the worm, proceeds to lay over the meadows a tablecloth for
the bees. He opens all the windows of Paris, and on the streets shows
us the sap mounting in carnation in the faces of the girls.
"My dear Hohenfels, I invite you to the festival which Spring is
spreading just now in the village of Marly. My cabin will be gratified
to open in your honor. May it keep you until autumn! Come, and come at
once."
* * * * *
[Illustration]
Having signed my missive, I tucked it into an envelope, which I
blazoned with my favorite seal, the lyre of Hyperion broken, and rang
for Charles. In his stead, in lieu of my faithful Charles, it was
Hohenfels himself who entered, fresh from the Hôtel Mirabeau.
"Look alive, man! Can you lend me an umbrella?" said he briskly.
I looked out at the window: it was snowing.
The moment seemed inopportune for the delivery of my epistle:
I endeavored to conceal it--without hypocrisy and by a natural
movement--under the usual pile of manuscript on my table devoted
to Progressive Geography. But the baron had spied his name on the
address: "How is that? You were writing to me? There, I will spare you
the trouble of posting."
He read my sentences, turning at the end of each period to look out
at the snow, which was heavily settling in large damp flakes. He
said nothing at first about the discrepancy, but only looked forth
alternately with his reading, which was pointed enough. I said long
ago that the beauty of Hohenfels' character, like that of the precious
opal, was owing to a defect in his organization. The baron retains his
girlish expression, his blue eye, and his light hair of the kind that
never turns gray: he is still slender, but much bent. He went over to
the fireplace and crouched before the coals that were flickering there
still. Then he said, with that gentle, half-laughing voice, "Take
care, Paul, old boy! Children who show sense too early never grow,
they say: by parity of argument, men who are poetical too late in life
never get their senses."
"I have given up poetry," said I, "and you cannot scan that
communication in your hand."
"But it is something worse than poetry! It is prose inflated and
puffed and bubbled. You are falling into your old moony ways again,
and sonneteering in plain English. Are you not ashamed, at your age?"
"What age do you mean? I feel no infirmities of age. If my hair is
gray, 'tis not with years, as By--"
"If your hair is gray, it is because you are forty-eight, my old
beauty."
"Forty-five!" I said, with some little natural heat.
"Forty-five let it be, though you have said so these three years. And
what age is that to go running after the foot of the rainbow? Here you
are, my dear Flemming, breathing forth hymns to Spring, and inviting
your friends to picnics! Don't you know that April is the traitor
among the twelve months of the year? You are ready to strike for Marly
in a linen coat and slippers! Have you forgotten, my poor fellow, that
Marly is windy and raw, and that Louis XIV. caught that chill at Marly
of which he died? Ah, Paul, you are right enough. You are young, still
young. You are not forty-eight: you are sixteen--sixteen for the third
time."
Hohenfels, whose once fine temper is going a little, stirred the fire
and suddenly rose.
"Lend me an umbrella!" he repeated imperatively.
[Illustration]
"Are you in such a hurry to go? That is not very complimentary to me,"
I observed. "Have you done scolding me?"
What is called by some my growing worldliness teaches me to value
dryness in an old friend as I value dryness in a fine, cobwebbed,
crusty wine. It is from the merest Sybaritism that I surround myself
with comrades who, like Hohenfels, can fit their knobs into my
pattern, and receive my knobs in their own vacancy. My hint brought
him over at once into the leathern chair opposite the one I occupy.
"Paul, Paul," he said, "I only criticise you for your good. What have
you done with your three adolescences? You are getting stout, yet you
still write poetically. You have some wit, imagination, learning and
aptitude. You might make a name in science or art, but everything
you do lacks substance, because you live only in your old eternal
catchwords of the Past and the Future. You can sketch and paint,
yet have never exhibited your pictures except in ladies' albums.
You profess to love botany, yet your sole herbarium has been the
mignonette in sewing-girls' windows. You are inoffensive, you are
possessed of a competency, but in everything, in every vocation, you
rest in the state of amateur--amateur housekeeper, amateur artist,
amateur traveler, amateur geographer. And such a geographer as
you might be, with your taste for travel and the Hakluyt Society's
publications you have pored over for years!"
This chance allusion to my grand secret took me from my guard.
Hohenfels, blundering up and down in search of something to
anathematize, had stumbled upon the very fortress of my strength.
I deemed it time to let him into a part of my reserved intellectual
treasure--to whirl away a part at least of the sand in which my
patient sphinx had been buried.
"I have indeed been a reader," I said modestly. "When a youth at
Heidelberg, I perused, with more profit than would be immediately
guessed from the titles, such works as the Helden-Buchs and
the Nibelungen-Lieds, the Saxon Rhyme-Chronicles, the poems of
Minnesingers and Mastersingers, and Ships of Fools, and Reynard Foxes,
and Death-Dances, and Lamentations of Damned Souls. My study since
then has been in German chemistry from its renaissance in Paracelsus,
and physical science, including both medicine and the evolution of
life. Shall I give you a few dozen of my favorite writers?"
"Quite unnecessary," said the baron with some haste. "But I fancied
you were going to speak of geographical authors."
[Illustration]
"Are you fond of such writings yourself?" I asked.
"Immensely--that is, not too scientific, you know," said the baron,
who was out of his element here. "Bayard Taylor, now, or some such
fellows as the Alpine Club."
"My dear baron, the republications by the Hakluyt Society are but
a small part of the references I have taken down for my Progressive
Geography. You admire Switzerland?"
"Vastly. Steep jump, the Staubbach."
"But the Alps are only hillocks compared with the Andes of Peru, with
the Cordilleras, with Chimborazo! Ah, baron, Chimborazo! Well, my dear
boy, the system I elaborate makes it a matter of simple progression
and calculation to arrive at mountains much more considerable still."
"Such as--?"
"The Mountains of the Moon!"
I then, in a few dexterously involved sentences, allowed the plan of
my newly-invented theory to appear--so much of it, that is, as would
leave Hohenfels completely in the dark, and detract in no wise from
the splendor of my Opus when it should be published. As science,
however, truly considered, is the art of dilapidating and merging into
confused ruin the theories of your predecessors, I was somewhat
more precise with the destructive than the constructive part of my plan.
"Geographical Science, I am prepared to show, is that which modern
learning alone has neglected, to the point of leaving its discoveries
stationary. It is not so with the more assiduously cultivated
branches. What change, what advance, in every other department of
culture! In geology, the ammonite of to-day was for Chalmers a parody
facetiously made by Nature in imitation of her living conchology, and
for Voltaire a pilgrim's cockle dropped in the passes of the Alps. In
medicine, what progress has been made since ague was compared to the
flutter of insects among the nerves, and good Mistress Dorothy Burton,
who died but in 1629, cured it by hanging a spider round the patient's
neck "in a nutshell lapped in silk"! In chemistry, what strides! In
astronomy, what perturbations and changes! In history, what do we not
owe to the amiable authors who, dipping their pens in whitewash, have
reversed the judgments of ages on Nero and Henry VIII.! In genealogy,
what thanks must we pay to Darwin! Geographical Science alone, stolid
in its insolent fixity, has not moved: the location of Thebes and
Memphis is what it was in the days of Cheops and Rameses. And so poor
in intellect are our professors of geodesic lore that London continues
to be, just as it always was, in latitude 51° 30' 48" N., longitude 0°
5' 38" W., while the observatory of Paris contentedly sits in latitude
48° 50' 12" N. and longitude 2° 20' 22-1/2" E. from the observatory
of Greenwich! This disgracefully stationary condition of the science
cannot much longer be permitted."
"And how," said the baron, "will it be changed?" and he poked the
fire to conceal a yawn. Excellent man! his time latterly had been more
given to the investigation of opera than of the exact sciences.
"Through my theory of Progression and Proportion in geographical
statistics, by which the sources of the Nile can be easily determined
from the volume and speed of that current, while the height of the
mountains on the far side of the moon will be but a pleasing sum in
Ratio for a scholar's vacations. Nor will anything content me, my
dear Hohenfels, till this somewhat theoretical method of traveling
is displaced by bodily progression; till these easy excursions of the
mind are supplemented by material extensions; till the foot is pressed
where the brain has leaped; and till I, then for the first time a
traveler, stand behind the lunar rim, among the 'silent silver lights
and darks undreamed of!'"
"I am unable to appreciate your divagations," humbly observed
Hohenfels, "though I always thought your language beautiful. Meantime,
my hat is spoiled in coming hither, and you have the effrontery to
write bucolics to me during the most frightful weather of the year.
Once for all, do you refuse me an um--"
He did not finish his sentence. A world of sunshine burst like a
bomb into the chamber, and our eyes were dazzled with the splendor:
a sturdy beam shot directly into the fireplace, and the embers turned
haggard and gray, and quickly retired from the unequal contest. I
opened the window. A warm air, faint with the scent of earth and turf,
invaded the apartment, and the map-like patches of dampness on the
asphaltum pavement were rapidly and visibly drying away.
"I'm off!" said Hohenfels, with a rapid movement of retreat.
"But you are forgetting your--"
"What, my gloves?"
[Illustration]
"No, the umbrella." And I presented him the heaviest and longest and
oldest of my collection. He laughed: it was a hoary canopy which we
had used beside the Neckar and in Heidelberg--"a pleasant town," as
the old song says, "when it has done raining." We sealed a compact
over the indestructible German umbrella. I agreed to defer for a
fortnight my departure for Marly: on his side he made a solemn vow to
come there on the first of May, and there receive in full and without
wincing the particulars of my Progressive Geography. As he passed by
the window I took care that he should catch a glimpse of me seated
by accident in a strong light, my smoking-cap crowded down to my
spectacles, and my nose buried in my old geographers.
* * * * *
[Illustration]
For the next few days the weather supported the side of Hohenfels. It
scattered rain, sunshine and spits of snow. At last the sun got the
upper hand and remained master. The wisterias tumbled their cataracts
of blue blossoms down the spouts; rare flowers, of minute proportions,
burst from the button-holes of the young horsemen going to the Bois;
the gloves of the American colony became lilac; hyacinths, daffodils
and pansies moved by wagon-loads over the streets and soared to
the windows of the sewing-girls. Overhead, in the steaming and
cloud-marbled blue, stood the April sun. "Apelles of the flowers," as
an old English writer has styled him, he was coloring the garden-beds
with his rarest enamels, and spreading a sheet of varied tints over
the steps of the Madeleine, where they hold the horticultural market.
[Illustration]
This sort of country ecstasy, this season at once stimulating and
enervating, tortured me. It disturbed my bibliophilist labors,
and gave a twang of musty nausea even to the sweet scent of old
binding-leather. I was as a man caught in the pangs of removing,
unattached to either home; and I bent from my windows over the throngs
of festal promenaders, taciturn and uneasy. I fancied that wings were
sprouting from my brown dressing-robe, and that they were the volatile
wings of the moth or dragon-fly. But to establish myself at Marly
before the baron, would not that be a breach of compact? Would he
not make it a _casus belli_? Luckily, we were getting through April:
to-morrow it would be the twenty-eighth.
On that memorable morning the sun rose strong and bright, and
photographed a brilliant idea upon my cerebellum.
I would undertake a pedestrian attack upon Marly by winding my way
around the suburbs of the capital. What more appropriate, for a
profound geographer and tourist, than to measure with my walking-stick
that enormous bed of gypsum, at the centre of which, like a bee in a
sugar-basin, Paris sits and hums?
[Illustration]
The notion gained upon me. Perhaps it was the natural reaction from
the Mountains of the Moon; but in my then state of mind no prospect
could appear more delicious than a long tramp among the quiet scenes
through which the city fringes itself off into rurality. Those suburbs
of blank convent walls! those curves of the Seine and the Marne,
blocked with low villages, whose walls of white, stained with tender
mould and tiled with brown, dipped their placid reflections into the
stream! those droll square boats, pushing out from the sedges to urge
you across the ferry! those long rafts of lumber, following, like
cunning crocodiles, the ins and outs of the shallow Seine! those banks
of pollard willows, where girls in white caps tended flocks of geese
and turkeys, and where, every silver-spangled morning, the shore was
a landscape by Corot, and every twilight a landscape by Daubigny! How
exquisite these pictures became to my mind as I thought them forth one
by one, leaning over a grimy pavement in the peculiar sultriness of
the year's first warmth!
"Quick, Charles! my tin botany-box."
I could be at Marly on the first of May at the dinner hour as
punctually as Hohenfels--before him, maybe. And after what a range of
delicious experience! How he would envy me!
"Is monsieur going to travel all alone?" said keen old Charles, taking
the alarm in a minute. "Why am I not to go along with monsieur?"
The accent of primitive fidelity was perfect. I observed casually, "I
am going on a little journey of thirty-six hours, and alone. You
can pack everything up, and go on to Marly as usual. You may go
to-morrow."
"Shall I not go along with monsieur, then?" repeated Charles, with a
turn for tautology not now for the first time manifested.
"What for? Am I a child?"
"Surely not--on the contrary. But, though Monsieur Paul has a sure
foot and a good eye, and is not to say getting old, yet when a person
is fifty it is not best for a person to run about the streets as if a
person was a young person."
It was Josephine who did me the honor to address me the last remark.
I confess to but forty-five years of age; Hohenfels, quite
erroneously, gives me forty-eight; Josephine, with that raw alacrity
in leaping at computations peculiar to the illiterate, oppressed me
with fifty. Which of us three knew best? I should like to ask. But it
is of little consequence. The Easterns generally vaunt themselves on
not knowing the day of their birth. And wisdom comes to us from the
East.
[Illustration]
I decided, for reasons sufficient to myself, to get out of Paris by
the opposite side. I determined to make my sortie by way of the Temple
Market and the Belleville abattoirs. On the thirtieth of April, at an
ambitiously early hour, wearing my gardening cap, with my sketch-book
sticking out of my pocket, my tin box in one hand and my stout stick
in the other, I emerged among the staring porters of the neighboring
houses, and it was in this equipment that I received the renewed
lamentations of Charles and Josephine.
[Illustration]
"Will you dare to go along the Boulevard looking like that, sir?" said
Josephine.
"A gentleman in a cap! They'll take you for a bricklayer--indeed they
will, sir," said Charles; "or rather for a milkman, with his tin can.
I can't stand that: I will carry it rather myself, though I feel my
rheumatics on these damp pavements."
"Monsieur Paul must take a cab--at least to the barrier: it will not
be pleasant to make a scandal in the street."
"Who will tend Monsieur Paul these two days, now?" This was uttered
with manly grief by Charles.
"And whoever will cook for him along the road?" It was Josephine who
asked the question with a heavy sigh.
To make an end of this charming scene of Old Virginia faithfulness,
I put my best leg out and departed with gymnastic sprightliness. An
instant after I turned my head.
Charles and Josephine were fixed on the doorstep, following me with
their regards, and I believed I saw a tear in the left eye of each.
What fidelity! I smiled in a sort of indulgent and baronial manner,
but I felt touched by their sensibility.
Come on! It is but a twenty-four hours' separation.
Go forth, then, as I remember saying long ago, without fear and with a
manly heart, to meet the dim and shadowy Future.
EDWARD STRAHAN.
* * * * *
FROM PHILADELPHIA TO BALTIMORE.
In 1832 a few adventurous men obtained a charter for a railroad from
Baltimore to Port Deposit: other charters were granted by Delaware
and Pennsylvania in succeeding years, and at last in 1838 all were
consolidated as the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad
Company, and became a through all-rail line, interrupted only by
the Susquehanna and some minor water-courses, under one management,
beginning at Philadelphia and ending at Baltimore. But the country was
too young and weak to make this a strong road, either in capital
or business. It struggled along with a heavy debt, poor road-bed,
imperfect rail (in some parts the old strap rail), few locomotives and
cars, and inconvenient dépôts, making but little progress up to
1851, when Mr. Samuel M. Felton was brought from Boston to assume the
presidency.
Seeing the actual and future importance of the line, some Eastern men
bought up the stock, put in the necessary money and encouraged Mr.
Felton to begin an entire revolution in the road. The road-bed was
perfected and widened for a double track, new dépôts erected in
Baltimore and Philadelphia, new rails laid, new branches opened;
and whereas Mr. Felton found the road with only a single track, 25
locomotives and 308 cars, he left it with many miles of double track,
its dépôts rebuilt, 49 locomotives and 1145 cars. When he took the
road its locomotives traveled 312,840 miles per year, and earned
$718,010, at a cost of $252,184.54: when he left it, borne down by
disease, the locomotives traveled 780,537 miles per year, at a cost of
$1,960,649. The capital stock in 1851 was $3,850,000, and paid three
and a half per cent.: it is now $13,486,250, and pays eight per cent.
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE SCHUYLKILL RIVER AND WEST PHILADELPHIA.]
When the war broke out in 1862 this road was the key of the continent,
and the fact that it was officered and controlled by Northern and
energetic men saved it from destruction or becoming an engine in the
hands of our enemies. Over it hundreds of thousands of soldiers
and citizens were carried to the front, and millions of tons of
merchandise and supplies were poured into the quarter-master's,
commissary's and medical departments all along the line.
In 1864, worn out by disease, the able manager laid down his
authority, to be taken up by another vigorous New England man, who
in his turn has given almost life-blood to carry the road on to
greatness.
[Illustration]
Since 1864 the advance in earnings has not been so great as in the
four preceding years, because of the necessary reduction in travel
and transportation since the war. But enormous improvements have been
made, thousands of steel rails have been laid, locomotives, freight
cars and passenger cars of the most beautiful description have
been added to the stock, new dépôts made (some of the finest in the
country), a new line planned and executed, carrying the road from the
meadows and marshes of the Delaware through the valleys and beautiful
rolling uplands of Delaware county to Chester, avoiding all danger
from floods, and going over or under twenty-seven streets to enter the
city without possible peril to life or limb. A whole railroad system
subsidiary to this road has been developed in Delaware, and to-day,
with the best road-bed, double tracks, steel rails, the best
locomotives, the best passenger cars in the country, supplied with all
the modern improvements of brake, platform and signal, and a perfectly
drilled corps of subordinates, this road may challenge the attention
of the country, and be pointed out as one of the best evidences of the
growth and prosperity of Philadelphia.
[Illustration: SHARON HILL.]
[Illustration: GLENOLDEN.]
The dépôt in Philadelphia, at the corner of Broad street and
Washington avenue, is a large and spacious building, which does not
pretend to be a model of domestic architecture, but is roomy and
reasonably well ventilated. The bell rings, we take our seats and move
out through the usual coal-yards and shanties and suburbs, passing the
United States Arsenal, until we reach Gray's Ferry, where we see the
Schuylkill, beautiful at high tide, the high banks opposite once a famous
estate, now the seat of the Almshouse, where four thousand paupers
live in the winter and about fifteen hundred in the summer. So mild and
pleasant is this climate that the majority of the paupers creep out, like
the blue bottleflies, with the coming of spring, preferring to sleep in
barns or under the green trees all the summer, rather than endure the
hard beds, discipline and regular habits of the Almshouse. The rains of
summer may fill their old bones with rheumatism for winter, but there are
charms in the life of the stroller, who feeds to-day at a farm-house,
or works a few hours to-morrow for a trifle to get whisky and tobacco,
but has no notes to pay, no house to maintain, no servants to support.
[Illustration: RIDLEY PARK.]
[Illustration: CRUM LYNNE FALLS]
Gray's Ferry is an old historic name, for here Washington and the
men of the Revolution crossed again and again. The old rope ferry was
succeeded by the old horse ferry, and now there are three railroads
here--the Darby Improvement, the Junction (which goes to West
Philadelphia and makes the connection for the great Southern
Air-line), and the old line, which leads us out, through the old
Bartram Gardens, where an enthusiastic botanist made the first and
best collection of trees and plants in this country, on to the marshes
of the Delaware. The mighty river, widening into a bay, flows on to
the ocean, its bosom furrowed by thousands of keels and whitened by
myriad sails. We look over wide acres of marshes, now green with the
tender colors of spring, the corn-fields of the higher portion giving
by their brown earth beautiful contrasts of color, the rows of corn
just coming into sight. All over these meadows stand huge oak trees
and elms, amongst whose branches the vessels seem to glide. But
beautiful as the scene is, it is a bad place for a railroad, for when
the great river rushes down swollen by some freshet, and is met by the
incoming tide, the water sets back over the marshes and threatens to
sweep away the track or put out the fires of the locomotives; and to
cross streams and tideways many draw-bridges, with their attendant
dangers, must be maintained. To avoid all these difficulties, Mr.
Hinckley planned the change which is known as the Darby Improvement,
carrying the road from Gray's Ferry to Chester over and through the
high lands of Darby and Ridley. We shall no longer hear the brakeman
shout out "Gibson's," "Lazaretto,", "Tinicum" (called by the Indians
_Tenecunck_), "Crum Creek." We shall no longer wonder that the train
should be stopped for so few passengers to get on or off, for in
future our car will take us over a road-bed so perfectly laid with
steel rails that a full glass of water will not spill as the train
hurries on through a thickly settled country. Look quickly from the
window at the country you are traversing: see the beautiful station
at Bonnaffon, and the magnificent oak tree, worth a hundred stations,
that stands in a field just beyond. We cannot enumerate all the
beauties and objects of interest that line the road: every valley
opens a pleasant view, every hill is covered with handsome houses,
comfortable farmeries or superb trees. Before the road was made, these
lands, lying on a ridge high above the river, perfectly healthy and
offering the most desirable homes for city people, were inaccessible,
but now they can be reached, and have been already appreciated. Most
of the land has grown too valuable for farming, and has been bought up
and laid out with different degrees of care for suburban residences.
[Illustration: DISTANT VIEW OF LANDSCAPE, SHOWING MILITARY INSTITUTE
AT CHESTER.]
Darby is one of the oldest towns in the State, and contributes largely
to the business of the road. Mills were built here in 1696, and it was
divided into Upper and Lower Darby in 1786. The first of the new towns
is Sharon Hill, where a large amount of land has been laid out in the
rectangular method, and already many of the lots are sold to actual
settlers: a machine-shop has been established, and the railroad has
built a very nice station for passengers.
Next to Sharon Hill comes Glenolden, where hill and dale, wood and
meadow and a beautiful stream, offer all the picturesqueness that
can charm an enthusiastic or artistic eye, together with good
building-sites and every advantage that fertile and forest-clad land
can give to one who would exchange the heat and pavements of a city
for rural life. From Glenolden it is but a short distance to Norwood
and to Moore's Crossing, where the company are erecting turnouts,
engine-houses, etc., and from here, eight miles from the city,
numerous trains will run to Philadelphia to accommodate the workingmen
who, it is believed, will come out to live on these cool and breezy
uplands.
[Illustration: CROZER SEMINARY.]
From Moore's we soon get to Ridley Park, which was described at length
in a former Number. The two stations at Ridley are models of beauty in
their way: the principal station spans the road-bed, wide enough here
for four tracks, and is probably the most picturesque in the country,
as well as very convenient. Crum Lynne Station is remarkable for
the beautiful sculpture of the capitals of the pilasters to the
architraves of the windows, the architect having designed each one for
this building, using the flowers and fruits and birds and animals of
the region for his ornamental work, instead of the usual cornice and
frieze and capital of Grecian architecture.
But the train sweeps us away from Ridley limits, past Leiperville with
its primeval railway, and on to Chester. As we round the curve and
rush through the woods we see on the left the broad river with its
three-masted schooners, ships and steamers, and on the right the
spires and houses of the town; and first and predominant the Military
School of Colonel Hyatt. This school was incorporated by act of
Legislature in 1862, and is devoted to both civil and military
education. The studies and drill are so combined as to secure good
mental and physical culture; and to ensure good military instruction
the State and the United States have contributed arms of all kinds.
Scholars come from all parts of the country, and even the West Indies;
and as the standard of scholarship is high, the graduates compare
favorably with those from other institutions.
Chester is one of the oldest towns on the line of the road by actual
years, but one of the youngest in growth. First called by the Indians
_Mackaponacka_, and then by the settlers _Upland_, it had a justice of
the peace court in 1676. Its court-house was built in 1724. Its first
newspaper was published in 1819. For many years Chester dozed away in
dignified quiet as the county-town: its court-house and jail gave it
all the honor it required. But the streams made good mill-sites, the
deep waterfront along the river offered splendid wharfage and chances
for shipbuilding, and, as good luck would have it, a rivalry awoke
which ended in loading Media with the county buildings and relieving
Chester. Since then it has doubled and trebled: mills and factories
are on all sides, and its shipyards are not easily surpassed. Roach's
shipyard covers twenty-three acres. The firm make their own engines
and everything required in iron shipbuilding from keel to topmast.
They have six vessels now on the stocks, and employ eleven hundred
men, and have room for sixteen hundred. They have built for every
trade from the coaster to the East Indiaman, varying in size from six
hundred to four thousand tons, and their vessels pass unchallenged
amongst the best in the world.
[Illustration: VIEW OF CHESTER.]
Nor is trade the only feature of the town. About half a mile from the
dépôt, on a gentle eminence, is the Crozer Theological Seminary. The
approach from Chester for the pedestrian, along the shrub-, vine- and
tree-clad banks of Chester Creek into and across the wide lawn, is a
delightful walk. The principal building was erected by John P. Crozer
for a normal school. During the war he gave it to the government for a
hospital, and when he died in 1866 left it to his sons, desiring
them to devote it to some benevolent use. They have responded in a
munificent manner by establishing a school for training young men for
the ministry, with accommodations for a hundred students, houses for
the professors, a church, a library building, lecture-halls and all
the required conveniences for a great and successful school. They
have added an endowment fund of two hundred and twenty-eight thousand
dollars, the whole gift being about three hundred and ninety thousand
dollars, and one of the family has since given twenty-five thousand
dollars as a library fund. The seminary was opened in 1868 with
fifteen students: there are now fifty from all parts of the Union.
[Illustration: RESIDENCE OF MR. F.O.C. DARLEY.]
But the most complaisant conductor of the most accommodating special
train could not wait any longer for us, and we must hurry on through
Lamokin, where the Baltimore Central, a tributary road, turns off
and traverses a most picturesque country, round by Port Deposit to
Perryville, where it again reaches the main road. At Lamokin are
works where steel of a peculiar kind is manufactured under a European
patent. From here the road again clings to the shore of the Delaware,
and until we reach Wilmington the river, with its sails and its blue
water, is on the left--on the right a high ridge, which ends in the
valley of the Shell Pot and Brandywine at Wilmington.
[Illustration: VIEW OF DELAWARE RIVER NEAR CLAYMONT.]
We flash past Linwood to stop a moment at Claymont, where the ridge
comes nearer the river and offers superb sites for buildings. Why
Claymont has not grown more no one seems to know. There are schools
and churches, fine rolling land, noble river-views, and all that can
make a country home delightful. That the place has attractions for
lovers of the picturesque may be inferred from the fact that it counts
among its residents an artist of such wide and well-founded celebrity
as Mr. F.O.C. Darley, whose delineations of American life and scenery,
especially in the form of book-illustrations, have been familiar to
the public for the past thirty years. With so many years of fame, Mr.
Darley counts but fifty-two of life, and in the enjoyment of vigorous
health still continues the practice of his art, executing many
commissions from Europe, where his genius is as highly appreciated as
at home.
[Illustration: VIEW AT CLAYMONT: CREEK AND BRIDGE.]
[Illustration: PRINCIPIO.]
But we must stick to our train, which carries us through the Red
Bank Cut to Ellerslie Station, where occurred the first accident of a
serious character which has happened on this road for eighteen years,
and which was due only to a willful violation of orders by an old and
very trusted conductor. At Ellerslie are the Edgemoor Iron-works of
Messrs. William Sellers & Co., where every known improvement in the
manufacture of iron is being tested and applied. The next curve in the
road shows us the meadows of the Shell Pot and the Brandywine, with
Wilmington in the distance. The Brandywine, famous in our history,
runs through as picturesque a valley as there is in America, combining
all that the climate of Delaware permits in trees, shrubs, vines
and flowers with the wildness and variety of the valley of the
Pemigewasset or the wild Ammonoosuck. In this rare valley are mills as
old as the settlement of the country, and quaint hamlets that seem to
belong to Europe rather than America.
At Wilmington the system of the Delaware railroads begins: it spreads
out over the peninsula of Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland
like a huge left hand. The thumb touches Chestertown and Centreville,
the fore finger Oxford, the middle finger Cambridge, the ring finger
Crisfield, the little finger Lewes; and this hand gathers into the
main road every year millions of baskets of peaches, and millions more
of oysters in baskets and sacks, and crates of berries, and car-loads
of hardwood and lumber. Under the influence of these roads the sleepy
peninsula is beginning a new career.
We cannot go down the peninsula, so let us keep on to Baltimore,
pausing, however, for a moment as we cross Mason and Dixon's line near
Elkton. Little did Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon dream, as they set
that tangent point for the determination of the boundary-lines of
the three States, how famous they would become. But there the simple
monument stands in the open fields, and there it must remain so long
as the three States need a boundary.
[Illustration: BRIDGE OVER THE SUSQUEHANNA AT HAVRE DE GRACE.]
Soon after leaving Mason and Dixon we strike the first of the great
estuaries of the Delaware and Susquehanna, which are the delight
of the sportsman, the naturalist and the tourist. No matter at what
season of the year you approach North-east, Principio, the Susquehanna
River or Stemmer's Run--no matter at what time of the day--the views
are always fine. The water spreads out in huge widening bays, and
loses itself in the forest or hides behind some projecting headland;
and when, as is often the case, the surface of the water is actually
darkened with large flocks of wild fowl, the variety as well as
beauty of the scene could not be heightened. Such shooting-ground
for sportsmen exists nowhere else on this coast easily accessible.
At Perryville, Havre de Grace, Bush River and many other places
the chance sportsman can find every accommodation, while clubs of
gentlemen have leased many of the best points, and established little
houses where they may be comfortable when the day's sport is over, and
where they can leave from season to season boats, decoys and all the
paraphernalia of the sport. To recount the names of canvas-backs, red
heads, bald pates and innumerable other ducks, to tell of the tens,
fifties, hundreds shot in a single day, would add nothing to the
excitement of any sportsman who has seen from the cars the huge flocks
of birds rise and sweep out to sea when scared by some passing train
or boat.
[Illustration: MOUNT ARARAT--PROFILE ROCK.]
If every passenger could stop once, and study the Susquehanna bridge
crossing the river between Perryville and Havre de Grace, he would
have a most profound respect for its projectors and builders. For many
years all transport by cars was interrupted here, and travelers and
merchandise were transported by ferry-boat, causing wearisome delays
and extra expense. But now a bridge 3273 feet long and with 1000 feet
of trestling, resting on thirteen huge piers built on foundations in
water from twenty-seven to sixty feet deep, and costing a million and
a half of dollars, carries all safely over, and defies floods and ice.
This bridge, one of the triumphs of engineering and a just source
of pride to the road, has already saved in time and trouble a large
percentage of its cost. It was threatened the past winter by the
ice-pack which filled the river back to Port Deposit, and which seemed
to promise for some time the destruction of that well-named little
town. It is hard to believe that in a country so extensive as ours,
with all kinds of lands and town-sites, any one could begin to build a
town in such a situation. It clings to the broken and rocky shores
and hillsides as lichens adhere to rocks and to the bark of trees or
swallows' nests to the eaves of a barn. There it is, however, and,
judging from its costly houses, churches and business appearance, its
inhabitants have found it a profitable place to stay in. Port Deposit
last winter, when the river was filled with ice from shore to shore
and for miles in both directions, fissured and cracked and covered
with mud, logs and débris, seemed on the verge of destruction; and
it was easy to believe that if the river did rise suddenly the moving
mass of ice, like some huge glacier, would sweep away all evidences
of humanity, leaving behind only the glacial scratches and the _roches
moutonnées_. Overhanging the railroad is a very remarkable profile
rock which has attained some celebrity, and is shown in one of our
sketches.
[Illustration: PORT DEPOSIT.]
[Illustration: FORT McHENRY.]
From Port Deposit to Baltimore the country is more rolling than from
Perryville to Wilmington, and there are many picturesque points. One
could find at Gunpowder River and Stemmer's Run several beautiful
points of view, but by the time he reaches these places the traveler
begins to get impatient for the great city, the terminus of his
wanderings, which soon begins to announce itself by more thickly
congregated houses, and roads cut straight through hill and valley,
regardless of cost or the destruction of local charms of hill and
dale.
[Illustration: THE BRITISH SHELL.]
If one were to judge by the streets, he would think Baltimorians
lived only on oysters, for the new streets seem wholly built of
their shells, making them very white, glaring and offensive to the
unaccustomed eye. But the attention is soon diverted from houses and
roads, to the bay and to Fort McHenry, which lies before the town like
a sleeping lion. Few forts in the country are more interesting or
have played a more important part in our military history; but all
its military reputation is less interesting than the fact that
whilst confined to a British vessel, one of the fleet unsuccessfully
bombarding the fort, Francis Key wrote the "Star-Spangled Banner,"
now a national hymn. A bomb thrown into the fort at that time by the
British has been preserved on a pillar ever since--almost the only
local reminder of the facts of the bombardment.
At Baltimore we leave the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore
Railroad, sorry to part from so good a road and one so important to
the welfare of the country. It is a link in the great system, and one
kept very bright and well polished by its managers. Their course has
been to pay only a moderate dividend, and use the rest of the earnings
to improve the road and its belongings, and to foster the interests
of the people who use it. Such wise policy must build it strongly into
the affections and interests of those who live along it, and ensure
its being each year a better and better-paying road.
ROBERT MORRIS COPELAND.
* * * * *
CHARITY CROSS.
Tinted are her cheeks with rose
She is waiting in the snows
Of the falling apple-blows.
Tinklings of a drowsy rill
Come from the upland orchard hill,
Niches in her dreams to fill.
Dotted is her rustic shawl
With the apple-leaves that fall:
Twilight splendors cover all.
Deeper lined than earthly grace,
Rest of heaven doth in her face
Rejoice in its abiding-place.
Charity Cross, it groweth late:
Household duties for you wait,
Just beyond the garden-gate.
Leave the apple-blooms to fall,
Far-off brook to vainly call:
Lightly climb the orchard wall.
All your dreamings softly fold:
Let them drift away untold
In the dying sunset's gold.
Down the path that leads between
Ferns and mosses, shaded green,
The gabled house is dimly seen.
Winds, with poplar trees at play,
Chafe with tossing boughs all day
Weather-beaten walls of gray.
Open wide the trellised door:
Sunset glories go before,
Fall upon the kitchen floor,
Turn to gold the swinging loom
Standing in the corner's gloom
Of the low brown-raftered room.
Brazen dogs that ever sleep
Silently the entrance keep
Of the fireplace huge and deep.
Charity, stop no more to dream:
Covers lift with puffing steam;
Waiting stands the risen cream.
Change to white your apron gray,
Sprinkled clothes to fold away,
Ready for another day.
Quickly now the table spread
With its homespun cloth of red,
Savory meats and snowy bread.
On the shelf a pink-lipped shell,
That for ever tries to tell
Ocean music, learned so well.
Tiptoe on the cricket stand:
Take it in your sun-browned hand--
Shell from eastern tropic land.
Let your clear voice through it ring,
Homeward the hired help to bring
From the distant meadow-spring.
Far away they hear the call:
Look! they come by orchard wall,
Where the apple-blossoms fall.
One that foremost leads the plough
Sees you in the doorway now--
Breaks a bending apple-bough;
Waves it by the meadow creek:
Answering blushes on your cheek
Tell the words you do not speak.
Out upon the rippling river
Purple lights of sunset quiver,
Rustling leaves reflected shiver.
Shell in hand, she goes to greet
Her lover, where the turf-grown street
And the meadow pathway meet.
Insect voices far away,
Hushed in silence through the day,
Whisper in the night of May,
While in vain the pink-lipped shell,
Murmuring in its hollow cell,
Would its own love-story tell.
Through the drifting apple-snow,
Where the four-leafed clovers grow,
Hand in hand they homeward go;
And they vow, whate'er the weather,
Mid the brier, through the heather,
They will walk life's way together.
Parting when the day grows late,
If a moment at the gate
One alone is left to wait,
Yet each other they will greet
Where life's shadeless, dusty street
And the heavenly pathway meet.
MARGARET MASON.
BERRYTOWN.
CHAPTER XI.
Catharine sprang from her bed at daybreak that morning. She could
scarcely stop singing in the bath. She had so much to do, so much to
do! The air blew briskly, the factory bells were clanging, the bees
buzzed, the pretty white curtains were flapping. It was a busy world,
and she was busiest of all. Had she not Hugh Guinness's fate in hand?
She felt like a lad when he comes of age or makes his first venture
in business. Jane heard her singing noisily for a while, but when
breakfast was ready she did not come down.
She was standing in front of her glass, staring at it as though the
chubby, insignificant face there were the Sphinx and could answer the
riddles of life. McCall's remark had suddenly recurred to her: "What
is Hugh Guinness to you? You belong to another man." With a flash, Mr.
Muller, natty and plump, had stood before her, curiously unfamiliar,
mildly regarding her through his spectacles. _Her husband!_ Why had
she never understood that until this morning? Her crossed hands lay on
her wide blue-veined shoulders. She almost tore the flesh from them.
"I belong to no man!" she cried.
She could not shake off the thought of him, as she usually did.
He stood beside her, do what she would--the fat body and legs, the
finical dress, the wearisome platitudes, a regiment of blue-coated,
thick-lipped children behind him.
"If the best were done for them that could be hoped, they would but
grow up miniature Mullers; and to think of _that!_" said Kitty. She
had given her life to him. If she lived to be gray-headed, he alone
owned her, mind and body. "If I were dead in my coffin, he would put
his mild, fat little hand on me, and look forward to owning me in
heaven! Oh-h!" This last was the one unendurable pang to Catharine.
Jane at the moment thrust her black face in: "He's come. Hurry up,
honey! Mr. Muller, ob course. Shell I do up your hair, chile?"
Kitty shook her head and smiled. She would have had a kind smile for
Jane and her like if she had been held by thumbscrews. Stooping to
button her gaiters, she caught sight of her face in the glass. There
were dark hollows under the eyes: they had the look of an older,
graver woman than she had ever been before. Kitty hung up the green
dress she had meant to wear, and took down a rose-colored one. Mr.
Muller was talking down stairs. There was reality. There was her work
and her husband. Why, she had the account-books of the school in her
upper bureau-drawer at that moment, and in the lower ones her wedding
things. Dresses and cloaks all made; and such lovely linen! As for
Hugh Guinness, he was, after all, but a perplexing shadow, a riddle
that turned from her the more she tried to make him real. She went
down.
"Why, Catharine!" He held her hand, patting it between his own, which
were warm and moist. "I really could not deny myself a glimpse of you,
though I was sent on an errand by Maria to the station. But all roads
end for me in the Book-shop. That is natural--he! he!"
"Yes, it is natural."
"It must be only a glimpse, though. I begged of Jane a cup of hot tea,
to take off the chill of this morning air. Ah, here it is: thank you,
my good girl. Only a glimpse, for Maria's business was urgent: Maria's
business always is urgent. But I was to intercept Doctor McCall on his
way to the cars."
"Is he going this morning?"
"Yes. Not to return, it appears."
"Not to return?" Her voice seemed hardly to have the energy of a
question in it.
"But I," with a shrug and significant laugh, "am not to allow him to
go. Behold in me an emissary of Love! You; would not have suspected
a Mercury in your William, Catharine?" Within the last month he had
begun to talk down in this fashion to her, accommodating himself to
her childish tastes.
"What is Mercury's errand?"
"Aha! you curious little puss! How a woman does prick her ears at the
mention of a love-story! Though, I suppose, this one is wellnigh its
end. Maria made no secret of it. Doctor McCall, I inferred from what
she said, had been pouring out his troubles in her ear, and she sent
me to bring him back to her with the message that she had found a
way of escape from them. Eh? Did you speak? You did not know _what_,
dear?"
"I did not know that Maria had the right to bring him back. They
are--"
"Engaged? Oh, certainly. At least--It is an old attachment, and Maria
is such a woman to manage, you know! Is that the tea-pot, Jane? Just
fill my cup again. Oh yes, I suppose it is all settled."
Catharine was standing by the window. The wind blew in chilly and
strong, while Mr. Muller behind her sipped his tea and ambled in his
talk. Crossing the meadow, going down the road, she saw the large
figure of a man in a loose light overcoat, who swung in his gait and
carried his hat in his hand as a boy would do. Even if he had loved
her, she could not, like Maria, have gone a step to meet him, nor
intoned the Song of Solomon. But he did not love her.
She turned to her companion: "There is something I wished to say."
"In one moment, my dear." He was sweetening his tea. Hanging the
silver tongs on the lid, he looked up: "Good God, Catharine! what is
it?"
"I wished to tell you--no, don't touch me, please--this is a mistake
which we have made, and it is better to let it go no farther. It ought
to end now."
"End? Now?" But he was not surprised. The pale face staring at her
over the half-emptied cup looked as if it had been waiting to hear
this; so that they began the subject, as it were, in the middle. So
much had already been said between them without words. He set the
cup down, even in that moment folding his napkin neatly with shaking
fingers. Kitty did not laugh. She never laughed at him afterward.
Something in that large, loose figure yonder, going away from her to
the woman he loved, had whetted her eyesight and her judgment. She saw
the man at last under Muller's weak finical ways, and the manly look
he gave her.
"You mean that there must be no--no marriage?"
"No. I'm very sorry. It has been my fault. But I thought--"
"You thought you loved me, and you do not. Don't cry, Kitty."
A long silence followed, which seemed to Catharine like that of death.
It was noticeable that he did not make a single effort to change her
resolution or to keep her. It seemed as if he must have been waiting
for her to waken some day and see the gulf between them.
"Don't cry, Kitty," he said again, under his breath. He stood by the
empty fireplace, resting his dainty foot on the fender and looking
down on it: he took out his handkerchief, shook out its folds and
wiped his face, which was hot and parched. Kitty was sorry, as she
said--sorry and scared, as though she had been called on to touch the
corpse of one dear to her friends, but whose death cost her nothing.
That she was breaking an obligation she had incurred voluntarily
troubled her very little.
"Yes, I thought you would say this one day," he said at last. "I think
you are right to take care of yourself. I was too old a man for you
to marry. But I would have done all I could. I have been very fond of
you," looking at her.
"Yes. You never seemed old to me sir."
"And your work for the poor children? I thought, dear, you felt that
the Lord called you to that?"
"So I did. But I don't think I feel it so much to-day." Catharine's
eyes were wide with this new terror. Was she, then, turning her back
on her God?
She was, after all, he thought, nothing but a frightened, beautiful
child.
"I should have been too rough for you," he said. How was he to
suspect the heights from which she had looked down on his softness and
flippancy?
She observed that he said not a word of the preparations he had made,
the house furnished, the expectant congregation, or the storm of
gossip and scandal which would follow him as a jilted lover. Was the
real wound, then, so deep? Or did he overlook such trifles, as men do?
"I did not forget the new dresses and underclothes," thought Kitty,
mean and mortified.
He roused himself as Jane came in: "No, Jane, no more tea. Yes, that
is my cup on the mantel-shelf."
"Dah's a gen'leman, Miss Kitty. I took him in the Book-shop. 'T mought
be Spellissy 'bout de oats. Tink it is Spellissy."
"You had better go, Catharine," taking up his hat.
"It is not important." The door closed after Jane. She came close to
him, irresolute. What could she say? She thought, with the heat of
childishness, that she would give the blood out of her body, drop by
drop, to comfort him. She wished that she had gone on and married him.
"But I cannot say that I love him." This was a matter for life and
death--even Kitty's polite soul recognized that--and not for a civil
lie.
Again the man asserted himself before the woman: "No, there is nothing
for you to say, Catharine," smiling. "There are some things it is
better not to varnish over with words." He took up his hat after a
pause, and turned a feeble, uncertain face to the window: "I--I might
as well go now: I have a prayer-meeting this afternoon."
"And when you go you mean never to come back again?" cried Kitty, pale
and red in a moment. "That's to be the end of it all?"
"What more can there be? It's all said." Yet after he had walked to
the door he stood on the steps, looking about the room which had grown
so familiar and dear to him. At Kitty he did not look.
"Will you have a rose?" breaking one hastily from the trailing
branches at the window. "To remember the old Book-shop." She had never
given him anything before.
He threw it down: "I do not need a rose to make me remember,"
bitterly. "It _is_ all said, child? You have nothing to tell me?"
looking furtively at her.
For a long time she did not speak: "No, nothing."
"Good-bye, Kitty."
Kitty did not answer him. The tears ran hot and salt over her round
cheeks as she watched the little man disappear through the walnuts.
She went up stairs, and, still crying, chose one or two maudlin
sonnets and a lock of black hair as mementoes to keep of him. She did
keep them as long as she lived, and used frequently to sigh over them
with a sentimental tenderness which the real Muller never had won from
her.