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II JFNCIV
IRLF
LIBRARY
UNlVZRCiTY OF
CALIF;,; NIA
SANTA CRUZ
AN ITINERANT HOUSE
AND OTHER STORIES
AN ITINERANT HOUSE
AND OTHER STORIES
EMMA FRANCES DAWSON
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ERNEST C. PEIXOTTO
SAN FRANCISCO
WILLIAM DOXEY
1897
COPYRIGHT
WILLIAM DOXEY
1896
THE MURDOCK PRESS
3 07
MS
PREFACE
The romance of "A Gracious Visitation " was writ-
ten because Mr. Doxey wished a new and long story
for the book. The length of it has crowded out one
or two tales.
The "prose poem," "In Silver Upon Purple," was
also written for this volume.
The other stories appear here by kind permission
of the following-named publications.
" The Dramatic in My Destiny" was written at the
request of the late Mr. Fred. M. Somers, when he
and Mr. A. Roman started The Calif ornian (the
present Overland), and given the honou of opening
the first number.
"Singed Moths " was written for the same magazine,
but Mr. Somers having returned to The Argonaut,
asked for its appearance in that paper. The dreams
mentioned in it are not fiction.
"Are the Dead Dead?" " The Second Card Wins,"
and "An Itinerant House" were also in The Argonaut.
"A Stray Reveler "and "A Sworn Statement" were
PREFACE.
written by the request of Mr. Ambrose Bierce for
Christmas issues of The Wasp.
As the idea in the last-named story, of the com-
munication of a vision through the touch, is in " Called
Back," it may be well to state that the story was
published before the novel.
Not long ago, the New York magazine, Short
Stories, offered five prizes for one-page "etchings," to
be dramatic, queer, humorous, pathetic, or descriptive.
There were thirteen hundred and forty-five competi-
tors. The prize for being queer was awarded to "The
Night Before the Wedding."
CONTENTS
PAGE
An Itinerant House i
Singed Moths . . . . < . . . . J . .33
A Stray Reveler . . . ., . ... . . .75
The Night Before the Wedding 91
The Dramatic In My Destiny 97
A Gracious Visitation . ^ .' . ., . . . .141
A Sworn Statement 213
"The Second Card Wins" 231
In Silver Upon Purple 275
"Are the Dead Dead?" .283
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
Telegraph Hill, San Francisco i
"Idiots" . '.'.,...,...... 7
"The great cross on Lone Mountain stood out
black against scarlet clouds" . . . . .43
"Think of flitting souls going out into such a
night" 66
"As she spoke and I gazed at the screen" . . 80
" I heard a chuckle, as his wide sleeve swept care-
lessly over the table" 119
"She looked very shadowy in sweeping, misty
robes and floating hair" 128
" It was a wild night" 222
"Now I see the beach near the Cliff House" . 269
"A white hand was laid on his shoulder". . . 318
AN ITINERANT HOUSE.
AN ITINERANT HOUSE.
' ' Eternal longing with eternal pain,
Want without hope, and memory saddening all.
All congregated failure and despair
Shall wander there through some old maze of wrong."
"His wife?" cried Felipa.
"Yes/* I answered, unwillingly; for until
the steamer brought Mrs. Anson I believed in
this Mexican woman's right to that name. I
felt sorry for the bright eyes and kind heart
that had cheered Anson's lodgers through
weary months of early days in San Francisco.
She burst into tears. None of us knew how
Itinerant
to comfort her. Dering spoke first: " Beauty
always wins friends."
Between her sobs she repeated one of the
pithy sayings of her language: "It is as easy
to find a lover as to keep a friend, but as hard
to find a friend as to keep a lover."
"Yes," said Volz, "a new friendship is like
a new string to your guitar you are not sure
what its tone may prove, nor how soon it may
break."
"But at least its falsity is learned at once,"
she sobbed.
"Is it possible," I asked, "that you had no
suspicion ?"
"None. He told me" She ended in a
fresh gust of tears.
" The old story," muttered Dering. "Mar-
ryatt's skipper was right in thinking every-
thing that once happened would come again
somewhere."
Anson came. He had left the new-comer at
the Niantic, on pretense of putting his house
in order. Felipa turned on him before we
could go.
" Is this true ?" she cried.
Without reply he went to the window and
stood looking out. She sprang toward him,
with rage distorting her face.
Itinerant
" Coward! " she screamed, in fierce scorn.
Then she fell senseless. Two doctors were
called. One said she was dead. The other,
at first doubtful, vainly tried hot sealing-wax
and other tests. After thirty-six hours her
funeral was planned. Yet Dering, once medi-
cal student, had seen an electric current used
in such a case in Vienna, and wanted to try it.
That night, he, Volz, and I offered to watch .
When all was still, Dering, who had smuggled
in the simple things needed, began his weird
work.
" Is it not too late ? " I asked.
" Every corpse," said he, "can be thus
excited soon after death, for a brief time only,
and but once. If the body is not lifeless, the
electric current has power at any time."
Volz, too nervous to stay near, stood in the
door open to the dark hall. It was a dreadful
sight. The dead woman's breast rose and fell;
smiles and frowns flitted across her face.
"The body begins to react finely," cried
Dering, making Volz open the windows, while
I wrapped hot blankets round Felipa, and he
instilled clear coffee and brandy.
"It seems like sacrilege! Let her alone!"
I exclaimed. " Better dead than alive !"
"My God! say not that!" cried Volz; "the
Sin Itinerant
nerve which hears is last to die. She may
know all we say."
"Musical bosh!" I muttered.
"Perhaps not," said Dering; "in magnetic
sleep that nerve can be roused."
The night seemed endless. The room
gained an uncanny look, the macaws on the
gaudy, old-fashioned wall-paper seemed flut-
tering and changing places. Volz crouched in
a heap near the door. Dering stood by Felipa,
watching closely. I paced the shadowy room,
looked at the gleam of the moon on the bay,
listened to the soughing wind in the gum-trees
mocking the sea, and tried to recall more
cheerful scenes, but always bent under the
weight of that fearful test going on beside me.
Where was her soul? Beyond the stars, in
the room with us, or "like trodden snowdrift
melting in the dark?" Volz came behind,
startling me by grasping my elbow.
"Shall I not play?" he whispered. "Fa-
miliar music is remembrance changed to sound
it brings the past as perfume does. Gypsy
music in her ear would be like holding wild
flowers to hei nostrils."
"Ask Dering," I said; "he will know
best."
I heard him urging Dering.
Itinerant
"She has gypsy blood," he said; "their
music will rouse her."
Dering unwillingly agreed. "But nothing
abrupt begin low," said he.
Vaguely uneasy, I turned to object; but
Volz had gone for his violin. Far off arose a
soft, wavering, sleepy strain, like a wind
blowing over a field of poppies. He passed,
in slow, dramatic style, through the hall, play-
ing on the way. As he came in, oddly sus-
tained notes trembled like sighs and sobs;
these were by degrees subdued, though with
spasmodic outbursts, amid a grand movement
as of phantom shapes through cloud-land. One
heart-rending phrase recurring as of one of the
shadowy host striving to break loose, but
beaten back by impalpable throngs, number-
less grace-notes trailing their sparks like fire-
works. No music of our intervals and our
rhythms, but perplexing in its charm like a
draught that maddens. Time, space, our very
identities, were consumed in this white heat of
sound. I held my breath. I caught his arm.
"It is too bold and distracting," I cried.
"It is enough to kill us! Do you expect to
torment her back? How can it affect us so?"
"Because," he answered, laying down his
violin and wiping his brow, "in the gypsy
Itinerant
minor scale the fourth and seventh are aug-
mented. The sixth is diminished. The fre-
quent augmentation of the fourth makes that
sense of unrest."
"Bah! Technical terms make it no
plainer," I said, returning to the window.
He played a whispered, merry discordance,
resolving into click of castanets, laugh, and
dance of a gypsy camp. Out of the whirl of
flying steps and tremolo of tambourines rose a
tender voice, asking, denying, sighing, implor-
ing, passing into an over-ruling, long-drawn
call that vibrated in widening rings to reach
the farthest horizon nay, beyond land or
.sea, "east of the sun, west of the moon."
With a rush returned the wild jollity of men's
bass laughter, women's shrill reply, the stir of
the gypsy camp. This dropped behind vague,
rolling measures of clouds and chaos, where to
and fro floated grotesque goblins of grace-notes
like the fancies of a madman; struggling, ris-
ing, falling, vain-reaching strains; fierce cries
like commands. The music seemed another
vital essence thrilling us with its own emotion.
"No more, no more!" I cried, half gasping,
and grasping Volz's arm. "What is it, Der-
ing?"
He had staggered from the bed and was try-
Itinerant
ing to see his watch. "It is just forty-four
hours!" he said, pointing to Felipa.
Her eyes were open ! We were alarmed as
if doing wrong and silently watched her. Fif-
teen minutes later her lips formed one word:
"Idiots!"
Half an hour after she flung the violin from
bed to floor, but would not speak. People
began to stir about the house. The prosaic
sounds jarred on our strained nerves. We
felt brought from another sphere. Volz and I
were going, but Felipa's upraised hand kept
us. She sat up, looking a ghastly vision.
Turning first toward me she quoted my
words :
" 'Better dead than alive !' True. You knew
I would be glad to die. What right had you
to bring me back? God's curses on you! I
was dead. Then came agony. I heard your
voices. I thought we were all in hell. Then
I found how by your evil cunning I was to be
forced to live. It was like an awful night-
mare. I shall not forget you, nor you me.
These very walls shall remember here,
where I have been so tortured no one shall
have peace ! Fools ! Leave me ! Never come
in this room again !"
We went, all talking at once, Dering angry
8 Qitt Itinerant
at her mood; Volz, sorry he had not reached
a soothing pianissimo passage; I, owning we
had no right to make the test. We saw her
but once more, when with a threatening nod
toward us she left the house.
From that time a gloom settled over the
place. Mrs. Anson proved a hard-faced, cold-
hearted, Cape Cod woman, a scold and
drudge, who hated us as much as we disliked
her. Home-sick and unhappy, she soon went
East and died. Within a year, Anson was
found dead where he had gone hunting in the
Saucelito woods, supposed a suicide; Dering
was hung by the Vigilantes, and the rest were
scattered on the four winds. Volz and I were
last to go. The night before we sailed, he for
Australia, I for New York, he said:
" I am sorry for those who come after us in
this house."
" Not knowing of any tragedy here/' I said,
" they will not feel its influence."
"They must feel it," he insisted; "it is
written in the Proverbs, * Evil shall not depart
from his house.'"
Some years later, I was among passengers
embarking at New York for California, when
there was a cry of " Man overboard !" In the
confusion of his rescue, among heartless and
Qln Itinerant
pitiful talk, I overheard one man declare that
the drowned might be revived.
"Oh, yes!" cried a well-known voice
behind me. "But they might not thank
you."
I turned to find Volz ! He \vas coming out
with Wynne, the actor. Enjoying our com-
radeship on the voyage, on reaching San Fran-
cisco we took rooms together, on Bush Street,
in an old house with a large garden. Volz
became leader of the orchestra, and Wynne,
leading man at the same theatre. Lest my
folks, a Maine deacon's family, should think
I was on the road to ruin, I told in letters
home only of the city missionary in the
house.
Volz was hard worked. Wynne was not
much liked. My business went wrong. It
rained for many weeks; to this we laid the
discomfort that grew to weigh on us. Volz
wreaked his sense of it on his violin, adding
to the torment of W r ynne and myself, for to
lonesome anxious souls "the demon in music"
shows horns and cloven foot in the trying
sounds of practice. One Sunday Volz played
the "Witches Dance," the "Dream," and
" The long, long weary day."
"I can bear it no longer!" said Wynne.
io 2ln Itinerant
" I feel like the haunted Matthias in ' The
Bells.' If I could feel so when acting such
parts, it would make my fortune. But I feel
it only here."
"I think," said Volz, "it is the gloria
fonda bush near the window; the scent is too
strong." He dashed off Strauss' fretful, con-
flicting "Hurry and Delay."
"There, there! It is too much," said I.
" You express my feelings."
He looked doubtful. "Put it in words,"
said he.
"How can I?" I said. "When our firm
sent me abroad, I went sight-seeing among old
palaces, whose Gobelin tapestries framed in
their walls were faded to gray phantoms of
pictures, but out of some the thrilling eyes fol-
lowed me till I could not stay in their range.
My feeling here is the uneasy one of being
watched."
"Ha!" said Volz. "You remind me of
Heine, when he wrote from Livorno. He
knew no Italian, but the old palaces whispered
secrets unheard by day. The moon was inter-
preter, knew the lapidary style, translated to
dialect of his heart. ' '
" * Strange effects after the moon,' " mused
Wynne. " That gives new meaning to Kent's
Qln Itinerant fonse. n
threat: * I'll make a sop o' the moonshine of
you!'"
Volz went on : " Heine wrote : ''The stones
here speak to me, and I know their mute lan-
guage. Also, they seem deeply to feel what
I think. So a broken column of the old Roman
times, an old tower of Lombardy, a weather-
beaten Gothic piece of a pillar understands
me well. But I am a ruin myself, wandering
among ruins. 1 "
" Perhaps, like Poe's hero," said I, "'I
have imbibed shadows of fallen columns at
Balbec, and Tadmor, and Persepolis, until my
very soul has become a ruin.' "
" But I, too," said Wynne, " feel the unrest
of Tannhauser:
'Alas ! what seek I here, or anywhere,
Whose way of life is like the crumbled stair
That winds and winds about a ruined tower,
And leads no whither.' "
" I am oppressed," Volz owned, " as if some
one in my presence was suffering deeply."
" I feel," said Wynne, " as if the scene was
not set right for the performance now going
on. There is a hitch and drag somewhere
scene-shifters on a strike. Happy are you
poets and musicians, who can express what is
vague."
12 Qtn Itinerant
Volz laughed. "As in Liszt's oratorio of
'Christus,'" said he, " where a sharp, ear-
piercing sostenuto on the piccolo-flute shows
the shining of the star of Bethlehem." He
turned to me. "Schubert's 'Wanderer'
always recalls to me a house you and I know
to be under a ban."
" Haunted?" asked Wynne. " Of all spec-
ulative theories, St. Martin's sends the most
cold thrills up one's back. He said none of
the dead come back, but some stay."
"What we Germans call gebannt tied to
one spot," said Volz. " But this is no ghost,
only a proof of what a German psychologist
holds, that the magnetic man is a spirit."
"Go on, 'and tell quaint lies' I like
them," said Wynne.
I told in brief outline, with no names, the
tale Volz and I knew, while we strolled to
Telegraph Hill, passing five streets blocked by
the roving houses common to San Francisco.
Wynne said: " They seem to have minds
of their own, with their entrances and exits in
a moving drama."
"Sort of 'Poor Jo's,'" said I.
" Castles in chess," said Volz.
"lo-like," said Wynne, "with a gad in
their hearts that forever drives them on."
Itinerant 40ns. 13
A few foreign sailors lounged on the hill top,
looking at the view. The wind blew such a
gale we did not stay. The steps we had
known, cut in the side, were gone. Where
the old house used to be, goats were browsing.
" Perchance we do inhabit it but now,"
mockingly cried Wynne; " methinks it must
be so."
" Then," said Volz, thoughtfully, " it might
be what Germans call 'far-working' acted
in distance that affects us."
"What do you mean?" I asked. " Do you
know anything of her now?"
"I know she went to Mexico," said he;
"that is all."
"What is 'far- working?'" asked Wynne.
" If 1 could act in the distance, and here too
1 what larks!"'
"Yes ' if," said I. "Think how all our
lives turn on that pivot. Suppose Hawthorne's
offer to join Wilkes' exploring expedition had
been taken!"
"Only to wills that know no 'if is 'far-
working' possible," said Volz. "Substance
or space can no more hinder this force than
the one of mineral magnetism. Passavent
joins it with pictures falling, or watches stop-
ping at the time of a death. In sleep-walking,
i4 Sin itinerant
some kinds of illness, or nearness of death, the
nervous ether is not so closely allied to its
material conductors, the nerves, and may be
loosened to act from afar, the surest where
blood or feeling makes attraction or repulsion/'
Wynne in the two voices of the play
repeated :
" VICTOR. Where is the gentleman?
CHISPE. As the old song says:
* His body is in Segovia,
His soul is in Madrid."'
We could learn about the house we were in
only that five families had moved in and out
during the last year. Wynne resolved to
shake off the gloom that wrapped us. In
struggles to defy it, he on the strength of a
thousand-dollar benefit, made one payment on
the house and began repairs.
On an off-night he was vainly trying to
study a new part. Volz advised the relief to
his nerves of reciting the dream scene from
" The Bells," reminding him he had compared
it with his restlessness there. Wynne denied
it.
"Yes," said Volz, "where the mesmerizer
forces Matthias to confess."
But Wynne refused, as if vexed, till Volz
offered to show in music his own mood, and I
Itinerant ijjouse. 15
agreed to read some rhymes about mine. Volz
was long tuning his violin.
"I feel," he said, ''as if the .passers-by
would hear a secret. Music is such a subtle
expression of emotion like flower-odor rolls
far and affects the stranger. Hearken ! In
Heine's 'Reisebilder,' as the cross was thrown
ringing on the banquet table of the gods, they
grew dumb and pale, and even paler till they
melted in mist. So shall you at the long-
drawn wail of my violin grow breathless, and
fade from each other's sight."
The music closed round us, and we waited
in its deep solitude. One brief, sad phrase
fell from airy heights to lowest depths into a
sea of sound, whose harmonious eddies as
they widened breathed of passion and pain,
now swooning, now reviving, with odd pauses
and sighs that rose to cries of despair, but the
tormenting first strain recurring fainter and
fainter, as if drowning, drowning, drowned
yet floating back for repeated last plaint, as if
not to be quelled, and closing, as it began, the
whole.
As I read the name of my verses, Volz mur-
mured: "LesNuits Blanches. No. 4. Stephen
Heller."
1 6 &n Itinerant
SLEEPLESS NIGHTS.
Against the garden's mossy paling
I lean, and wish the night away,
Whose faint, unequal shadows trailing
Seem but a dream of those of day.
Sleep burdens blossom, bud, and leaf,
My soul alone aspires, dilates,
Yearns to forget its care and grief
No bath of sleep its pain abates.
How dread these dreams of wide-eyed nights !
What is, and is not, both I rue,
My wild thoughts fly like wand'ring kites,
No peace falls with this balmy dew.
Through slumb'rous stillness, scarcely stirred
By sudden trembles, as when shifts
O'er placid pool some skimming bird,
Its Lethean bowl a poppy lifts.
If one deep draught my doubts could solve,
The world might bubble down its brim,
Like Cleopatra's pearl dissolve,
With all my dreams within its rim.
What should I know but calm repose ?
How feel, recalling this lost sphere?
Alas ! the fabled poppy shows
Upon its bleeding heart a tear !
Wynne unwillingly began to recite: "'I
fear nothing, but dreams are dreams ' "
He stammered, could not go on, and fell to
the floor. We got him to bed. He never
Qtn Itinerant tyonst. 17
spoke sanely after. His wild fancies appalled
us watching him all night.
"Avaunt Sathanas! That's not -my cue,"
he muttered. "A full house to-night. How
could Talma forget how the crowd looked, and
fancy it a pack of skeletons? Tell Volz to
keep the violins playing through this scene, it
works me up as well as thrills the audience.
Oh, what tiresome nights I have lately,
always dreaming of scenes where rival women
move, as in ' Court and Stage/ where, all
masked, the king makes love to Frances
Stewart before the queen's face ! How do I
try to cure it? 'And being, thus frighted,
swear a prayer or two and sleep again.'
Madame, you're late; you've too little rouge;
you'll look ghastly. We're not called yet;
let's rehearse our scene. Now, then, I enter
left, pass to the window. You cry 'is this
true?' and faint. All crowd about. Quick
curtain."
Volz and I looked at each other.
"Can our magnetism make his senses so
sharp that he knows what is in our minds?"
he asked me.
"Nonsense!" I said. "Memory, laudanum,
and whisky."
"There," Wynne went on, "the orchestra
1 8 &n -Itinerant
is stopping. They 've rung up the curtain.
Don't hold me. The stage waits, yet how
can I go outside my door to step on dead
bodies ? Street and sidewalk are knee-deep
with them. They rise and curse me for dis-
turbing them. I lift my cane to strike. It
turns to a snake, whose slimy body writhes in
my hand. Trying to hold it from biting me,
my nails cut my palm till blood streams to
drown the snake."
He awed us not alone from having no con-
trol of his thoughts, but because there came
now and then a strange influx of. emotion as if
other souls passed in and out of his body.
* Is this hell ? " he groaned. What blank
darkness ! Where am I ? What is that infer-
nal music haunting me through all space ? If
I could only escape it I need not go back to
earth to that room where I feel choked,
where the very wall paper frets me with its
flaunting birds flying to and fro, mocking my
fettered state. * Here, here in the very den of
the wolf!' Hallo, Benvolio, call-boy's hunt-
ing you. Romeo 's gone on.
' See where he steals
Locked in some gloomy covert under key
Of cautionary silence, with his arms
Threaded, like these cross-boughs, in sorrow's knot.*
Itinerant fanse. 19
What is this dread that weighs like a night-
mare ? ' I do not fear ; like Macbeth, I only
inhabit trembling/ * For one of them she is
in hell already, and burns, poor soul ! For the
other' Ah! must I die here, alone in the
woods, felled by a coward, Indian-like, from
behind a tree ? None of the boys will know.
* I just now come from a whole world of mad
women that had almost what, is she dead ?'
Poor Felipa!"
"Did you tell him her name?" I asked Volz.
"No," said he. "Can one man's madness
be another's real life?"
"Blood was spilt the avenger's wing hov-
ered above my house," raved Wynne. "What
are these lights, hundreds of them serpent's
eyes? Is it the audience coiled, many-
headed monster, following me round the world?
Why do they hiss? I 've played this part a
hundred times. ' Taught by Rage, and Hun-
ger, and Despair?' Do they, full-fed, well-
clothed, light-hearted, know how to judge me?
'A plague on both your houses!' What is
that flame? Fire that consumes my vitals
spon-ta-neous combustion! It is then possible.
Water! water!"
The doctor said there had been some great
strain on Wynne's mind. He sank fast,
20 Qtn Itinerant
though we did all we could. Toward morning
I turned to Volz with the words :
"He is dead."
The city missionary was passing the open
door. He grimly muttered :
"Better dead than alive!"
"My God! say not that!" cried Volz.
" The nerve which hears is last to die. He
may know - "
He faltered. We stood aghast. The room
grew suddenly familiar. I tore off a strip
of the gray tint on the walls. Under it
we found the old paper with its bright
macaws.
"Ah, ha!" Volz said; "will you now deny
my theory of 'far- working?' "
Dazed, I could barely murmur: "Then
people can be affected by it !"
" Certainly," said he, "as rubbed glasses
gain electric power."
Within a week we sailed he for Brazil, I
for New York.
Several years after, at Sacramento, Arne,
an artist I had known abroad, found me on the
overland train, and on reaching San Francisco
urged me to go where he lodged.
" I am low-spirited here," he said; " I don't
know why."
Itinerant ijjonse. 21
I stopped short on the crowded wharf.
"Where do you live?" I asked.
" Far up Market Street/' said he*.
" What sort of a house?" I insisted.
" Oh nothing modern over a store," he
answered.
Reassured, I went with him. He lived in a
jumble of easels, portfolios, paint, canvas, bits
of statuary, casts, carvings, foils, red curtains,
Chinese goatskins, woodcuts, photographs,
sketches, and unfinished pictures. On the
wall hung a scene from " The Wandering
Jew," as we saw it at the Adelphi, in London,
where in the Arctic regions he sees visions
foreshadowing the future of his race. Under
it was quoted :
- "All in my mind is confused, nor can I
dissever
The mould of the visible world from the shape of my
thought in me
The Inward and Outward are fused, and through them
murmur forever
The sorrow whose sound is the wind and the roar of
the limitless sea."
" Do you remember," Arne asked, "when
we saw that play? Both younger and more
hopeful. How has the world used you? As
for me, I have done nothing since I came here
22 &n Itinerant iponse.
but that sketch, finished months ago. I have
not lost ambition, but I feel fettered."
"Absinthe? opium? tobacco?" I hinted.
" Neither/' he answered. " I try to work,
but visions, widely different from what I will,
crowd on me, as on the Jew in the play. Not
the unconscious brain action all thinkers know,
but a dictation from without. No rush of cre-
ative impulses, but a dragging sense of some-
thing else I ought to paint."
"Briefly," I said, "you are a * Haunted
Man/"
" Haunted by a willful design," said he.
" I feel as if something had happened some-
where which I must show."
" What is it like?" I asked.
" I wish I could tell you," he replied. " But
only odd bits change places, like looking in
a kaleidoscope; yet all cluster around one
centre."
One day, looking over his portfolios, I found
an old Temple Bar, which he said he kept for
this passage which he read to me from T.
A. Trollope's "Artist's Tragedy:"
" The old walls and ceilings and floors must be sat-
urated with the exhalations of human emotions!
These lintels, doorways, and stairs have become, by
long use and homeliness, dear to human hearts, and
Itinerant Ijanse. 23
have become so intimately blended a portion of the
mental furniture of human lives, that they have con-
tributed their part to the formation of human char-
acters. Such facts and considerations have gone to
the fashioning of the mental habitudes of all of us. If
all could have been recorded! If emotion had the
property of photographing itself on the surfaces of the
walls which had witnessed it ! Even if only passion,
when translated into acts, could have done so ! Ah,
what palimpsests! What deciphering of tangled
records! What skillful separation of successive
layers of 'passionography!'"
"I know a room," said Arne, " thronged
with acts that elbow me from my work and
fill me with unrest."
I looked at him in mute surprise.
" I suppose," he went on, " such things do
not interest you."
"No yes," I stammered. " I have marked
in traveling how lonely houses change their
expression as you come near, pass, and leave
them. Some frown, others smile. The Bible
buildings had life of their own and human dis-
eases; the priests cursed or blessed them as
men."
" Houses seem to remember," said he.
" Some rooms oppress us with a sense of lives
that have been lived in them."
" That," I said, " is like Draper's theory
24 Qtn Itinerant
of shadows on walls always staying. He
shows how after a breath passes over a coin
or key, its spectral outline remains for months
after the substance is removed. But can the
mist of circumstance sweeping over us make
our vacant places hold any trace of us?"
"Why not? Who can deny it? Why do
you look at me so?" he asked.
I could not tell him the sad tale. I hesi-
tated; then said: " I was thinking of Volz, a
friend I had, who not only believed in what
Bulwer calls * a power akin to mesmerism and
superior to it, once called Magic, and that it
might reach over the dead, so far as their ex-
perience on earth/ but also in animal magne-
tism from any distance."
Arne grew queerly excited. " If Time and
Space exist but in our thoughts, why should it
not be true?" said he. " Macdonald's lover
cries, * That which has been is, and the Past
can never cease. She is mine, and I shall find
her what matters it when, or where, or
how?'" He sighed, "In Acapulco, a year
ago, I saw a woman who has been before me
ever since the centre of the circling, chang-
ing, crude fancies that trouble me."
" Did you know her?" I asked.
' No, nor anything about her, not even her
Itinerant ^onse. 25
name. It is like a spell. I must paint her
before anything else, but I cannot yet decide
how. I feel sure she has played a- tragic part
in some life-drama."
" Swinburne's queen of panthers/' I hinted.
" Yes. But I was not in love. Love I must
forego. I am not a man with an income."
" I know you are not a nincompoop!" I
said, always trying to change such themes by
a jest. I could not tell him I knew a place
which had the influence he talked of. I could
not re-visit that house.
Soon after he told me he had begun his
picture, but would not show it. He com-
plained that one figure kept its back toward
him. He worked on it till he fell ill. Even
then he hid it. " Only a layer of passionog-
raphy," he said.
I grew restless. I thought his mood affected
mine. It was a torment as well as a puzzle to
me that his whole talk should be of the influ-
ence of houses, rooms, even personal property
that had known other owners. Once I asked
him if he had anything like the brown coat
Sheridan swore drew ill-luck to him.
"Sometimes I think," he answered, "it is
this special brown paint artists prize which
affects me. It is made from the besc asphal-
26 &n Itinerant fonse.
turn, and that can be got only from Egyptian
mummy-cloths. Very likely dust of the mum-
mies is ground in it. I ought to feel their ill-
will."
One day I went to Saucelito. In the still
woods I forgot my unrest till coming to the
stream where, as I suddenly remembered, An-
son was found dead, a dread took me which I
tried to lose by putting into rhyme. Turning
my pockets at night, I crumpled the page I
had written on, and threw it on the floor.
In uneasy sleep I dreamed I was again in
Paris, not where I liked to recall being, but
at "Bullier's," and in war-time. The bald,
spectacled leader of the orchestra, leaning
back, shamming sleep, while a dancing, stamp-
ing, screaming crowd wave tri-colored flags,
and call for the " Chant du Depart." Three
thousand voices in a rushing roar that makes
the twenty thousand lights waver, in spas-
modic but steady chorus :
' ' Les departs parts parts !
Les departs parts parts !
Les departs parts parts I"
Roused, I supposed by passing rioters, I did
not try to sleep again, but rose to write a letter
for the early mail. As I struck a light I saw,
smoothed out on the table, the wrinkled page I
Itinerant f case. 27
had cast aside. The ink was yet wet on two
lines added to each verse. A chill crept over
me as I read :
FOREST MURMURS.
Across the woodland bridge I pass,
And sway its three long, narrow planks,
To mark how gliding waters glass
Bright blossoms doubled ranks on ranks ;
And how through tangle of the ferns
Floats incense from veiled flower-urns,
What would the babbling brook reveal?
What may these trembling depths conceal?
Dread secret of the dense woods, held
With restless shudders horror-spelled!
How shift the shadows of the wood,
As if it tossed in troubled sleep !
Strange whispers, vaguely understood,
Above, below, around me creep ;
While in the sombre-shadowed stream
Great scarlet splashes far down gleam,
The odd-reflected, stately shapes
Of cardinals in crimson capes ;
Not those but spectral pools of blood
That stain these sands through strongest flood?
Like blare of trumpets through black nights
Or sunset clouds before a storm
Are these red phantom water-sprites
That mock me with fantastic form ;
With flitting of the last year's bird
Fled ripples that its low flight stirred
28 2tn Itinerant
How should these rushing waters learn
Aught but the bend of this year's fern?
The lonesome wood, with bated breath,
Hints of a hidden blow and death!
I could not stay alone. I ran to Arne's room.
As I knocked, the falling of some light thing
within made me think he was stirring. I went
in. He sat in the moonlight, back to me before
his easel. The picture on it might be the one
he kept secret. I would not look. I went to
his side and touched him. He had been dead
for hours ! I turned the unseen canvas to the
wall.
Next day I packed and planned to go East.
I paid the landlady not to send Arne's body to
the morgue, and watched it that night, when
a sudden memory swept over me like a tidal
wave. There was a likeness in the room to
one where I had before watched the dead. Yes
there were the windows, there the doors
just here stood the bed, in the same spot I sat.
What wildness was in the air of San Francisco !
To put such crazy thoughts to flight I would
look at Arne's last work. Yet I wavered, and
more than once turned away after laying my
hand on it. At last I snatched it, placed it on
the easel and lighted the nearest gas-burner
before looking at it. Then great heavens!
Qln Itinerant ijjonse. 29
How had this vision come to Arne? It was
the scene where Felipa cursed us. Every de-
tail of the room reproduced, even the gay
birds on the wall-paper, and her flower-pots.
The figures and faces of Dering and Volz were
true as hers, and in the figure with averted
face which Arne had said kept its back to him,
I knew myself! What strange insight had
he gained by looking at Felipa? It was like
the man who trembled before the unknown
portrait of the Marquise de Brinvilliers.
How long I gazed at the picture I do not
know. I heard, without heeding, the door-
bell ring and steps along the hall. Voices.
Some one looking at rooms. The landlady,
saying this room was to let, but unwilling to
show it, forced to own its last tenant lay there
dead. This seemed no shock to the stranger.
"Well," said her shrill tones, "poor as he
was he's better dead than alive!"
The door opened as a well-known voice
cried: "My God! say not that! The nerve
which hears is last to die "
Volz stood before me! Awe-struck, we
looked at each other in silence. Then he
waved his hand to and fro before his eyes.
"Is this a dream?" he said. "There,"
pointing to the bed; "you" to me; "the
30 &n Itinerant
same words the very room ! Is it our
fate?"
I pointed to the picture and to Arne. " The
last work of this man, who thought it a fancy
sketch?"
While Volz stood dumb and motionless be-
fore it, the landlady spoke :
"Then you know the place. Can you tell
what ails it? There have been suicides in
this room. No one prospers in the house.
My cousin, who is a house-mover, warned me
against taking it. He says before the store
was put under it here it stood on Bush Street,
and before that on Telegraph Hill."
Volz clutched my arm. " It is ' The Flying
Dutchman' of a house!" he cried, and drew
me fast down stairs and out into a dense fog
which made the world seem a tale that was
told, blotting out all but our two slanting forms,
bent as by what poor Wynne would have
called "a blast from hell," hurrying blindly
away. I heard the voice of Volz as if from
afar: "The magnetic man is a spirit!"
SINGED MOTHS.
SINGED MOTHS. .
In Yorkshire, England, night-moths are called souls.
Poor moth ! thy fate my own resembles
***** *
What gained we, little moth ? Thy ashes
Thy one brief parting pang may show,
And withering thoughts for soul that dashes
From deep to deep are but a death more slow.
Carlyle's Tragedy of the Night-Moth.
KATHARINE'S DIARY.
June 21. Waiting for Elizabeth to-night,
Charlotte and I sat in silence, unbroken save
by the slight sounds of our work.
" While I pay court to a new ' one-eyed des-
pot,' I want to ask if you have thought that
this is Midsummer Eve?" I asked at last,
with a scornful laugh, but feeling more like
crying, as I stopped the sewing-machine for a
new needle.
" No, is it?" Charlotte answered, with a
long sigh, and soon looking up from her desk
to add: "Now I have spoiled that sheet of
legal-cap! You made me think of our lawn
with colored lanterns, our lace dresses, wide
33
34 Sinpfc iftotrjs.
Roman sashes, diamonds and whole pearls, the
kind men and fond women, and instead of
'City and County of San Francisco, ss.,' I
wrote Strauss waltzes and strawberry-ices.
How could you?"
"Well," said I, "I had been thinking all
day of the change our gloves and boots too
shabby for daylight, hats years old, black silks
that knew some of our old ' tea-fights ' and
have to be court-plastered like beaten pugil-
ists, our dread to see things wear out or break
because not sure of new ones, even what
should pay car-fare kept for a loaf of bread."
"Our only caller," said Charlotte, "the
landlady for her rent. Neither time nor money
for books or papers. Theatre, concert, sail,
and drive, joys for us no more than if we were
ghosts."
"Shunned," said I, "except for insult, by
those in our old rank of life, as if with our
money went our culture, wit, sense, and
purity."
"Innocent souls," said Charlotte, "forced
to toil fourteen or sixteen hours a day, while
the vile wretch at San Quentin works eight
or ten, and sleeps with no care for food or
rent."
"A steady grind of small economies," I
Singed JHctljs. 35
went on, " that are both comic and cruel a
struggle for ten cents' worth of flour, one
candle, five cents' worth of sugar, seventy-
five-cent boots, and twenty-five-cent gloves."
"Forced to think," said Charlotte, "of
claims due the unyielding body, and forget
there can be joys the spirit needs; that we
ever knew sunrise parties on horseback, gar-
den-shaded hammocks at noon, sea-sands at
sunset, or serenades by moonlight."
"In San Francisco," said I, "we know
neither the fire-side glow thrown on our old
silver-laden side-board in winter, nor the for-
eign travel of our summers, nor the red and
yellow woods of fall we saw from the marble-
terrace overlooking our landscape garden, with
its lake and Swiss cottage where the trees
looked as if seen through the stained windows
of our great library."
"Outdoors," said she, "we see only wind-
blown dust or rain; indoors, we know our
work, and an hysterical sort of good spirits."
"Our past in the East," I said, "is gone
like a dream; folks treat us as though with our
lost money went our brains."
"Not all," said she.
"Only exceptions that prove the rule," I
answered
36 Qingeir JHotljs.
After another hour of quiet, Charlotte lighted
a fire, filled the tea-kettle, and spread the
cloth.
" We will have a party supper," she said.
"Elizabeth will be tired and hungry. If we
had flour and a bit of suet (I have nearly for-
gotten what butter is), we could have some
griddle cakes. If we had this or that, we
could have the other. What will you have?
broiled chicken, custard pie, and citron
cake?"
"Oyster soup, quail on toast, and an ome-
lette soufitee," I replied
' If wishes were horses, beggers might ride ;
If wishes were fishes, we'd have some fried.' "
"Perhaps Elizabeth will bring something,"
said Charlotte, as she set a cup of milk and a
five-cent loaf of bread on the table. "She
was to get some sewing from the Wertley's
they may give her some cake."
"Don't!" I cried, it vexes my pride to take
such gifts yet I am so tired of potatoes and
salt, and milk and water."
"And owing for the potatoes and milk,"
said Charlotte, grimly; "even the five dollars
Elizabeth will get for playing for the Wert-
ley's children's party ought to go in how
Jttotljs. 37
many ways! all to the grocer, or for rent,
for coal, for milk, or to get dresses dyed, or
- O dear! it is after eleven j she must
come soon. Ah! here she is."
Elizabeth came up stairs, tired and out of
breath, with two small jars, which she set on
the table, saying: "More frill and no shirt!
Pickles and jam the housekeeper gave me.
Good soul, she didn't know what a farce it
was, that we had nothing to eat with them,
that the scent of dinner in houses I passed go-
ing there to-night made me feel ill." !
We laughed, but our voices were full of
tears.
"In the children's lessons, to-day," said
Elizabeth, " we read (what I felt as they could
not) about the pagan goddess of death, ' Hel '
in the realm of the Cold Storm. Hunger
is her table, Starvation her knife, Delay her
man, Slowness her maid, Precipice her thresh-
old, Care her bed, burning Anguish the hang-
ings of her room."
"Oh, don't!" I cried; "the water boils;
come, we will play it is tea but we must
sweeten it with smiles, as we have no
sugar."
" No one came to see the room, I suppose,"
said Elizabeth, as we gathered round the table,
38 0ittjg*& Jttolljs.
"though I answered the notice so quickly;
nor any one to take lessons."
"No," said Charlotte, "nothing has hap-
pened except that Biddy has sent us some coal
and wood."
" Think of our old servant coming to own
this house, and letting us the upper part
swelling round in a big fur cloak, and showing
us charity! Bah!"
"Never mind," said Charlotte, "her good
heart gave her grace to say the fairies sent it.
We are lucky to have such a friend when I
have got word that, as some one will do the
work cheaper, this is the last of my copying."
We all sighed.
" Elizabeth," said I, " I thought Mrs. Wert-
ley was to send some sewing by you."
"Mrs. Wertley," said Elizabeth, "did not
like it because I played something more than
dance-music when asked to by one of her
guests, and outshone her daughter. So I have
lost my place as governess."
Charlotte and I groaned.
"Oh, Charlotte," said Elizabeth, "haven't
you got some verses to read to us to-night?"
Charlotte searched her papers, and read :
Singefc iftottjs. 39
"BETTER DAYS.
" What pathos sounds within the common phrase
On careless tongues : * They have known better
days!'
As if for them were dimmed this sun's gold rays,
The dazzling miracle of winter's snow,
The festal pomp of summer's blossom show
Were seen by them through veil of sombre haze.
" God help poor souls on whom that burden lays !
They walk through narrow, crooked, lonely ways,
Look on their darkened life in sore amaze,
To Care and Sorrow and Regret fast bound,
To toil and moil in endless chain-gang round,
And almost view the Past as madman's craze.
" Rare is the soul that sympathy betrays,
As if they lose all claim to blame or praise,
Or from their poverty contagion strays.
Chafed raw by rough and seamy side of life,
They stagger, wounded, crippled, by the strife,
And often lost within the novel maze.
" Of all the blessings that the soul portrays
When, as the heart-sick and world-wearied prays,
We shall some time see heaven's glories blaze.
Naught can surpass the certainty of this:
That once within that sphere of perfect bliss,
Our thoughts can never turn to ' better days ' ! "
When Charlotte paused, Elizabeth was cry-
ing, but I said: " We will have good times.
You must not despair. If you do not marry, I
40 Singed
will, /do not mean to dress St. Catharine's
hair in the next world, as the old saying has
it that a maid must!" and I chanted the old
prayer:
"'A husband, Saint Catharine,
A handsome one, Saint Catharine,
A rich one, Saint Catharine,
A nice one, Saint Catharine,
And soon, Saint Catharine ! '"
" Position before money," said Elizabeth.
" Biddy would say love before money,"
said Charlotte.
"No," said I, "money, money, money!
Think of our heartaches and headaches, not
only the picturesque of life, but the comforts
denied us, all for lack of money ! I would
marry the Devil if he were rich ! "
" Oh, Katharine ! " they cried.
"I would! I would!" said I, striking my
fist on the table.
" One might be tempted," said Elizabeth to
Charlotte, who nodded.
" There could be inducements," said she.
The clock struck twelve ; the house shook,
and the windows jarred.
" Was that a shock of earthquake?" Char-
lotte asked.
" Only a blast of wind," said Elizabeth.
Singeir Jflotljs. 41
" No," I said, "there is some one knocking
at the outside door,"
"It is too late to open it," said Charlotte.
" Nonsense ! " I cried. " Bright moonlight,
and three of us ! Let us all go. If not Fate
for one of us, we can be the three Fates for
him!"
They unwillingly followed me ; but, at the
last moment, I shrank, and it was Elizabeth
who opened the door. A man who did not
look quite strange to us, stood on the steps.
" Pardon me," he said, taking off his hat;
" 1 followed you from Mrs. Wertley's, but did
not start in time to overtake you. I heard you
say you had a room to let. Can you excuse
my coming at this untimely hour, and let me
see it?"
We looked at each other. It would not do
to lose a chance of a lodger. We let him in.
A true American, plain, thin, sharp-faced,
alert, and confident. He wanted to avoid bad
smells; he said he left his last quarters on
that account. He took the room, paid a
month's rent, and said he would come in the
morning.
When he had gone, we took hands and
danced round our table, spread with "Duke
Humphrey's dinner."
42 Singeb ittotfya.
" See what Midsummer Eve has brought
us!" 1 cried.
At that moment the front door blew open,
a wild gust of wind tore through the house,
and put out the light; and, as we felt round in
the dark, Charlotte said :
" There was something uncanny about that
man. I am sorry he is coming."
"So am I," said Elizabeth; "but I thought
I ought not to say so."
"I feel the same," I said; "but is it not as
uncanny to be without money?"
And over a sputtering candle, burning blue,
we all nodded at each other like so many
doomed witches.
CHARLOTTE'S DIARY.
August 15. It does not seem now that less
than two months ago we were in despair. Mr.
Orne's taking the room, and the ease with
which he helped us to work more fit for us,
have been such relief. I have gone back to
my pictures, and Elizabeth to her music.
Katharine picked up in the street some money
for which no owner could be found, that has
paid half our debts.
Our handsome, dark, Spanish-looking lodger,
43
who tells me he is a poor, "devil-may-care"
artist, went with me up on our flat roof to-
night, to see a fine sunset. Strangely far-
sighted, more like eagle than mart, he saw
things out of the range of most people's vis-
ion, and told me of ships far at sea. The
great cross on Lone Mountain stood out black
against scarlet clouds, while above stretched
shadowy shapes as of angels.
"It reminds me," I said, "of an ecstasy of
Saint Francis of Assisi, in a little chapel of
Santa Croce in Milan a cross standing up
dark and strong in shade, a figure in friar's
robes borne up in the gloom, as if floating on
it, his arms lifted to arms of some vision he
sees."
He gave one of his odd, scornful laughs'.
" What could the vision tell him?" he asked.
"The angels know all," I said.
"Not everything," he answered; "there
are three things they do not know."
"What are they?"
"The day of the Second Advent, men's
hearts, and the number of the elect. Then
they have no tongues."
I thought I must try to reform this stray-
ing soul. "Don't you remember your Bible?"
I asked.
44
"I know all about Job, Jethro, and Balaam,"
he answered; " they studied sorcery."
" This view changes like magic," I said;
"all may be fog save where the sun rises a
blood-red ball on its image in the bay, the two
a huge pillar of fire, like sign and portent; or,
sole rift at noon, a sheet of gold holding the
shipping in black outlines; or, sky all blue,
the bay looks a brook to be spanned by foot-
plank, the city seems of toy-houses, the
Golden Gate a mountain-hemmed lake; or
the city shrunk into a patch of black mist,
the bay is a great sheet of quicksilver; or,
the city stretches everywhere, mountains and
bay are withdrawn in vague, sad distance.
It is like the views one takes in changing moods
of the other world."
He seemed amused. "What do you know
of the other world?" he asked.
"As much as any one. What do you think
about it?" said I.
"Nothing," he replied. "Wait till you go
there yourself. All that has been fancied
about it does not near the truth. People are
much surprised when they die."
And he laughed low and long, as if all to
himself, at some secret thought.
"Angels came in dreams in Bible-times," I
Jftotljs. 45
said. "I once had a dream which was a great
comfort to me. I thought I asked some one if
we were immortal and should meet our friends.
He answered, 'You ought to know by your
own spirit.' "
''Has your spirit never deceived you?"
asked our lodger; " does it not daily tell you
wrong, for or against things you would do or
think?"
I sighed to have to own how often my own
thought had duped me. What strange power
this man has like a baleful star to stir
doubt in my heart ! But my first distrust of
him is gone; instead, he seems more like some
one dear to me of old. By a fine sympathy
he often seems to know before I speak what I
am about to say, as if he read my mind. "If
evil, there is also good - " I began.
He frowned. "There is too much light!"
he cried, and we came indoors.
As I went down the stairs I looked back,
saw his swarthy face in the fiery glow of the
sunset, and saw for an instant a wonderful
model for a picture of the Prince of Darkness.
46 Singcb 4Jl0tl)0.
ELIZABETH'S DIARY.
August jo. Our lodger, who proves a
thorough musician though he tells me he is
heir to a proud foreign title seems like an
old friend, now I am used to his odd blonde
beauty. He took me to-night to hear Faust.
It was brought out with more care than often
given, the voices sweet and well-trained, the
acting good; but Mr. Orne was restless, and
laughed at it all; and it had not so vivid a
charm for me as before, though I shuddered at
the weird warnings that in the overture, with
mystic awe, hint all the tragic love-tale.
"Where," I asked him, "has the music
fled when the instrument is broken? It seems
like a soul."
"You do not know," he answered, "of any
hereafter for your own soul !"
"No," said I; "but neither do we know all
the hidden chances for bliss or woe in our
lives; that we do not know, does not make
them less there."
"Swayed by this music," he said, "you
are not the same person who left home. Self
thus made and unmade each moment, one is
but a drift of atoms, unlikely to meet again !"
" Is it chance, or are we clock-work?" I said,
Singefc ittotljs. 47
as the opera went on, and I was filled with a
sense of the folly of striving against fate.
" Or are we ruled by unearthly powers, as
these instruments are played upon" and forced
to yield certain strains? "
" That is not for you to know," he said.
"Perhaps," said I, " vibrations from angels'
choirs jar us like the atoms of Chladni, into
our places."
"Then an infernal chorus," said he, "may
cause the discord of awful crimes?"
"Yes," I said, " a spell from hell. What
can the real Mephisto think of this stage
copy?"
" It is as if a wild bloom tried to be a hot-
house flower," he said. "How would you
like a crude mockery of yourself?"
As we sat there, I could almost fancy in
him a queer, flitting likeness to the Mephis-
topheles before us, like an image in a brook,
shaken and changed by speaking to him.
While the music stirred me as wind blows a
leaf, I saw so many unmoved faces in the
crowd that I asked him : " Why does the effect
of music vary on different persons?"
"Because," said he, "in music the un-
earthly touches the human. Some have no
soul, no vital spark to move like Tyndall's
43 Singcfc iUotljs.
sensitive flame, which shrinks at a hiss, thrills
at a jar, and leaps at a waltz."
" Music seems to me," I said, "as if we
heard a spirit trying to take bodily shape, but
failing."
" Like that Mephisto there," he said; and
after we reached home he still scoffed at that
singer's make-up and acting.
" Why, even his laugh," said he, " had not
the true ring. This is the way he should have
looked and laughed" and he donned my
cloak, with its tasseled hood above his head
in grotesque shape, and gave a wild laugh,
which sent cold chills over us, and made
Biddy, passing along the hall, stop and cross
herself.
" You have frightened Biddy," I said.
"Oh, no," he said, "it is her own soul
that scares her."
Then he brought his violin, and played Tar-
tini's "Dream" for a good-night "to make
you dream," he told us.
" How strange it is," I said, " that dreams
else forgotten sometimes come back to us
at the sound of music."
" If they could only be brought again and
finished," said Katharine, " you might read the
letter which lately came to you, Charlotte."
4Jlotl)0 49
"What was that?" he asked, with keen
interest.
Charlotte read to him her verses :
" UNKNOWN.
" To me what could that note reveal
Which glimmered through my dream?
Large, white, with an unbroken seal,
From whom 't was sent no gleam.
Like planet's wheel our dreams conceal
Strange hints of Life's hid scheme.
" Was it from friend in distant star?
Or one on earth, in sleep?
Or that twin-soul whose path lies far
From waking glances sweep?'
Or sent to mar all joys that are
Where Dream-land shadows creep r
" The music-score of demon-band?
Or summons to witch ball?
Or form of compact wily planned
And signed with mystic scrawl,
From fairy-land, or goblin damned,
To hold my soul in thrall?
" Did my good angel send me balm
For heart too ill at ease?
Perhaps a spray from heavenly palm,
As signal of release
Or tale of charm in that fair calm,
To cheer and give me peace?
50 Singeft
" What were its contents, grave or glad
Reply to all I ask,
When worn and weary, baffled, mad
Despairing at Life's task,
I would have had the reason sad,
Not wear its iron mask.
** Was it a message from the dead,
Of hope, or warning sign ?
Accursed be whatever led
My soul from sleep divine !
O'er note unread in that dream fled
I often muse and pine !
" Do not open a letter which comes in your
sleep," said Mr. Orne, plainly vexed at such
nonsense ; " evil spirits are as likely to be
near as good ones. The world of sleep is their
carnival."
Charlotte looked pale and startled. Kath-
arine laughed.
" 1 do not need to dream," said I. "I have
other warnings."
" What sort?" he asked, eagerly.
" Oh a little bird tells me," 1 said.
"Take care," said he, as he left us; " it
may be the bird of the Amazon, the ' Lost
Soul'!"
Singed 4Jl0tl)s. 51
BIDDY GOSSIPS.
"Sit down, Mrs. O'Shane; I can talk an'
iron too. Did ye mind the gintleman who
wint out as ye kem in? He's the strange
lodger. Though he's been here since June,
an' it's now the middle of September, he is,
an' always will be, the strange lodger. The
ladies upstairs are all greatly taken wid him,
but what they can like I can't, thin. Him
wid his club-foot, his hair in two curls like
horns, his sly, cruel eyes, wid small whites to
thim, his foxy, pinted ears, an' claw-fingers !
"The first mornin' he was here, I was on
the front steps, comin' from market, whin he
wint out; an' the sight of him made me cross
mysilf . He gave me a scowl that was heart-
scaldin', and he seemed to jist melt into air
like a flash, he was gone so quick wid his
flame-colored hair an' whiskers, like the Judas-
beard in the garden ; his hollow back, too thin
to cast a shadow ; an' his feet of unaven size.
Sure, God's writin' is plain enough !
" It gives me a turn to hear his knock, for
ne '11 not touch the bell. It is no work for thim
to care for his room ; he niver seems to have
moved anythin'. They wondered why the
piant died in tne hangin'- basket in the hall.
52 Simjefc
But I saw him brush by it one day ; it was
that killed it.
" Thin he nearly crazes me, makin* the
wildest music on his fiddle. It 's always the
sly lad that takes to playin' on that, an*
there 's nothin' plain an' open about him.
The three sisters are charmed wid him in-
toirly. But the sight I got of him one night
was enough for me warnin' for anybody.
He had taken Miss Elizabeth to the theatre ;
an* after they kem back, he caught her opera-
cloak, as it was slippin' from her shoulders to
the floor, an' threw it over himsilf wid the
pinted hood on his head, stickin' up like a
horn. Ugh ! what a divil he looked ! I
wondered what was in his nose thin. An'
he gave a screech of a laugh that curdled my
blood an' set my hair on ind. Sure, he 's one
of those ye ought to hate at sight; an' ye
may know, if ye have much to do wid 'em,
ye will come to be ready to travel many a
hard mile to hear the dirt fall on their coffins.
" Even the cat there knows more than the
three women ; grave an' still as she is, she
knows what bad spirits have power at Mid-
summer Eve, an' that was the night the quare
man kem.
"I tell ye, I think he's sort o' bewitched
Sittgefc iflottys. 53
the sisters. They aven think they are wid
him whin 1 know they are not. One will be
tellin' me of goin' to a concert wid him. The
same afternoon another says to me she was
walkin' wid him, an' the other will speak of
his bein' wid her here in the house ! They
are not much better off than before he kem,
but they think they are. Lone, worried
women take odd notions. They are jist out
of their heads about him, but they '11 come to
grief, mind ye. Mind ye, he who eats wid
the Divil has need of a long spoon ! Perhaps
they think it 's in love they are, but it 's not
love. It's not the feelin' I had for Patrick,
which made me not care whether he had cabin
an' pig, or not. Don't mind me, I have to
wipe away the tears when I think of him,
though his grave is far away as Ireland an'
twenty-five years can make it. But whin ye
have known the rale thing, ye can tell what is
sham. No, they are thinkin' of what they '11
git, not of the man.
" Must ye go? Wait till I open the door for
ye. Stay, do ye see that tall figure, a little
lame, skulkin' up the street in the moonlight?
Kape on the other side of the way, an' count
yer beads as ye go, an' don't look at him,
for he has the evil eye. Run now, for he
54 Singeb 4lt0tl)0.
always moves so quick, I can think of nothin'
but what I once heard the priest say in a ser-
mon: 'And I beheld Satan like lightnin' fallin'
from heaven.' "
CHARLOTTE'S DIARY.
September 30. To-day Mr. Orne took me
to the park to see the Victoria Regia, like a
bit of a sunrise cloud. He bought me a bou-
quet, but the heat of his hand withered it in
a moment. He is so odd darting here and
there. I was speaking of the flower of the
Holy Ghost, thinking he was by me, but sud-
denly found him distant the whole length of
the greenhouse. When we came home, he
drew the great lily with one or two dashes of
his pencil ; but though a true copy, I thought
the outline bore, too, an odd likeness to an
elfin face ; but he talked me out of it.
" Though Saint Cyprian saw the Devil in a
flower, you need not," he said.
"You work so quickly," I replied; "it makes
me think of the Devil's crucifix, painted by
two strokes of his brush in the convent of the
Capuchin friars at Rome. He did it for a soul
bound to him ; and the soul was so struck with
its heartrending truth, that he made the sign
of the cross, and got free."
Singeb Jttotfys. 55
"It is well known," he said, "the Devil
would be an artist/'
" Is art an evil power ?" I asked.
" Doctor Donne/' said he, " preached be-
fore Oliver Cromwell that the Muses were
damned spirits of devils. No one can mark
where the presence of evil comes and goes. It
may be very near, and you not know it."
I tried to work on his portrait, but in vain.
He changes so much with his moods, and the
fire of his eyes is not to be copied. The girls
want to see it, but I keep it screened. To-day
he was very restless ; told me secrets of color
thought to have been lost for ages; tossed
over my portfolios of sketches and rhymes
with mingled praise and blame. He found and
read to me :
" UNFULFILLED.
" The night was dark and wet, in long gone age,
When Genevieve to mass with maidens went ;
The gleaming torches, carried by a page
Through gustvwind and rain, were quickly spent;
She touched them, and again their ruddy glare
Shone on the pious souls who wandered there.
' No fire of this world 'thus the legend ran ;
' T was her same force celestial that could snare
The secret thought of man !
56
" Upon the gilded tomb of Genevieve
In church of Saint Etienne du Mont, the quaint,
With airy stair from shadowed aisle to eave
Behind a golden grating lies the saint.
Forever tapers shine. Who buys one tries
To send some earnest prayer to Paradise.
Ah ! long I watched its eager, changing flare
As hands raised, palm to palm, point toward the
skies
My burning, burning prayer !
" Wind-shaken, like my thought that bold aspired,
It paused, drooped fainting, rose again, implored,
While I, like frantic moth, all my desire
Cast on the flame that yearningly adored.
Around my sacred hope this aureole
Became a steady beacon for my soul,
And through long years of darkness and despair
Its cheering rays athwart my care would roll,
My glowing, glowing prayer !
" At last, like smoke-wreath poising over flame,
The shadow of my hope loomed just in view,
But floated off, nor ever nearer came.
Was it within my sway for joy or rue?
Who shall define the bounds of will and fate,
Man's choice, or hand of Providence debate?
To lose it was to see Hell's lurid flashes,
And Heaven is to find there, incarnate,
My prayer that burned to ashes ! "
The strange smile that curled his lip made
me in despair throw down my brush.
Sittgeb 4H0U)S. 57
" There the Catholics are like the followers
of Confucius," said he, "who think what is
burned rises to the next world. Do you recall
the Devil of human size on the outer gallery of
Notre Dame in Paris? Do you think he
watches the smoke of the city to know what
people want? Eastern tales are nearer right
that keep him in ruins and desert places."
" Like the minds he wrecks or lays waste."
He flashed upon me a glance of keen ques-
tion, then bent again over the sketch-books.
He found a photograph of my favorite " Paolo
and Francesca," falling, falling, forever and
ever, murky shadows reaching from below to
engulf them, the light of lost Paradise stream-
ing from above, a troop of filmy forms in the
background watching.
" Is it not the worst of all for each that they
must both go?" I asked.
" Would not their parting be worse?" said
he. " Nothat is not hell."
With his swift pencil he sketched some
woeful figures looking back one who sees his
bosom friend forget him ; one who knows his
foe pleased at his death ; one who finds his
secrets come to the gaze of the world ; one
who learns that the woman for love of whom
he died loves and regrets him.
58 Singed ittotfys.
" Hell," he said, " is to keep the same pas-
sions without the human frame in which to
show them to be in your old haunts and see
things going against your wishes with no
power to hinder ; no dropping through bottom-
less pit, no raging flame could be worse. What
would you choose for heaven?"
" To look back," I said, "and see at least
one of my pictures live on. I would give my
soul for that."
He clasped my hand as if to close a compact,
and, as the other arm went round my waist,
he said: "But your own image, mirrored in
the soul that loves you, maybe more lasting."
I felt his fiery kiss upon my mouth. Be-
wildered, I could have believed that over his
shoulder I saw the figures in his sketches be-
gin to dance and jeer at me. I shrank back.
At that moment, Katharine and Elizabeth burst
in where we were, like jealous sisters in a
fairy tale.
KATHARINE'S DIARY.
October 15. I went with Mr. Orne to a
ball last night. The girls helped me dress,
and each lent of her best, but I was so dazed
with the strain of trying to look gay, while
dulled by vain struggle to feel well, in our old
Singeir Jflotfjs. 59
worn things, that all the hours I was gone,
though I seemed to see rich robes of Flanders
lace and Genoa velvet he had sent for me to
wear, yet I was mindful how Elizabeth had
warned me of some carefully darned lace that
would not bear a touch, and Charlotte had
dyed an old sash-ribbon, and painted flowers
over stains, and we had all sighed over the
whole.
But here I was, as if in a leaf far back in
the book of my life, in full dress once more,
whirling with a rich and gay escort down a
long hall of dancers, the band playing the
" Lucifer" waltzes, my partner buoying me
clear of the crowd. He seems to know every
one ; he was nodding right and left. 1 would
cry: "Why, do you know him?" " Inti-
mately," he would answer. And once, as he
said so, the voice of a passing dancer reached
our ears, and made us smile: " The Devil is
nearer a man than his coat or his shirt."
He slipped on my finger a ring set with an
opal of occult power and mystic fire, like the
lurid light in his eyes ; and when I said, " I
like 'a pearl with a soul in it,'" he replied:
" That is its very charm for me the soul in
it," looking at me as if he could will my very
soul from me. I heard people groan that the
60 Singeb ittotlje.
supper was gone, but he brought me dainties
in plenty, and unlike what others had found.
I heard him jesting in many languages with
this or that one, well known and liked by all.
He told me he had just made a fortune in min-
ing stocks. As I sipped and played with my
spoon, caught the witch-gleam of my opal, felt
pleased with the fine mesh of my laces, the
shadow and glow of my velvet, I felt that to
gain all such spendthrift wants of mine would
make heaven of earth. Then the man went
by who had quoted Luther. Was the Devil so
near? Who was our strange lodger, who filled
my mind with such wild thoughts, like an evil
planet drawing forth all the bad in my nature?
Then I forgot my doubts in the swift whirl of
music and dance.
As we stood on our steps and he searched
for his latch-key, I watched the fire of my
opal, burning like a will-o'-the-wisp in the
moon-lit dark.
" It has a weird life of its own!" I cried;
and, fearing my sisters' eyes of wonder and
envy, " Take it ! " I said.
"Not without you," he answered, bending
over me, and a sudden, brief kiss scorched my
lips.
Then the girls, who had sat up for us, and
Singeb iHoltya. 61
heard the carriage, had opened the door and
swept us upstairs with them.
I could have thought them jealous by the
way Charlotte cried: "You look changed in
some way like a shining spirit against a dark
cloud!" And Elizabeth added : "It does not
matter much about your dress, after all ! "
I stood before our bureau-glass. It showed
me the darned lace and dyed ribbon with
which they had dressed me. Had I imagined
my fine things? Perhaps I had but fancied
the ball, the lights, and music, and my
lover ! The ring was gone.
And then the next I knew, they had un-
dressed me and put me in bed, and Elizabeth
was cooling my head with damp cloths, while
Charlotte was fanning me, and I heard them
murmur together, as if far off. "What did
she mutter about a ring set with a spark
from hell? " Elizabeth asked. And Charlotte
answered: " That she was sealed to Satan ! "
ELIZABETH'S DIARY.
October 31. This afternoon, as I played
Gr6goire's fine "Etude du Diable," I was
startled to my feet by finding Mr. Orne stood
close behind me to hear.
62 Singefc ifloiljs.
''Good, is n't it?" I asked.
"Not the right thought," said he; "listen."
And he drew from his violin strains of dread
meaning.
"That is more unearthly," I said; "a
spirit might play so."
"And a wicked one?" he answered. "The
Mussulman legend runs, that the Devil is given
leave to fill his spare time with music, song,
love-poetry, and dancing."
" How is it that you can surpass all others?"
I asked.
" Because I have the will the secret magic
of all success."
" Teach me," I cried, " to win power, posi-
tion!"
"Will you leave your sisters without fare-
well," he asked, " and fly with me at twelve
to-night, knowing no more of where you go
than that you will have rank and sway be-
yond your wildest dreams?"
He drew me to him ; his burning lips touched
mine. Then my sisters rushed in, with that
new, watchful way of theirs, and he went
out.
This evening, as we sat together for the last
time in our safe, warm, bright room, with a
rising storm stirring all round the house, I
Bingeb Jttotljs. 63
could hardly keep from telling the girls that I
was going abroad, and all he had promised me.
Indeed, I did hint about it, but they thought it
only one of our old day-dreams, and Katharine,
as if sure that hers was coming true, began to
tell us how she should build her castle. Lean-
ing proudly on the mantelpiece, she looked
statuesque, as if the petrifying effect of wealth
had begun.
"But how sad it is," she said, "to think
that death can bear me from it all."
" My pictures," said Charlotte, "will live
when I am gone."
"Position," said I, "may be prized even
then, if we can look back."
" Yees can take nothin wia ye," said
Biddy, who had come in unheard, " but
love."
We all started, and then laughed in scorn.
" Sure, the priest was tellin' only last Sun-
day," said she, " how Saint Theresa could say
nothing worse of the Divil than ' Poor wretch,
he loves not/ Her notion of hell was that no
love was there. But love is all we 're sure of
in heaven."
"Biddy, have you come to preach a ser-
mon?" I asked.
"No, I beg yer pardon. 'Tis All Souls"
64 Singefc ifloirja.
Eve, and I thought maybe yees would come
to vespers to-night. The music '11 be fine."
For a moment we thought of going. I half
rose; Katharine went a step or two toward
the door ; Charlotte left her seat. Was it the
unfelt wind which blows us on the shoals of
destiny which drove us back ?
"Not now, Biddy," said I; "some other
time. To-night Charlotte is, at last, going to
let us see her portrait of our lodger. Don't
you want to wait and see it?"
Charlotte placed it where we could view it
in the long glass, which had lights around it,
" like a shrine," Biddy said, as if she did not
like it.
As Charlotte unveiled it, Katharine and I
cried, in surprise : " This is not his likeness ! "
And Biddy, laughing, said: " Not a bit, not
a bit like him!"
"It is not only better-looking, but it is
another man," said I ; "there is no Spanish
knight about him."
"No, indeed," said Katharine; "the true
type of an American I call him."
"Why no," said I; "he is a pure German
blonde."
Biddy heard, half-grinning, half-frowning.
" Oh, yees are all bewitched, an' 'tis Allhal-
JHotljs. 65
lows Eve," she said; " come to the holy
vespers, do."
But we laughed and sent her off ; and when
she had gone Mr. Orne suddenly stood in the
door, as if he had sprung through the floor,
and paused, looking at his picture.
" Come and tell us," cried Katharine, " how
is it that Charlotte could paint you in this
way?"
" No two persons see alike," he said.
"One seems to different people to have as
many characters, perhaps as many aspects.
How few agree when speaking of any one ! "
"But this," said Katharine, "has not your
mouth; and you are neither light nor dark."
" But this," said I, " has not your chin, nor
your fair hair."
" But this," said Charlotte, " has your dark
curls. It is just like you, except the eyes,
perhaps."
Then we all stared wildly at each other.
"But this," said Biddy, glancing in, with
her bonnet on, "is All Souls' Eve, if yees
would only come."
"Where?" cried Mr. Orne, in a voice of
scorn. But, seeing him, she fled like light-
ning, and the outer door echoed like thunder
after her.
66
He soon followed. "But not to vespers,"
he said, laughing.
Katharine, Charlotte, and I wrangled over
the picture till Charlotte screened and put it
by, and sat at her desk to rhyme ; while I, at
the piano, with precious minor keys, unlocked
the inner gates of the realm of musing, and
Katharine sat with open book on lap, but look-
ing in the fire. Hours went by with no word
between us. We did not heed when Biddy
came home, nor know when Mr. Orne passed
through the door, but found him with us again.
"This is a fine gale," he said. "Bodies
may be housed, but think of flitting souls go-
ing out into such a night."
" Is it the wind and storm," cried Charlotte,
"which set me to writing this?" And, while
the winds tore round the house in a witches'
dance she read to us :
"AFTER DEATH.
" All through the unseen realm of air I float;
The souls that, passing, mount to God, I note ;
Each flashing through the void like fiery mote
By fierce wind blown.
" Death makes an anvil of our pigmy world,
And drives these sparks these spirits upward
whirled
That glimmer on till all the dark is furled,
Before the throne !
JHotljs. 67
" I would look back and linger, linger yet
What can I feel but passionate regret?
When I remember thy dear eyelids wet,
What shall atone? *
" But, borne by some resistless force, I go
To learn what but immortal spirits know
Or faint and fading into darkness flow
Dread path unknown !
" The earth becomes a distant waning star.
What ! is this all ? A memory floating far ;
My conscience for the dreaded judgment bar ;
And this alone?"
In the shadowed chimney-corner Mr. Orne
nearly went out of sight as she read. He
seemed coming and going by the flickering fire
as she paused or went on ; and, at the end,
I thought he had left the room ; but a sudden
glow of the fire showed that there he sat.
Then he added some verses, while Katharine's
book " Footfalls on the Boundaries of Another
World" slid to the floor, as she bent toward
pictures in the fire ; Charlotte leaned on her
desk, with her face in her hands ; and I, drift-
ing off in a dream-skiff, trailed my hands
through a rippling tide of music.
In a few minutes he read to us :
" No dazzling ranks of angels' choirs appear,
Nor bands of wailing spirits damned are here,
A merely silent, lonely, misty sphere
Forever shown,
68
" Where darts that restless flame, my naked soul.
But sometimes yet at thy fond thought's control
I can return, thy faithful heart my goal,
My Love, my Own !
" Know at thy tears I tremble, almost wane,
Thy sighs revive my smouldering fire again,
The best of life, our love, may yet remain,
Eternal grown.
" But if thou canst forget, my light will pale,
When no regret of thine seeks my lost trail,
Then, only then, within dim depths I fail,
Expire, alone ! "
I roused from my rapt gaze at him to find
Charlotte and Katharine looking at him as in-
tently as if they, with their sudden jealousy,
fancied the lines meant for them. The winds
howled and shook the house, the rain beat
against the pane, Mr. Orne, uneasy, too,
walked up and down the long room, and his
deep, rich voice, a cordial that warmed the
ear, broke forth in " King Death is a rare old
fellow!" He paused after one verse before
Katharine. "Even Money is powerless before
him," said he.
He stopped after the next verse by Char-
lotte. " Yet Death may be foiled by Fame,"
he said.
As he came near me at another verse, he
Singeb itlotlja. 69
said: "On a level with all at the touch of
'his yellow hand.'"
We heard his voice die away in the distance
in the ghostly old song about King Death. By
the queer, subtile sway of one spirit over
another, my sisters seemed to feel that parting
was near. They could not have acted other-
wise if either of them thought of going.
"Good-night, girls," said Charlotte, start-
ing, but coming back to kiss us. " Perhaps I
should say good-by. 'Who has seen to-
morrow?'"
Soon after, Katharine rose. " Good-night,"
she said, kissing me, "and good-by till we
meet again."
1 sit here alone, writing. I have listened to
the vanishing sound of her footsteps; I am
tempted to call them back. But it is on the
stroke of twelve. The storm rages still more
wildly; an awful night to be out. What a
surprise is in store for my sisters ! When I
next see them, how strange will be our meet-
ing!
BIDDY GOSSIPS AGAIN.
"Sure, an' it's kind of ye, Mrs. O'Shane,
to come in this pourin' rain to-night. Give me
the umbrill, an' sit ye down by the fire. Yes,
70 Singeir Jftottys.
it has stormed night an' day for a week ever
since Allhallows Eve, heaven save us 1
" Tell ye all about it? Oh, they got worse
an* worse all three wild in love wid him, an 7
that jealous they did n't want one of them to
be alone wid him. Now, he was all wrapped
up in Miss Elizabeth, playing duets wid his
witch of a fiddle, showin' her how to write
music, an' talkin' of his high rank at home ;
then jist the same wid Miss Charlotte, teach-
in* her how to mix colors, an' touchin' up her
pictures, an' tellin' her she was a wonder, an'
folks wouldn't forget her, an' writin' verses
wid her ; an' jist as deep wid Miss Katharine,
plannin' how she was to make her fortune in
no time, an' always showin' off in some way
how rich he was.
" How did I know his ways so well? Did n't
I use to be goin' through the hall quite care-
less, an' hear it all? Ye may learn a good
dale that way, by niver hurryin' yourself.
Many's the time he nearly caught me, but I
got into the dark corner, wid my apron over
my head, quakin' as he went by. But at last
he got a dog an awful big, black crater, wid
eyes like coals, an' I had to kape down here.
" I did talk to thim. I could n't make thim
see him as I did, try as much as I would. Ye
Singeb Jttotljs. 71
might as well warn water not to run down hill.
An* he windin' round thim like a snake, I
used to think. May the holy saints kape us !
Is that only the shutters knockiri'? Let us
say a prayer or two. It makes me shake to
think of him now.
"About the mornin' after All Souls' Eve, is
it? Listen to this, thin: His sketches an'
verses they thought so much of had turned to
black paper! They each had his picture,
they called it, but neither one looked like him,
an' that mornin' they had sunk to a little heap
of ashes under where they had hung! An'
Miss Elizabeth's portrait of him was never as
she thought she left it, nor as her sisters
thought it looked, but it was like him as I saw
him, only it had no eyes !
" If ye' 11 believe it each one showed me
that night a fine necklace the strange man had
given her, a secret from the others. It was
good as a play to see them comin', one after
the other, on the same errand. Poor dears !
Bless us and save us ! don't move your chair
with such a sudden noise, it makes me jump ;
an' don't kape lookin' behind ye ! Miss Char-
lotte's was coral, all carved into little imps ;
Miss Elizabeth's was like great coals of fire
carbuncles, she said 'twas; an' Miss Kath-
72 Singeb
arine's was like little red sparks rubies, she
called them, an* said it must have cost a great
deal of money. But next mornin' their bureau
drawers, where they kept their fine things,
held no necklaces nothin' but a heap of dead
leaves, an* dust, an* pebbles !
" No, it was only a red line round the throat
each wore for a chain at daylight. Dead,
then? Dead as Pharaoh!
"Yes, he was gone, an* they will not find
him, either; though the police an' reporters
call me a crazy old woman to doubt it, but I'm
sure they'll have their trouble for their pains.
Where is he? The Divil knows ! "
A STRAY REVELER.
A STRAY REVELER.
The Picture Which Was a Prophecy.
' Who hath known the ways and the wrath,
The sleepless spirit, the root
And blossom of evil will?"
" Which is the room, and which is the pic-
ture?" 1 asked my friend Aura, when she
received me after my long absence abroad,
during which I heard she had fallen heir to a
fortune, but found her looking pinched and
wan.
The picture filled nearly one side of the
room, which was arranged as an exact copy
of it, even having a lattice-window opening
lengthwise, put in to match the painted one.
Carpet, Navajo rugs, chairs, tables, draperies
were alike. A strip of carpet hid the lower
part of the frame, so that one might fancy he
saw double parlors instead of one room and
a painting. The screen in the room stood at
just such an angle as just such a screen stood
75
76 & Strag Reveler.
in the painted scene. Tall Japanese vases,
low bookcase, hanging shelves filled with
rare, odd trifles, were all thus doubled.
" Yes," she said, seeing me glance to and
fro, " I felt impelled to copy everything painted
there, and to banish all my room held before.
That knotted rope under glass on the mantel?
Well, no; that was neither in the picture nor
here, till now ; the fact is, I hold the property
Penniel left me only by keeping that there.
Two of his friends, Dacre and Chartram, re-
ceived bequests on condition of calling here
unexpectedly at irregular intervals to see that
I let it remain always in my sight."
"I don't like it there."
" Nor I; but there is nothing puzzling about
it as about the picture, finished just before
he he died. That is a legacy I have often
pondered over. Why did he call it prophetic?
I always wonder where the window in it looks,
and that inner door ajar, showing a banquet-
scene. Is it a Christmas revel?"
" One of the female figures resembles you
why, it is meant for you ! "
" Don't, don't say so! It makes me un-
easy, and angry, too; for I will not believe in
the * mystic* nonsense of his scribbling, paint-
ing, and acting tribe."
Bender. 77
" Yet you always let them hang round
you."
"Because they are amusing, often hand-
some, and sometimes have money. But few
come now, except Chartram and Dacre, in
their uncertain visits. I am no longer gay
enough company."
" Pshaw! as if the influence of one who is
dead could thus last!"
"If not, how could there be so many true
tales of curses which have followed individuals
or families through generation after genera-
tion. I never used to believe any such thing.
I am forced to keep the picture under the
terms of Penniel's will, and I cannot help
studying it."
"Did Penniel paint it?"
" Yes. He put me in that festive scene
because I am yet alive. He once spoke of
ghosts as stray revelers after life's banquet.
The vacant seat beside me was to signify
his absence. 'Not eternal,' he wrote; M
shall come back when you least expect
it.'"
"You make me shiver. Let us talk of
other things. What a pretty inlaid table
wild -fowl flying over a marsh isn't it?
Ah! it is just like that one in the picture,
78 & Stras
even to a manuscript lying upon it spread
open under a horseshoe paper-weight."
"You see," said Aura, "one drifts inevit-
ably to that painting. What the manuscript
there represents I have often asked myself.
The one beside you, Dacre wrote. Read it."
It was :
"A FLIGHT OF FANCY.
" In single file wild-ducks drift by.
Dyed red by western glow.
Belated swallows lonely fly,
And strange birds trooping go.
" Though flown from forest-pine remote,
Or from near orchard-pear,
Along the water-depths they float,
As on the heights of air.
" The lake, with mirror-surface spread,
Bronzed by the day's bright close,
To each wayfarer overhead,
A shadowy double shows.
"Ah ! thus reflected in my soul
What flitting thoughts will stray
From hidden source ancestors' dole,
Or sunshine of my day.
" Fantastic shapes that, circling, throng,
Some charming, some unblest ;
I snare one in this fragile song,
I cannot count the rest."
Eeueier. 79
I made another effort to divert her mind.
" What is behind your lovely screen?" I asked.
" Nothing. What is behind that one?" she
asked, pointing to the pictured one. " That
question haunts me like the indefinite meaning
of some passage in Browning or Rossetti."
" What have you learned by your study of
it?"
"What do you discover by examining that
screen near you?"
" Masses of interwoven flowers with trailing
vines and lights and shadows athwart the
whole. Who painted it?"
"Chartram; and while he was doing it he
and I suddenly detected amid those apparently
random dashes of color eleven letters. Look
again begin at the lower left-hand corner and
cross diagonally here are lilies of the valley,
then eschscholtzias, a branch of xanthoxylum
fraxineum, tuberoses, azalias, lobelia, iris-
lilies, oleander blossoms, Neapolitan violets,
ixia-lilies, and stephanotis flowers."
"Well?"
"Don't you see? Two words not merely
spelled by the first letter of the plants' names,
as the old-fashioned ' regard ' rings were set
with ruby, emerald, garnet, amethyst, ruby,
and diamond, but by looking carefully you can
8o <3t
discern, in the seemingly careless spray or
cluster, the letter in indistinct and fanciful
form."
As she spoke and I gazed at the screen, I was
surprised to distinguish so plainly now the
words, Lextalionis! so skillfully placed as to
elude a careless glance. "The law of re-
venge!" I cried. "Was this more of your
old coquetries?"
" No ; I did not tire of Penniel as usual. He
had one charm all my other lovers had lacked :
a stronger will than mine."
I looked at her inquiringly.
"When you went away you remember
I was starving genteelly starving. I met
Penniel; he was engaged to an heiress, i
reasoned with myself that she did not need his
money as I did. I used every art to win him
from her."
"Oh, Aura!"
"I did, I did ! I may own it now, since both
are dead."
"Both?"
" Yes; he broke the engagement on account
of something I told him about her. She died
soon after, some say broken-hearted; but, of
course, we know that is a mere phrase. I pre-
sume she got a cold, or something."
Straj) Easier. 81
"And your refusal of him killed him ? "
"No; I accepted him. All went well until
one night we went on horseback with a party
of friends, on a moonlight trip to* the Cliff
House. While there, he overheard me own
my worship for money. 'Not marry for it ? '
I said. ' It is a woman's duty. 1 And he met
there that night some old friend who completely
disproved all I had told him about Helen Roth-
say, the girl who died. Oh, how angry he was!
his eyes were lurid, he never spoke to me
again. Next day he sent back to me these
verses he had found that Dacre had written for
me to give him as mine, though you know
there is nothing nonsensical about me."
She gave me to read a
"VILLANELLE.
"What clouds of laughing little Loves arise
On buoyant wing are all about me blown !
I dream within the night of his dark eyes.
" How blest to be, though but in flower guise,
Worn on his heart until my life were flown !
What clouds of laughing little Loves arise !
'* Forgotten is the sun, to-day's blue skies,
I know nor time nor space nor any zone ;
I dream within the night of his dark eyes
82 Qt Strag
"By fancied blisses borne to Paradise,
Like some translated saint that Art has shown.
What clouds of laughing little Loves arise !
"Such lotos-eating lures until one dies,
No poppy-petals such nepenthe own ;
I dream within the night of his dark eyes.
"For him my passion waxes crescent-wise ;
Will wind and tide of Fate its sway disown?
What clouds of laughing little Loves arise !
I dream within the night of his dark eyes."
" He also sent me a letter telling me of these
discoveries and taking leave. ' 1 shall avenge
Helen's wrongs,' he wrote, ' I shall avenge my
own wrongs, but in my own time and in my
own way. You shall suffer for what you have
done, if I have to come back from the next
world to make you. Poor or rich, old or young,
sad or gay, remember that I have not forgot-
ten.'"
"He died soon after?"
"Yes; in a year and a day from the time we
first met, which was Christmas Eve."
Company came, and I could hear no more.
Two weeks later, on Christmas Eve, Aura
sent for me. I found her in the same room,
looking thinner and more depressed, and study-
ing the painting.
" Don't!" I said; "you will dream of it."
Strag Beoeler. 83
" I did. 1 have been in the picture, gathered
a leaf from that graceful clump of ferns grow-
ing in the odd jar, sat in that antique chair,
and looked from that open window/'
I could not understand my hitherto matter-
of-fact friend. " What did you see?' I asked.
" The same grand sunrise that thrilled us,
Penniel, Dacre, Chartram, and I, as we re-
turned from a New Year's Eve ball. A sunrise
Penniel wrote about."
She showed me these lines :
"A NEW-YEAR'S DAWN.
"Through fog that veils both sky and bay there gleam
The sun and wraith, red glowing ;
So interblended that one flame they seem
As if dread portent showing.
"Where will it lead us through the year untried,
Through what vast desert places,
Vague tracts of time whose misty margins glide
Within eternal spaces?
"I, weary pilgrim in Life's caravan,
That pillared fire must follow
Past pyramid and sphinx of Doubt and Ban,
Mirage of Hope, how hollow !
"Palm-shaded wells of joy, too far apart,
Long leagues through changeful weather,
Unless that foe in ambush, my own heart,
Leaps, and we fall together ! "
84 & Strajj
" What else happened?" I asked.
" Nothing. I was dimly conscious of coming
from that room into this. I want to stay here.
Tell me about your travels, and divert me."
I talked to her a long while ; then she brewed
rich chocolate, which we sipped as we sat
silently listening to the sounds of mirth from a
party given by boarders in the opposite room,
listening to the fog-horn and the wind, till
drowsiness stole over us insensibly as the fog
crept round the house, as if forming an im-
palpable barrier around a region enchanted.
Suddenly Aura started out of her doze with
a piercing cry, and sat trembling from head to
foot. "I have been there again," she said.
" You have not left your chair." I mur-
mured, half-awake; " you dropped asleep."
" Perhaps you think so ; but I have been in
the picture." She shuddered as she turned
her head to look at it. " There were two
vacant places at the table. I no longer sat
there, but wandered about the outer room
while the guests at supper were watching and
whispering and pointing, and a murmur of
'Lex lalionis ! ' ran from mouth to mouth. I
felt that some horror waited for me and drew
me to that screen, but I tried not to go. I
went to the window, but the view was changed
Strug Eetieler. 85
to the blackness of midnight. I looked in the
mirror, yet saw nothing reflected but the room
behind me. I was not to be seen. I noticed
the perfume of the flowers in the "bouquet on
the table. I saw this room, with our figures
sitting before the fire, with our chocolate-tray
between us, as a picture on the wall of that
room. I took the manuscript from the table,
and found it to be verses, as we thought. I
can repeat them :
BALLADE OF THE SEA OF SLEEP.
When from far headland of the Night I slip,
What potent force within the rising tide
Bears me resistless as the billows dip,
To meet their shifting wonders, eager-eyed,
Or float, half-conscious what stars watch me glide,
To fear when nightmare monster's weight o'erpowers,
Or laugh with nymphs and mermen in their bowers
Through blinding tempest toss on breakers steep,
Or fall for countless fathoms past what lowers
Below the dream waves of the sea of Sleep !
I trace, with sails all set, the unbuilt ship,
And sunken treasure, ere the waves subside ;
Find here the wrecked craft making phantom trip ;
Define the misty bounds : upon this side,
The mighty mountains of the Dark abide ;
On that, the realms of Light expand like flowers;
There, 'tis the rocky coast of Death that towers ;
Here, on the shoals, Life must its lighthouse keep.
Who is it that vague terror thus empowers
Below the dream-waves of the sea of Sleep?
86 Qt 0traj> fteueier.
On shore all day I find slight fellowship,
But in those surges fain would plunge and hide :
Those depths hold joys that none above outstrip.
Perchance I cannot choose what shall betide
Friend flown afar I clasp, dread foe deride,
Forget that sorrow all my heart devours,
Avenge the wrongs that Fate upon me showers.
Not my control can lift the tide at neap,
Nor quell its rise. Who thus my will deflours
Below the dream-waves of the sea of Sleep ?
ENVOY.
Archangels, princes, thrones, dominions, powers !
Which of ye dwarf the centuries to hours,
Or swell the moments into eons' sweep?
Is it the Prince of Darkness, then , who cowers
Below the dream-waves of the sea of Sleep ?
I was full of indecision and fear about
looking behind the screen, but, at last, I did
look"
Her voice failed. I gave her some wine
" What did you think you saw?"
" Think! I saw it."
"What?"
" Don't ask me!" she cried, shuddering.
" I cannot describe it. Can you imagine the
aspect of a corpse, long dead, mouldering,
luminous, all blue light, and threads and tatters
of its burial robe? O God, save us!" Her
glance rested on the mantel. " I will not keep
Strag fteueUr. 87
that rope. I will not! I will not ! Curses on
him and his memory ! "
She snatched down the glass case, broke it,
and flung the rope in the grate. We watched
it as the fire consumed it and for a few mo-
ments held its charred outlines as it had fallen
in a distinct semblance of a closed hand with
index-finger pointing toward the screen ! Our
eyes met above it. "Do poets and artists
possess an extra sense?" she muttered, grasp-
ing my arm in awe.
" But the property I'M stammered in sudden
alarm. " What will you do without that?"
" No one need know at present of this con-
flagration. I will lock up and go abroad. I
will start to-morrow ! "
Just then we heard the voices of Dacre and
Chartram in the hall. We stared at each
other in dismay. "They must not come
here!" she cried, and hurrying toward the
next room disappeared behind the screen.
The next instant a blood-curdling shriek rang
through the room, rooting me to the spot where
I stood. Before I knew anything more, Dacre
and Chartram were standing by me, asking
what was the matter. I could not speak.
Weighed down by a sense of dread, I could
only point to the screen. As they turned it
88
aside, throwing another part of the room into
shadow, the picture vanished in gloom, but
the room took a more picturesque aspect.
The door ajar showed, across the narrow hall,
the open door where the merry-makers paused,
leaning forward with startled faces and anx-
ious gestures. Aura was lying full length on
the carpet, dead ! Her face was full of terror.
Was it only a shadow, that livid line around
her neck as if she had been strangled? As
we turned away in horror, Dacre uttered a cry
of surprise, and touching Chartram, pointed
to the vacant space on the mantel.
"The rope?" they cried with one voice,
like the chorus to a tragic opera.
" She had just burned it," 1 stammered.
They looked at each other. " Did she fur-
nish Penniel with the means to destroy her?"
Dacre asked Chartram.
" Tell me," I begged, " what is the mystery
of that rope?"
There was a moment's delay. Then Chart-
ram gave the startling reply : "It was the one
with which Penniel hung himself."
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE
WEDDING.
THE NIGHT BEFORE THE
WEDDING
Etching.
'Any one may dream." Polish Jew.
Mother. Eh! What? John, I'm glad you
woke me.
Crying, was I?
Oh! it seemed as if I had married Seth
instead of you. Yet it was bitter to lose the
years that you and I have been dear to each
other. May our girl be half as happy !
Father. There, there, Ann ! All have hard
trials in sleep as well as out. Strange truths
show there, and masks fall. I was dreaming,
too. (Sighs.) I wonder what became of my
old sweetheart Jane !
Bride. His friend ! Urge not. Your eyes
are kind. You would be gentle, tender. 1
should adore you ! I only dreamed that I was
bound. I dare go to the world's end, the
fartherest star, with you yet I tremble
91
92 lje Nigljt Before ttye
Best Man. My shy darling ! He is too
fierce, but / why, the whole grand universe
shaped toward ottr blissful meeting ! Fear not,
you and Love and I part never, but, still pil-
grims three, shall pass to Paradise.
Bridesmaid. I wept for this! To be, if
once only, folded to your heart, your fond lips
on mine! My soul's great deep reflects alone
your face ! I could kill myself to keep it there
not know you hers! She care as you de-
serve? I worship you ! Her right is not like
mine.
Bridegroom. You draw me as by a spell.
Before your eyes* fire the world I knew melts
into nothingness! Life was a milk-and-por-
ridge nursery rhyme ! Now first grown to my
full stature, with the strength, the will of a
god, I defy earth, hell, and heaven ! Come !
Servant. (To another as they wake with
a start.) Gone to be married, but changed
about ! I saw them. I was not asleep ! I heard
them ; I got up and looked through the crack
of the door. Downstairs went one couple at
a time. Queer-looking like spirits!
Watch-dog. They came out. Where did
they go? Dust rises in the road as from car-
riages rolling off opposite ways. (Roused.)
Two o'clock and a full moon. (Suddenly bay-
Nig!)t Before il)e toefcbittg. 93
ing.) Powers of Air ! whom dull man doubts.
/see you! / know your work tangling
sleepers' thoughts with luring, mocking, heart-
rending hints of What Might Be i *
THE DRAMATIC IN MY DESTINY.
THE DRAMATIC IN MY DESTINY.
"Who shall say, 'I stand!' nor fall?
Destiny Is over all."
PROLOGUE.
" Alcohol is for the brutish body, opium for
the divine spirit," said Tong-ko-lin-sing, as he
lighted the lamp. " The bliss from wine grows
and wanes as the body has its time of growth
and loss, but that from opium stays at one
height, as the soul knows no youth nor age."
He brought the jar of black paste, rounded up
by layer on layer of poppy petals. " Opium
soothes, collects, is the friend alike of rich or
poor. It has power to prove to the sinner that
his soul is pure, and make the unhappy forget ;
it reverses all unpleasant things, like the pho-
nograph playing a piece of music backward."
He handed me the pipe flute-like, fit instru-
ment for the divine music of Dreamland, though
clumsy bamboo the earthen bowl with the
rich coloring of much smoking, like a China-
man himself. "Dead faces look on us, and
97
98 lje JUramatic in iHg Sleeting.
dead voices call, for the soul then gains its full
stature, can mix with the immortals, and
does ; when alone and in silence, it can know
that Time and Space have no- bounds." He
took a wire, which he dipped in the jar and
held in the flame. " Strangest of all is the
power of opium to form as well as repeat,
even from odds and ends in our minds. There
are herbs which inspire, those which destroy,
and those which heal. The Siberian fungus
benumbs the body, and not the mind; the Him-
alayan and the New Granadan thorn-apple
brings spectral illusions ; why should there not
be those which may cast prophetic spells?"
The few drops of the paste clinging to the
wire bubbled and burned. He smeared it on
the rim of the pipe-bowl. " Opium has the
power of a god; it can efface or renew the
Past, and ignore or foretell the Future."
I drew three or four whiffs of whitish
smoke ; the bowl was empty. Again he went
through the long course of filling. "Though
it bring dream within dream, like our Chinese
puzzles mark their meaning, for our Chinese
saying is, ' The world's nonsense is the sense
of God!"'
I heard. I knew him for my queer teacher
of Chinese, who knew French, English, and
Dramatic in iHg dDesting. 99
Sanscrit as well, whom I was wont to muse
over here in "Chinatown," as over a relic,
until oppressed with thought of the age of his
country, until San Francisco seemed a town
built of a child's toy-houses, and ours but a
gadfly race. I knew the room, with its odd
urns and vases, fans and banners, some of the
last with stain which shows the baptism of
human blood, given to make them lucky in
war; the china and bronze gods, ugly and im-
possible as nightmare visions ; the table, with
lamp and pot of tar-like paste, my Chinese
grammar, and paper and ink ; the other table,
with its jar of sweetmeats, covered with clas-
sical quotations, basket of queer soft-shelled
nuts, and bottle of Sam-Shoo rice-brandy ; the
much-prized gift, a Lianchau coffin, standing
up in the corner ; the mantelpiece, with Tong-
ko-lin-sing's worn lot of books, where the
great poet, Lintsehen, leaned on Shakspeare,
Sakuntala stood beside Paul and Virginia,
Robinson Crusoe nudged Confucius and Hiou-
enthsang, and Cinderella sat on Laotse; and
hanging above them a great dragon-kite which
would need a man to control it. I knew the
Chinese lily, standing in the pebbles at the
bottom of a bowl of clear water on the window-
sill, by a globe of gold-fish; and, beyond,
ioo lj ^Dramatic in ills
the Oriental street (for it was in the region
bounded by Kearny, Stockton, Sacramento,
and Pacific streets, where fifty thousand aliens
make an alien city, a city as Chinese as Pe-
king, except for buildings and landscape, and
not unlike the narrow, dirty, thronged streets,
with dingy brick piles, of Shanghai); the cafe
across the way, with green lattice-work, and
gilding, and gay colors in its gallery; the lot-
tery-man next door, setting in order his little
black book covered with great spots like blood ;
the rattle of dice coming from the half-open
basement next to us ; the cries of stray ven-
ders of sweetmeats ; no sound of any language
but the Chinese passionless drone, too cramped
for all the changes of life's emotions, with its
accent unswerving as Fate ; the only women
among the passers-by shuffling along with stiff
outworks of shining hair, bright with tinsel
and paper flowers, and wide sleeves waving
like bat-wings, broad fans, spread umbrellas,
and red silk handkerchiefs sometimes in one
of these a baby slung over its mother's back,
perhaps one less gayly dressed tottered on
goat-feet between two girls who held her up ;
little children like gaudy butterflies in green
and gold, purple and scarlet, crimson and
white, boys in gilt-fringed caps, girls with
l)e ^Dramatic in JHs UJesting. 101
hair gummed into spread sails, and decked
like their elders ; an endless line of dark, mys-
terious forms, with muffling blouse and flaunt-
ing queue, the rank, poisonous undergrowth
in our forest of men. I was idly aware of all
this. I knew that I, Yorke Rhys, quite care-
free and happy, had nothing to dread. I
calmly dropped down the tide of sleep but
what was this vivid and awful dream all in
brighter hues and deeper shadows, and more
sharply real than Dreamland seems, without
the magic touches of opium? As if looking in
a mirror, like the Lady of Shalott, I saw all
past scenes at once as a great whole. Against
the mystic gloom of opium everything stood
out as the night shows the stars ; the soul had
a mood that could focus All since the making
of the world, and only then knew how far off,
fading, stretch the bounds of Time, the untold
reach of the Universe, which we wrongly
think we daily see and know. I saw into it
all as a leader reads an opera-score. I was
unused to dreaming, being seldom alone and
without time for long walks, and I wondered
when my own mind mocked me with odd bits
it held, jumbled and awry, like my own like-
ness in rippling water, mostly what I had once
thought of, but not as I thought it. Past
102 fl)e HJratnatic in
events started forth, not as what I had gone
through with, but as a part of my inner sense,
with old fancies about passing trifles ; as when
one, though rapt in some strong feeling, may
yet mark the number of notes in a bird's song,
or of boughs to a tree, or of petals to a flower,
as if the mind must be double, we think ; but
in my dream I learned that it is yet more com-
plex. In the vast poppy fields of Bengal,
likened to green lakes where lilies bloom, near
the holy city of Benares, which dates itself
back to creation, I idly plucked a white blos-
som on a lonely stalk, and flung it down, when
it at once changed to a shapeless form, which
chased me. Then it seemed it had been my
curse through far-off ages, the frost that
chilled me when I was a flower, the white cat
that killed me when I was a bird, the white
shark that caught me when I was a fish in
all places a white cloud between me and my
sunshine. My horse, in gold armor, thickly
gemmed, bore me from the field where a silk
tent held my love, with others of King Ar-
thur's court, to a gloomy-raftered cobwebbed
hall, where shield and battle-axe were given
me, and soon I wept over the shattered helm
of one whom I had loved yet killed. Where
silver cressets shone behind diamond panes,
f&tye ?Bramatic in ittg UDestinji. 103
and dragon-banners flew from gilded turrets of
my castle, I waited at a postern in the wall for
a note from my lady-fair, but the pale spectre
of a scorned lover told me she was dead.
Through the lapse of ages, over strange lands,
in old and new-world town or wild, I often lost
my way, but never the sense of an unseen
foe. Now, at a masked ball in some old
palace, where I was dogged by a white domino
with whom 1 must fight a duel ; then, in the
red glare of the southern moon in the Arizona
desert, through stillness overwhelming as
noise, I fled from a figure hid in a Moqui
blanket. By huge fires, 1, too, waited the
coming of Montezuma. I was Montezuma,
held down by weight of the mountain which
bears his profile at Maricopa Wells. My great
white shadow flitted after me across the red
and yellow of Colorado scenery. In the aw-
ful depths of Gypsum Canon, I gazed in de-
spair up at the round, well-like heights for
chance to flee from It. At the Royal Gorge,
peering from the cliff straight down for over
two thousand feet, I gladly saw It at the base.
Eased, I stood on a mountain-top, where, as I
turned, I saw the four seasons most wonder-
ful view that could be brought by a wizard of
old to a king's windows ; but here I suddenly
104 QLl)t ^Dramatic in
found a white mist that turned as I did, and
strove to shape itself to my form. Crossing
the plains of Nevada, It was the white dust
which choked and blinded me from sight of
the pink and purple mist-veiled peaks. In a
Mexican mine, at a shrine to the Virgin, cut in
the rock where her lamp glowed through last-
ing night, It was the large white bead of my
rosary of Job's Tears, which took my thoughts
from prayer and broke my vows. Again, It
was the mirage of Arizona midnights or noons,
and I was one of the coyotes who leave their
holes to howl. It was a spectre that strove to
burden me with the secret of the pre-historic
ruins of the Casa Grande. It brooded as a
mist over the Colorado River while I hid in its
depths a corpse as if it might be my ghost.
Here I could have been safe, since that stream
does not give up its dead, but as a small bird I
was forced to cross a wide sea, chased through
days and nights by a great white gull. Lost
in the jungle of a Chinese forest, I suddenly
came to a clearing where beetle and glow-
worm were staking out a grave for some one
near and dear to me, whose death I could not
hinder. I watched until they began to mark a
second grave oh, for whom? But I was torn
from this sight, and thrust in the heart of a
^Dramatic in Hip testing. 105
Chinese city. I wound through its crooked
streets to a dark flight of steps, which came to
an end; no rail, no step, darkness before I
could get quite down ; and I was again creep-
ing from the top of a like staircase. Over and
over 1 tried to go down these vanishing stairs.
At last, 1 was faced suddenly, as if he sprang
through a trap-door, by a huge white form
that tried to tell me something, some strange
fact linked with my fate, which would explain
a secret that had long chafed me. But what?
I shook with fear Tong-ko-lin-sing spoke to
me. I woke. My first glance fell on the pure,
sweet-scented lily, calm and fair, in its clear,
glass-bowl, and the relief was so great that
tears sprang to my eyes.
ACT I.
" 'Was it not Fate, whose name is also Sor-
row?' " said Elinor.
We were looking at Randolph Rogers's
"Lost Pleiad, " in the inner room of Morris &
Schwab's picture-store.
"No," said I, kindling at a glance from her
fine eyes; "Fate is well named when in one's
favor, but cannot be truly against one. I
could master it ; so could others. Man rules
106 fle Dramatic in
his own life it need not depend on others
he gains what he strives for, and need never
yield to evil forces."
" Then you have no pity for the man who
killed another here yesterday?"
" None. That is the worst of crimes. I
respect the Brahmins, who hold life sacred
even in an insect. No. Heaven may keep
me from other sin I will hold myself from
murder."
" Your friend, Noel Brande, does not think
as you do."
"No; but he gains his wishes because he
is brave enough to try and fight what he calls
doom."
" That is not the only point on which you
differ."
" No; but we are too fond of each other to
quarrel."
" Even Fate could not break your friend-
ship?"
" Never. I defy it."
"It is as good as a fortune to be sure of
one's self," she said, looking at me for an in-
stant with such approval that I was bewitched
enough to have spoken my love if others had
not come in, and we soon strolled home.
Her shy, brief glances stirred my brain like
fl)e Dramatic in ittg JDesting. 107
wine. Was it true that the woman who could
look long in a man's eyes could not love him?
I sighed with joy. I was in the gay mood
which the Scotch think comes just before ill
luck. It had been a very happy day. I had
taken her to drive in the Park in the morning ;
I had found her in the picture-store in the
afternoon. As we went up our boarding-house
steps, I felt that the world was made for me.
As she passed through the storm-door before
me, I stayed for mere lightness of heart to
drop a gold piece in the apron of Nora, the
neat Irish nurse-girl, sitting outside with Eli-
nor's little cousins. Elinor had glided so far
alone that .Si-ki, coming toward her with a
card that had been left for her, did not see
me. I watched him, thinking of what Nora
had told of his skill in making melon-seed
fowls, and carving flowers from vegetables,
and of her dislike for his hue 'Mike an old,
green copper," she said. He did have an odd
sort of tea-color to his skin, not unlike that of
morphine-lovers, but I thought he looked no
worse than Nora, with her face like a globe-
fish. Elinor, with hand on the newel, paused
to look at the card. Amazed and angry, I saw
Si-ki dare to lay his hand on hers, saying :
"Nicey! Nicey!"
io8 &lje Dramatic in Jttji Sleeting.
Elinor's hand that I had not yet held but
as any one might, in a dance, or to help her
from a carriage! The sight filled me with
such rage, that, just as I would have brushed
a gnat out of the world, I sprang on Si-ki and
began beating him. I was in such fury that I
scarcely knew when Elinor and Nora fled, or
that the French lady hung over the railing up-
stairs, in her white frilled wrapper, with but
one of her diamond sparks in her ears, and
her hair half dressed, crying to heaven ; that
the Spanish lady stood in the parlor-door, clap-
ping her hands; that the German professor
opening his door, the Italian merchant running
down-stairs, the English banker, the American
broker, and my friend Brande, coming in from
the street, all tried to stop me.
"Keep back! It is a matter between us
two!" I answered them all. "Between us
two!" timing my blows to my words. I
thrashed him till my cane snapped in two.
" Between us two ! " I turned him out. " Be-
tween us two!" I cried, and flung him down
the steps. " Between us two ! " I muttered to
myself as I went up-stairs to my room, with a
passing glimpse of Elinor, disturbed and blush-
ing, in the doorway of her aunt's room. She
did not come to dinner. The foreign boarders
Dramatic in ifljj JDesting. 109
were shocked or excited ; the others amused or
unmoved; the landlady was vexed. I was
filled with shame to have spent so much force
and feeling on such a wretch, and 'to have dis-
tressed Elinor by setting all these tongues in
motion about her ; to think that I, Yorke Rhys,
high-born and high-bred, should have deigned
to so beat a creature of no more worth in the
world than a worm. But, as I told Brande
that night in my room, I had a strange dislike
for Si-ki.
" He was too cat-like," I said, "with his
grave air, his slyness and soft tread, his self-
contained cunning."
"Yes," said Brande; "our rough classes
are like the larger kind of beast ; those of the
Chinese are like rats and gophers the timid,
wiry, alert creatures who pose on their hind-
legs in nursery-tale pictures."
" They look like a child's drawing on a
slate," I said; " outlines of a man, in square-
cut robes."
"But that Chinese teacher of yours is
worse," said he; "dark as if the gloom of
ages had taken man's shape, with as still
motion, locked behind his reserve, as if cased
in mail. It is like dealing with ghost or
sphinx."
no {!) ^Dramatic in ittg
"He shows the effect of inherited civiliza-
tion," said I; "dignified, priestly, close-
mouthed as if his millions of ancestors in him
frowned at me as one of a short-lived race a
sort of Mormon-fly with its life of one night."
" He and the Chinese grammar both would
be too much for me to meet/' said Brande.
" But they have each their charm," I said.
"The grammar shows the hidden working of
the mind, the laws of thought."
"That early hieroglyphic you told me
about," said he, "of folding-doors and an ear,
which meant 'to listen/ shows the same law
of thought that our landlady has. What hid-
den force let her have only raw coolies for
months after she sent off a trained servant for
his thefts? We hear of their 'high-binders'
and other secret societies. You have not
known the last of that cur you whipped."
" Pshaw ! I soon start for China, anyway,"
said I "glad of the pay promised me there
for three years, and tired of roughing it in
Nevada, Colorado, and Arizona; but I wish
I wish I could have had a chance with your
friends on California street."
" I wish you had," he said; "but never
mind. You will have gained the Chinese lan-
guage, and, judging by your feat of to-day,
Dramatic in JUg UDestins. in
the Chinamen had better not cross your path.
Was it for this we moved to this house of
seven gabbles ?" +'
"For this," I answered, glumly. "Why
did we move?" For we were scarcely settled.
I came to be near Elinor, and Brande because
he wished to be with me.
" There is the cause," he said, nodding
toward the window as a gust of wind swept
by. " People wonder at the roving impulse of
the San Franciscans. It is the wind which
urges and compels them to arise and go ; it has
even driven me to try and mock the monotone
of its chant."
He took from his pocket and read to me
these lines :
THE WIND! THE WIND! THE WIND!
Refrain, refrain, O wind! from such complaining,
Or deign at last to make thy murmurs sane.
Explain, explain thy pathos ever paining
Thy vain desire torments and tires my brain.
Refrain ! Refrain !
At last reveal how vanished ages freighted
Thy voices with their added woe and pain ;
Forbear to mutter I feel execrated.
Urge not, for naught impatience can attain.
Refrain ! Refrain 1
ii2 I)e Dramatic in
At last, at last, cease all thy raging clamor,
Nor beat and pant against my window-pane.
I listen now ; at last thine eerie hammer
Mine ear hath welded for thy mystic strain
Nay, crouch not nigh with clank of heavy chain.
Refrain ! Refrain !
At last thy blast, whose mocking threat just passed,
Must feign new breath. What awful secret (lain
For ages in thy realm of space, too vast
For thought) shall thy next startling sounds contain ?
I fain would flee thy sighs constrain.
Refrain ! Refrain !
Insane, far-off, pathetic tones retaining,
No grain of all that caused them may remain ;
Again renewing in thy wild campaigning
The strain of bugles under Charlemagne ;
Again unearthly voices, summons feigning,
Ordain the death of Joan of Lorraine ;
Again high shrieks that castle-turrets gaining
Thrill pain and dread through Cawdor's haunted
Thane;
Again low sighs (no bliss of love attaining)
That gain the longing lips of lorn Elayne.
Mock strain and creak of hollow oak distraining
Profane magician Merlin in Bretagne.
Complain the English peasant's ear detaining,
Remain to him the sad song of the Dane.
Draw rein, O souls of dead! who ride (retaining
A train of howling dogs) new souls to gain.
To vain and vague lament my thought constraining.
Refrain ! Refrain !
Dramatic in illg EDsstinB. 113
Though rain, though sun thine own rapt mood sustain-
ing
Of vain regret, no more must thou complain,
Nor strain to show, in depths and glooms remaining,
Wild main and reefs that wrecked, old days of pain.
Disdain, deride no more, my whole thought gaining
With skein of subtle hints that are my bane ;
Of rain that slants athwart mid-ocean plaining
While train of shadows crosses heaven's plain,
No reign of stars, nor moon whose crescent waning
Might vein the purple dusk with amber stain ;
Far lane of snow no mortal foot profaning,
Moraine may lock, or iceberg rent in twain ;
In chain of peaks, where thunder-clouds are gaining,
Unslain old echoes rise and roll again
Again. Thine incantations oft sustaining
With strain of distant bells that chimes maintain
Ingrain with melancholy, hope quite draining,
Like plaintive fall of castles built in Spain.
O'erlain with laugh and yell and sob complaining,
The train of sound is broken, scattered, slain.
Regain, constrain to far and further waning
Refrain I Refrain !
How reign such fancies? By thy weird ordaining,
Or lain amid the fibres of my brain ?
The vane of thought turned by thy mournful plaining,
Shrill strain of days remote and love long slain,
Shows plain inheritance of grief pertaining
To train of ancestors whose acts enchain
Old pain, far peaks of woe chill heights attaining,
Faint stain of ancient crime starts out amain,
The bane, the burden of Unrest remaining
Through wane of ages though no clue is plain ;
ii4 l)e Dramatic in ills
Old vein volcanic, quicksands cruel feigning,
Or main in tumult as chance gales constrain,
My brain-palimpsest but dim trace containing,
Made plain, O Wind ! when thy fierce cries arraign.
Refrain ! Refrain !
As he ceased, the wind, which had thrust in
its undertone of sympathy, rose so strongly
that the house trembled like a boat, and in the
close, creeping fog we might have been far out
at sea, for any sign to be seen of the city be-
low us. We sat in silence, broken suddenly
by a quick, urgent knocking. Brande opened
the door. Elinor's aunt stood there, looking
wild. Without heeding him, she called to me :
"How could you do it? Why did you do
it?"
" Because he insulted her," I stammered.
" He has done worse now ! " she said.
"What do you mean?" asked Brande, while
I stood in speechless wonder.
"I mean," said she, still looking at me,
"that Nora brought some Chinese sweetmeats
that she said you had sent Elinor, but it seems
they were given her by Si-ki."
"By Si-ki!" we both cried.
" With word that they were what you had
once promised to get for her."
"Well?" I gasped.
^Dramatic in 4flj) Stestinji. 115
" Elinor, poor girl, at once tasted them "
"And "
" and now lies senseless!"
" Great heavens ! " cried Brande, turning to
me. "Poisoned?"
" Poisoned ! " I moaned.
ACT II.
Chased by Brande as by a shadow, I in
turn tracked two policemen, through a net-
work of horror like a nightmare through the
foreign city in the heart of San Francisco, like
a clingstone in its peach. In single file, drop-
ping story below story under the sidewalks,
we slipped and stumbled in mildew, damp, and
dirt, where the coolies flitted round like gnomes,
where no window let in light, no drain bore off
bad air. We searched narrow galleries run-
ning everywhere, often bridging each other
like those of an ant-hill, and dark ways where
but one could pass. We bent at doorways
that barred our path at sudden turns, peered
into vile dens that lined the way, and, choking
and strangling, climbed above ground, where
we scanned the thousands of workmen in the
many boot and shoe factories and cigar-works ;
hunted through the numberless gambling-hells,
n6 rje Dramatic in
but could not pass the old watchman, with
wrinkled face like a baked apple, sitting on a
stool in front of a red curtain (the color for
luck), before he jerked the cord dangling near
him, when bells warned, doors were barred,
bolts shot like lightning, door upon door sud-
denly thrust itself across our path, or a screen
slyly slid before us, turning us unaware into
another passage. In this way, through secret
signs, the whole ground-plan of a building
would shift and dupe like a mirage. We might
at last find a group of men merely talking,
with neither dice, domino, dragon, or demon-
pictured parchment card, button, nor brass
ring, in sight no copper with square centre
hole, nor other trace of Fan-Tan ; or find such
utter darkness that fear seized us and drove us
out. We viewed their pent, full workshops
and boarding-houses, each story refloored once
or twice between the first floor and ceiling, and
their lodgings where they are shelved in tiers.
We tried to find their courts of justice, but
found secret laws within our laws, like puzzle
in puzzle, and all in charge of the six-headed
chief power, the strong Six Companies, from
whose joint decree there is no appeal. All
hedged from us by a Great Wall of their
language, for what I heard spoken was not the
&!)e ^Dramatic in M$ tH^sting. 117
written language I had learned from books
and of their ways, formed by such long, slow
growth that it is the soul of their past ages
which still lives it is the same Chinese who
lived before the flood who watch us now.
Worn out, Brande and I started for home, but
on the way stopped to see Tong-ko-lin-sing.
He had been playing chess with his friend Si
Hung Chang, who left as we went in, and he
packed the chessmen in their box while he
heard our tale, but said nothing. His face was
a clear blank when Brande asked about secret
societies. I tried all forms of begging and urg-
ing I could think of. He would not know what
we meant. He offered us cigars, and took his
pipe, as if he wished us to go his own pipe,
with a small tube on one side, in which to burn
an opium-pill. Too dear to him to trust in the
hands of a "foreign devil," I had not been
given a chance to touch it. Brande laid a
large gold-piece on the table. Tong-ko-lin-sing
smiled, wavered, but sank back into grave
silence. Brande poured forth a stream of
abuse. Tong-ko-lin-sing, bland and deaf, eyed
his Lianchau coffin with pride, and fell into
deep thought. I opened the door, and signed
to Brande to follow me. He did so, swearing
at the whole Chinese race as sly fools. We
n8 f&tye ^Dramatic in Iflg
were half-way downstairs, when Tong-ko-lin-
sing shuffled out on the landing and called after
us, the English words having a queer effect of
centred force when intoned like Chinese :
" Red-haired devils ! barbarians ! all of you !
Like bears beating their stupid heads against
the Great Wall. Are the black-haired people
not your betters? Great in mind as in num-
bers, did we not make paper and ink, and
print, a thousand years before your time?
and travel by a compass more than twenty-
five hundred years before your Christ?" He
shuffled back, but swung out again to add:
" Do we not excel in dyes, in sugar, in porce-
lain, gunpowder, and fireworks?" He started
toward his room, but turned back to cry:
"Think of our secrets in the working of
metals, our triumphs in the casting of bells,
our magic mirrors which reflect what is
wrought on their backs!" He seemed to
have really done this time, but stopped in his
door for this boast: "Look at our silk, cot-
ton, linen, engraved wood and iron, carved
ivory, bronze antiques, fine lacquer-work!
We make as brilliant figures in the universe
as our rare colors on our famous pith-paper ! "
His grand air struck Brande as so absurd that
in his nervous excitement he laughed. Tong-
lje UJramatic in iUg IDesting. 119
ko-lin-sing darted out again, shaking his fore-
finger at us, as if in the Chinese game of Fi-fi,
or like our " Fie ! for shame ! "
"You foreign devils would be wiser than
your forefathers. You care nothing for the
sages of old. What do you know of our three
thousand rules and forms? You need a tri-
bunal like ours at Peking, a Board of Rites! "
Going through his door, he called over his
shoulder: " What is your poor country? Not
fit for our graves ! To be happy on earth one
must be born in Suchow, live in Canton, and
die in Lianchau. T-r-r-r! Begone!"
I had gone back a few steps, and could see
into his room. I heard a chuckle as his wide
sleeve swept carelessly over the table as he
went by it. He passed on. There was no
money there.
"Who could have foreseen such a lecture
from a jumping-jack in brocade drawers, tight
to the ankle, and a loose blouse?" said Brande,
as we hurried home. " He has the wholly
irresponsible air of a clothier's sign-suit swing-
ing in the wind, but he knows the points of the
compass! "
We found Elinor seemed to have changed
for the worse and still senseless. After Brande
left me I sat in my window, too sad and too
120 fl)e Dramatic in iHg
tired to go to rest. I saw Goat Island loom
large, but blurred by fog, like Heine's phan-
tom isle, faint in the moonshine, where mists
danced and sweet tones rang, but the lovers
swam by, unblest, off into the wide sea.
Elinor and I, too, had touched no isle of bliss,
but passed comfortless into a sea of uncer-
tainty which might widen into eternity. Sweet
as it had been to be on the brink of owning our
love, what would I not have given now to have
some fond words? even but one kiss, to re-
call in time to come if I could not think of
such a loss. I lighted my room, and tried to
read or write, but in vain. I only thought of
her. " Oh ! " I groaned, " if I could have had
some proof that she loved me!" As I sat, I
saw in a long mirror the door behind me open,
and Elinor come! In misty white trailing
robe, she looked unreal. Could it be, I
thought, that they had left her alone to leave
her room in a trance? A thrill of joy shot
through me that she should even uncon-
sciously come straight to me. I sprang to my
feet and turned toward her to find I was
alone! I sank again in my chair. Was I
losing my wits? No she was there there
in the mirror, looking at me with the deepest
woe in her face ! She reached her arms to-
&lje ^Dramatic in ills fttestins. 121
ward me, as if she longed to embrace me, and
looked so sorry, so sorry for me.
" Did I stay with Tong-ko-lin-sing, and
take opium again?" I murmured.
She made a gesture of farewell and half
turned to go.
"Elinor! Elinor!" I cried.
A spasm of grief crossed her face. Filled
with wonder, sorrow, and surprise, I rose
again, but she made a motion of despair and
left the room before I could turn. Did she go?
Was she there, or was my brain wild? My
own shadow, crossing the ceiling toward the
door as I moved, startled me. Had I not read
of the ill-will between shadows and the beings
that live in mirrors? Mad I should surely be
if I stayed longer alone ; yet I opened the door
most unwillingly. The dim hall was still and
vacant. I went to Elinor's door. Her aunt
said for the last half-hour they had not felt
sure she was not dead, but there had just
come back signs of life ; they could see that
she breathed again. The doctor had slight
hope. She gave me a slip of paper covered
with Elinor's dainty penciling.
" I found that in Elinor's pocket," she said,
"in the dress she wore when out with you
yesterday. I thought you would like to read
i22 (l)e Dramatic in
it.*' And the grim, old woman really looked
with pity at me.
I wrung her hand, and rushed to my room to
read :
THE LOST PLEIAD.
"Merope mortalis nupsit."
Spellbound, by planet that I fain would spurn,
To circle like the forms in poet's soul,
Like them for starry heights to madly yearn,
Yet feel the tension of the Earth's control,
And ever drifting seem
Like blossom floating down restraining stream.
Through vast cloud-spaces, up and down I wheel,
While years, like vagrant winds, shift far below?
The stillness of the upper air I feel
Is like the rest the immortals ever know.
Here 1 forget how man
Through haste and strife his life can merely plan.
His life, like that reflected in a glass,
Knows not the sweep of that among the gods
Has its set limits that he may not pass
Except he vow himself to Art's long odds,
And Sorrow's eyes of woe
Must some time fix on each with baleful glow.
More wise than man the acts of Nature are
The little dewdrop pearling twilight leaf
Will take unto its inmost heart a star
Which mortals give but careless glance and brief,
Nor heed when slants the sun
What mystic signs gleam red, gold clouds upon.
HJramalic in iftn EDestinn. 123
Forlorn, I fail forever Pleiad height
Float downward just above the phantom realm
Where Fame and Beauty, Love and Power, take flight,
Fate ever whirling after to o'erwhelm.
See rise the Day's bold crown,
Or muffled Night with stolen stars slink down .
With slow pulse poise while moonless midnights pass.
And vivid on the velvet dark is lain,
By memory painted, that sweet time alas !
When yet I knew, as nymph in Dian's train,
The gods, the stars, the tides,
The sylvan fauns and satyrs naught besides.
Not for the goddess, stag, and hunt, I sigh-
Nor for my sister Pleiades above,
As for the blissful moments long gone by
In rapture and despair of mortal love.
This is the potent spell
Which sends me drifting down the cloud-sea swell !
"It cannot be!" I cried, with bursting
heart. " Our drama is not ended. Some-
where, some time, it must go on, even though
she passes now behind the green curtain of a
grassy grave !"
ACT III.
The next day found no change in Elinor,
and found us again with the policemen, hunt-
ing Chinatown. Standing on corners while a
drove of coolies passed, crowding and bleating
124 1) Dramatic in
like sheep, or the din of funeral music jarred
on our nerves ; down in cellars, damp and
green and gloomy as sea-caves, and the roar of
the city overhead not unlike that of the sea ;
up on roofs as cheerless to live on as leafless
trees, but full of coolies, like chattering mon-
keys no jungle of a Chinese forest less fit
for human life. And through it all I was
haunted by thoughts of happy hours I had
passed with Elinor, which came back like
scenes in another life, as if I had already gone
down to hell dewy garden-alleys with foun-
tains and whispering shrubs, blossoms and
bird-songs, radiance, bloom and sweet scent,
all that gave a charm to life unlike this foul
quarter as a perfect poem to vile doggerel,
music to discord, light to dark. One China-
man we saw everywhere ; on a corner across
the way; at the head of steps as we were
coming up ; at the foot of the stairs when we
were on a roof ; bowing at a shrine with gold
and saffron legends and scarlet streamers round
the door, and through the dim inner light and
scent of burning sandal-wood, the gleam of
tinsel and flare of lamp, before an ugly image ;
in one of what Brande called their chop-(stick)-
houses, feasting on shark's-fin or bird's-nest
soup ; watching a group in a wash-house who
^Dramatic in Jtts ^Jesting. 125
play Fi-fi to see who shall pay for a treat of
tea; in a barber-shop, among those undergoing
dainty cleansing of eyes, ears, and nostrils,
trimming and penciling of eye'brows and
lashes ; or at a market-stall (kept in the win-
dow of some other kind of shop), haggling for
pork, or fish, or fowl its only stock; always
in the background of our scene, even in the
theatre, watching the ground and lofty tum-
bling, until the crowd and noise and bad air
forced us to leave, when, as I came out last of
our party, I nearly fell over him.
" Tong-ko-lin-sing ! "
"Why all this trouble for a woman?" he
asked, gravely. " Women are plenty, for to
become one is a future punishment of ours for
sin when men. I have seen her with you;
she wore the tiger's-claw jewelry you got
through me. Like most American women, she
would not make a * mother of Meng,' our wise
woman, who has passed into a proverb. Then
she wore black, which is ill-luck for body and
mind."
Nothing could have better set off Elinor's
golden hair and fresh. daisy-bloom than the
soft laces and black velvet she had so often
worn beside me at concert or play. I could
almost see her again with me at the thought.
i26 I)e ^Dramatic in
I drew a deep sigh. " Where is Si-ki?" I
cried, making a vain clutch at Tong-ko-lin-
sing's sleeve. But the others had turned back
for me, and my Chinese teacher's jacket and
cap of black astrakhan fur soon melted into
the darkness of some too near alley. Had he
followed us all day from mere curiosity, or
could he help us? We went to his door, but
knocked in vain, though we all saw a line of
light under his door as we went upstairs, not
there when we came down. Disheartened,
we went home. Elinor had not changed. We
could not try to sleep, but sat in my room.
" I wish," said Brande, " you looked as full
of life and joy as you did the last time I saw
you come home with Miss Elinor."
"O Noel!" 1 cried, "if I could but live over
that last happy day, when to see her by me
was thrilling as music, when to breathe the
same air was exciting as wine ! "
" Like Socrates under the plane-tree," he
mused, " 'borne away by a divine impression
coming from this lovely place.' "
1 'Yes," I said; "life was all changed, my
soul was no more pent by bodily bounds, my
eyes saw everything by an inner light which
made all fair."
"That reminds me," said he, "of some
JUramatic in ittg Resting. 127
verses about the picture over Miss Elinor's
piano."
He searched his note-book, found, and read :
AN INTERLUDE.
Tall candles and a wood-fire's fitful burning
Seem like a spell to conjure from the wall
One picture's living eyes, which, though returning
To shadows that engulf, hold me in thrall.
Against the wall a sad musician leaning
Across the strings has lain caressing bow,
But pauses for some thought that intervening
Yet holds him waiting, listening so.
As if of life so near, yet far on-flowing,
Some consciousness had thrilled and made him know
And long to step into the circle, showing
Such charmed one within the hearth-fire's glow.
My life, like his, is picturesque, transcending
What can be felt, or heard, or seen, except
When passing flashes of emotion, lending
Some added senses, over me have swept.
More sad, more glad, and more enchanting
And my existence may to angels seem
Like that of phantom through dim vapors flaunting,
Forever near some vague, elusive dream.
Perchance they mark me pause and look and listen,
In some bright moment's exaltation brief,
As if, though circling shadows oft imprison,
My music waits but for a turning leaf !
i28 l) Dramatic in ills
'"Spirits in prison/" said I; "where do
you think they go when first set free? to
another world, or to the dearest friend in
this?"
" That would depend," he answered, "upon
the kind of spirit that goes. One like Miss
Elinor now "
"Do not speak of her death," I cried;
"though I have thought before that you did
not like her."
" No," said he, " I do not, but with no rea-
son. It is a mere feeling that repels, and did
at first sight, lovely as she is. I need not
speak of her death to say that her spirit is one
that would"
I started. Elinor had come in at the door
behind him, and stood looking at me, making
a sign of caution, as if she did not wish Brande
to know of her presence. What had brought
her to my room? She looked very shadowy
in sweeping, misty robes and floating hair.
Perhaps she was not in her right mind. I was
sorely vexed to have Brande see her come to
me. I had even wild thoughts of blindfolding
him, while she should have time to flee.
"What is it?" he asked. " You look as if
you saw a ghost."
"Nothing," I faltered. While I wondered
Dramatic in 4ft 2 Westing. 129
what was best to do, she looked anxiously at
me, and made motions toward Brande, as if I
meant to do him mortal harm, as if warning
me back from a crime. Such strange move-
ments perplexed me, so that, seeing my ab-
sorbed gaze, Brande looked behind him.
"What do you see?" he cried, as he
turned, and to my horror added, " there is
nothing here!"
Had he gone mad, or had I?
" Don't you see her?" I gasped, hardly able
to get on my feet, for a sinking at my heart
seemed to root me to my chair.
" Poor fellow! " he said to himself in pity.
"He has lost his wits! See, my boy," he
said to me, rising and walking toward her.
" Empty space, all empty space."
He swung his arms about him, but she
moved swiftly toward me, still with the same
air of warning me, then paused and spread
her arms, as if to keep us apart.
"Elinor! What is it? Speak!" I cried,
rushing toward her.
But Brande caught me in his arms, and by
main force bore me to a chair in spite of my
struggles and prayers. A look of despair came
in her face. Her warnings doubled in zeal and
number.
130 Stye ^Dramatic in ills
" Let me go!" I panted.
" I cannot let you dash your brains out
against the wall/* he said.
I made one more vain strain to leave my
seat. He held me in a grasp of iron.
" What shall I do?" he groaned to himself,
and turned white about the lips, for unseen I
had made out to draw my pistol from my
pocket, and now suddenly held it toward him.
" Yorke Rhys ! " he shouted, but did not let
go his hold.
How can I tell it? The room turned black
to me. Then I found Elinor had fled, and my
friend lay at my feet with a bullet through his
heart !
I have a confused remembrance of the board-
ers rushing in. I knew the glint of the French
lady's diamond ear-drops, and the down on her
opera-cloak, just from the theatre, the wrought
band of the German professor's smoking-cap,
and the palm-leaves on the Spanish lady's
cashmere shawl, thrown over her night-robes
as she came from her bed. They thought
Brande had shot himself, for I sat there
vaguely asking over and over :
" Why did he doit?"
There was a murmur of "Don't tell him."
The crowd gave way for Elinor's aunt, who
JBramatic in iftfj ^testing. 131
came and laid my head against her breast in
dear motherly fashion.
" What does Elinor want?" I asked. "She
has just been here."
She only said, "Poor boy!" and smoothed
my hair.
Something in their faces smote me with
dread. "He is out of his head!" they
whispered.
" Tell me," I urged, "where is Elinor? She
was here just now."
The Spanish and the French lady looked in-
quiringly at Elinor's aunt. I turned my face
up to hers just in time ere I lost my senses (or
did that make me faint?) to see her lips shape
the words :
" Elinor died just now ! "
ACT IV.
I lay on my bed, dimly aware of a long,
slow lapse of time. Was it of weeks, months,
or years? I could not tell. Sometimes I saw
the sunshine veer round the room, and knew
day after day passed, but not how many.
Some of the boarders came and went, to my
dull senses like visions in dreams : the French
lady, trim and straight, nodded and twinkled
132 l) HOratnalic in IUj] Resting.
past, whiffs from the German professor's pipe
curled near me, the tinkle of the Spanish lady's
guitar rang faint and far. Elinor's aunt had
often shaken and smoothed my pillow, but I
did not know why nor how I came to be in
this weak state of mind and body, and no one
spoke of it to me even after I could sit up, till
one day Nora brought me a folded page of
note-paper, which, she said, fell from my
clothes when I was undressed the night I
fainted, and she had kept it for me, " because
it had Miss Elinor's writing on it." It was
"The Lost Pleiad." All my weight of woe
dropped on me anew. I knew what star had
fallen from my sky.
" You kept it for me all this time?" I said,
as I gave her some money. " I suppose I was
sick some weeks."
"Months," she answered.
I sighed. How much in debt such long idle-
ness and illness must have brought me ! And
I must have lost my chance for work in China.
Letters must be written. I opened my desk.
It had not been locked, and a pile of receipted
board and doctor's bills I had never seen lay
in it, with a letter dated the very day that
Elinor that Noel that I fell ill, from Brande's
friends on California Street. It told me that
Dramatic in tt HJestinrj. 133
through his strong efforts I was given a place
with them, which made sure the income I had
longed for to let me marry and stay in my own
country. They had kept the place'waiting for
me, and meanwhile paid my bills. Through
Brande's influence ! And I had killed my best
friend ! I gasped for air, opened the windows
and walked the room. I could trace my troubles
all back to that infernal Si-ki. Hastily making
ready, I stole out unseen, and rushed to Tong-
ko-lin-sing. As I went in, his Tien-Sien lark
was filling the room with its song, standing on
the floor of its cage, which was on the table in
front of his master, who sat reading in his
bamboo easy -chair. Tong-ko-lin-sing was
struck with the change in me, and wished to
talk of it.
"I must find Si-ki," I said.
" In a field of melons do not pull up your
shoes," said he; "under a plum-tree do not
adjust your cap. If I go with you, it will look
as if I knew where to find him. I do not."
"You can find him. You must hunt for
him," I persisted.
It was like talking to a blank wall. He was
unmoved except to ask :
" The lady ?"
" Is dead. I must find Si-ki."
134 &l) Dramatic in Jftj) Resting.
Quite shocked that I should be so straight-
forward, he said: "She has ascended to the
skies?''
I nodded impatiently.
" To what sublime religion did she belong?"
he asked.
I told him. I piled a small heap of gold and
silver on the table under his eyes.
He spoke in high praise of her faith, but
added :
" Religions are many. Reason is one. We
are all brothers."
While speaking, he put the money out of
sight, hung up the bird-cage, and opened his
door.
We searched parts of Chinatown which
would have been barred to me without a Chi-
nese comrade ; underground depths, like the
abysses after death ; upper stories and roofs of
buildings that towered in air as if striving for
space to breathe; narrow, crooked alleys,
where loungers talked across from windows
about the American straying there, and
seemed to think I was led by Tong-ko-lin-sing
because in some way his prisoner. He offered
odd trifles from the depths of his sleeves, in
small pawn-shops, which held queer gather-
ings pistols of all styles, daggers, even the
Dramatic in Jfls SDestinj). 135
fan-stiletto, clothes, beds and bedding, tea,
sugar, clocks, china, and ornaments. He
called on large warehouses, where the heads
of great firms met us ; and behind huge jars
the size of men, wrought silk screens, giant
kites, odd baskets, and gay china, but not be-
yond the queer foreign scent of such stores,
we were given rare tea in tiny cups holding
no more than our dessert-spoons. He drew
me through woody ards and vegetable gardens,
and over fish-dryers' sheds. All knew and
looked up to Tong-ko-lin-sing as one who knew
the written language, but could not help him.
He went to the Six Companies; but neither
the Ning Yang, which owns the most men in
San Francisco, nor the Sam Yup, which sends
the most men to other States ; neither the Hop
Wo, nor the Kong Chow, nor the other two,
nor the great washhouse company, could or
would tell us anything. One after another he
asked the throng of small curbstone dealers,
the pipe-cleaners, cigarette-rollers, vegetable
or sweetmeat venders, and cobblers, even the
gutter-snipes.
At last, the cobbler who always sits on the
south side of Clay Street, just below Dupont,
told him something which 1 did not catch, but
he heard with a start. He wavered and urged
136 QLtye ^Dramatic in
me to give up the search. I would not. He
set off a new way, and soon darted into an
alley full of the grimy, blackened buildings
which can never be used after the Chinese
have lived in them, whose dark horrors re-
called some scene elsewhere known in what
past age? I saw round me only the signs of a
civilization older than the Pharaohs. I heard
the twang and squeak of rude instruments,
which, two thousand years before the three-
stringed rebec (sire of our violin) was heard in
Italy, played in balmy tea-gardens these same
old songs of love, difficulty, and despair. Here
crowded the strange buildings, here crouched
the quaint shadows of an Oriental city, known
to me when? where? in some dark-hued
picture?
As Tong-ko-lin-sing started down some
breakneck steps, I stopped a moment for
breath, and looked around me. A street-lamp
lighted a Chinese poster close by me, a signed
and sealed notice from the Chin Mook Sow
society, offering a thousand dollars, not for the
taking of two offenders, but for their assassina-
tion ! I shuddered and crawled down the nar-
row, shaky stairs. On the last landing from
which I could see the narrow strip of sky, I
looked up. Two great golden planets watched
SEtye Dramatic in iHg iDestinjj. 137
me. I groaned and went on. I felt the crooks
of this under-world soon shut all out, like a
coffin-lid. My love was dead. My friend was
murdered. I cursed aloud. I followed Tong-
ko-lin-sing only by the strained tension of my
nerves, through which I saw him in the dark,
as plain as if in light, and heard him mutter-
ing in Chinese, monotonous as the shrilling
of the wind far overhead. He went in at a
door through a long passage that had a
strange smell that made me feel faint, a smell
of death till, after a moment's pause, as if
to make sure he was right, and giving me a
warning touch, he opened a door into a dimly
lighted den, while the sickening scent grew
worse.
"Si-ki!" he called.
What was this ghostly form, white as a
skeleton, which slowly glimmered through the
gloom before my amazed eyes? Dizzy from
the fetid scent, yet held by my horror as by
transfixing spear, with failing heart and quak-
ing limbs, I saw the ghastly figure cross the
rotten, slimy floor toward us.
" My dream ! My dream I'M murmured as
I clung to Tong-ko-lin-sing for support.
An awful voice, discordant as a Chinese
gong, the hollow voice of a leper, a voice un-
138 &l)e Dramatic in illg
earthly as if we had been shades met in
another world, cried:
" Between us two ! Between us two!"
A GRACIOUS VISITATION.
A GRACIOUS VISITATION.
All those strange things and secret decrees and unrevealed trans-
actions, which are above the clouds and far beyond the regions of
the stars, shall combine In ministry. Jeremy Taylor.
Who sleeps on graves, rises mad, or a poet. Tzigane Proverb.
S33
' PPP
The first time so faint and far that I could
not tell it from the hauntings of the inner ear
known to all musicians, the chance strains
evoked for me by the differing keys of the fog
signals.
I lived in a region of remote sounds. On
Russian Hill I looked down as from a balloon;
all there is of the stir of the city comes in dis-
tant bells and whistles, changing their sound,
just as the scenery moves, according to the
state of the atmosphere. The islands shift as
if enchanted, now near and plain, then re-
moved and dim. The bay widening, sapphire
blue, or narrowing, green and gray, or, before
142 & (Orations Visitation.
a storm, like quicksilver. The hills over the
water drawing close, green or snowy, showing
whether their buildings miles away are of
brick or wood, or all is thrust into blue dis-
tance, or brushed away, a bank of fog looking
as if the world reached no farther. The city
lights twinkling of long lines of romances or
hidden by the gray slides that shut off all in
life but the wails of warning to the sailors.
Great heat spreading stretches, as of piles
of white wool upon the water. Sharp edges
everywhere bringing the city huddling into
itself, as in fear of the coming storm. It
is like having genii for companions, so pictur-
esque and constantly varying are the alternate
movement and exchange of currents from the
sea of air and the sea of water, tremendous
forces of life, showing me personality, pulse
and arteries, as traced by Maury, who even
suggests for the ocean a heart the equator.
Their companionship enlarges and enriches the
mind, the air uplifting with its symbolic effects,
the sea responding to movements of far-off
worlds, and a highway for distant nations.
I watched not only our steamers and ferry-
boats and yacht-races, like a flock of white
birds hovering over the blue, but Arctic
whaler, South Sea trader, Mexican, Chilean,
21 rations tJisitatian. 143
and Peruvian coaster, Chinese junk, Austra-
lian and Japanese merchantmen, Malay prahu,
double-decker, corvette, frigate, men-of-war
under all flags.
Never again my husband's ship, never
again !
To have my house full of curios he had
brought from long voyages, and to be able to
always look at the shipping on the water, was
some comfort for the sore heart that sought
loneliness as' a wounded animal hides. At
first there were long, wakeful nights, when I
sat in my window, till the harbor-lights grew
like dear friends. Gradual healing came, in
the stillness which makes the town, although
within stone's throw below, seem yet un-
built; on the pure blasts from mid-ocean
spaces where none have breathed ; in the gor-
geous sunsets that give the meanest Cinde-
rella the freedom of fairy cities ; in never-to-
be-forgotten cloud effects, as when the aerial
sea hints knowledge of ocean depths, showing
mackerel spots or the Pope's signet, once, a
perfect skeleton of a whale, and, before a tem-
pest, a gigantic, livid hand, with its Saturn
finger torn out, pointed long toward the Golden
Gate, as if calling up a gale, or signalling its
coming from thousands of miles at sea. Often
i44 21 Gracious bisitation.
the whole sky was of such terrific import that
I feared Michelet's waves, like a mob of eye-
less, earless beasts, foaming at the mouth, de-
manding universal death, suppression of the
earth, and return to chaos; but I learned that
a dread menace of the sky may mean nothing
here, ending in dire effects on distant waters.
I had no longer to fear for my husband's ship.
I could enjoy seeing a storm sweep in, slowly
blotting Gate, Presidio, Tamalpais, and Angel
Island, in my view hours before its descent
upon the eastern side of the town ; or black
clouds as of thunder over Tamalpais fringe
into trailing wreaths like smoke that blow in-
land, shaking loose rafter and blind, and
rattling door-lock; or hearing a gale beating
doors and windows, threatening down the
chimney, straining to lift the whole house,
and shrieking in wrath about it.
All this made the busy streets very dull.
Born with a sort of temperamental hasheesh in
my veins which makes a book affect like a
whirlwind, a picture soothe as manna from
Heaven, a piece of music seem crushing disas-
ter, I lived in exciting times, as if always look-
ing on at the opera of the Flying Dutchman.
This led to my rhyming about one of its airs.
Orarious faisitation. 145
SPINNING SONG.
Wagntr-Listz.
I turn the wheel of thrumming whir,
Hear tread of life and love and hate.
I burn, I feel through humming stir
The thread is rife with grief and fate.
Witch-cat light purring, purrring light,
Breathe of high wind by wizard sold,
White horses' flight in rushing might
By lashing blast alone controlled.
Yo-ho-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho-ho!
Far sailor-cries float, dinning long,
Blend billowy, fray in thinning throng,
I thrill, I play the spinning song.
Twirl, wheel, whose magic moan and drone
Shades golden hope with tint of gloom.
Whirl, wheel, whose tragic monotone
Braids holden scope with hint of doom.
The wheel the wheel the wheel the wheel-
Dream-spinner moving to and fro
Night hours reveal a plunging keel
Where rolling gale and breakers blow.
Yo-ho-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho-ho /
Far sailor-cries float, dinning long,
Veer billowy, stray in thinning throng.
Sheer thrill, I play the spinning song.
Roll, fashion murmur, in thy gyre,
Of seashells' muffling, that is yet
Dole, passion, all the world's desire,
Brief foam-bells ruffling our veins' fret
146 31 <S>rtui0us tositation.
Glide, slurring, slurring wheel, go round,
Mock cordage-wail of fated sail
Make blurring, blurring of a sound
As if all frail hearts did bewail.
Yo-ho-ho-ho! Yo-ho-ho-ho!
Far sailor-cries float, dinning long,
Blown billowy, spray in thinning throng.
I thrill, I play the spinning song.
In vain my friends, toiling up to see me,
urged me to move, saying it was not safe for
me to live there alone. I never felt lonely.
If not playing or reading, I had my reveries.
In these, since living here, the same scenes
came again and again, as if people sitting by
me had always the same thoughts which I
grew to know, as my husband and I from long
companionship read each other's minds. I saw
granite quays, a vast city of miles of straight
lines, utterly flat; against its pale sky minarets
and domes of pink and gray, as of great Baby-
lon blushing into view through the mhst of
time. Was I looking through telescope at a
dead world, or was this an immense, vague,
dreary marsh? A bog, snow- weighted alders
and willows here and there, and endless rows
of stakes along a plank-road. Big moose with
branching antlers, wolves shaggy and dark,
outlined against a moon-lit horizon. Black
& (Sracions i)isilation. 147
troops of ravens and crows, blown, upset,
borne off helpless in zigzag trailing through
sheets of storm like a fall of white fox fur.
High terraces of birch and maple lengthening
into scattered pines, and yet fewer firs; then
the silence of centuries felt under the copper
moon, beside the rivers of molten silver of a
polar night. Sledge, barge, caravan. A lonely
ship becalmed upon her tremulous reflection
countless fathoms below, white upon the dark-
ness of night, with stars glancing amid the rig-
ging. A vessel rolling with slanting spar and
swelling canvas, flying through the foam of a
wild wash leaping windward. A knot of sailor-
faces, lowering and heavily lined, swaying
with the bound of the ship and showing by
fitful light of a swinging lamp below deck.
An island with tufted tree-tops, and beach so
white as to dazzle.
^
9*
PP
The second time I heard it with quick re-
membrance. An old French sea-song which
Richepin calls that master-piece of an un-
known, a revelation of man and high soul-
tides; the words are few, the notes but five,
the refrain only traderi tra lanlaire et trouloula.
148 21 Gracious Visitation
yet, as he says, all the sea, the breath of
space, cries from wrecks, the mirth and the
terror of the sailor's hard life are there, and
heard at sunset it has the melancholy grandeur
of an evocation of Night. How often my hus-
band and I had together listened to it, the
favorite " chantez" of a French sailor who
voyaged with him for years ! Ah ! that very
day the Russian priest had read in my face a
famished heart.
Looking down upon the Latin Quarter, with
its rows of prim Boston houses, its Mexican
corner-stores, its French tiny conservatory-
fronts, the buildings showing the mingling of
foreign elements in its people, "the character-
istic Russian fleck of gold upon green" shows
the Greek church. I liked to go there some-
times, for the reverent attitude of a standing
congregation, the priests in picturesque hats
and brocade robes, upon carpets spread for
them, the swinging censer, burning tapers, and
chanting of stately music of the fifteenth cen-
tury, allowing neither voice of organ nor of
woman. Here I listened to a relic of days of
hiding in catacombs, the thrilling Greater
Compline, with its striking effect of choirs
upon opposite sides bandying like a ball four
exultant words. The choirs alternate through
21 radons tHsitation. 149
twenty-six phrases, all ending in " God is with
us!" which is at last sung by the united
voices. It is like hearing the earnest prophet
Isaiah himself, for his are the words. Thus I
came to know one of the priests, a stately old
man whose look was that of a human-faced
bull of Nineveh. I like to think I had a share
in what Aivasovky painted, that arrival of
relief from America to the famine-stricken
Riazan. By hard work I was able to collect a
large sum for that fund. When, on this day, I
gave it to the priest he said, after thanking me :
" You have a sad face, Mrs. Trevelyan.
Few of us get through this battle of life un-
scarred. I have known so many, so many of
the wounded. To those who live here for
years it is a city of haunted corners, haunted
not only by our own old footsteps and hopes
that rose and fell to their beat, but by
knowledge that here was a suicide, there a
murder, hither and yon the vague " found
dead." You look like a Russian friend of
years ago. It is one of those chance resem-
blances of face, or figure, or voice, that are so
strange so sweet so sad. For life has its
haunted corners, too, with their own tragedies.
Bitter is a famine of the heart ! I shall pray
for your peace."
150 21 (>rcm0B0 fcisitatiott.
His lofty, Mithraic head-gear did not mar
the remains of romantic blonde beauty. As I
looked at him I wondered what heartbreak he
had known or caused. He gave me a costly
icon, the Madonna and Child with gold-winged
angels round them, all the faces finely painted
on porcelain, and silver arabesques hiding the
figures.
On my way home I went on the green hill-
top. All the southern portion of the city was
shrouded in smoke, it towered above in the
Afrite columns of the Arabian Nights, it spread
low like a tumultuous ocean, no more of the
town in sight than as if the Last Hour had
long been burning it. Against the east side of
the Swedenborgian minister's hermitage a tall
clump of scarlet passion-flowers added its
solemn legend to the scene. It was a purple
and white one I had known running over the
door of my eastern home. The crown of
thorns, sponge, scourge, nails, and five
wounds in this bloody guise cast a weird
gloom as if I had met the Witch of Endor.
Grave and tired I turned homeward. The
owner of a fine house near had gone abroad,
the care-taker, a sad woman who had known
better days, stood at the gate as I passed.
" I hate to go in ! " said she. " The house
31 <B>radotts Visitation. 151
looks bigger and darker and more lonesome
every night ! How strange it is that you are
never afraid ! There has been so much crime
here lately, too."
I said some cheering words to her. When I
reached my house I looked back; she still
stood there. I thought I would go over later
and keep her company a while.
Alone, thinking of her, of the starving
Russians, and of the priest's words, an old
" charm" came into mind, and set me to
rhyming an appeal, not for myself alone,
though worded so, but meant as for all
stricken and despairing.
THE RUNE OF THE HEALING.
Come! forces of an ancient "healing charm/
Begged of soft heart and lofty soul its balm.
Deeper than plummets fall
It has no limitary,
In height or breadth no thrall :
Help! by the heart of Mary!
Help! by the soul of Paul!
Aid, O, brave mother-heart, full heart of Mary,
For one decree we know :
"A sword shall pierce through thine own soul ! " Nor
vary
Our souls, white shields, all show
Like pure Sir Galahed's
A red cross come and go.
152 & Gracious bisitction.
Rossini's Inflammatus , wild appealing,
Breathes, fitly, pathos, passion, depth of feeling,
In keen, uplifting ecstasy revealing
My heart inflamed for thee,
Thy heart aglow for me !
Hear both mild reed, bluff brass, imploring, soaring,
"I weep! I weep! I weep!"
Ineffable the agony adoring,
Sigh upon sigh doth leap,
Grief rippling eddy spreads,
The strings in shudder keep.
"Because unloved, unloved, goes Love, so tender!"
Let me be one with thee, Great Heart surrender
Melt into thee there let me glide Befriender !
The music-tide at neap-
While in I trembling creep !
Kind Powers of overwhelming awe and might !
Immortal allies against mortal plight !
The ages cannot pall
Confiding tributary
That cries when ills befall :
Help! by the heart oj Mary!
Help ! by the soul of Paul!
Aid me, high soul of Paul, illuminating
The way through dark and mire.
Soul of Initiate, irradiating
Cheer from Eternal Fire.
Like pure Sir Galahad's,
Thy strength can never tire.
<3>rad0tis Visitation. 153
Thou great Intelligences close beholding,
Thine things unseen, and the unknown, unfolding
All mysteries that life and death are moulding,
To thee naught can be dire,
Thy fervor 1 desire.
Of vast depths open to thy thought's entreating
What daring hints are thine,
Impassioned mystic ! " Grace and peace " thy greeting,
For to thy wisdom fine
Move with commingling threads
The earthly and divine.
Thy meditation as a planet beaming,
Thy intuition like a meteor streaming,
Thy revelation light from Heaven gleaming,
Let faith and hope combine
With love, the greatest, mine !
Heart
That grieved and pitieth even passing smart
Soul
Caught up into wide vision of the whole
Hark to the eager call
From life but fragmentary
To love fulfilling all :
Help! by the heart of Mary!
Help! by the soul of Paul!
I went to a window, thinking about going to
cheer the care-taker, and the sunset kept me
there. The usual bands of rose and turquoise
of our twilight horizon were not to be seen;
the whole sky was dappled in pink as often by
i54 21 (Stations Visitation.
day in white. The meaning of the low-hang-
ing smoke was shown. The air was in a
tumult of the strange symbolism which seems
to reveal personality, showing broken rainbow,
fallen castle, ruined bridge in the sky before
a storm. Here were glimpses of palaces,
churches, monasteries as of the Kremlin es-
planade. None of the sadness of Gothic art,
with its vain upward reaching, but the true
romance of Muscovite architecture, all its wild
caprices of blue, red, and apple-green, of rose-
in-bloom and lily-in-bud bell-towers, gilded
spires and cupolas, rococo and Byzantine
joined, like fantastic freaks of frost, and here
and there were touches of snow. There was
Frederick the Great's room, coated with amber,
the raised parts translucent; here the famous
pavement of agates. Lovely letters of the
Russian alphabet, in Greek attitudes, drifted
in line, like the decorative frieze in Oriental
palaces. Amid a crowd of half-revealed figures,
the chief one, in Byzantine style, three times
the height of others, even seemed to carry the
long sword of Paul.
The third time, the name flashed upon me,
2t rations Visitation. 155
the Complaint of the Three Mariners. Close
by came men's voices in cooing, sputtering
Russ. Sailors often climbed up the hill to look
at the sea, as actors enjoy the theatre.
Now, the words came back to me :
"We were two, we were three,
We were three mariners
Of Groix."
When I answered a knock at my door five
unknown Russians, sailors, by their bronzed
faces and the dress of three of them, stood
bowing before me.
"Mrs. Trevelyan," said the handsome
leader, a haughty Pole in fur pelisse and cap,
"my name is Vladimir Stroganoff. I am the
supercargo of the Stormy Petrel. We know
of your interest in Russia and call to pay our
respects.''
The second, a fine-looking gentleman, wore
a blue coat with gold buttons, a gold plate on
the shoulder with raised crown and stars and
a number, and a very white flat-topped cap.
He said: "I am Boris Volokhoff, formerly of
the Russian navy; later, master of the Jolly
Polly."
How could a master-mariner's widow re-
fuse? I thought they knew the priest. 1 let
them in.
156 Qi racums thoitation.
The third was a big, clumsy man of over-
bearing way, with a whiskey-bottle sticking
out of his pocket, outlined through his old blue
boat-cloak with a look of hoar frost upon it,
the salt of what far seas! " I am Dmitri
Dmitrivitch, second mate of the Stormy
Petrel," he blustered. "I want to say to
you, Mrs. Trevelyan, you are the one woman
in ten that we Russians say has a soul ! "
The other two were in sailor suits. The
fourth was a wiry man, with onyx eyes and
the indrawn gaze of the wizard Finns; his hair
was like Finland granite, reddish speckled with
gray; he wore ear-rings. On his shoulder,
also bowing to me, perched a tiny monkey, as
if his familiar.
He and the boy bowed first to the icon.
Then he said: " I am Alexis Prayrafsky; and
this boy," motioning toward the last one, "is
Ivan Bitiagofsky, both of us seafaring men,
sailor and cabin-boy of the Stormy Petrel."
The boy was a sad-faced Kalmuck, wearing
one big earring. He handed me some flowers.
The monkey hurried down to present one to
me and dashed back up his master's arm.
" The castor-oil tree in your garden," said
the captain, "looks like an old friend. My
father had a plantation of it."
& radons Visitation. 157
" It pleases us," said the supercargo, "to
find here our petunias, marigolds, daisies, ver-
benas, red poppies and thyme."
"Have you been here long?" I asked.
"Well yes some time," said he; " we are
so to speak marooned."
I concluded they were changing ships.
" You find this a contrast to the bigness and
flatness of St. Petersburg," said I.
" There 's nothing here like St. Isaac's; that
cost millions," the boy burst forth. " To gild
the copper of the cupola fourteen bushels of
English ducats were melted down. Fourteen
bushels of ducats! Our Nevsky shrine is a
pyramid fifteen feet high, a ton and a half of
pure silver! "
"You would like Gautier's words about St.
Petersburg," said I, "a city of gold upon a
horizon of silver."
" Our sky," said the supercargo, "is never
sapphire; it is like opal or the chill blue of
steel."
"Always," added the captain, "like late
afternoon on your Atlantic coast."
" There are times when this looks like a
foreign seaport," I said, "when the water
seems to have risen and crowded the city
under the hills; there are views from these
158 !3l (Stations Visitation.
corners satisfying as food, like the eastward
glimpse from Jackson and Taylor streets."
"The water is always threatening," said
the Finn, "to carry out the Mexican monk's
old prophecy of this city's drowning."
" There are none of these illusions on the
stern coast of the prim Puritans and their
descendants," said the captain. " Mirage be-
longs to a different class of people."
"An atmosphere of miracle," I said, "suits
a city of a saint."
"We have no begging friars in Russia," the
mate boomed at me in a hoarse voice. " It is
not your St. Francis that interests Russians,
but your bear, the favorite animal of our St.
Sergius."
The boy had run to a window. "Look!"
he cried. "A shooting star ! Come to fetch
souls!"
I saw a glance of meaning going from one to
another till all five had caught it.
" One of our superstitions," said the cap-
tain.
I brought forward my samovar a.n& made tea,
serving it in their fashion in glasses, with
lemon and big lumps of sugar for them to hold
and nibble now and then, the monkey joining
in this. The Kalmuck slyly spilled drops
Qt rations Visitation. 159
toward the north, south, east, and west, like
the tribute paid by the New Mexican Indians.
" I used to wish,'* said 1, " that my husband
would go to Russia to bring me beautiful things
made there."
They glanced at each other. Presently the
supercargo drew from his pocket and showed
me bracelets of globes of crystal and of ame-
thyst. The Finn had a spoon carved by monks
with the text: "Seek by prayer and supplica-
tion." Stroganoff brought out a necklace of
rose tourmalines set with diamonds. The
sailor showed turquoises from the old mines of
Nishapur, dozens set in rolls of wax. The
mate's boat-cloak had hidden bolts of tissues
woven with gold and silver threads, and slip-
pers of gay morocco covered with gold em-
broidery. Volokhoff showed a brooch of
exquisite niello work, and then a Moldavian
woman's necklace of gold coins. The monkey
darted upon their glitter and ran home proudly
wearing it.
I vainly tried to buy some of the finery.
They beamed upon me with smiling refusal
that showed their gleaming teeth. " No, no;
not these," they said, and put them away.
" I would like to show you some Russian
ornaments a neighbor has," I said; "we can-
not tell the inscriptions."
160 & rations thsitation.
1 started toward the door. There was a
general rising. 1 found myself surrounded
and got back to my chair, but in the gentlest
manner, by my big-waisted, baby-eyed callers.
"No," said the captain; "let us look at
your curios ."
They politely feigned interest in what could
not have been new to them : costly shawls of
palm-leaf covered Cashmere, and heavily em-
broidered crape, of which, with Flemish guipure
lace, I had made portieres and mantel-drapery;
French trifles in porcelain, gold, and ivory;
crystal and gold perfume-caskets, a fan that
was Pompadour's, some Sevres cups and
saucers; rare old amber Satsuma jars; huge
polar-bear skins ; wide-spread antlers ; carved
tusks, odd bronzes, Parian statuettes and
groups; an emu's egg of palest green, a large
fan of white peacock feathers, a carved teak-
wood table from India ; a cherry-stone brace-
let bearing three years of Chinese carving;
bits of the Constitution, the Bounty, and
the first Atlantic cable ; from Corea a carved
tortoise-shell necklace and box topped with
dragons and a little ivory god that was
never to be laid on its back or it would,
bring ill-luck on the one who gave it to my
husband, her family had owned it for three
01 <B>raci0n0 Visitation 161
centuries; things collected through many
years, numberless, of varying worth, but
some of extreme value.
The Russians vied with each other in trying
to please me with stories. The mate told of
trees of seaweed, mountain-ranges of coral,
and great grottoes of amber. The supercargo
named treasures of the Troitsa monastery:
coats of mail wrought with verses from the
Koran; the chain of the first of the Roman-
offs, every link with an engraved prayer and
one of the Czar's titles, ninety-nine in all;
Gospels encrusted with gems and clasped by
cameos; diamond-set chalices; and brocade
dalmatics worked with flowers in precious
stones. The captain mentioned the African
trees of silver-gray, where the gray parrots
roost unseen.
The boy told of the Granovitai'a Palata, the
Facet Palace, the whole inside known as the
Gilded Room, its gold walls covered with dark
paintings and legends in the fine old Sclavonic
letters, the very height of the dazzling, gloomy,
and imposing. " It is like walking in a story-
book," he said.
They were all pleased with a pastel an
artist friend had made for lines of mine, which
he had framed beneath it.
1 62 Qt radons toisitation.
A FOG.
Dim, shifting shape, the buildings loom afar,
Is it a driving snowstorm held in air?
Almost I hear the sleigh-bells' beating jar
White silence sound but faintly can impair
In scene like crystal ball of icy glare,
For Memory, mystic seer its visions are !
Dim, shifting shape the buildings loom afar,
Is it a snowfall spellbound in the air?
I watch o'er tufted palm the evening-star.
Then aerial currents drifting, duping, snare,
The wailing fog-horn warns of harbor-bar,
On far-off frosty road I seem to fare.
Dim, shifting shape, the buildings loom afar,
Is it a film of snowflakes charmed in air?
"A fog is as mysterious as beautiful/* said
the captain. " There is a wide difference in
the stillness inside and outside. It has inter-
spaces where sound never penetrates; this
causes wreck even near fog- whistles. "
" In the next house," said I, "they have a
pastel much like this, but larger, by the same
artist; let me borrow it to show you."
Again I had almost reached the hall. Then
the supercargo was politely leading me across
the room, and the others were between me and
the door.
"Do not take the trouble," they were all
gently saying.
21 radons Visitation. 163
" Let the Finn show you some of his
sorcery/' said the captain.
At once the sailor's arms were waving, and
the air was full of flying cards which returned
to him and were caught by monkey as well as
by master. Through our silence of r watching
him there came once a sound like a faraway
cry, and again I saw that meaning look go
round. Stroganoff begged for music. I played
Glinka and Rubinstein. Volokhoff sang a
Muscovite love-song, a mingling of joy and
grief; a smothered fire, the southern sun
and northern gloom. Dmitrivitch began to
bellow :
" Five betel-nut palms of Bombay," intones
of a fog-horn, but was checked by the captain.
Stroganoff played strains of Tschaikowsky's
pathetic symphony, showing me the trom-
bones' heart-broken cries, dying away, one by
one, at the close.
"Like expiring torches at a midnight fu-
neral," said he.
" Moliere's ! " I suggested.
"Juliet's," he said.
"Why," I asked, "do people speak as if
deep feeling could be only in play or song or
story?"
"Lord love ye, ma'am!" roared the big
164 21 (B>rad0B0 bisitation.
mate, "we could spin you yarns that beat
playhouse and book all to tatters."
" I should like nothing better," said I.
"Tell her," said the boy, " about the galleon
foundered off Acapulco with crusadoes of gold,
chests of pieces of eight, wrought crucifixes of
precious ore, gold and silver bars, silks, spices,
costly tea, chocolate, and sweetmeats."
"I might tell of fire at sea," said- the cap-
tain, "or wild adventure on the coast of
Africa, when I was in the ' black ivory ' trade
and could have got one hundred blacks for one
white woman."
" I could make your blood run cold, Mrs.
Trevelyan," shouted the great mate, "all
about being hemmed in by icebergs, or chased
by sharks."
" Speak about the Manila ship," the boy
said, "that had four hundred and fifty in the
crew, carried a hundred and fifty pirates,
prisoners, and a three-million-dollar cargo of
gold, satins, musk, jewels, wines, and con-
serves."
"I can tell of St. Elmo's lights," said the
Finn, " or of were-wolves among some wedding
guests."
"Tell," the boy urged, "about when the
pirates counted out five hundred and ninety-
21 <B>racion0 bisitation. 165
nine guineas in half and whole pieces, all of
Queen Anne's time, yet fresh and delightful
to feel of."
"She wants to hear," asserted the mate,
positively, "about a ship being ketched in the
bottom of a whirling blow, in pitch dark, noth-
ing left of creation but a hole of lightway up
over us, the eye of the storm, we calls it,
leering down to see how we takes it, or how
to upset us."
" I want her to hear," said the boy, " about
the three ships Dampier met, laden deep as
they could swim with tons and tons of quince
marmalade, that would have had eight hun-
dred thousand gold pieces only they got wind
of freebooters."
" 1 could make your face as long as a wet
hammock, ma'am," cried the mate, " about a
masked cap'n, and a lady made to walk the
plank."
" Come, come," said the supercargo, "Mrs.
Trevelyan is not to get nervous. Let us tell
her our own story. You begin it, captain."
"That'll ease off a point or so for each
man," thundered the mate, "a five-stranded,
left-handed twister !"
The captain began : " The Jolly Polly was
a tramp vessel, now smuggling opium, or
i66 21 radons Visitation.
musk, then in the ' black ivory ' line, another
time carrying pirates' treasure. I need not
say what cruise I was on when we sighted a
ship we had several times heard of from ves-
sels spoken. They reported her as 'acting
strangely.' She carried a distress-signal, the
reversed ensign, and colors that cried 'To
Speak/ yet she was said to run away from
any attempt to reach her. When we saw her
she carried fore-sail, lower top-sail, spanker
and main-sail set; everything else was in con-
fusion, as if dropped suddenly. She was
painted blue, with a fine red and gold line her
length, and a red, blue and gold figure-head.
The name on the stern read The Stormy
Petrel. She seemed to wait for us, gently
swaying, as if but a mermaid's fan in motion,
she was so far and small to the naked eye.
There was no gleam from polished brass and
glass as she moved ; all looked dingy. As we
came up there was no answer to our cries.
Nobody showing on deck to watch the coming
of the boat I sent, I had curiosity enough to
set off myself in a second boat. There was
no one on board the Petrel. We could find no
trace of hurt; she had not struck a reef or
been run into; stern, sternpost, and rudder
were all right. Seamen's chests and some of
& (^radons bisilaiian. 167
their clothes left about were dry. They had
not met very heavy weather. A little bottle
of vanilla on the cook's table had not been
upset; the pitch in the water-ways had not
started; hull, masts, and yards were perfect;
there was not a crack in the grimed paint of
the deck-house. The deck was smeared
everywhere with old stains of blood. It was
flush-decked ; you looked from the taff rail along
a platform whose length was broken only by
skylights, the forward windlass, and once by
the galley long-boat, but that and all the boats
were gone. The cabin was large, panelled in
pale blue and red and gold, and light with a big
stern window. There was a woman's long
black cloak here, a lace handkerchief and
carved ivory fan there. A table under the lamp
bore books and papers. A woman's diary,
made of loose sheets, had dates of months
after the last entry in the log, but now weeks
old. It was merely bits about the weather
and her being all alone. There was a piece of
poetry in the same writing on a sheet of paper
fallen to the floor, where there was also a
small square of paper, folded once, with the
word 'Act/' on it, in a man's writing. The
captain's chronometer, sextant, and charts
were gone. No bills of lading, no manifest,
1 68 Ql (^rations Visitation.
were found. The cargo had been taken away,
but small wedges of gold were scattered about,
proving it had been a treasure ship. Why it
had been deserted was a riddle we did not
think we could ever solve, but in the hope of
salvage-claim we took the Petrel in tow.
"Some days later we all heard^ one dark
night, the whistling of a Russian air, but could
not tell where it came from. The crew thought
the Petrel might be haunted; but I was sure
the sound came from another side, and long
hung over the starboard rail listening. It came
and went, a fine, loud whistling of a beautiful
old tune, slowly louder and louder, till the man
in the forecastle cried :
" ' It's right off the bow, sir; but I don't see
anything.'
" Again and again it rose and fell, with a
hopeless sadness in it that curdled my blood.
I ordered the Polly stopped and had rockets
sent up. At last these showed a little boat
drifting close by, with a boy sitting in it and
whistling, whistling, with no sign of seeing
or hearing us. I had a boat lowered for a mate
and some rowers, and had port-fires burning
to show them how to find the boy and come
back to us. When the boy was hoisted on
board he cried :
Qt (Sradons Visitation. 169
cap'n and the second mate! Why
have n't I come across 'em?'
"He was dazed and could hardly be made
to eat and drink what was brought him, and
soon fell into the dead sleep of exhaustion. To
all our questions his only reply was once to
exclaim :
"'Oh! I was so afraid of drifting ashore
and finding Chocolate Charley and his
gang!'"
The captain rose, and saying "Allow me,"
carried a light from the mantelpiece to a table.
It was the third time he had moved the lamps ;
he had them now near windows. I concluded
that his nerves took whims.
"I wish I hadn't! cried the boy. "I
wish I had'nt! But how could I know ? And
I was so afeard ! It was blessed hard on me,
too ! When I see the Jolly Polly I thought it
was only one of my dreams till I see it was
tugging another one that lurches and peeps from
behind just as if on the lookout for me, but
trying not to have me find out it was the
Stormy Petrel. I was in one of my queer
spells. I could n't help myself. I let 'em take
me on board. When they all crowds round,
asking this and that, at first I says :
" ' I don't know about that ship.'
1 70 & radons faisilation.
" But I used to sit and stare at it so that
Cap'n Volokhoff says at last:
" * You do know about the Petrel ; I see it in
your face.'
'" Where is the lady?' says I, for 1 was
most dead with wanting to know.
" ' There was nobody on the Petrel when we
found it,' says he.
"My heart was full; I couldn't see. I
burst out crying, and cried a good while, for all
I had left her there alone. She was so kind,
and pretty enough for a figure-head, and I
liked her so much till the last, and then I was
only afeard. When they sets us adrift in the
Petrel we knowed it was going to be all chance
with us, but we tries to cheer each other up.
" She says: 'We must meet some vessel.'
" ' We 've got lots to eat,' says I.
" ' We are safer here than on some island,'
says she.
"1 says: 'We've got rid of Black Bill's
blue mug and his boosy set.'
"I tells her fine pirate-stories, only she'd
laugh when I did n't see anything funny. She
tells me of grand doings at court ; soldiers there
with big diamonds in their epaulets and sword-
hilts ; ladies in dresses of lace ' like a spider's
web,' says she, 'and worth as much as rubies
21 <S>rad0ns tHsitation. 171
and diamonds/ She 'd been to a great ball the
night she come to the ship.
" ' I had not gone home/ says she, * when I
was forced to hurry to the wharf. 'I had to
pay the driver of a droski with my lace over-
dress. It was a fortune for him.'
"Her handsome yellow satin she wears
caught up all round over her lace-trimmed
skirts, rather tumbled and soiled now. She
hides it all under her long cloak, only on deck,
when it blowed chilly, she has to wear my
pea-jacket and the bo'sun's sou'wester ; though
that couldn't hide the fine lady. She was
good company then. She tells me about see-
ing nine bushels of pearls at the Troitsa mon-
astery, just left over from embroidery. She 'd
been to feasts where she had real caravan tea,
the ten-dollars-a-pound kind, not hurt by sea-
voyaging ; and oysters and grapes and water-
melon, brandied cherries and sugar-glazed
filberts !
"We tried to forget where we was, for we
could n't bear to stay on deck, on account of
the splashes of blood, nor in the cabin it was
too lonesome. It was hard to take in that we
two was there alone, after all we 'd known go-
ing on up and down.
are going to meet the Portuguese
172 & radons Visitation.
carrack that never come home,' says I, 'with
a castellated stern rising into a tower from
her poop and pooproyal, and in her hold
thousands of pounds' worth of gold and silver
bars, ingots, doubloons and ducats, gems, and
minted money. That's the ship you ought
to be on ! '
"'It does sound like 'my ship',' says she.
" The time come when we didn't say much.
We watches for days a smooth swell, most too
lazy to go by us, and the slow sway across
the deck of the shadow of the mizzen-mast,
like a lullaby, listens to the straining of bulk-
heads, clicking of doors loosely hooked, and
the flapping of the canvas, till we feels we
might as well be dead and under hatches.
Then a breeze would send us skimming like
the gulls slanting against the wind or hanging
in the air round us, for the lady makes me
scatter feed on deck for 'em. When we 'd
feel the stir and rush we 'd cheer up and
watch the snow of foam behind us and see
things in it, same as you can looking in the
fire. She see flower-wreaths, hearts, and stars
mostly, but I could make out fortress and can-
non and smoke of battle. Dear heart ! how
afeard she was of a stiff blow, when the rig-
ging screamed and the mast-heads leaned over,
21 radons Visitation. 173
and we has to steady ourselves by rail or be-
laying-pin. Once or twice in many weeks
we see ships creep out and in the haze on the
horizon. I hoists the colors 'To Speak ' and
a brand new white ensign I finds in the color-
chest.
"'To show 'em we ain't pirates,' I says.
'When they ketches sight of that the first
mate with a telescope will run up on the
main-royal yard, the second mate with a tel-
escope will climb up on the fore-royal yard,
and the cap'n will be trumpeting : 'Ahoy ! '"
" She laughs and says : ' Think of their sur-
prise to find, after all that hurrah, only a
woman and a boy."
" But the vessels we see gets swallowed in
fog or we did. And the Portuguese carrack,
too ! After we 'd been hurried along for days
by short winds, or stopped as if anchored for
weeks, she gets downhearted. I knowed by
her eyes that she cries a good deal, but she
never let me see her doing of it. She knowed
it was dirty luck for me, too. She asks me
about my folks and makes me tell her things
she could say to 'em in case she ever got
home and I never did. I wants to do the same
for her, but she says :
" ' It is better for you yourself that you
174 & radons bisitalion.
should not name me. There is only one I
want to reach. I don't know where.'
" One day I see her leaning over the bul-
wark rail and goes up to her. She was looking
where the ensign shadowed a white streak
under the stern that made me think of a burial
at sea and the body sinking.
" 'Haul it down! ' she says, with a shiver.
' It is too like a shroud ! '
" So I does, but I hated to lose such a big
signal. Then she takes spells of walking,
walking, walking sometimes all night above
and below, all over the ship ; though, while she
was in her right mind, she was shy of the
bloody deck. I put off and put off trying to
clean it up ; it turned my stomach to think of
it. After a while she would n't eat nor talk,
but sits all the time writing, writing. I got
afeard of her big, wild eyes and crazy ways,
and when I see a branch with green leaves on
the water, I says to myself:
" 'We can't be far from some island; I'll
risk it I 1 I'd always been fond of sitting in
the cap'n's gig to watch the foam and spray
about the rudder when we gets a breeze, and
she did n't mind my going there now. Little
by little, I lays in provisions, and one night
when she was standing behind the interlacing
Qt <5radons Visitation. 175
of the main shrouds, looking ahead, I sets to
work and slowly, one end at a time, gets the
gig lowered. Right you are ! The night was
mild, the lady had no wrap, her hair was
dressed very fine, and she was a-letting down
her long train. The next minute I knowed
she 'd be a-pacing to and fro, a-singing a polo-
naise, and a-playing she was at the ball. I
seen her do it lots of times. Over and over
I 'd put off going, and maybe I 'd stayed this
time if she hadn't set up her forlorn piping.
A polonaise is just a high swagger of a march,
no more dance of the hornpipe sort than stand-
ing still is, and when the music is sad, like the
' Oginski,' it is all sobs and a catching of the
breath. So I drops gently after the gig, and
lets the ship move off with naked davits and
hanging tackle. I hate's to lose the Petrel ; as
I looks up at it the spars was tossing against
the moon as if it knowed, from flying jib-boom
end to the taffrail, the whole yarn, and was
uneasy as I was. I was sorry right off when
I could n't get back. A wind rose and carried
me away. I lost sight of the ship and found
no island. 1 felt it serves me right for desert-
ing the poor lady. Some nights, when the
sky was a mass of stars, there was liberty
and brightness of morning, but the others I
1 76 21 radons l)isitalion.
Folks on shore don't know what the dark
means; at sea it is thick black, like velvet.
Sometimes all the top of the water would
flicker and gleam, as if thinking about me or
trying to tell me something. One black night
there comes up a wet squall, and the lightning
looks to be slanting right after me. I was too
scared to do anything at night, but on a calm
day, though I didn't know what way to go, I
used to row and row till I was dead tired and
didn't care what come. I was lonesome for
the lady, and I missed the noise of big sails
beating the masts. I knowed no vessel would
sight me, for often a haze shut the horizon in
to within a few yards, and in clear weather
my boat on the big blue made about as much
show as a bird. I found I'd only divided a
clove hitch, the lady and I had each now one
to ourselves. So I goes on, day after day,
night after night, never knowed when some
big monster might knock my boat over and
drag me down, and soon I had nothing left to
eat. One night the full moon hangs like a
big gold-piece in the sky, and I could seem to
hear the lady singing the Ukrainian love-song,
* The Moon.' I could n't bear to hear her it
was sweet, but just like storm-clouds coming
up, it made me want to cry yet the time had
31 radons bisitation. 177
come when I begins to whistle it for company
every night. I got forgetful spells, when I
didn't know how I come to be there alone,
and, by the powers! each day and night
seemed a year long. It was a rum start to
find the Jolly Polly had got me, but the queer-
est of all was when the lookout soon after
sighted an island, so far away, shining and
sparkling, and the water pounding so white on
the reef I thinks of a bit of green glass dropped
in snow. The air was so clear, like looking
through a telescope, we see a man come to the
shore long afore we gets nigh. The sun was
like a ball of fire sinking into an ocean as of
blood ; there was a red glare on the whitening
breakers, on clouds of sea-birds, on the dazzle
of green and white, and on that figure standing
on the beach, as if he 'd sent for us, the man
the crew of the Petrel thought had danger in
him, they says :
" ' He and his shadow is the worst cards in
the pack ! '
" It was calm as if he had been tying up
the winds in knots of his handkerchief. Here
was the Petrel coming right back where
she'd been set adrift, and there stood, by
the men's yarns, a Finn who could sail a
ship in contrary winds.
178 Qt radons thsitatian.
"'The Knave of Spades/ they calls him,
'and his shadow, the Nine Spot?'
"There was a little imp standing beside
him, no bigger than a sprit-sail knot, and I
says to myself :
'"That's the Ace!'
Here the restless boy left the room, run-
ning to the front door and back. I thought he
feared the Finn might not like his words ; still
he had been dodging out and in all the
evening.
"When I see two ships driving tandem,"
said the sailor, "and as they draws near
makes out that the hind one is the Petrel, I
was struck all of a heap.
" ' Shiver my timbers ! ' says I to the mon-
key. ' If it ain't the whole blessed ship, from
cross-trees to kelson ! '
"And the monkey takes off his cap and
scratches his head and smooths his chin, and
tries, too, to think it all out.
" I see the boy on deck of the Polly, but no
sign of the lady. They sends a boat off for
me, and when I climbs aboard the vessel, here
is Ivan ready to square off at me.
" 'Do you know each other?' says the
captain.
"'It's the Knave of Spades! He has got
& (^radons foisitation. 179
us back,' cries the boy. 'The Petrel was
here and he cut the hawser.'
"'What could you see in the darkness?'
says I. 'It was Chocolate Charley, 'cause he
suspects I wants to get aboard and leave 'em.'
" 'Where is he? Where are they all?' says
Ivan.
" ' Gone to the bottom or come out t' other
side of the world ! ' says I. ' Black Bill give
me a mauling, and they clears out when I
knowed nothing. Where's the lady?'
" ' Gone,' says he, and turns his back.
" The Petrel had a fiery set of Malays, Por-
tuguese, Chileans, and a lot of half-breeds.
Some of 'em had been ugly and put in irons ;
that cripples us by want of hands, and a big
blow drives us leagues and leagues out of our
course. They lays it all to the Finn. One
dark night I was at the wheel, but I knows
what 's going on, that the first mate, who was
on watch, is being gagged and bound. It
wa' n't no use for me to try to stop it.
" Black Bill, one of the Malays, says to me:
' Old Jack of Spades, just keep off ! You
might have put one of your spells on 'em and
saved us this trouble. But we '11 keep you to
whistle up winds for us.'
"Chocolate Charley, a quadroon, and
i So & radons Visitation.
Gentleman George, a Portuguese, who might
have been an earl, he was so high and mighty
and lazy, gets the cap'n and second mate on
deck by some trick, and then has four men
seize each one.
"'Now/ they says, 'we've taken the
ship! You've got to agree to navigate her
where we say, or we '11 cast you adrift.'
" The cap'n was pluck clear through. He
swears blue streaks and thunders out : ' I
scorn to even answer you ! '
" The mate loves a fight, and he sets to and
trips up two of the men holding him, and
punches another on the head and doubles up
the fourth by a dig in the ribs.
"'Look out for squalls, cap'n!' he says.
"I '11 attend ioyour men now.' And he steers
for 'em.
"There was an orderly set on board, too;
they gets at the arms-chest, as well as the
others, and comes a-running up and takes
sides agin Chocolate Charley and his men,
and so here was as pretty a fight as ever you
see, bang of pistol and clash of cutlass in a
pitched battle right off and the deck running
blood.
" 'You ought to have sanded the deck first,
man-of-war fashion,' I sung out.
01 (Smmoas toisitation. 181
"'You mind your wheel!' hollers Bill.
We '11 sand the deck with bodies ! '
' ' There was a good deal of dull thumping of
the deck, and many goes overboard without a
boat and with a stiff air of thinking they could
walk the water, or not caring whether land
or water waits for their feet. The first mate
was one of these, died where he was gagged
and bound, maybe from fright at being help-
less. There was few left of the good men
and true sort, and they was mostly the scared
ones who never shows fight. The launch was
lowered, the cap'n and second mate forced to
go over into it by pistols held at their heads.
The cap'n was fond of his ship, let alone the
disgrace of losing a treasure-cargo, and as the
Petrel sheers off his last look at us was pitiful.
I knowed he was steering near the wind;
they 'd killed him as much as if they 'd shot
him. He was speechless, but the mate yells
and yells back till the ship lost hail of him,
telling the leaders of the mutiny what blasted
fools they was, for none of 'em could navigate.
The first thing was to help themselves from
the ship's stores, and they drinks all hands
quiet for a spell. The poor lady had heard
the row and locks herself up and tells through
the door anybody that comes that she is ill.
182 & (^radons bisitation.
She was such a frail wax-doll they cares noth-
ing for her more than for a foam-wreath.
They tears and yells and sings till they drops.
When they sobers up, they has a long talk and
decides to land at some island and bury the
treasure to lose its link with the ship.
" * There was a stiff blow last night,' says
Chocolate Charley to me, * and we knows
who called it up, you Jack of Spades, and
we're not going to risk our cargo with you.
Just you find a desert island now, if you
values your life ! '
" I knows more about setting a course than
they thinks, so I steers in a certain direction,
though it was many days afore we sights an
island; and Chocolate Charley was suspicious,
and used to stand and glare at me and want to
curse, but hardly dare, 'cause they was afeard
of the Finn's power for bedevilment. And I
don't know but some of 'em thought I con-
jured up the island we finds. It did look like
a vision, with its coral-grit like drifts of snow
heaped on the dark blue water, its tall spikes
of grass, its clumps of cocoanut-trees with
tufted heads, its glaring green, and its birds of
gold and red and blue. We could n't get very
near, and the treasure has to be carried ashore
by boat-loads, and some of it gets swamped in
21 (Srcuiotis Visitation. 183
the surf. I'll not deny 1 was looking at it,
hoping it might. It took several days. The
rest of us men goes ashore, too ; the scary ones
had to help.
"I finds out, one afternoon, why supplies
was taken off the vessel, too. Chocolate
Charley was the only one for burying the
treasure; Black Bill was for building a big
raft, to get picked up with it at sea, and no
proof it was a steal nor trouble of coming
back to dig it up, and nobody else finds it. I
overhears Gentleman George mutter :
" * If we leave it here, we 'd better bury the
Finn with it to leave him on guard.'
'"If you do,' says I, 'by the powers! re-
member me when the next storm rises, that 's
all!'
"At dusk I steals down to the water's edge
and waits for the steady ones, meaning for us
to get back to the ship on the sly and get off
with the lady and cabin-boy left on board. I
could navigate well enough. There was such
a thunder of big rollers I hears nobody behind
me. The first I knows I gets flung up the
beach. Chocolate Charley was sawing away
on the hawser with his sea-gully. He had a
sheet in the wind's eye, and never thinks how
taut the Petrel was pulling. When the haw-
184 31 <S> radons Visitation.
ser snaps, it jerks him into the surf. The
vessel starts off in a hurry. I see the lady in
the big stern-window, a light behind her. She
springs to her feet. The boy shows dimly,
hanging over the bulwark rail ; I hears his
faint cry for 'Alexis ! ' for we gets on well
together. Chocolate Charley, carried by the
tide, goes plunging after, as if in chase, and he
never comes back. The scary ones did n't get
round. Black Bill and Gentleman George
come running down, thinks I cast Chocolate
Charley into the water, and falls upon me;
Gentleman George, too lazy to do more than
hold me, while Black Bill give me such a drub-
bing I knowed nothing for days.
"When I comes to myself there was no
noise but the beating of the surf on the reef.
It was broad day. There was this little
man," patting the monkey, "stands by me
and looks anxious.
"When he finds that I see him, he offers his
paw, as much as to say :
" ' Let me know if I can do anything.'
" I was too weak for a while to stir. When
I could sit up I see all the litter of raft-building.
They must have shanghaied the timid men for
the sake of having their help. They had left
pork and rum and biscuit, 'cause they was
01 (B>raci0tts bisitation. 185
afeard of me. 1 had been simply marooned.
It wa' n't likely there was any cache, though I
hunts some, but finds no sign. The company
of the monkey was worth more than the
treasure there. Poor little castaway, he must
have been some wrecked sailor's pet, for
monkeys are not found on those islands, and I
never heerd of one that had evoluted into
being born with a little cap, which he has on
when I first see him. He was fine company,
not to talk, but a deep thinker ; he used to sit
by me watching the sea for a sail, and look
dreadfully old and wise seemed to know the
most of the two of us. He would climb a tree
and throw cocoanuts down, and take care not
to hit me, and watch me fish, as if he felt him-
self above such silly trifling away of time,
always staying by me, unless he sees 1 means
to shoot a bird ; then he runs into the woods
till the noise is over. Sometimes he would
study hard over a tattoo-mark on my wrist
and arm ; it was plain he thought it ought to
run up to my shoulder ; he would push up my
sleeve and puzzle over the matter and look up
in my face. So I made out that his master
must have had the long tattoo he was remem-
bering. When 1 first see the Jolly Polly stav-
ing along with the Petrel behind, I says to
i86 & Gracious bisitation.
him : * By thunder ! ' And he claps his paw
on his knee, as if the sight was just what sur-
prised him. When the Jolly Polly takes us
aboard he acts all at home, and sits up in the
rigging as if he was hired for the lookout.
The boy and I could n't talk much about the
lady. We did n't think to see anybody belong-
ing to the Petrel, but as we goes into Honolulu
I grabs Ivan's arm, and says I :
"'Did you ever lay eyes on that man
afore? Over there, at the top of the landing-
stairs. See him stare at us ! '
" 'Lord!' says the boy.
" But we never run afoul of Black Bill
and Gentleman George, and you may lay
to that. As soon as I stands up again on
that there island 1 spends the same hour
every night thinking of 'em and their raft,
and dancing three steps to the right, three
steps to the left, and three turns with my
arms raised to the full moon, and whistling,
whistling, whistling. You get great help in
such things from doing of it in a lonely
place; you needn't think your wish with
such heavy under-lines, so to speak; mine
took to 'em like pitch.
' ' There was a shipshape gale come up that no
raft could live in / ' '
21 (S>raci0ns Visitation. 187
The sailor's little wizard-chum gave him a
pat on the head, as if in high approval.
"Who the lady was or where she come from,
nobody on the Petrel knew," the big mate's
rumbling voice began: "If she'd waited till
daylight the police or custom-house officers
would have ketched her. It was along in the
third watch she come gliding down the wharf
like a black shadow. As she sweeps along
the deck we see right off she was Ai, fore,
main, and mizzen. Under her long, black cloak
there was the edge of a primrose satin ball-
dress. She seems sort of wild to find some
one she expects to meet, and begs the cap'n
to wait wait wait! But he sees she was
a way-up lady and was afeard of trouble. She
didn't tell who was to come, only says
'Wait!' Our supercargo was a stranger,
who didn't come nor send word. The cap'n
scented some police business; so off we goes,
hand over hand, right on time. The cap'n
give her the cabin the supercargo would have
had, and the officials overhauling us afore we
starts did n't notice there was any door where
the cap'n slid the big screen he kept for scary
times. When we gets fairly off up she comes
on deck. She had all us officers taut in tow,
first look she was a dainty duff, with lots of
1 88 & (Stations tesitation.
plums, but she didn't see anybody there.
She just cries and wrings her hands and holds
her arms towards the last of the Russian shore.
It is queerly level to what this coast is, so flat,
so low, just a pencil-line between sea and sky,
the slope of the water often hiding the land,
the lighthouse towers looks like sails.
"'Oh! for your wings to go back to go
back ! ' she cries to the gulls.
"The captain tries to calm her, and gets
her to go below agin, and there she stays
for weeks. She 'd only just come on deck,
biting lemons all day, when we had the
mutiny. There was great wonder about our
missing supercargo, and through that it at last
got told about among the crew that the Petrel
was a treasure-ship. We did have, but did n't
mean to have all hands know, six hundred
thousand pounds in gold from the big Golenski
mines, even where it was consigned kept
secret, so far, by the captain and first mate.
We had weeks of fog and days of gale, and
that tremendous blow, after some of the ugly
men had been put in irons, sends us far off our
track, and the Petrel was a lost bird till she
could have all hands at work.
"I never sailed along of a harder set; I
knowed Chocolate Charley, Black Bill, and
& (gracious bisitation. 189
Gentleman George was ripe for the gallows,
but I didn't think they'd break out this trip
till I found them athwart my hawse. It was
a lovely fight after I sails slap in. Blows and
kicks and cries and stamp and rush of feet,
and roar of shots and cutlasses clashing, and
the deck slippery with gore ! Lord love ye !
it was fun ! Never got so thirsty in my life !
Pity the leaders got drownded, I'd have liked
to dangle 'em, a pretty row of 'em, from a
yard-arm ! If all the steady men on board had
been decent and loved fighting as I do, as a
baby loves sweets, we could have got Black
Bill and his gang into irons. And when that
mess of swabs cast the cap'n and me loose, I
was swearing mad, 'cause I knowed we could
have got the best of 'em, if there 'd been
enough spunk on board. When the cap'n see
his pet ship going off with this here precious
cargo right afore his blessed dead-lights and
knows the cruise is bungled for good and all,
he jumps overboard. All his plans about ship
and treasure, all his concern in life amounts to
a few bubbles floating by me ! I must have
been within half a plank of death, tossing in
that there boat nigh upon a month. I got out
of provisions; the soft-headed lubbers flung
only a little stock on board; it's a wonder the
1 90 Qt rations Visitation.
likes of 'em done so much. I turned light-
headed, and when I hove in sight of the Black
Gull Ijknowed nothing of it; but they sees and
sends a boat. 1 was for fighting when they
sheers alongside, and they has to seize me. I
was sick for weeks after they left me at Hono-
lulu. When I gets outdoors I goes to the land-
ing-stairs and sits in the sun with other salts
stranded there, to do my share of jawing about
rot'ry storms and pirates.
" There was a Russian not long from China
and Japan that I had some talk with; but I
never thinks, by a long sea-mile, that he
knowed anything about the Petrel, till the
Jolly Polly come a-towing of her round the
bight. When I gets a bit over my own set-
back by it, I sees a sudden change in this
man's face, a whiteness, a set holding of him-
self together, as if some shock was a-threaten-
ing to knock him to pieces.
"'Do you know either of the ships?'
says I.
"He looks at me as though he did n't know
what I says; and it was plain he couldn't
speak."
The mate took the sailor's cards into his
ragged fingers with livid patches of nails and
set himself to playing solitaire ', keeping his air
<3t Gracious tUsitatian. 191
of bluster toward the game, and fierce, even in
his silence.
" The day before I was to leave .St. Peters-
burg," said Stroganoff, "as supercargo on the
Stormy Petrel, a note came inviting me to the
theatre, signed by an unknown name. Lock-
ing my door and lowering my window-shades,
I dipped a glass-brush in a corrosive liquid and
wet the paper. The common ink vanished.
The page turned blank. Then, like a flock of
wild geese trooping across a pale autumn sky,
letters in another handwriting rushed into
sight. Here was a notice to appear that night
at an ' illegal ' tea-party to be given by our
'Circle' at the house of Vassily Botcharov,
late ataman or leader in a military affair which
had failed. This was to talk of and guess at
the unknown fate of some members of our
Circle who had been lost by the late failure,
doubtless carried off secretly. I was about to
give up this life of constant dread. I would
not have gone to Vassily 's but for the hope of
persuading my friend F6odor Bolchakoff and
his betrothed, Nadia Hilkoff, to also leave the
country. They had become too well known
as at least 'sympathizers' with the Circle.
Fodor was still a 'legal' man, living under
his own name, with a genuine passport, but we
192 3t <B>rad0ns Visitation.
knew he had been lately watched. He had
' tarnished ' his rooms by letting a refugee stay
there. Nadia was an aristocratic convert to
our Circle, had inherited money, and, to divert
suspicion, still wore clothing too costly and ele-
gant for one of her views. She looked very
beautiful that evening when we three mingled
with the dancers at a ball in the Taurida
Palace; her dress was of point-lace, over
primrose satin ; bouquets were held on shoulder
and skirt by clusters of diamonds, and there
was a string of pearls in her hair. F6odor was
as fine-looking as she."
The Finn, leaning toward me with his eyes
intently upon me, pointed to Stroganoff. I
had a vision of this handsome man, not in his
fur pelisse, but dressed as a military officer,
gold embroidery on his uniform, diamonds on
his heavy gold epaulets, buckle, sword-hilt
and scabbard, stepping through the stately
polonaise, with the beauty, in the famous half-
mile of ball-room and conservatory with
twenty thousand wax-lights on pillars, on
plants, tracing border of friezes and outlining
arches.
" Petroff, one of the intermediate class who
aid secretly and know movements and ad-
dresses of the Circle and its friends, said in
my ear, as he passed in a dance :
Qt radons bisitatiou. 193
" 'The wolves are out to-night/
" This need not mean that they would visit
Vassily. In a waltz Nadia whispered :
" 'I met Dudorov Katchenski.'
" 'Where?' I asked anxiously; he was one
of our 'disappeared.'
"'On the Nevskoi Prospect. Swiftly as
my carriage passed, he yet made the sign not
to speak to him.*
"We could not leave the ball too long be-
fore others."
The vision fled. Stroganoff wore his
pelisse and sat before me. The Finn sank
back, drawing the long breath of exhaustion.
" Hours after midnight are especially danger-
ous, yet Vassily's safety-signal in his window
awaited our coming. Nothing had been learned
of other vanished members.
" There was still to be ' removed ' the official
of the Fortress, who had lately escaped the
Circle. Such officers know our unbroken law,
not to follow if they take themselves off; but
he boldly stayed, and we had letters from the
prisoners complaining of fresh cruelties from
him. To decide who should move as our
avenging hand, Vassily wrote 'Act/' on a slip
of paper, folded and placed it, with many look-
ing like it, in a Chinese jar, stirred them as if
194 21 radons Visitation.
a careful brew of poison, and offered the bowl
to each of us. No sign was made as to which
one had drawn the word. I feared Nadia's
heightened color betrayed her as its owner. I
felt sure she had it when she gave all her
jewels to Tchartkoff, an old gray-beard who
had just been to Paris to sell such contribu-
tions to the Cause and was going again. I
urged her and Fodor to leave on the Petrel ;
but, as we say, the mind muddled the reason ;
they would not hear of it.
" Tchartkoff startled all by flinging a big
bomb among us. It exploded from the fall into
a thousand bits of candy a French device.
" ' Is it ready?' he asked; for names of per-
sons or things are left out of the Circle.
" ' I have to fit the touch-holes, that is all,'
said Vassily. His wary ear caught some
sound, which made him snatch the candle from
the window, just as Petroff tore up the stairs
and burst, breathless, into the room, crying:
" ' Save yourselves ! The police ! '
" I managed to murmur to Feodor and
Nadia : ' Come to the ship if you can get
there/ and then we had fled by different ways.
" I doubled and turned through our secret
roads, passing across gardens, and even
through houses, but as soon as I stepped into a
& (Stations Visitation. 195
main street I was stopped, and twenty-four
hours later was on my way to Siberia. None
of our Circle were in my gang of prisoners.
There was no way to learn whether they were
in some other lot or were not caught. To ask
would bring them into danger they might have
eluded. So with torture about them for my
close companion, I crossed that awful desert
where villages show like mustard-seeds, scat-
tered so far in the white waste. To escape
would be only to die by hunger or by wolves.
Even the few trees hold their branches in
gestures of fear and despair, softened only by
powder and filigree of snow from a low sky
of unbroken gray. The Great Post Road was
punishment enough. I was saved from work
in the Nerchinsk mines. I met in Siberia a
high official, who, on account of old family
obligations, secretly helped me to join, in
disguise, a tea-caravan returning to China.
Another journey of week after week, that
long land route to Shanghai, by sleigh through
Siberia, camel through Tartary, boat and mule
through China; but now a sense of freedom
gave me strength.
"Uncertain what to do, weary in mind and
body, I wandered to Nagasaki, and then to
Honolulu, where I lingered, not knowing that
196 Ql racious bisitation.
I waited to see, with amazement, the arrival
of the Petrel, to hear the story of the
captain of the Polly, and to walk up on his
left and say:
" 'I was the supercargo of that ship.'
" I steps up on the cap'n's right," said the
gruff Dmitrivitch, "and I says to him, says I :
" * I was the second mate. ' "
Furious with himself about his game, he sat
glowering at the cards.
Stroganoff had gone to the piano, and was
softly playing.
" Then," said the captain, " I sold the Jolly
Polly and the chance of salvage-claim for the
Stormy Petrel. We all had a touch of cholera,
and there was not much left of us when we
reached San Francisco."
"Thank you," I said. "How I wish I
could have seen what the lady had written ! "
The captain drew from his pocket a folded
paper, yellow with age and blue with damp,
opened it and read to me an appeal from the
poor lady to her lost lover. The undercurrent
of Stroganoff's music made it seem very
touching.
" It has the stress of Mascagni's Intermez-
zo!" I cried. "And he never knew!"
" That is as it may be," said Volokhoff.
Qt radons tHsitation. 197
" We cannot tie and unite knots in the
thread of destiny," said Stroganoff.
" It leaves the story so incomplete," I said.
" But that is real life. Or is it that our
glimpse is uncertain?"
" Life is a bungled voyage anyhow,"
growled Dmitri vitch. " By the time you gets
the hang of your sealed orders you're too nigh
port to set your course different, and you 're
sure to wish you could."
He was in another fume over solitaire, glar-
ing at cards and Ivan till the poor boy ran out.
" What a man is to know would be sure to
reach him," said Volokhoff. "We have a
story of a captain who put to sea without pay-
ing a debt contracted on a relic of the cross.
A storm arose, which he calmed by throwing
overboard a chest with the money, which
floated safely to the claimant. He was to
receive it; it could be sent recklessly."
"As we say," said Stroganoff, "what must
be, must be."
" Now, she is dead," I said, sadly.
"What is being dead ? " cried the Finn, with
indifferent air, looking at me with pity through
that veiled gaze of his onyx eyes, always look-
ing in rather than out.
" If we only knew ! " I cried.
198 01 <&>raci0ns Visitation.
" Creations of one kingdom, marine, animal,
or vegetable, " said Volokhoff, "frequently
imitate those of another. So the spiritual
body is often born with a mockery of physical
blindness and deafness."
The Pole had glided into a strain by Chopin.
"You are the only one/ 1 I said, "lever
heard interpret that angelic voice as I do. It is
not grieving, but comforting."
I brought him my rhymes about it.
FUNERAL MARCH.
Chopin.
Hear muffled throb of the heavy hearts, helpless and
terrified.
Death, like a wind, blowing fragile web of their affairs
aside,
Tore it and tattered and dashed it to earth, stunned,
aghast, they chide :
Merged in the One? Or transfigured self ? What and
where is the dead ?
Death is a sphinx, in vain Life has put ear to its lips
and pled
Blank desert space ! And may be no more though All
were to be read.
All of the body wants are met,
How should the spirit famish yet?
Its thoughts are dream and vision pearled,
For its delight there lies unfurled
(Stations bisitation. 199
Transcendent beauty of the world,
Though but pontoon to bear ye, hurled
Above what dizzy deep on deep !
Below illimitable steep !
Through vastness ye in grandeur sweep i
Yet fear and question, yearn and weep !
The answers in your longings leap !
What know ye? Where Earth wheels in flight,
Thrown by one of the shapes of might
That weave the stars in web of light?
What on the moon's far side is lain ?
Why tide of wind and sea complain ?
How thunder roars in rolling wane
A burst of sobs through tears of rain ?
Why sap in weed or pine-tree vein
Stirs, winding as to piper-strain?
How one loam yieldeth balm and bane ?
Could / change when the mere plum-spray
Engrafted on the peach may stay
An individual branch? Nay, nay,
That great law moveth not astray,
I still am /, shall be alway !
And I then gone because unseen,
Though not when wall might intervene ?
Yet, Nature warns, mark shrivel, cower,
The clematis ; the orchid dower
Of hidden strength awaiting hour ;
The deathless resurrection-flower ! *
* South American. One which the writer's family has had
nearly forty years, looks like a ball of brown evergreen, English-
walnut size, but expands to a saucer-like lily whenever put in
water.
200 21 <8>rcui0tis feisitation.
Though wide the field of night and deep,
The dark no sickle-moon may reap,
The dawn-flushed clouds in radiance heap ;
Foreshadowings so round ye creep,
But dull to miracle ye keep,
For of the hints that hide and peep,
How great is this : ye rise from sleep !
Hear leaden beat of the hapless hearts, sullen,
rebellious, tried.
None know the Truth's rapt exaltation, or who could
here abide?
Yet Voice of tender vibration ! now this their
thought as they glide :
The dragging worm in his cloak of fur knows not of
overhead,
He, too, must follow his kin, wrap himself in a dying
bed
What beauty rises ! What joy ! On inaudible wings
outspread !
He read it aloud. He and Volokhoff looked
at each other and then at me.
They spoke together : " You are right, Mrs.
Trevelyan."
Ivan came in, muttering: "Seitshas! Set
tshas! (Directly, directly!)
Dmitrivitch muttered back: " They'll have
to belay that talk ! "
Again that meaning glance ran round among
them.
21 (Stations ibisitation. 201
Volokhoff rose, saying: "Vladimir, son of
Stroganoff, it is time."
The clumsy bulk of Dmitrivitch, in my room
filled with frail treasures, made his " Stand by
to go about! " as he rose, seem needful.
We had a last round of tea with a general
"Vosh durrivia!" (Here 's to you !)
"Mrs. Trevelyan, pardon our long stay,"
said Stroganoff, with that unseen motion that
gives play to the pelisse, crosses, doubles, and
clasps it around the body, which it swathes
mummy-like.
" You are not likely to see us again," said
Volokhoff.
" We shall not forget you," said Ivan.
Dmitirivich loomed over me in an effort to
be gentle that was yet alarming. " Recol-
lect," he said, "if your ship is ever in irons,
on a lee shore, the Russians will come to the
( f
You will hear us spoken of to-morrow,"
said the captain.
" I am glad you came," said I; " I am sorry
for exiles."
"That word is not used in Russia," said
the supercargo. "We say and please re-
member us as ' involuntary emigrants.' "
" Sometimes you gets in the midst of a hur-
202 QV tSrciricms imitation.
ricane and your masts going over the side
before you knows it," darkly hinted the big
mate, " but don't you be afeard. Just think
of yourself as safe right among
" ' Five betel-nut palms of Bombay.' "
" Think of the marooned," said the Finn.
I opened the doors ; they passed out, bow-
ing.
The boy gave me the comforting cry of the
sea-watch : "All 's well ! "
The monkey, impressed by all this leave-
taking, took off his tiny cap to me, but the
lurch of the sailor's shoulder forced him to
hastily put it on and clutch his master's collar.
They filed off into the darkness from whence
they came.
The mate questioned: "Napravi?" (to the
right ?) The captain ordered : * ( Na leva / ' ' (to
the left !) and away they went.
As their steps went down into Jones street
their voices rose with true swinging deep-sea
roll in other lines of that old, old chant spread
from Breton fishermen to sailors of all coun-
tries :
" The north wind, the north wind,
The north wind came on to blow."
Farther and farther, fainting away in the
01 (Stations bisitation. 203
mysterious night, like a salt breath of mid-
ocean, or cries of sea-birds over the lonely
deep, a concentration of the poetry and color
of a calling filled with the sublime symbolism
of air and sea.
So I lost my friends. I have never seen
them since; but in nights of storm I have
fancied I heard on gusts of wind their voices
cheering me from afar with :
" We were two, we were three,
We were three mariners."
There was such a sense outdoors of the
night being far gone that I drew in and
locked the door, thinking "It must be too
late now to visit that poor care-taker." To
decide I looked at the hall clock. It was past
two!
I slept late next day, only roused at noon
by long and loud knocking at the front and
back door, even upon the windows. I hurried
into a wrapper and opened the front door.
Who were these urgent callers, with eager,
anxious faces, exclaiming, as if relieved, " Here
she is!" and "She is here!" and crowding
upon my steps? Not only neighbors, but po-
licemen and reporters and some of my friends
from the Mission, Hayes Valley and Oakland!
204 31 (fi>raci0ns bisitation.
They looked at me with an air of doubting
that they really saw me.
"You are alive, then!" a reporter said,
and two or three of my friends began to
cry.
"Why not?" said I. "Why do you come
like this?"
A policeman spoke: "The houses on each
side of you were broken into last night and
robbed, and the care-taker of the fine house
was brutally murdered ! "
"It was lucky for you," said a neighbor,
" that you had a party."
" You are mistaken," I said.
"Well, your house was lighted in every
window, up and down, back and front," said
another.
Was this the reason of Ivan's running
about ?
"And we heard music! " said a third neigh-
bor.
" Nothing else could have saved you," said
a fourth; "lots of folks know about your
valuable curios"
I could not believe my kindly pink-cheeked
blondes were in league with those criminals.
I explained nothing. The reporters went off
in a huff. One of my friends took me home
& <5rari0us biaitatian. 205
with her. Others insisted upon coming to
stay with me at night.
It was late in the afternoon when I left my
friend, a sea-captain's wife living on Tele-
graph Hill. I came down Greenwich street
and was looking over at the green and gray
of the Russian Church, thinking of Pouch-
kine's St. Petersburg:
" Under a pale-green sky,
Weariness, chill, and granite ! "
when the Russian priest came up the steps
at the corner of Washington Square.
" Mrs. Trevelyan ! " he cried. " In a city of
battle, murder, and sudden death, you are yet
safe, thank Heaven ! "
" Saved, too, by a call from some of your
countrymen," said I, and told the story.
"Stroganoff !" he cried, as if stunned, and
made me repeat the tales told by the super-
cargo and the boy.
He grew younger as he listened, with his
eyes on fleecy clouds in the west. " Poor
Nadia ! " he murmured.
I had not yet told her name.
The long slope northward of Russian Hill
rose sharp-edged with light from an amber
sunset, but that was not the gleam I saw on
his face.
206 & Gracious Visitation.
The slope is like the graceful flank of a
mastodon, and, with the house on the brink
of Vallejo street, overhanging Taylor, re-
minded me of the children's drawing on a
slate, where a house in the left upper corner
has a path leading from and to it, undulating
until it forms an animal, with the house for
its head.
The Latin Quarter at this hour is like a de-
serted village; but one or two passers-by
greeted the priest as "B&tiushka" (father).
One old man, more intimate, said:
" Good evening, Fodor."
The story was complete, I thought. We
went down into the Square to cross by the
diagonal path.
"The lady's poem," he said with a sigh.
" If I could only have read it ! "
" I remember it," said I.
We sat on a bench near the giant willow,
and I repeated the lines as if another voice
spoke through me.
A CRY IN THE DARK.
O, if I knew, if / knew, if I knew !
Against flood-tide of grief and dread and smart
How prove my faithful love ? by what sure art !
The Judgment Day I shall forget to rue
Qt radons t)isitation. 207
If it but bring us face to face, we two !
Hear me ! though in abysmal broken heart :
On pinnacle of joy upraised, apart:
Or here, unseen, the while I weep for you.
Who shall forbid my message? It should leap
The wreck of worlds, black chaos, touch with glow
Cloud-drift of spirits in tumultuous flow,
Your thought in sudden lift and splendor steep !
I call to you from my soul's utmost deep,
Now if you know, if you know, if you knowf
The priest's face shone; the kindling of an
inner light had grown into radiance.
We left the Square, following Powell street,
and turned up Vallejo, where Russian Hill
seemed to rise to meet and listen to us,
abruptly towering above us, dark, sinister
even with its lanterns, like a ladder of light
for several almost upright blocks. It took
the part of a third person in our talk, one
who knew most.
The dog-howl whistle of one of our men-of-
war pierced the air. I thought of the erect
bearing of Volokhoff and Stroganoff. " Is
there a Russian man-of-war in port?" I asked.
"No," he replied, "nor any Russian ves-
sel."
The hill loomed nearer, higher, the street-
lights wavered, as if the wisest one of our trio
2o8 & Orations tHsitation.
drew breath. We turned up Mason street, for
I must skirt the steep hill.
" There are no strange Russian sailors here
now."
"Would you be sure to know ?"
" Certain; they do nothing new without
burning a taper before a saint in church."
We crossed Broadway, and a few steps
southward paused and looked back. I was to
call here for my friends who were going to
stay with me.
" Come to the church, to-morrow," he said,
"and I will give you a motiben.
"What is that?"
" Prayer, chant, and the burning of incense;
a service of thanksgiving to your guardian
angel. You had a night-watch to keep you."
Even in the dimness I could see that sudden
look of youth still wrapping him like a mantle.
Aloft over tightly packed roofs, rising high,
crowding north and west above the Spanish
church the last street light of the great hill
flared as if out of the sky. From our almost
diagonal view across the block there looked no
road to what seemed a friendly sign from hid-
den guard.
I asked what I had not before thought of :
" Why do they call it Russian Hill ?"
Qi <B>raci0tis biaitation. 209
" Oh ! you have not been here long ; you do
not know !" he replied. His right hand was
on his breast. I saw the third and little finger
draw into the palm, in the Russian sign of the
cross. "Years ago before I fled from the
Nerchinsk mines they buried on that hill
five unknown Russian sailors."
A SWORN STATEMENT.
A SWORN STATEMENT.
Being the Deposition of Mr. Audenried's Valet.
This ae night, this ae night,
Every night and alle,
Fire and sleet and candle-light,
And Christ receive thy saule.
Lykewake Dirge.
1 first met Mr. Audenried through his adver-
tising for a valet. I liked his appearance, and
engaged with him at a lower salary than one
of my experience and ability will usually work
for. He was then living in a furnished house
on Rincon Hill, whence he could see the bay.
He sat for hours looking at it and writing
verses. He had money, but was neither
young nor strong, and seldom went out. He
had been very handsome, was still fine-look-
ing, with eyes that glowed with a lurid, in-
ternal fire.
There was one other person in the house, a
quiet lady, yet one to be noticed and remem-
bered. 1 pride myself on my discretion. It
was nothing to me how many " Coralies" or
213
214 31 Sworn Statement.
"Camilles" existed. It was long before I
alluded to her, though I met her in the upper
hall, on the stairs, and sometimes found her in
the room with my master and myself, or just
outside the door, standing near, as if waiting
for me to go. After a while, I got the notion
that she did not like me, and it made it
unpleasant. After long thinking it over, for
I did not want to leave, I gave a month's
notice.
" Why is this, Wilkins?" says Mr. Auden-
ried. " If it is a question of wages, stay on.
I like your quiet ways,*' says he. That is
just what he says.
"To tell the truth, sir," I says, "it's not
my pay it's the lady, sir."
"What!" says he.
So then I told of her air of watchful dislike,
and how I was not used to being spied upon,
and that it was needless my recommendations
could all show. He turned quite pale, so white
that I thought Heaven forgive me if I'd made
trouble between them, for she looked sad
enough anyway. He did not speak for a long
while.
Then he muttered to himself: "TKyman,
too!"
He made me tell him all over again. Then,
Qi 6morn Statement. 215
after a pause, he says: "Find me another
place, Wilkins, and help me move."
So I thought there was a quarrel; We did
move from house to house, from street to
street, from city to city, all through the State
and to others near. Mr. Audenried never
spoke of her, nor noticed her, but as soon as
she came, as she always did come, he at once
gave the order to start. He seemed to watch
my face, and I fancied he knew in that way
when she was about. I wondered what their
story might be, and tried to make out from
verses he wrote that time, but all I could
get hold of were these :
PROPHETIC.
Unto the garden's bloom close set
Of lily, larkspur, violet,
Sweet jasmine, rose, and mignonette
More beauty lending,
Fair Marguerite stands in the sun,
Plucks leaves from daisy, one by one,
While Faust, impatient, sees it done
And waits the ending.
See ! on the garden-wall behind,
Their happy shadows plain defined,
Bent heads and eager hand, outlined
Like soft engraving ;
2i 6 Qt 0uj0rn Statement.
And there athwart their fingers' pose
A shape whose presence neither knows.
Mephisto ! 'T is his head that shows
A cock's plume waving !
Sometimes we rested a few days or weeks,
sometimes went on, day after day, without
stopping, but she was my master's shadow;
she followed us everywhere. I used to try
and puzzle out what their secret was. If it
had been love, it must now be hate, I told
myself, seeing how they often met and passed
without a word. He did not appear to even
see her.
We had come back to San Francisco, and it
was nearing Christmas-time when I was first
seized with my queer spells. We had taken
another furnished house, far out and high upon
Washington street. I thought we had got rid
of the woman; but coming home late one after-
noon I found her in the window, while my
master had been looking over his writing-desk.
Before him lay withered flowers, a ribbon, a
lady's glove, and a photograph with some look
of this persistent woman, but younger and
handsomer.
I felt uneasy. Mr. Audenried sat with head
on his hand, lost in thought. When 1 spoke
he did not hear nor notice me until I put the
01 6to0rn Statement. 217
medicine he had sent for into the hand in his
lap. Then he did not know it at first, though
in giving the parcel I touched his hand. Some-
thing about him I could not describe kept me
an instant motionless in that position.
A stupor came over me. The carved ivory
hourglass we had filled with Arizona sand
from before the Casa Grande, our bright,
thick Moqui blanket on the lounge, our
foreign fur rugs, our Japanese fans, bronzes,
and china the whole room came and went
as to one who is sleepy yet tries to keep
awake. Again and again it vanished, re-
appearing enlarged to twice, three times, its
size. Then it was lost in a mist, from which
rose a different scene.
The chandelier had changed to long lines of
lights, the pictures to great mirrors, and arches
with banners and streamers. Devices in ever-
green showed that it was Christmae Eve. I
was aware of a rush and whirl of dancers,
walz-music, flowers, gay colors, and the scent
of a sandal-wood fan; but I saw plainly only
one woman, young, gay, lovely, but with a
faint likeness to some one I had seen who was
older and wretched. I rubbed my eyes, and
when I opened them at the sound of my mas-
ter's voice, it was the room I knew, with all
2i8 & Groom Statement.
its familiar objects, and he and I were there
alone.
One day I met our quiet lady coming from
Mr. Audenried's study, and found him there
in a fainting-fit. As I was helping him across
the hall to his bedroom I had the second of my
odd attacks.
A dullness and vague fear troubled me.
Our many-branched antlers, our lacquered-
work and carved cabinets and great Chinese
lantern, the stained-glass skylight, the big
vase of pampas-grass, the open doors and
windows, the sunny yard, with callas and
geraniums in bloom, all wavered before me,
went and came and vanished.
I saw a room with flowered chintz in cur-
tains and furniture-covers, a glowing anthra-
cite fire, and Christmas wreaths hanging in
long windows looking on frost-bound garden
and river. And the beautiful woman of the
ball ! Still young, but now unhappy, looking
at me in despair. Both arms outstretched
in an agony of entreaty, and tears rolling
down her cheeks. Terribly distressed by
her woe, I gave a cry of pity just as Mr.
Audenried, gasping and falling on the bed,
brought me back to him, to myself, and to
his
01 6to0rn Statement. 219
Putting away his things for the night I
found these verses in a woman's writing:
IN ABSENCE.
In my black night no moonshine nor star-glimmer
On my long, weary path that leads Nowhere
I get no shimmer
Of that great glory our day knew.
I cannot think the world holds you;
It is not ours, this Land of Vague Despair
I scarce can breathe its air.
I am as one whom some sweet tune, down dropping,
Has left half-stunned by silence like a blow;
Like one who, stopping
In drifting desert sands, looks back
Where sky slants down above his track,
To mark the tufted palm whose outlines show
An oasis below ;
Like one whom winter wind and rain are blinding,
And storm-tossed billows bear from land away,
Who, no hope finding,
Should yield himself to bitter fate.
Can I do this ! Ah, God ! too late
Have I not felt thy dear, warm lips convey
Commands I must obey ?
" Forget-me-not ! " a kiss for every letter.
" Forget-me-not! " a kiss for every word.
It could not better
Have stamped itself upon my soul
It passed beyond my own control.
All thought, all circumstance are by it stirred,
Invisible, unheard.
220 Qt. Sttmrn Statement.
Though, like Francesca, ever falling, falling
Through dizzy space to endless depths afar,
Thy kiss recalling
Would charm me to forget my woe ;
Of Heaven or Hell I should not know,
Nor as I passed see any blazing star,
Nor mark its rhythmic jar.
If such remembrance only moon-reflection
On depths untried of my soul's unknown sea
Mere recollection
Could hold me spellbound by its sway,
What of your true kiss can I say?
Ah! that is wholly speechless ecstasy,
No words for that could be!
I thought it might be I had myself grown
nervous about the quiet lady, to have these
crazy fits after seeing her, and I dreaded to
have her come again. But it was not my
place to urge Mr. Audenried to move, and he
seemed tired of changing.
One evening he had a severe attack of pal-
pitation of the heart, and called me in great
haste. I had been wondering what had put
him in such a flutter, when that lady opened
the door and glanced round the room as if she
had forgotten something, but did not come in.
Mr. Audenried was so ill that he had to sit up
in bed and have me hold him firmly, my hands
pressing his breast and his back.
31 Sworn Statement. 221
Again that strange dread and drowsiness fell
on me like a cloud. My master's pearl combs,
brushes, crystal jewel-box, with its glittering
contents, and a bunch of violets in a wine-
glass on the bureau, his Japanese quilted
silk dressing-gown thrown over a chair, em-
broidered slippers here, gay smoking -cap
there, and a large lithograph of Modjeska,
glimmered through a fog, came back, with-
drew again.
The one high gas-burner became a full
moon, the walls fell away ; I stood out of doors
in a summer night's dimness and stillness that
make one feel lonely; grass, daisies, and but-
tercups underfoot, and overhead stars and
endless space. The beautiful woman, worn
and wild-looking, with flashing eyes, stood
there in a threatening posture, calling down
curses ! I shrank in horror, though the vision
lasted, as before, not more than a quarter of a
second.
Mr. Audenried, wasted and wan, had grown
so nervous that after this time he refused to
be left alone, and above all, cautioned me to
stay beside him on Christmas Eve.
"An unpleasant anniversary to me," he
says.
The doctor advised him to change to a hotel,
222 Qt Sroorn Statement.
to have cheerful society. We moved to the
Palace Hotel, and to divert his mind from its
own horror Mr. Audenried gave a dinner-party
in his rooms on Christmas Eve.
It was a wild night, just right for " Tam
O'Shanter," which one of the gentlemen re-
cited. The weather or my master's forced
gayety made me gloomy. There was a raw
Irish waiter to help, and once I went into the
anteroom just in time to catch him about to
season one of Mr. Audenried's private dishes
from a bottle out of our Japanese cabinet. It
was marked " Poison, " but he could not read.
"What could possess you," I says, "to
meddle with thatf"
"Sure," he says, "the lady showed me
which to take."
" The lady I What lady?" I says, trembling
from head to foot.
"A dark lady," says he, "with a proud
nose and mouth, and eyebrows in one long,
heavy line."
I was horrified. I did not want to figure in
a murder case. I liked Mr. Audenried too well
to leave. I was too poor to lose a good place.
I resolved to stay and protect him, but my
heart beat faster. For my own safety I meant
to say over the multiplication-table, and not
01 0nj0rn Statement. 223
get bewitched or entranced again. I told my-
self over and over, "She shall not outwit
me."
The wind and rain beat against the win-
dows, and I heard one of our guests singing
"The Midnight Revellers:"
" The first was shot by Carlist thieves
Three years ago in Spain ;
The second was drowned in Alicante,
While I alone remain.
But friends I have, two glorious friends,
Two braver could not be;
And every night when midnight tolls
They meet to laugh with me ! "
As I took in some wine, a gentleman was
saying: "Too wild a story for such a com-
monplace background as San Francisco."
" One must be either commonplace or sated
with horrors to say that," says Mr. Audenried.
" What city has more or stranger disappear-
ances and assassinations? There have been
murders and suicides at all the hotels. Other
cities surpass it in age, but none in crime and
mystery."
It was a lively party. A love-song from one
of the gentlemen turned the talk on love
affairs, and I went in just as Mr. Audenried
was saying: "Aaron Burr relied wholly on
224 & 0tn0rn Statement.
the fascination of his touch. I believe in the
magnetism of touch ; that it cannot only im-
part disease but sensations. Holding a
sleeper's hand while I read, by no will-
power of mine he dreamed of scenes I saw in
my mind."
Trained servant as I am, I disgraced myself
then. I dropped and broke some of our own
bubble-like glasses I was carrying. I was so
unnerved by this explanation of my queer
turns. It flashed upon me how they had only
come when I was touching him. I had heard
a former master, a learned German, talk
about his countryman Mesmer, and I under-
stood that what had appeared to me in my
spells was what Mr. Audenried was thinking
of!
I could scarcely recover myself for the rest
of the company's stay. I recollect no more
about it, except that somebody played the flute
till it seemed as if a twilight breeze sighed for
being pent in our four walls and longed to join
its ruder brother-winds outside ; and that'Mr.
Audenried read these verses of his :
Stoorn Statement. 225
RONDEL.
To-night, O friends! we meet " Kriss Kringle";
He comes, he comes when falls betwixt us
The chiming midnight-bells' soft klingle,
When, glad, we crowd round cheery ingle,
Or, lonely, grieve that joy has missed us;
Or, in cathedral gloom, pray Christus;
Or drain gay toasts where glasses jingle.
Though marshalled hosts of cares have tricked us,
In wine's Red Sea drown all and single
"Christmas!"
Drown recollection that afflicts us
Our bowls, like witches' caldrons, mingle
Too much of old Yule-tide that kissed us
The bitter drink that Life has mixed us
Forget, and shout till rafters tingle
"Christmas!"
The last guest had hardly gone when Mrs.
Carnavon's card was brought up. This was
an elderly lady we had met in our travels,
who took an interest in Mr. Audenried's case,
though a stranger. She came in, bright and
chatty, and my master was so cheered up by
it that he readily let me leave.
I did not want to go. I had not been drink-
ing ; I was well and in my right mind, but my
whole skin seemed to draw up with a shiver
and thrill as at some near terror. But he sent
me to a druggist to have Mrs. Carnavon's
vinaigrette refilled.
226 & Sroorn Statement.
As I left the passage to our suite of rooms
and turned into the long, lonesome hall, more
dreary than ever in its vastness at this quiet,
late hour, I saw a little way ahead our bru-
nette stepping into the elevator. I fancied a
mocking smile on her face as she looked back
at me. I forgot the multiplication-table, whose
fixed rules were to keep me in my senses.
For the first time it struck me that she was
the woman of my visions, grown older and
sadder.
I hurried, but when I reached the door
she had gone, and stout Mrs. Lisgar was
coming up, like the change of figures in a
pantomime. She was another mystery of
mine; for her maid had told me Mrs. Lisgar
and my master knew each other abroad, but
were sworn foes now, neither of us knew
why.
"I beg your pardon, Madam," I says; "did
you see the lady who just went down? A
handsome brunette, with eyebrows that join
above a Roman nose, and a very short upper
lip. Where did she go?"
Mrs. Lisgar swelled bigger and redder.
" Has Mr. Audenried sent you to annoy me?"
she says.
"Certainly not, Madam," says I. "But 1
01 Srnorn Statement. 227
saw her! heavy, meeting eyebrows, scorn-
ful mouth, and "
" Silence, sir ! " she cried. " There was no
one in the elevator. Don't you know you are
speaking of my poor sister, dead for many
years?"
In my confusion I gasped out at random:
" Mrs. Carnavon is here. Do you know
her?"
Mrs. Lisgar says: "She was my sister's
most intimate friend. But you are either
drunk or crazy. I was with her when she
died in Arizona last week."
An awful suspicion seized me ; a cold sweat
broke out on my brow. I had not lost sight of
Mr. Audenried's door. I bowed to Mrs. Lisgar
and tried to hurry back, but a numbness in
every limb weighed me down till I seemed to
move as slowly as the bells that were striking
twelve.
As I drew near, I heard angry voices inside,
then a fearful groan, which seemed to die off in
the distance. But I found every room in our
suite vacant, except for my figure, which I
caught glimpses of at every turn, staring out
of the great mirrors, ghastly, haggard, with
bloodshot eyes, and a strained look about the
mouth, madly straying among the lights and
228 & 0ro0m Statement.
flowers, tables with remnants of the feast, and
the disordered chairs, which after such a revel
have a queer air of life of their own.
A long window in the parlor stood wide
open. Chilled with fright, with I don't know
what vague thought, I ran and looked out.
Six stories from the street, nothing to be seen
outside but the night and storm, neither on
the lighted pavement far below, nor among
drifting clouds overhead ! Nothing but impen-
etrable darkness then and afterward over Mr.
Audenried's fate.
This is all I can tell of the well-known
strange disappearance of my unhappy master.
It is the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth
"THE SECOND CARD WINS."
"THE SECOND CARD WINS."
A house with two doors is difficult to guard. Spanish Proverb.
I. THE LOVELY MRS. CLARE SPEAKS.
I read people at a glance always could; it
was born in me, as it seems to have been born
in my husband to dispute it; and I don't care
what he says, I shall still think there was
some strange secret between Mark Dillon and
that woman. There was always something
queer about him. I saw it at first, when Sam
brought him to our rooms in the hotel and pre-
sented him to me as his "old friend from In-
dia, who joins us for the opera." I thought it
was shyness that kept him dumb, for he only
bowed and stared.
"Oh, from India !" I cried, warmly, shak-
ing hands; "the one I am to thank for the
rare fan sent to Sam's wife ! I am so glad to
meet you."
"You have it, then?" he said, looking
closely at me.
231
232 "(Elje Beronir Carir
He was plainly struck with Sam's taste in
the choice of a wife. He never got over his
surprise, but always watched me with a
puzzled air, as he might look at a strange
bird or flower, even turning to gaze after me.
"Yes, indeed, among my treasures," I said.
" I was waiting for Sam to take me to the
opera to-night. Here it lies with my India
shawl."
I took it up, a gay bunch of bright feathers
with a picture on one side, mounted on sandal-
wood and silver beaten by the patient toil of
India into frostlike flowers and leaves, one
spray even twisted round the red tassel.
"Now, do tell me the story," I begged.
" You wrote in the note to Sam which came
with it that it was enchanted. What did you
mean?"
He looked startled. " I had nearly forgot-
ten that," he said. " It was a spell cast by
an old Hindoo whom I vexed by smiling at his
tricks of magic."
"Has it worked?" I asked, lightly, as I
drew on my long gloves while we waited for
Sam, whose man is so slow in the last touches
of his toilet.
Mr. Dillon looked uneasy. " In spite of my
common sense," he said, "though I thought I
6er0n& Olarb toine." 233
was above such delusions, I must confess that
the spell is working. Where will it end?" he
asked himself.
"Oh, how awful! What is it?" I asked,
adding with a laugh, " I shall look at my
lovely fan with a half fear of it."
"Well," he said, after a moment's thought,
".I will tell you, for it is not you who are to
suffer. But, first, please tell me the date of
your marriage."
" Why the fan was among my bridal
gifts ! Have you forgotten when you sent it?"
"Oh yes," he replied, with what seemed
a painful effort of memory. " Well, this is its
story : While I was at the Rajate of Puttiala,
a rich and powerful baboo, Lall Chunder,
asked his friends to come and see a great
juggler show his tricks. Foreigners and na-
tives all went, on elephants, camels, and
horses. The baboo's divan was in the centre
of his courtyard. We sat round him, the
natives smoking hookahs. There was a din
of tumtum wallahs, and a troop of nautch-
dancers. Then, to the sound of gongs and
trumpets, came the sorcerer on a gayly
decked elephant. He made gracious salaams
to us, and, after sending paper birds and
butterflies in long flights chosen by us, calling
234 "(&lje Seconfc Carfc (Bins."
up from a far-off pack any card we named,
and other slight tricks often shown, he had a
fire made, into which he cast fragrant spices,
and, while they burned, he put on a robe
covered with strange signs ; from a pocket in
this he took a wooden ball full of holes where
long thongs hung out. Grasping one of these,
he flung the ball into the air with such force
that it passed, unreeling as it went, at once
out of our sight and stayed in the clouds.
Then he made climb the thong a camel, which
quickly vanished in the sky ; a boy was sent
after, making many trips, and bringing at each
descent something for the baboo's guests.
These gifts were left in a pile, while the boy
was told to bring the rest on the camel. He
went up, but the animal, now loaded, came
down alone. The conjurer called three times ;
then, in a rage, snatched a knife and himself
ran up the thong. We could see nothing, but
heard his fierce threats and the boy's wild
cries. He soon threw down one of the boy's
hands, then a foot, then the other hand, the
other foot, the trunk, and then the head. He
ran down, panting, and with blood on his robe,
laid the parts of the boy's body all in place,
still raging at him, and gave them a kick,
when the boy rose and bowed to us and
8cc0n& Carfc tOins." 235
divided the gifts among us, who were in each
case chosen by the magician, after making us
pass singly behind the vapors of hte mystic
fire. With each thing he gave some warning.
The natives, much excited, call on Brahma,
Vishnu, Calle, and all the calendar of Indian
gods; but the foreigners smiled at the fine
jugglery, and I laughed out. The sorcerer
looked at me long and gravely, and cast that
fan to my lot. He came to me, spread it,
and, showing me the picture on it, said: "I
have put you there. That figure will go away
when you leave the world. Though you send
this fan straight as an arrow, it shall yet
swerve from its course. When her hand
holds it, will be when your sun sinks behind
a golden mist!"
"But I don't understand/' said I, "about
the working of the spell."
"Come, come," said Sam, bustling in,
"what are you talking about, Mark? You
look too grave for opera bouffe," and hurried
us off.
During the evening I overheard Mr. Dillon
ask Sam, "Why did you never write how
matters stood?"
Sam took his opera-glass and looked over
the house, and searched all his pockets for
236 "(El)* Seronb OTarfr ttlins."
cardamoms, before he answered, "Why
should I ?"
I knew at once what they must mean. Of
course, Sam would prefer to have his wife
seen to boasting of her beauty.
After we came home Sam asked how I liked
his friend.
" What makes him seem so queer?" I said.
"How?" demanded Sam, bristling, as usual,
for fear some one may have slighted me.
"What did he say?" he asked, anxiously.
" What was he telling you here ?"
I told him, adding: " He seems so absorbed
and odd."
But Sam, who, while I was telling him the
story, was crazy enough to knock over my
best cloisonn6 bowl and break a Dresden vase,
only said : "Asked when we were married, did
he? The infernal climate of India must have
affected his brain."
So I ceased to wonder at Mark Dillon's
odd ways, even at his looking troubled at
seeing me carrying that fan, and really
trying to have me change it for a carved
cherry-stone bracelet he brought from China.
I did not mind his losing himself in thought
when near us, or watching me, as if I
puzzled him. Sam had explained it all, but
Beronfc (Earfc tDins." 237
he could never set my mind at ease about
that woman.
I pride myself on my power to study char-
acter and motives. It is simply impossible to
hoodwink me. The moment I first set eyes on
her on the overland train I thought, " There
is a woman with a story." And to think that
even now I do not know what that story was
is enough to make me let down my back hair
and scream, as I did at Aunt Ann's yesterday
when the oysters were not cooked to suit me.
She looked able to travel anywhere alone, as
she was then. I had my maid and man-
servant, of course. What with my lovely
Skye, and "Ouida's" latest, my shawls,
lunch - basket, candy -jar, and writing-desk
(for Sam expects to hear every day), I could
not travel without; I don't see how any one
can, though Babette was half-sick and wholly
cross, and Alphonse smelled of cheap cigars in
the smoking-car ; so that really I did have my
troubles. She sat in the next seat, and I
could not help showing her some kindness in
the way of canned turkey, and stuffed olives,
and sherry, for she seemed strong in neither
body nor purse. She had severe nervous
headaches, and I loaned her my vinaigrette.
As she returned it, just as we were nearing
San Francisco, she said:
238 "<&i)e geconft (Earir toins."
"You have been kind to me. I am very
grateful. May I ask the meaning of that mon-
ogram?" pointing to the initials set in bril-
liants in the side of the little gold flask.
" My name is Clare/' I said. " Those let-
ters stand for my husband's name."
"Ah!" she said, "I am also Mrs. S. C.
My name is Capel."
" Indeed!" said I; "that is a name in my
husband's family. It is his middle name."
" How strange ! but my husband has no
relatives living," said she.
I wanted to ask about her husband, but
feared she was a widow.
She seemed to read my thoughts.
" My husband is in California somewhere,"
she went on. "I am going to try and find
him."
" Then you have not lately heard from
him?" I asked.
" Not for ten years," was her startling reply.
What would Sam say, I thought, to such
conduct in a husband !
" How surprised he will be," I said.
" Yes," said she. "I did not know where
to write."
I wanted to ask if she thought he was
worthy of such search, but I saw she was
Second Qlarir tiOins." 239
poor. Perhaps she hoped he had money. Pos-
sibly she was still fond of him. But I thought
he had most likely forgotten her ; for, though
plainly a bright woman, she had none of the
dainty curves and fair rose tints that do a
man's eyes good such as I know please Sam
in me. I urged her to come to my hotel. I
had reached home Thursday night, a week
before my husband expected me. I planned
to surprise him, but found he had gone on a
hunting and fishing trip to San Gregorio.
When he came back, I meant to make him
help my new acquaintance. I took her under
my wing, chose her room, made Babette dress
her hair, and we went down to breakfast
together Friday morning, when who should
sit in front of us but Mark Dillon ! He was
so amazed to find I had come that he seemed
really nervous.
"Bless my soul Mrs. Clare!" said he,
looking as much at her as at me, and then got
very red and confused. I never quite knew
before how much he admired me. I felt so
glad to be at home again, I urged him to come
to my rooms after breakfast and practice
duets. When he came, Mrs. Capel was with
me, and I presented him to her. I saw then
he did not seem at ease.
240 "fftlje Secottb Carir toins."
" This is a new friend of mine," I told him.
" Her husband is somewhere in California,
and I am going to help her find him."
" You help her ! Good gracious no yes
certainly oh! of course by all means,"
was his strange reply.
He seemed more absent-minded than ever,
as if trying to see his way clear for something.
At last he said: "Mrs. Clare, I got a letter
last night from Sam. Want to hear it?"
" No," said I ; " I found one waiting for me,
in case I got here while he was gone."
"Ah! with a sonnet to your eyebrow?" he
asked.
" No. Sam never writes verse to me now-
adays," I said.
" He does to me," said he; " and I want
you ladies to hear it," with stress on the word
" ladies," as he saw Mrs. Capel about to leave
the room. She waited. He went on : " Sam
has sent up a rare shot of his, a loon, to be
stuffed for our club-rooms. Says he has not
had very good luck this season, and it seems
to have made him downhearted, to judge from
his rhymes :
241
PORTENT.
No looker-on but wild growth, like the fern,
I feel the hidden current's forceful sway ;
I must attend to weird cries of the hern,
Must round the marsh with phantom vapors stray.
And pause, breast-high, where reeds and rushes rear
Their flaunting craze, to watch the white gulls' flight,
As, high athwart wide-roving clouds, they veer
Through darkening air, like waning flecks of light.
The sluggish water dreads the storm's first dip,
Turns rolling eyes of light toward sullen sky ;
The winds, as in the cordage of a ship,
Through tangled forest wander piping by.
They mock the cries of shipwrecked sailors ; shout,
And wail, and laugh, till I, excited, scream
Dead silence follows ! for the goblin rout
Then know man's presence in their sylvan dream.
I turn where cypress branches interlace
To arch against the sun's red wane,
Outlining vast cathedral's gloomy space,
Half-lit by Gothic window's scarlet stain.
Within this holy hush and solitude
Entranced 1 linger, and forget forget;
No Past above me here can darkly brood,
Nor Future watch upon my footsteps set.
What voice of hidden Mephistopheles
With scornful echo startles the lagoon?
I feel the current of my life-blood freeze
At dread derisive laughter of a loon !
242 " Htye 0ec0nir QTarfc tDins
Alas ! although I shot him in my dreams
1 hear his warning cry, and watch the storm,
Till, where the lightnii j through the shadow gleams
Upon the marsh, I see my lifeless form ' "
" What nonsense ! " I began, when the' look
on his face and hers stopped me. He had
handed her the verses to look at, but, with
only a glance at them, she was looking at him
with a painfully earnest question in her gaze,
while his face was that of a culprit who is-
caught. For the moment I could have sworn
they were not the strangers I had thought
them. Then she rose, tried to excuse herself,
and started to go to her room, but was so
faint, I, with Babette, had to help her reach it.
" Worn out from her journey," I explained
to Mr. Dillon.
"No excuse needed, Mrs. Clare; I saw for
myself."
Then he made a series of failures with our
duets for flute and piano which were wont to
make us sure of being asked to musical par-
ties. In the middle of Drouet's " Semiram-
ide" he broke down, and turned it off by
asking:
"Where did you make her acquaintance?"
" On the overland train. Ah, you are smit-
ten, as 1 was," I said.
Seronb (Earfc toins." 243
"
Are you pleased with her?" he asked.
Sworn lasting friendship, and vowed to
help her find her own true love," said I.
To hide his next mistake he said, "How do
you know he is her own true love ?"
" Oh, I know he must be," I replied.
"The word 'fickle' is unknown to you?"
he asked.
"Yes. Isn't Sam my model?"
He failed again, and begged to be excused
from further practice.
Mrs. Capel kept her room with a nervous
headache all Saturday, but on Sunday I made
her drive with Mr. Dillon and me to the Cliff
House. I wisely planned it so neither knew
the other was going until too late to pause
starting with her and taking him up on the
way. There was a warning of coming storm
in the black haze that, as Mr. Dillon said,
made the air a magic crystal, showing far-off
places as if near, and by the time we had
finished luncheon and gone out on the balcony,
a wall of fog hid the sea but for what seemed
a short space before us. Some one in the par-
lor played a snatch of Wagner's "Spinning-
Song."
" Too monotonous," I said.
"The droning wheel," said Dillon; "but
244 "Stye Seconir OTarir toin0."
you can hear the footfall of fate, see the red
sails and black masts of the doomed ship, and,
in Listz's version, hear the wind whistle in
the rigging." He turned to her as if she had
asked a question. "But when the captain
finds Senta at her wheel, she is bound to
another."
"What can be done then?" I asked.
" Truly," said he, still looking at her,
" what can be done?"
She thought a moment before replying:
" There is the decision of Heine's lover :
" 'As fickle as the wind thy heart
That flutters to and fro ;
With black sails sails my ship,
Across the seas to go." 1
He sprang up and began pacing up and
down, when suddenly a full-rigged vessel,
looming through the mist, passed within hail,
more phantom-like than real.
" Like a dream ! " she said.
"And to them," said he, "this shore looks
like dreamland."
" Noiseless, ghostly, and swift as the ' Fly-
ing Dutchman/ " she said.
"How absurd for people to rave over that
opera! " said I. " That old fogy striding along
"Stye Beconfc arir toins." 245
the beach, so many paces to certain orchestral
chords, and so on ; nothing to get so excited
over, as folks like you all do."
"It is because he is fated like the figure
on the fan," he said with a sigh, and asked
us to excuse him a while. I was glad to have
him go, for she had caught his trick of watch-
ing me, and I was impatient under the musing
gaze of two.
When he had gone, she asked : " Suppose it
to be Senta who finds the Captain faithless,
what ought she to do?"
" You could ask no better person," I said.
"How do you mean?" she asked, looking
at me with wonder.
I felt proud of being appealed to. / knew
what should be done, and I told her at once :
" Make him pay for the ship she sets sail in."
" Money ! " she said bitterly.
" Yes," said I. "A man should pay for for-
getting me. But such a thing is not possible
to Sam."
"One would think you, who have all the
money you want, would not value it," she
said.
" Not quite all I want. Sam has promised
me a hundred thousand dollars for my birth-
day, next week, and I am glad to get it."
246 "t&tye Second (tarir
"A hundred thousand dollars ! " she said, as
if deep in thought; and after a pause went
on : " Suppose a woman to have had two
lovers, and to have chosen the one who proves
least faithful - "
" Don't fancy such things ! " I cried. "Wait
till he is found. Oh, why don't you advertise
for your husband?"
"Lost, strayed, or stolen," drawled Mr.
Dillon, who had lounged back unseen, and
startled us by speaking.
" How shall I make amends?" he asked.
" By writing some verses about that mirage-
like vision of a sail," said Mrs. Capel.
While he wrote, with note-book on knee,
the fog cleared, and there was a strange sun-
set which charmed them, but I was too vexed
over the damp the fog left on my crimps to care.
He said : " A poem in colors ! "
She quoted : * ' The setting of a great hope
is like the setting of the sun ! "
"Why was that not said in verse instead of
prose?" said he.
"Use it," she hinted.
" It would be no worse theft," he answered,
"than 'Sweet By-and-By,' which is but a
poor version of the old Irish air, * Has sorrow
thy young days shaded?' "
Second Carfc toins." 247
Soon after he read to us :
HAPHAZARD.
In the balcony jutting above the wild ocean,
Like scene an Arabian Night reveals,
Where oft we linger, with gay emotion,
To look at the rocks and the sunning seals,
To number the clouds and the gulls, wind-shaken,
And name the crowding white horses whose manes
Float and flutter to spray as they sink overtaken
Th' sea reclaims
'T was here we stood, when a mist unbroken
Made the world seem sketched on a vapored pane,
Gray walls surrounded, and blurred all token
Whether sun or moon might arise or wane ;
'T was like a dawning or dreamy gloaming,
And a potent spell upon you and me,
For as we paused there our thoughts were roaming
Ships at sea.
As if in conjurer's crystal, looming
Through murky depths, sailed a ship afar
Like thistle-down in its phantom blooming,
Or a floating film a breath might mar;
As if carved of the moonstone's cloudy sheen,
Through the mist it glimmered with softened glow,
Ai J its sails afret with the wind were seen
Intaglio.
And you murmured, " Perhaps in that vessel one
passes
Whom we might have adored had we known ;
And it may be their view our own so surpasses
Their fantasies shoreward are blown."
248 " f&tye Qeconb
"Alas!" I answered, "We have no warning
When the things that almost occur are near
Or, like our dreams between dusk and dawning,
Disappear!"
Then they fell to talking of omens, second
sight, the sway of one mind over another, and
such ghostly stuff, to my high glee and scorn.
" People who can believe in such things," I
said, "are easily duped/'
"Mrs. Clare," he said, "as I have often
told you, you must some time be most com-
pletely fooled. It is sure to be. "
I had not time to tell him what a vain boast
this was, when Sam, who had reached town,
learned where we had gone, and followed,
came out among us. As, nodding to Mr. Dil-
lon, he rushed toward me, he noticed Mrs.
Capel, but he was quite overcome at the
sight of me. He turned pale, his eyes
flashed, he could scarcely speak.
"What is it?" I cried. "Are you ill?"
He tried to turn it off with some pretense of
a passing faintness, but he seemed stunned.
Of course, I understood he was vexed not
to have been here when I returned.
"Why didn't I hear from you?" he asked
Mr. Dillon, angrily.
"I sent a dispatch in reply to your letter,"
said his friend.
Qetorib Cfltfc toins." 249
" I never got it," said Sam, crossly.
1 think Mrs. Capel must have one of the
sensitive electroplate minds Mr. Dillon talks
of; for she said nothing, only, turning red and
pale by turns, watched Sam with searching
gaze, as was natural when I had promised her
his help. I hastened to make them acquainted,
to tell him about her, and beg him to aid her
to find her husband ; but she put up one hand
as if to stop me, vainly tried to speak, and
looking an appeal to Mark Dillon I shall
always think his queer aspect then was con-
scious guilt, slid out of her chair in a deep
swoon, from which Mr. Dillon and I had hard
work to revive her, while Sam looked on,
frightened and displeased. He was so kind he
would not come to town with us for fear of
crowding us in her faint state. But I knew he
was angry to have our meeting so broken in
upon by a stranger. Indeed, it made him
take such a dislike to her that he refused to
have anything to say to her.
" You are prejudiced," 1 said.
"Perhaps 1 am," he replied, coolly, and
would have nothing to do with her. He
seemed all worn out by his trip to San Gre-
gorio, and in the evening had a severe fit of
cramp in his right arm and shoulder. My
250 "fftlje Ketonb Carir toins. 1 '
head was so full of Mrs. Capel that I had just
burst out about it :
" I believe I know where to lay my hand on
her husband."
Sam looked amazed, gave a husky sort of
roar, and that very moment was seized with
this cramp that kept his man rubbing him for
a long time. When Alphonse had been sent
out, I went on, though Sam had to look over
some business papers, and could hardly attend
to me.
" I feel sure that Mr. Dillon knows," I said.
Sam looked up as if annoyed. He cannot
bear anything roundabout, while I like mys-
teries. Perhaps because I can solve them.
" Yes," said I, at the risk of vexing him
about his friend, "/ believe he is her hus-
band."
Sam gave a sigh of relief, the cramp had
been so bad. With an admiring glance he
cried "By Jove! I never thought of that.
There 's woman's keen wit ! "
But then I always knew I was more shrewd
than others. "As a reward of merit" he
brought me some fine candies, saying, "A
Market -street confectioner advertises these
as * high-toned.' Does he mean their rank
flavor?"
Seconb Carb toins." 251
Perhaps they made me dream, as the lady
in the next room says it is the sugar in the
whisky-punch which flies to one's head ; any-
way, I dreamed strangely that night. I
seemed to stand at the elbow of some man
whose face I could not see as he bent over a
letter he was writing a queer letter; and
the dream was so plain that I saw him trace
each word, and, leaning over him, read as he
wrote :
"As disembodied spirits we might agree ; but as life
is as it is, so dependent on our mortal frames and tem-
peraments, I have made my choice."
I roused from sleep to find myself in bed
alone. Babette had left the night-lamp burn-
ing, as usual. I knew Sam was in the next
room casting up accounts, as he often sat up
to do. Then, puzzling over Mark Dillon and
that woman, I dropped off again to the same
dream the figure writing with face bent
toward the right, and myself standing at his
left shoulder. He had written on, and while
I watched, his hand formed these words :
" Silence, with instant departure for Europe, with a
solemn promise never to return or send a message to
me by word or letter. These are my sole terms, even
if I must pay at the rate of a thousand dollars for each
letter in the words."
252 "(El)* Bttorib Carfc
Again I struggled to my senses ; I sat up in
bed to be sure I was now awake. Sam came
in, and was alarmed, thinking I was ill.
" I wish," said I, "I could give Mr. Dillon a
piece of my mind."
' ' Better not meddle in what does not con-
cern you," said Sam, quite gruffly for him.
An hour or two later, I was roused by Sam's
talking in his sleep. " Is she not worth a hun-
dred thousand dollars?" he muttered. He was
dreaming of the sum he had promised me.
Then he grew angry. " Why won't you
go?" he cried, fiercely. "There is the
money! "
"Sam! Sam!" I called, "who is meddling
now with other folks' affairs. You are dream-
ing."
Only half-awake, he cried : * ' You shall not
part us ! " and grasped me firmly by the arm.
" What is the matter?" I said, waking him
at last.
"What was I saying?" he asked anxiously,
and scarcely slept again. So I did not wonder
he did not want to go to the theatre Monday
night, as I had before his return engaged with
Mrs. Capel and his friend to do.
"You must guard yourself to-night," I said
to Mr. Dillon, as we went to call for Mrs.
Seconb OTarb toins." 253
Capel. " I have lent her the bewitched
fan."
1 did not think of his taking it seriously ; but
he muttered : " Great heavens ! has it reached
her at last?"
" What is that?" I asked. " It seems to me
we are all a little crazy about this stranger."
" It is all your fault," he answered; "you
brought her here."
"Did 1?" I asked. "It was her absent
husband you know very well what brought
her I think you know him. 1 ' I added this
recklessly, but was surprised at the effect ; he
got so excited.
"Oh, Mrs. Clare," he cried, "don't ask
me anything about it! I know nothing, noth-
ing, nothing! "
"As well as you know yourself" I went
on; "you are " I faltered. I felt I was
verging on rudeness. We had reached her
door. I dared not go on. But he understood.
"7 her husband! It is like telling a man
who is bound hand and foot that he is free !
I"
But his nervous knock brought her at once
to her door, and I lost whatever he meant to
say.
After we were in our box, Mrs. Capel looked
254 "l)e Seronb (Earir tains."
at the play-bill. " The burlesque Evan-
geline!" she exclaimed, and turned to Mr.
Dillon. " You have known a burlesque Evan-
geline in real life. There are such footballs of
fate."
He looked quickly at me. "We will not
talk of unhappy things to-night," he said;
then, turning to her, added: " Silence is
golden.'"
Bent on making us enjoy, he brought us
flowers and candy, and talked more than his
wont. He toyed a while with the Indian fan,
sketching the history of fans, and ending, as
he returned it to Mrs. Capel, with : "Among
the Asiatics a fan on a plate of special shape
told a condemned nobleman his sentence, and
when he reached to take the gift, was the mo-
ment of losing his life."
"What a sigh you gave as you took the
fan, Mrs. Capel," I said, "as \iyou had been
sentenced."
" To exile with no hope of reprieve," said
Mr. Dillon.
Some stir of late-comers caught my glance ;
when I again looked at Mrs. Capel her breast
heaved, the fan, half-open, shook in her hand;
behind it I caught a glimpse of a long slip of
paper, like a check.
Senmb QTarfc toins." 255
" I feel faint," she said. Mr. Dillon brought
her some water, and then she sat back out of
sight, and he talked to me about those we
knew who were in the house. But as I do not
choose to let people dupe me with secrets right
under my eyes, I soon said:
" Was that a love poem ?"
" What do you mean ?" he asked.
" That paper slyly thrust in and creased to
fold with the fan," I said.
I think the sounds from the orchestra
screened a muttered oath, he looked so
angry.
" Was it poetry?" I insisted.
" Not poetry, but a bit of philosophy and
a secret of mine," he added.
" I shall ask her to let me see it," I said, for
I was provoked that he should try to fool me.
He seemed confused, and, turning, looked at
Mrs. Capel. The fan lay closed in her lap.
"Allow me," he said, gently taking it from
her. At the same moment his glance, roving
over the house, fell on some one he knew.
" Excuse me," he said, and rushed out. He
came back almost at once, and, sitting beside
me, opened the fan, withdrew a slip of thin
paper from the sliding sticks and gave it to me.
1 quickly unfolded it and found a blank !
256 "QTlje Scconb QTarfc tains. 1 '
" Mrs. Clare, you have a very vivid fancy,"
he said, with his cynical smile, which makes
me sometimes almost hate him, and think if
not Sam's friend I would cut him.
" Only think," he went on, " how all these
commonplace people around us have each a
story as picturesque and diverting as any
play! There is a chance for your fancy."
11 1 should like to know all about their pri-
vate lives," I said.
" Heaven forbid!" he cried. "Never try
to go behind the scenes in real life. You
would find the same dingy makeshifts, cur-
tains, traps, and sudden steps up and down,
as on the stage."
Mrs. Capel came forward, and seemed like
herself again. But I watched them both, for
I felt that 1 was on the track of a strange
story. Coming out, I was behind them, and
found on the floor where Mrs. Capel had been
sitting a sheet of paper, on which these lines
were written (without doubt, Mr. Dillon had
meant them for me. I cannot remember
breaking any promise to him that is, of
course, just poetical flummery. He must, man-
like, have forgotten for the moment that I had
lent the fan, and that it was not I who would
find them in it, and his feint about the blank
"l)e Qetorib OTarfc toins." 257
paper was done to hide his shame at his
blunder. It was all quite plain) :
A FANTASY.
" Eclipse, and sound of shaken hills and wings
Darkening, and blind inexpiable things."
I. -THE FAN.
Toy the most feminine ! Woman's will ! Yet
Chinese the saying is now I forget!
Ivory, filmy, the fan of frail fret
Holding one realm
With the Marie Antoinette collaret
Baleful in ray, crime beset carcanet
Famed gem on gem.
Eight words by Chinese sage at Woman hurled.
In minor tones my heart-throbs there upwhirled !
Bauble of lace all embroidered, unfurled
Shadow in freak,
That, at the court and play, feigned to the world
Blush-roses bloomed upon rouged and empearled
Pompadour's cheek.
That pedant ere he posed o'er learned primer,
Quaffed Rose-In-Bloom romance in foaming brimmer!
Down through the Feasts of the Lantern that
glimmer
Three thousand years,
After the eye of fair Kansi lent shimmer
Over her masque, premier fan, none make dimmer
This of vague fears !
258 "l)c geconb (Harb toins."
II. SPREAD.
Reed broken ; trailing wing : a darkened sky ;
Each are inherence of that bitter cry !
Far, high horizon, leaning awry,
A pallid moon
Ruminant wandering through a blue sky.
Curlew low flying, gull hanging high,
Down-tilting loon.
World-grief Is through his murmur surging free,
So moan the billows, and the wind in tree !
Who is here, roaming alone by the sea,
Drift on the shore,
Blown and oblique? Let the dream -figure flee I
Why doth he, beating his brow, turn to me?
What to deplore?
His breaking heart in a proverb embalming,
How could a cynic in China be harming?
Picture of dread, a prophetic alarming,
Fate and despair !
Meanwhile the orchestra thrills with its charming
Traumbilder^ Lumbye, composer, becalming
Castle in air !
111.- FURLED.
Phrase like a ghost with a finger on lip !
Love-hooded heart like a bird let to slip !
"ftlje Second (Hard tomg." 259
Plume upon plume here with down on the tip,
Hovered in flight
O'er bramble-hid city, voyaging ship,
Desert, mirage and simoon, but to dip *
At tranquil height.
On wind of every fan blown to its aim,
Blows, blowing yet, that sigh of wrathful blame !
Filigree-silver and sandal-wood frame
Hint caravan ;
Deep mining-tunnel with torches aflame ;
Incense and rite in the great Brahma name,
Blessing or ban.
All the world over doth Beauty cajole,
Love learn the wisdom of that Chinese dole !
Clouds of enchantment around you uproll
From fan and glove,
As if each flower you Ve worn left its soul,
Like painted dream, where to Earth downward stole
Cherub, or Love !
IV. THE TASSEL.
Few are his words, but how much they betray ;
Pathos of novel or heart-rending play !
If as the Magi held though all astray,
Life a blind road,
I but intangible fibre obey
Spun from unpitying star 01 my day,
What may this bode ?
260 "l)e Seconb arb
My heart his tent, I hear him low complain:
Star falling, venomed flower, are in the strain !
Mine to be fashioned like mere tassel-skein ?
Frosted the flame,
Chill of your coldness to fire in my vein !
// Flung from your hand as whim may ordain.
Like puppet-game?
V.- THE BOX.
Passionate sage and I ! Hearts of one race !
On my Great Wall of woe his words I trace !
Trifle may prophesy, even that case,
Cushioned with crape.
Broad, rounded top with a narrowing base,
Black on the white of your velvet and lace,
A coffin shape !
The saying ? Truth in China or Japan
A woman's word is like a broken fan !
Tuesday, I was on my way to the street;
the elevator had just touched the ground-floor,
when I found that stupid Babette had given
me the wrong gloves, two of the same hue,
but where one had twelve buttons the other
had but six. I signed to the boy to go up
again ; but he waited for a couple just coming
from the street-door, who entered, and, in the
Beronb orb tDina." 261
change from outdoors to darkness, did not see
me in the corner, but kept on talking.
"You must cheer up," she said, "and not
look on life as a losing game."
" Perhaps you thought it one," he sneered,
"till you had the chance to cry checkmate.
You can talk thus when you could give up the
certainty of happiness in a second venture,
give up the most constant of your girlhood's
lovers, give up the opportunity to redeem a
broken promise all for the possibilities of
money! "
"But think of those possibilities!" she
answered; "happiness is among them as
surely as money need not be reckoned in hap-
piness, ^fou cannot judge; you have not
known the bitter taste of poverty
" But I do judge. 1 know you are lost in a
golden mist. 1 can not see how you could keep
from seizing your freedom."
"At the cost of that butterfly's wings?"
she asked. "Why should I break down a
lovely flower? I could not hurt one who has
been kind to me."
" But my conscience is not easy to have
matters go this way," said he.
"What is a man's conscience?" she said.
" A passing gust of wind that blows in the line
262 " <g|e Second Car& toins.
of his glance, always coming up behind him,
never blowing against him!"
"But he has obeyed the dictates of con-
science in "
"Dictates of conscience!" she broke in,
" in a man who knows no difference between
a desire and a duty!"
" I can not wonder that you are bitter," he
said, " to find your husband as you have "
"Oh, Mrs. Capel!" I cried, grasping her
arm, " have you found him? Oh, I'm so
glad! kiss me, my dear. Oh, tell me all
about it! Come to my rooms I will not go
out this afternoon."
I suppose 1 startled them both, seizing hold
of her in the dimness, for she really screamed :
"O my soul! I didn't see you!"
" Great heavens! Mrs. Clare!" cried Mark
Dillon. ''Mrs. Capel is not well. She is on
her way to her room to lie down. She has
found"
"A kind friend in you, Mrs. Clare," she
broke in. "I feel your sympathy. No I
have not found the man I married."
Then the elevator touched our floor, and she
and I stepped out. Mr. Dillon bowed and
went down again. Mrs. Capel's eyes gleamed,
and her lips wore a tense curve, as she begged
Seconb arb toina." 263
me to excuse her; she needed rest. As I
watched her pass down the hall, her air made
me think of the woman Sam can not bear to
see walk into the dining-room, because her gait
recalls some one he has known. The more I
thought over their strange talk together, the
more sure I felt that there was some secret
between them. I meant to know what.
Our hotel gave a hop on Wednesday night.
Sam and I were on the floor waiting for the
music to begin. He often gets the band to
play what he likes.
" Have you told the leader what you will
have?" asked Mark Dillon, as he strolled up
to us. " Shall I name ' The Open Road* ?"
/'Or 'Man lives but once,'" Sam an-
swered, and his friend gave the order.
When we sat down, he joined us, saying,
after one of his old, long looks at me :
"Well Mrs. Capel has gone."
Sam walked off, as he always did when she
was spoken of. So dull of Mr. Dillon not to
know /was the one most interested in her.
" Without a word of farewell!" I said.
"Oh, yes," he answered; "she sent a
good-by to you. She got a letter Monday
night that caused her sudden start. She
meant to leave yesterday morning, but missed
he train."
264 "l)e Seconb Carb toms."
"Poor woman!" said I. "How I wish we
could have helped her ! She had her journey
for nothing."
"No," he said; "she gained by it expe-
rience."
" Yes," said 1; " she is richer, I suppose."
" Ah?" He spoke as if surprised.
"Yes," 1 answered; "in thought and
feeling."
" Oh yes," said he; " yes, I think she is
richer. It has been worth to her at least a
hundred thousand dollars."
He was watching me so closely that I knew
he felt I suspected him, and 1 changed the
subject by asking: " Isn't it a shame about
the break in stocks?"
"Break! Why, you are dreaming. Stocks
are booming."
" Oh, no. Sam has just lost in them the
hundred thousand dollars he promised me for
my birthday."
"Is it possible? I was not aware oh,
yes, to be sure."
His wits seemed to be straying; but I
suppose he was lost in admiration of my ex-
quisite dress gold-colored satin and cloth-of-
gold, embroidered with seed-pearls. Or was he
thinking about her?
0er0nfc QTar& tains." 265
"How would her husband have felt if she
had found him?" I asked.
" How can I more than another answer that
question?" said he. " Ask Sam."
" I am sorry for him," I said.
" For whom?" he asked.
" For her husband," I answered. " He has
lost a good wife."
" Well," he said, musing, " I once thought
she had a soul. But only a few souls are made.
Half the world have none. I 'm afraid she was
like the most of us, mere painted slides on the
lantern of Life. But suppose we will say
suppose she had found him married again?"
"But," said I, losing patience, " she didn't
even find him."
"Oh, no," he replied, quickly; "I didn't
say she did."
He had been idly playing with my Indian
fan, and now suddenly asked if I did not think
the figure in the picture less plain than of
yore. " The old juggler really could foretell
then," he muttered.
But I wanted to solve the mystery, and
began by asking, "Why don't you marry?"
He smiled. " Shall I say I am the victim of
the cruel laws of being, or of chance ? I only
wait at a banquet where I inhale the odor of
266 "Slje Seconir Carb
other men's cake, and hear the plash of others'
wine."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
" That married women please me most," he
said.
Of course, I knew it all the time, but was
surprised that he owned it to me.
"But lately," he went on, "my wonted
pose of looker-on has been disturbed. I have
just been a heavy loser by getting too
absorbed in another man's game."
"What was it? Faro?"
" No yes yes, it was a very good game
of faro. Do you know what that is?"
"No. How is it played?"
"It is all chance," he replied; "the first
card loses, and the second card wins."
He bowed and loitered off through the
whirling, jostling throng. I was glad to lose
sight of his cynical smile and sound of his
affected drawl. It was two or three hours
later, just twelve o'clock, when, tired of
dancing, I sat listening to the " Oginski," and
waiting for Sam, who stood not far off, telling
some one the love-lorn legend of the music.
After the last bar, I heard his words: " Here
the Polish lover, mad with despair, went
from the ballroom out into the night and shot
himself."
Seconfr QTarfc toine." 267
A chilly wind swept round me, a gust that
tore my fan out of my tight-gloved left hand,
which was trying to also hold bouquet and
handkerchief, while I beckoned Sam to come.
" They must have opened a window some-
where/' I told him. " Do have it closed."
" I feel the wind, too, now I come here," he
said, picking up my fan, and going to see about
it, but he came back without finding any
reason for the blast. " I feel it only here," he
said; but we went to our rooms. As we left
the elevator, a rush of cold air again chilled us
to the marrow. I shivered, and trying to draw
my cloak more closely round me, the fan
slipped out of my hand as if some one had
snatched it, and in some odd chance was
thrown over the banisters as we passed the
stairs, and falling many feet on the marble
pavement, was wholly shattered. I could have
cried, I was so vexed to lose it. I wished I
had taken the cherry-stone bracelet.
" The house seems full of draughts to-night,"
said Sam, as he locked our door.
Shivering, too, I answered, " I wonder how
far Mrs. Capel has got on her journey."
" She can't be colder in the cars than we
are here," said Sam, poking the fire, which we
always have at night ; but all at once it seemed
to have been needless, for we had to open the
268 "i)e Kecorib OTarb toins."
windows. Sam tried to comfort me for the loss
of the fan ; but he was in a very jolly mood,
and kept pirouetting all through the rooms.
"By Jove!" he cried, " this is a world worth
living in, isn't it? Oh, Minnie! you looked
as sweet as a peach to-night. I 'm so proud of
you ! I 'm very sorry about your fan."
" Oh, I am!" said I. "There is nothing like
it in this country."
"Not only that," he said, "but I hate to
have Mark know it is ruined. But I 'm so
happy to-night I can't grieve so much. Come
and kiss me, Minnie."
Dear Sam ! There never was a more fond
and faithful husband. How I pity wives with
husbands who can be false !
II. PASSAGE FROM THE DIARY OF
MRS. CAPEL.
Thursday morning. My nerves have been
so shaken by the ordeal I have passed that I
could not rest well last night. As I lay in my
berth the very motion of the train seemed to
throb against my brain. "You are not the
same poor creature who passed over this very
road a week ago not the same not the
same!" I could not keep from thinking of
poor old Mark. How true he had been ! But
Qetonb Carb toins." 269
what folly it would have been to trust any
man again! I drew my watch from under my
head, made out to see that the hands. were on
twelve, and then dropped to sleep as to a series
of strange visions. Out of blank darkness
suddenly shapes itself before me that fan from
India, which will confront me. I can not turn
so that it does not follow, until I see and cry
out: " Why the figure has gone from the
picture!" Then it all vanishes. Now 1 see
the beach near the Cliff House. There is a
full moon, and Mark paces there alone, though
a high wind is blowing. But such a weight is
on my soul that I groan myself awake. (Could
he have been there, I wonder? Was his mind,
looking out on the moonlit sea and lovely
sands, reflected in mine, and vividly defined
against the chiaroscuro of dreamland ?) Then
I am in a ballroom, the band playing the wildly
sad " Oginski," full of deep-drawn sighs and
longing. I am conscious of a swarm of
dancers, yet seem to be only sure of Samuel
and my lovely friend who sits near him, look-
ing very beautiful, and takes no notice of
Mark, who comes up with some queer dis-
figurement of his face, and behaves very
strangely, snatching her fan out of her hand
and flinging it on the floor. (Probably I
270 "(Erje Second <Ear& toins."
dreamed this because I knew he disliked to
see her have it.) She pays no heed to him,
but shivers. Samuel gets her fan, and soon
they all three leave the hall, she and "Clare"
acting as if chilly. Mark again tears the fan
from her, and dashes it down as if from some
great height. Dream-like, she does not notice
him, though grieved to lose her fan, which, I
see, is shivered to bits. Then I lose sight of
all of them I hang across the firm but un-
seen arm of some shadowy presence that bears
me away with it. I hear no voice, but feel
borne in upon me these words: "Beyond
even the possibilities of Money!" I float in
mid-air, though it does not seem so much that
I move higher and higher, as that my old sur-
roundings drop away is tkati\\e city with its
net of lights far below? and that vast silver
shield must be the ocean ! Clouds bar off that
view. I am chilled and breathless. How daz-
zling the stars grow ! Is that dim speck our
world down there by the moon? Is this
I feel the unseen arm loose its hold, and the
vapor that seems like a presence shoots far
above, as if torn from me. I am falling, fall-
ing through endless depths. I awoke with a
convulsive start, to find myself in the swinging
train, with the crazy beat upon my brain.
" Not the same ! Oh, not the same ! "
Seronb (tarb toine." 271
III. PARAGRAPH FROM SAN FRANCISCO
PAPERS OF THURSDAY EVENING.
Last night, Mark Dillon left the hop at the
Hotel, and with a party of gentlemen
drove to the Cliff House. Leaving them at
supper, he went out on the beach at midnight,
and shot himself in the temple. No cause for
the suicide is known. He was a man of refine-
ment and culture, but had spent most of his
fortune in foreign travel. He was well known
in society as musician and poet, and in his
pocket were found these lines (dated yester-
day):
A LOST HOPE.
Oft when the sun has set
A wondrous afterglow will linger yet ;
Through darkening dome the trailing gorgeous hues
Unite, dissolve, slow change to shadows gray
As echoes of some haunting tune perplex,
That come and go and vex,
And all the idler's hollow thought confuse
With occult sway.
When a great hope has set
Long must its halo stir a deep regret,
Illuminating oft the gloomy thought
With rays from sunken argosy.
The floating cloud of foiled sweet fancies nued
By it, are viewed
With aching heart and soul that, half-distraught,,
Yearn oh, how helplessly!
IN SILVER UPON PURPLE: "STAR-
CROSS'D LOVERS."
I
IN SILVER UPON PURPLE: "STAR-
CROSS'D LOVERS."
Pastel.
" From no human equation can you eliminate that unknown
factor, the most mysterious of all, the unexpected."
Midsummer and midnight in an Italian city in
the sixteenth century. The narrow, crooked
streets are dim and quiet. The purple dark
above is strewn with worlds like silver sands,
yet so solemn and mysterious one feels that
they may form cabalistic characters, and
dreads some consequence yet hanging in the
stars.
A nobleman passes along the lonely streets
toward the cemetery, followed by his page,
who bears a torch and a basket of flowers.
The torchlight casts glints upon the heavy
gold embroidery of a sinister heraldic flower
which wreathes the young gentleman's white
cloak, and lets the white satin puffing in his
slashed sleeves gleam, the gems set in the hilt
of his rapier flash. The frosty plumes in his
275
276 In Siber Upon JJurple.
hat nod above a refined, proud face. Many
women have sighed, have wept, because he
passed them without a glance. The stately
elegance of the man himself is far more than
his adornments. What could thwart the will
of such a fine, majestic being ?
Those shifting, silver sands, that dust of
worlds, athwart the purple dark long-blown
and blowing far !
" These milky blossoms," he muses, "are
not white enough to match the purity of that
fair girl who was to have been my wife. I
ought to thank Heaven that I lose her only
as the bride of Death. I could never have
yielded her to any other bridegroom. My
Beautiful! My Own!"
He will never know that she loved, even
married, another. He moves haughtily to-
ward that unforeseen but immediate, sudden
fray in which he is to be killed.
Athwart the purple dark, long-blown and
blowing far, those shifting silver sands, that
dust of worlds !
The page tries to stride like his master, and
longs to be the grown man who can do as he
likes. The shadows leap from them, point at
them, draw grotesque likenesses of them,
crowd back and follow. Here is a lofty win-
Jn Siber Hpon JJnrple. 277
dow, over which a fantastic gargoyle, half-
demon, half-dragon, is lolling out its tongue,
as if in derision, but a shadow closes its
mouth, even cowls its head, and leaves its
sharp claws, holding an open book, its coiled
tail, by which it hangs from the roof, without
meaning. Below, in the open window, a girl
of scarlet lips and bright eyes is leaning out
into the summer night. Many men, with their
hungry hearts in their eyes, have followed
her to and from mass. What shall assail with
stifling torment a creature of such grace and
charm ?
Long-blown and blowing far, that dust of
worlds, athwart the purple dark those shifting
silver sands !
She sees the picturesque passing of knight
and page. She knows their mission. She
does not regret the death ; her own lover was
too much taken by that girl at the late
masque. " I have been wrong not to let him
know how his wooing has thrilled me," she
thinks. "When he serenaded me the night
before, I neither lighted my window nor flung
down a flower. I will make amends now for
my long neglect of him. I will embroider that
old love-song he sang for the border of the
cloak he shall wear at our wedding. It stiall
278 Jn Qiluer &pon Jtarple.
be of sky-blue velvet, the border of satin,
the five lines, the stems of the notes, the bars
in silver, the notes of seed-pearls. With ropes
of pearls and white plumes on his hat, how
handsome he will look! His beauty is a
melody, a harmony for the eye beyond any
the ear ever heard ! And its theme is Love ! "
The purple dark, that shifting dust of
worlds, those silver sands long-blown and
blowing far athwart !
The serene night is too pitiful to let her feel
any foreboding of ill, of news that dawn will
bring of a triple tragedy to-night in the ceme-
tery, any hint of the secret which will be such
distress to her to know that her lover has
already married the girl whose beauty be-
witched him at the masque.
An old nurse who has come from a palace in
mourning, and whose black figure, thrown up
by the circling rays of torchlight, is a blot on
the paler darkness behind her, sees by the
dancing flare the beatified girl in the window
and the passing beneath of the jaunty, dis-
dainful cavalier and his strutting, envious
page. The lovely girl, with pink roses in dark
curls shadowing her high forehead, wears deep
rose-velvet, heavily embroidered with crystal
beads, the bodice a glittering mass of them,
In Siloer Hpon purple. 279
like a vision, all for an instant, of tears she is
soon to shed. The old woman has a vivid
glimpse of her against a background of gold-
colored tapestry. The gargoyle grins, its
mouth gapes into mock laughter, then appears
to hastily shut, as grim shadows close around
the dreaming girl and pursue the departing
cavalier.
"Now, afore Heaven! why couldn't they
fall in love with one another?" the nurse
mumbles. " Just as young and handsome as
the others, and with the chinks ! Yet these
must go down through the ages, as they say,
forever famous as the jilted ones! Nobody
will be concerned about what they may have
suffered. A dainty beauty, a brave gallant
they deserve a better fate. Poor County
Paris! Poor Rosaline!"
That dust of worlds, those shifting, silver
sands long-blown and blowing far athwart the
purple dark !
'ARE THE DEAD DEAD?"
;
"ARE THE DEAD DEAD?"
Who shall determine the power of sympathy, or assign to that
power its limit?
My story is so strange that I cannot expect
many to believe it. Only a short time ago
I myself would have scoffed at such a tale. I
would not tell it, but for the faint hope that it
may lead others if such there be to own to
any like experience ; for I cannot think that I
alone, of all the world, have had such glimpse
of the mysterious outlying region usually
veiled from mortals. Whoever you are, now
about to read what comes, I implore you com-
fort me, if you can, by writing: " I, too, have
heard and seen!" Come forward and share
my burden before I lose my mind.
Marvel not that I grant the request of the
club which asked for this statement. Since
that awful experience I feel lifted above the
paltry secret-keeping of this world. I own
our spiritual kinship. On the Day of Judg-
ment all will be known ; why should I hesitate
to give now a brief account of what, after all,
283
284 "&re tlje
might have happened to any one ? For we are
all tangled in strange meshes of circumstance.
But it must be seldom that one is allowed to
see how one's thoughts or acts here may, long
after one is gone, affect people one may not
have known ; to see how, before unguessed,
life might have been different; to find that
one's passions last as strong as in life, or
stronger. But are they not one's self ! With-
out them we might as well be lost in the
Universal Spirit of the Brahmins.
That no one has seen and heard such proof
of this until now weighs nothing against it.
Sir John Herschel has said, that of all the
fusions that might be of the fifty or sixty ele-
ments which chemistry shows there are on the
earth, it is likely nay, almost sure that some
have not been made. Those who cannot un-
derstand my story should remember that to
the blind the touch of ice or fire is the same.
Those who doubt this tale are like the Indian
prince told of by Hume, who would not think
thare could be ice.
1 have another reason for writing this; I
owe it to the club upon which I rather forced
myself to tell the cause of my abject terror
when they saw nothing. I know some of
them thought I was crazed; they will feel
ttje EJeafc Eleabr' 285
sure of it, perhaps, when I say that, so far
as human judgment could go, it seemed to me
at first that my joining them sprang from the
wealth of bloom this year on the great helio-
trope under my parlor-window, and from a
chance call ; but now these seem but links in
a chain, running into past and future beyond
our ken.
I filled a vase on my piano with the flowers,
whose strong, sweet, wine-like odor led me to
rhymes. Then I played and sang till, through
the dreamful scent and the charm of music, I
was rapt in clouds far above the world, and so
little pleased to have a caller that I paid slight
heed to him ; and, on the plea of playing for
him, did some hard practice, till, with aching
arms, I turned round to find he had caught up
the leaf of note-paper I had written on, and
was placing his eyeglass to see what it was.
With some notion that it was a joke to do so,
he read aloud my
RONDEL.
Strange depth of passion freights the heavy scent
Of heliotrope ; there breathes a discontent
From pallid purple upon snow upthrown,
Like haze of hills afar with white cloud blent;
All vague regret and mad desire seem loan
From odor blown.
286 "&re ttje JDecrtr
Sweet things that never were pervade my thought,
As when sad music sounds, with yearning fraught,
That makes the present pass behind two tears,
All that the future may unfold seem naught.
Some past unknown was blest. Too quickly veers
The lapse of years.
1 cannot read nor sing I only sigh.
A haunting presence in my room is nigh ;
I suffocate with a delicious dole.
What spirit stronger than my own is by?
Is this fierce will, that can my mind control,
The flower's soul?
"Humph!" said he. "You ought to join
the Ghost Club."
"What do you mean?" 1 asked. "1 had
not heard of one."
" Well, it is kept quiet," he said ; "but it is
a small club, whose members go to houses said
to be haunted, to see what truth there may be
in the tales. You know that one out on
Valencia street, near Fifteenth? They have
spent some time there ; and in the large house
here in town, on Sutter street, which was
vacant so long, and at last taken, with its fine
grounds, for a beer-garden."
"What happened?" I asked. "Was any
one frightened into a fit?"
"No," said he; "they have seen nothing
"Sir* tlje 8)*ai> Eeabr' 287
yet. But if you watch to-morrow night, you
will see them marching up here to the house
over the way."
I began to be interested. " That house!"
I said. "I did not know anything was the
matter with it. But I know it has long been
to let." I did not tell him what a part of my
reveries it had been not only for its pictur-
esque look, but because of the music I had
once heard from its windows.
"It is not easy to let," he went on, "be-
cause the first owner poisoned himself there.
Why don't you join the club ? You are fan-
ciful enough. I can give you letters to the
chief members."
"I might for fun," I said; "I have no
faith."
"Neither have they; they call it a quest
for truth."
I let him write the letters two to women,
one to a man three out of the seven who
formed the club. The last thing that night I
paused by my window to look over at the
house square, high, dark, outlined against
the stars, far above the street, which was cut
through the hill at some date since the build-
ing of the house, which stands near the head
of about a hundred zigzag steps, with landings
288 "<3lr* ti)e
here and there at the turns, the first flight
boarded from the street, and looking like a
switch-tender's hut on a railroad.
Behind an uncared-for garden of dusty ever-
greens, and half-hidden in yellow and white
jasmine, the lonely house, with its closed win-
dows, made me think of a giant with shut
eyes lying in a garden under a spell. Did it
ever dream? Sometimes I half -believed in
flitting lights and changeful shadows behind
one shutterless window upstairs, but thought
it must be the reflection of the headlight of a
passing street-car dummy.
That house had long been like a conscious
comrade in my day-dreams. It was linked in
my mind with an offer of marriage I once had
from one for whom I cared very little, but
whom circumstances nearly brought me to
accept. But through the open windows came
such a strain of warning music that, creatures
of chance impulses that we are, swayed by a
look or a tone, my mind changed in spite of
me. I was lifted out of my usual self, and
had strength to do right. I never knew any-
thing of the unseen singer but his love for
his art as shown by daily study which I
heard. That " sound which was a soul"
surely saved me from making my life a mere
JDeafr SDeafc?" 289
hard, rude outline, from losing all the pic-
turesque effects of light and shade which
romance, hope, and feeling give. But it was
strangely done, by making the man at my feet
so suddenly hateful to me.
I could not help wishing to join the Ghost
Club, though I thought our pains would be
vain. I felt a strange interest in the plan. It
made me restless that night. While dressing
in the morning, I looked up again at the
lonesome-looking house, and, nodding gayly
toward it, cried : " You have haunted me/"
No one could have felt lighter-hearted and
more free from dread than I, as during the day
I presented my letters, and gained consent to
my joining the club "for that one house. "
Heaven knows I have now no wish to thus
visit another !
When the club gathered that night at the
doorway to the steps over the way, I joined
them. A queer group. A believer, a doubter,
an inquirer, a strict church member, and
others who came, as I did, for pastime. Some
were late, and had not yet come when we
wound up the long stairs, and waited at the
door for some one who was to bring the key.
" Nothing is too strange to happen/' said
the inquirer, who, with his wife, seemed
tlje
gravely exploring a strange region. " There
is nothing which may not be in the wide mar-
gin of the unknown around all we know."
"The Bible tells us," said the pious man,
" ' There is a universe to us invisible, but not,
therefore, unreal."'
"But I cannot think," said the doubter,
"that those who have gone there think of us;
for ' Death remembers to forget.' "
"Yet Isaac Taylor thought," said the be-
liever, "the human and extra-human crowd
might be within any given bounds; but as they
are commonly unseen and unheard by us, so
we may be the same to them."
" Like the voices the Talmud tells of," said
a Jewess, laden with flesh and lace and dia-
monds, "the sounds which pass through the
world, and are not heard by any creatures
in it."
He nodded, and went on: "Jung Stilling
and Oberlin also held, we can be only ghosts
to them, as they to us."
" No one ever saw a ghost not made by his
fancy," said the doubter a Jew. "It is
always like that German tale of a student
who fought a duel with a spectre, who, when
he dropped the cloak from his face, was seen
to be himself!"
ilje JDeair flDeab?" 291
"That is why the club was formed," said
the believer; "doctors own that more than
one may have an illusion, but say there is
no such thing as delusion for a group of
people."
The pious man patted my Spitz dog. " He
may see more than we can," said he, "as
Balaam's ass saw the angel."
"Yes," said the joker, "to * speak by the
card,' when we are within an ace of meeting
hobgoblins, and the deuce is to pay, Tray will
knock spots out of them."
As we went into the house, I found in the
man who had the key an old neighbor.
"Why, Mr. H -- !" I cried.
He started nervously, and looked around in
great surprise. "Miss W - !" said he,
"are you here? with those asking eyes of
yours? "
"Oh, I don't believe in it," I laughed; "I
am only curious, like the rest."
Not so much then as since, I have thought
of his strange look at me, and the shrug of his
shoulders, which seemed to lift me off his
mind, for he paid no more heed to me that
night.
The others glanced here and there through
the open doors, with an eager air, in marked
292 "<&re il)* SDeair
contrast with Mr. H - 's studied unconcern.
They noticed his manner, and spoke of it.
"I never look about me in this house," he
said, gravely, "or in any of these old places,"
he added, and hurried off.
The inquirer plunged down the steps, caught
him on the first landing, and cried: "Why?
Why not?"
Mr. H - hesitated. "Well you might
look for the ghosts of the restless, roving folks
who wandered to California," he answered,
and ran down.
As we stood in the hall, the believer made
us a speech about being in a fit state, and
urged that we should be placed in rooms by
ourselves, or no more than two together.
Though, after some wrangling, we were
allowed a light in each room, we were to sit
idle and not speak. I was left in a small
room, with a window on the street. The
others went where he told them. The silence
which soon reigned made it seem as if there
was no one in the house. Fearless as I had
always boasted of being, a strange dread at
last settled on me. I could not lose that feel-
ing as of some one just at the door, which we
know in vacant furnished houses. I tried to
forget why we came. I counted, each way,
tlje ftteab SDeafc?" 293
the figures in carpet and curtains. I noticed
all in the room, the common and uncommon,
from chairs, table, and sofa to a veiled picture
and an old-fashioned secretary, whose torn
green silk behind the glass doors showed some
stray leaves of manuscript.
I wondered in which room the old owner
took poison. Supposing it to be true, as some
have thought, that suicide chains the spirit to
earth, why should we know it? What right
had we to pry into the unknown ? I shrank
from the test, and was seized with nervous
trembling. Even my dog grew restless, and
ran home just as, much to my relief, a late-
comer entered the house.
He came in the room where I was a shy,
quiet young man, who went toward the win-
dow, but, suddenly seeing me, started, stared,
and dropped into a seat. It struck me some
way that he was in awe of me. I was half-
amused to think he might be taking a stranger
for a ghost.
Long we sat amid the shadows, silent and
strange, as if both by some spell called up
from the shades by the club. The oil-lamp
burned dimly. I faintly saw my companion's
glowing eyes, and fine profile, like that on
antique vase or coin, and the small spray of
294 "3tw tlje Eteair
the breath-of-heaven's snowflake flowers that,
with a blood-red pink, he wore as a button-
hole bouquet.
The floor cracked like a goblin telegraph.
The banisters creaked as if people were
going up and down the stairs. The wind
in sudden gusts rattled the tin roof till it
seemed like the tramp of an army. But I
heard with my mind's ear once more the
passionate love-songs and snatches from operas
which had of old so charmed me from this
very window.
I could not keep my eyes off this man.
Dazed, I looked at him. Where had I known
him? I seemed flooded by a tidal wave
of memories of what? bits of dreams?
sleeping or waking ones? Was it a tide of
inherited memories surging through my veins
with the hot blood of some ancestress who
had, like me now, loved at first sight one like
him, this man of graceful movement and head
like an antique bust? Who could tell? I
gazed at him, mad with vague, keen longing
and remembrance, excited as with wine by
the new and piquant charm of feeling the
overwhelming power of his presence, yet see-
ing him wholly unaware of it, and even shy.
I was under a spell subtle as the scent of the
JDeafc JDeafc?" 295
blossoms which nestled where 1 longed to lay
my head, upon his breast.
When the hours of our fruitless waiting had
passed, and we all stumbled down the wind-
ing, grass-grown steps, from starlight through
shadow into the gas-lit street, I was dizzy with
the intoxication of his glances, and lay awake
the rest of the night. Who was he ? One of
this crazy club. I wanted nothing to do with
them. I resolved not to join them again. But
just as I had waked all night, I dreamed all
day. This, then, was love, to look into eyes
of such dazzling enchantment that all else
became dull. I could do nothing but think of
him. I envied the girls in the "Arabian
Nights," who could always send an old
woman to tell a young man he was loved,
and bring him. I longed for the freedom of
the birds of the air, who are not held in check
by the straight-jacket of custom which keeps us
from blows or kisses at first sight. As the day
wore on, 1 could not keep from going up there
to look about in the light. The key had been
left with me. I took it, but hardly meant to
use it. I thought I would walk in the garden.
The still, old place had an odd charm for me.
San Francisco was gone; its hum sounded
faint, like a distant sea ; it seemed far off, as
296 "&r* tl)* Wecti
if one of the vanished Five Cities of the Plain,
to me on this hilltop, alone, with the fierce
wind and dazzling sky, better comrades and
more akin than the breathless, thronged
streets and crowding buildings. The clouds
floated near. The garden shrubs whispered
their secrets. It was so solitary that, though
the sunshine was over all, and an army of
wall-flowers formed their torch-lit ranks round
the door, there seemed to be no relief from
a weight of loneliness. It seemed almost
remote enough for Death to overlook. Was it
haunted? The house looked at me with its
pleasant windows, and lured me to go in. The
sense of intrusion was too strong for me to go
all over it. I went into the room where I sat
the night before. I had not paused to mark
the dusty gloom, or to feei nervous, when I
happened to glance througn the glass of the
secretary. I bent to admire the writing thrust
behind the worn green silk. I saw my own
Christian name. I opened the doors. Frag-
ments which had lain there by chance so
long, plainly worthless, at the mercy of the
next tenant, whoever it might be. I took
them by right of my name of Rose. They
were leaves torn from a note-book, mostly the
record of a singer's daily practice; so many
ilje Eteafc JDeafc?" 297
minutes to these exercises or to those, or to
songs, and so much time to French and Italian.
But here and there came these entries :
Rose ! sweet blossom in the wilderness of names,
freighted with fragrance of lovers' vows folded in it,
with hints of passionate meetings and farewells em-
balmed in amber moonlights, of dusky old gardens at
nightfall, whose satin - cheeked flowers wakeful,
pale, and tearful, or crumpled, flushed, and warm,
tossing in their dreams all sigh their hearts out for
the day who loved and rode away for a Rose should
have an ardent soul. She would not look at me now ;
but when skilled in my art, famous, rich who
knows?
This evening I saw her sitting in her window, look-
ing lonely and sad, for her drooping head reminded me
of a heavy-hearted flower. Could I but be her shelter-
ing and supporting leaf ! But I am like the ground at
the feet of my Rose no more able to come near her
sweet lips, or touch her dainty hand ! Soon her cur-
tains were drawn. Into the moon-lit space between
our houses, from the depths of my heart, I sang
Fesca's impassioned " Maiden at the Window."
I love her ; but how can that serve her the love of
one with no wealth beyond his silver tenor and his
golden hope. She might as well be the wild rose who
blushes in lonely woodlands, her sweet soul unblessing
and unblest, and dies with no knowledge of bliss that
might have been hers. She may never know of the
kisses I long to give her. It is strange to think of our
298 "&r* ttje JDeair
cool unconsciousness of precious treasures of heart and
soul in those around us whom we never know.
How hard is my fate! My mind is like a phantom
battle-field, with this conflict carried on in silence an
awful, noiseless war, as of shadows ; but, to me, what
dread realities ! Sometimes I think I must break my
bond with my cousin. What a cursed fool I was
to bargain away my freedom for the sake of her
money, for study here and in Europe ! But love was
to me only a name. When 1 made that contract I had
not seen Rose.
To see Rose sitting here before me, to hear her say,
" I love you ! " would be enough to come back for
from another world. But what we miss here must be
gone forever.
" We shall go down to earth,
And be raised again from her ;
But there is no resurrection birth
For the things that never were."
Sometimes I seem to live but to see her shadow on
her curtain, her flitting form in the garden, or going in
or out. Bliss and woe ! Then I force myself to scales
and exercises of the like sameness, that may dull my
senses like a narcotic.
Last night, at my open window, I poured out my
whole soul in the love-songs of Beethoven and Schu-
bert. Edith supposed I was making out my hours of
practice. The only neighbors near enough to hear
may have thought me mad, but I did not care. I had
"Sir* tlje IDeab ?Dea5?" 299
seen &?r lighted room grow dark ; I knew my voice
rang through her dreams. The nightingale singing to
the rose, I thought ; and was I not also leaning my
breast against a thorn ?
My God! What an awful feeling is jealousy!
Three days ago, through our open windows, I watched
Rose with a suitor. It was plain that he was wooing,
and that she, though, it seemed, not much caring, still
she listened. I thought of the "Malediction" from
HaleVy's "Charles the Sixth." My teacher, an old
opera-singer, had told me how the spell of this fatal air
followed the pointing finger of a tenor of the Grand
Opera at Paris : now it was one of the audience who
dropped in a fit; then he signed downward, and the
shock was upon a carpenter under a trap-door; again,
reaching up, a scene-shifter fell senseless. I burst into
the solemn air. If ever such subtle influence worked,
I meant it should now. I wished there could be poison
in sound. I hated that unknown man. I willed him
to lose his cause. I thought how Stradella's heavenly
tones in his own hymn, the prayer of a bruised and
rueful soul, changed the minds of those who had come
to slay him. Could I make mine evil enough to crush
that man's hopes? My song should be an alembic
through which passion, hate, and despair could distill
a strong and malign force. I shook. I grew afraid of
my own voice, of my own soul. The man rose as if
unwilling to leave. I willed him to go. I quaked from
head to foot. Cold drops beaded my brow. In the
glass I caught sight of my uplifted, menacing hand,
and of my eyes, which were strange to me, blazing
with a fierce, inward fire, like those of a wild beast that
300 "are tl)e SDeair
sees its prey. He went. I drew free breath. I felt as
if I had been out of my body. And I did not find my
voice for two days after. Can there be truth in the
old saying that curses come home?
How can I bear to drift away with no anchor in her
life? Oh, it is too, too hard. I have studied so long ;
I owe too much to Cousin Edith. I must keep on. But
I must earn enough to pay her, and then, when I re-
turn, I shall be free ! O Rose! shall I find you here
the same? Heaven grant it ! I go to study, to sing,
so Edith thinks; but 7 I am sure of but one thing ; I
go to return . 7 shall come back!
This was all of the journal. There was
nothing else in the secretary, except a book of
poems by the Countess Hahn-Hahn. Side by
side with her *' Playful Love" was pinned a
page of note-paper, which bore the last of her
verses, in a version made by the writer of the
diary:
Must I die? straight will soar
My soul above to thee ;
And thou new life will lend,
New light to me. And I
Could I with thee quite blend,
I should not fear to die.
Shall I with spirits keep?
No ; though I soar, depart
As spirits heavenward sweep,
Yet th' heaven is thy heart.
tlje JDeafc JBeafc?" 301
Thou wilt thy truant shield,
And ever sympathize,
And ope to him the field
Of that calm paradise.
*
And then the portal golden
Soft, softly close again,
Where I, in peace enf olden,
Shall ever rest from pain.
As, of a morn, the bee
In tulip lies apart,
I sleep all hid in thee,
Swayed of and in thy heart.
I was amazed at these bits of a shattered
romance ; for the writer had long been known
abroad, and I had read of his being made
court-singer for life in a far-off country. It
was like too late looking down some charming
road one might have taken. I sighed. Was
my sigh echoed, or was it the sound of the
swaying boughs of the old gum-trees ? I could
not stay. I ran home to think it over. I
remembered the weird music which had so
strangely mingled with my thoughts when I
refused the man whom he saw. I was still
lost in wonder over it when, in spite of my
resolves, I joined the club at night. Neither
my companion of the night before nor my old
neighbor were there this time.
302 "&re tlje JDeertr
"This is a risky scheme," said the believer;
" it is playing with edged tools."
"We fail to see anything," said the inquirer,
"because visions must come without being
evoked, as by the witches in the play."
"Shut off in different rooms," said the
joker, " who knows which is witch."
" What I can not make agree with there
being ghosts," said the learned-looking in-
quirer, "is this: Heraclitus says, 'Nothing is,
but all flows; being is not a station, but a
motion, a constant becoming.' So those out of
the flesh are not the same as when in it.
Always moving on, no one crosses the same
stream or sees the same picture twice."
" Then," cried the joker, " debtor and
creditor of yesterday lose that relation to-day.
Owe, let us be joyful!"
"Buddha," said the doubter, "called the
soul a current of states ; when the mechanism
goes to pieces, the soul is gone. It was only
the mass of associations, experience, and
memory."
" That," said the believer, " puts man on a
level with a table or chair."
" Yes," said the joker, " let us be chary of
that unstable belief."
" Life is a current of states," said I; "it is
llje Uteab ftteab? 11 303
not in our frames, or in years, but in moments
of bliss or woe, hope or despair, pain, disgust,
strength, or weakness. Those who have not
known * raptures and desolations/ have no
spirit to come back."
We were placed as before, but not without
much dispute.
I thought of the odd folks now in these
rooms, queer as the thoughts that lurk in the
cells of a madman's brain. I waited, like
them, but not for the same reason. I was
anxious for his coming, though I felt faint and
ready to run home to shun meeting his eyes.
What if he did not come ? At the thought, a
weight on my spirits changed the look of the
room, as a cloud dulls the sunny landscape.
With a thrill, a shiver of delight, I heard him
enter.
As he stood for a moment, looking at me over
the lamp on the table, the faint radiance
making his statuesque beauty glow out of the
dimness as if conjured by a spell, the scent of
the breath -of -heaven and clove -pink in his
button-hole might have been that of spices
burned for an incantation. What was it I saw
in those fine eyes? Neither scorn nor pity;
they were kind, but full of an overwhelming
surprise.
304 "Qlre trje
" Again!" he murmured; then kept the club
rule of silence.
1 was confused. I could scarcely breathe.
My head whirled. I reeled to a chair. The
flickering rays of the lamp danced about him,
like my restless thoughts, while we waited.
Waited? I forgot the club, the house, that I
was in the city, in the world. 1 knew only
that the man I loved sat before me. I could
not love those who sought me. How was it
that my heart leaped at a glance from this
stranger's eyes? Stranger? Had we not
known each other from the first of creation ?
The king had come to his own again !
After even the little I had known of the club
disputes, I was not surprised to see the pale
young man shun the others when we all left.
As we went out into the windy night, the well-
known street and view seemed new. I felt
as if I had left the real world behind; that,
truly, one "lived" only in "raptures and deso-
lations." San Francisco, the club, were vague
phantoms, dreams within dreams. I roused to
myself at my own gate, with Mr. H - 's
voice in my ear:
"Are these all?" he asked, looking after the
members going down the street. And watch-
ing, with a pang of regret, their vanishing
forms, I forgot to answer.
irje EDectfr JDectfr?" 305
Then I cried: "Mr. H - , it has just come
back to me how you urged my folks not to take
that very house a year or two ago.. Why did
you do so ? ' '
" I don't want to see any one live in ft, ".he
answered. "My friend K - , the rare tenor,
used to be there. Poor fellow! He was to
have married a cousin, whose money helped
him to study music ; but I have always thought
his heart was elsewhere. She held him in a
thrall, which wore upon him; and the voice,
most frail of all instruments, is hurt by worry.
His was, and at last left him. This shock,, and
disappointment, killed him."
"Oh, I am so sorry!" I cried. "I never
saw him, but I shall not forget his voice. In
'Robin Adair' it was like <the flute of the
twilight wind.' "
" Yes," said Mr. H -- . "As I stood by his
grave, I thought of what Antipater said over
the tomb of Orpheus : ' Here lies a poet ; here
lies a soul that sang ; here lies the sound of the
wind.' He did not want to die, though he
would say to me, * Then I shall be free!' His
cousin, a spiteful woman, seemed to hate to
have him escape her control, though he did
that whenever he sang. His voice raised a
magic wall around him we could only listen
306
afar. _ After his death, she said to me, 'He
has got away from me now' but wait till I
die! 1 with a motion that was a threat. She
would not return here, and has been trying to
have the house sold."
"But why did you not want us to move
there?" I asked.""
"He once said to me," Mr. H - went on:
"'If, when I dream, I can see the old house,
go over it, see her in the window across the
way, may it not be that such pleasure, felt
by me now through none of the nerves of
sense, will be known to my spirit after I die ?
Perhaps, unheard, unseen, the two worlds
blend, and we shall move along our old paths,
with rare visions of the living, who will seem
unreal and awful to us. I wonder if my soul
could then affect one I loved, or must I be a
flitting spectre with no power. We shall see.' "
" Then you believe - ? " I began.
"I have no belief," he said, quickly. "It
seems to me nothing is too strange to happen,"
unconsciously repeating the words of a club-
member.
"No," I thought, after he left me, "I should
wonder at nothing after feeling this sudden
deep interest in two strangers, such regret for
the singer, and such absorbing passion for my
If)* JDtfetfr JEeafcT 1 307
companion of the last two evenings." Why
had I not asked Mr. H - who he was?
The next night I meant should be my last
with the club, shrunk this time to* the inquirer
and wife, and the joker.
" I half believe," said the inquirer, "shadows
are bound to go through tragedies whose scenes
shift with no lookers-on, night after night, year
after year, as if the hour could not forget, and
would not let the place do so. It is the horror
of Doom. But it is not for all to have it proved
to them. Our inner sense has its bounds, like
our other senses."
The joker wound the great hall-clock, which
began to work with convulsive gasps, as if it
had been scared into silence. " Too fright-
ened," he said, "to cover its face with its
hands."
The small room where I sat had at once a
charm and a sadness for me. I was filled with
the vain desire to have known its old tenant.
I wondered about the end of such strong
passions as his. Can they cease here ? Are
they merely to brighten our path, like vivid
colors in flowers and sky ? In fancy I heard
again the lovely tenor airs from "Lucia,"
"Faust," and "Martha" which had of old
rung through this window. I thought of his
308 "&rs ttye EDeafc
journal, and his translation of the German
love-song. And I was haunted haunted by
two lines of Jean Ingelow's
"I have no place on sea or shore,
But only in thy heart."
But through it all ran the stronger under-
current of longing for the coming of the pale
young member of the club a longing that
made me blame my fickle heart, so touched by
one stranger's love and grief, and just as much
thrilled by another's sweet eyes; a longing
that made me tremble, and made my heart, at
the sound of his step, feel as if clutched by
Fate, and nearly powerless to beat.
He started at seeing me, and, pausing an
instant, murmured, "Once more!" and sank
into a chair which stood back to the door; and
again I was spellbound by his shy but ardent
gaze, by the scent of the same sweet flowers
he wore.
With none of my suitors, thronging like bees
about the honey of my wealth, had I ever felt
this tumult of emotion. I was glad of the club
rule of silence. I could have thrown myself
into his arms, but I could not speak.
What was the fatal enigma his eyes held?
They had a mystic spell, as if they had seen
"Qtre ttye Uteafc SDeafc?" 309
deeper than most eyes. Looking into them,
my soul was lured down an unknown tide, on
and on, voyaging through their unspeakable
glory, with glimpse of a new world behind
them, dropping through endless gulfs, till only
by a fierce strain I turned my head away,
blinded, breathless, dazed, and awed; for far
down in those fathomless depths I touched
eternity I found the immortal Love!
Sitting there so long, so still, it seemed to
my strained nerves that we were like ghosts,
and only the pictures on the wall had life and
motion. The hall-clock groaned twelve times,
but my watch lacked ten minutes of twelve.
A cold draught rushed in as at the opening and
closing of some of the doors. A nameless fear
seized me. But a woman I had not yet seen
with the club looked in at the open door, sur-
prise, doubt, and scorn in her intent face.
A woman more to be feared than a ghost, I
thought, as I marked her evil look. She paused
in amaze at sight of us. Suddenly the dim
light wholly failed. To be in the dark was to
recall the errand here of the club. It could not
be borne, even with others near me. After
crossing what seemed an endless space, I
reached the mantel, felt for a match, found
one, and groped back to the centre-table.
3io
As I lighted the lamp, I saw him watching
me with questioning eyes, as if unmoved by
the loss of the light or its return. I saw her
looking in with a wicked smile. A jealous
woman, I judged all the more as she drew
back before he could turn to find the cause of
my changed looks. But he was curious enough
to leave the room. Was she his wife ? Was I
bewitched by a man bound to another woman ?
Has each case its like ? Was another man in
this very house held in bonds? These ques-
tions perplexed me all night.
The next afternoon I went over to look for a
favorite lace handkerchief, dropped in coming
out with the club. I found it caught on a
thistle, near the top stair. It was Sunday, and
the chimes of Saint Patrick's Church came to
me clear and sweet. Some of the words which
are sung to the air they played ran through
my mind:
"A realm of shadowy forms out yonder lies.
Faint sounds of friendly voices come and go,
That seem to lure us forth into the air ;
But whence they come perchance no ear may know,
And where they go perchance no foot may dare."
I looked at the old house, longed and yet did
not like to go in. But I knew none of the club
311
were likely to come until night, when they
were to make their last visit and as for
ghosts, had we not tested it? What worse
than to be haunted by vain yearnings after a
different past, or to know a present not to be
shaped by my will because a woman may not
speak first. Perhaps I was to fade the un-
gathered rose that cannot seek its lover's
hand! Surely, if he felt as I did, he could
not long rest without seeking me outside of the
club.
I pushed in through the dreary hall. I
passed on into the small front room. It gave
me the same feeling of sorrow and regret. It
was like the return from a funeral. How
sorry I now felt that I had never known the
people who used to live here ! I had often
thought, perhaps the friends we never meet
might have been the dearest. I could not tear
myself away. For the first time by daylight
I looked from the window, which, to my sur-
prise, had a full view of my own room across
the way. They must have known more of
me than I ever knew about them.
The house shook in the wind, as if stirred
by unseen hands, but in the room all was still
as if in a picture. There were the rusty nails
and black moss in the grass-grown garden, and
312 "Sir* llje JEeafr
stairs, as at the "moated grange"; but no fly
buzzed in the window, no mouse squeaked in
the wainscot, no bird chirped on the roof.
Nothing moved but the clock in the hall, and
the shadow of a gum-tree across the floor. My
little dog and I sat still as statues.
As in the gloom of Gerome's pictures, rag-
ged beggar and peddler, in the softened light
of oriental canvas-covered streets, become
grand and suggestive ideals, so in this dim,
lonely room common things had a weird, un-
real look; the lounge took coffin-shape ; the
tall, narrow secretary loomed like a monument
near it. I could fancy the veil over the pic-
ture stirred. The chairs gave sudden creaks,
as if bearing unseen burdens.
I looked out of the window, and saw the
buildings of the city far below stand out in the
light of the sinking sun, with sudden sharp
lines, as long-forgotten things start up in the
mind of one dying. Why were my thoughts
all of death? Then a line of phantoms of
silent tunes, long since sung here, passed by
my ears.
I thought of the surprise and dislike in that
woman's face the night before, and of what
slight ground for jealousy she had, when he
and I sat in such silence, but recalling his
JDeafc?" 313
speaking eyes, my heart's quickened beating,
and the flushes I felt mount my cheeks, I knew
she had good cause.
I was vexed at myself, both for being here
almost against my will, and for a nervous fear
which had come over me when once inside
the house. I would not yield to it. There
was a scrap of paper on the table. I drew a
pencil from my pocket, and tried to forget by
writing about
THE GHOST OF YESTERDAY.
Faint in the cloudless sky yet shnws
The last night's moon, whose phantom white
Has haunted dawn's pale-blue and rose
With thrilling gleam of lost delight,
And lingers through the blaze of noon,
Like Banquo's ghost at Macbeth 's feast.
Avaunt, O Spectre whose weird rune
Appears to me when thought of least !
Though clouds from out life's sky seem furled
By dazzling bliss, to me is clear
Far off and dreamlike my own world
Burnt out, my yesterday thus here !
A long-drawn sigh, which sounded close by
me, made me look up. Bravely as I had tried
to think only of the words I wrote, I was
startled. My dog crouched at my feet and
314
barked. Had I left the front door on the latch ?
I rushed to see. Turning in the hall with the
feeling of being watched, I saw a woman's
head peering round a distant door. There was
a familiar look about her. Thinking it must
be one of the club, I started toward her, but
she drew back and closed the door, which she
held against me.
Was she afraid of me? I laughed, a little
nervously, wrenched it open but no one was
in sight! I called, no answer, but, glancing
up, saw the same head hanging over the ban-
isters upstairs, and part of her dress. I was
struck with something so wicked in her look
that my little Spitz ran cowering and whining
to the street-door. But, thinking I ought to
explain my presence there, I went upstairs.
To my surprise, the woman, without waiting
for me, passed down the long hall and turned
a corner.
I hurried after, thinking I might have fright-
ened her, if she were a nervous member, and,
in my haste, nearly fell through to the lower
story, for at the turning yawned an opening
where stairs had been taken down. My dress
caught on a nail in the floor, and held me back
just in time. As I freed my skirt, I saw that
from the hall-window, just beyond the pitfall,
315
my house could be seen better than from
downstairs. A smothered chuckle, followed
by a cry of rage, made me look down. The
woman was watching me from below. There
must be some other flight, I thought, yet found
none, and went to the lower room, but she had
hidden.
My verses, dropped as I ran out, were torn
into shreds, and strewed on the floor. Think-
ing it was one of my dog's tricks, I felt I ought
not to have brought him, that I must wait and
excuse myself to her. I turned to look for
him. What was this fluffy mass by the hall-
door ? Not my gay little comrade ? This poor
creature in spasms ! Some evil power was at
work here. Even that cruel-faced woman
would be welcome company. I called. No
reply. I tried to open the outer door, but it
seemed barred by the rusty, large lock, to
which there was no key.
I strove to be brave. I went through the
lower part. The back door was fast. I
thought she must have fled that way. It
was awful to be alone there ! I saw nothing
strange, but felt as if dogged, doors opening
behind me as soon as I closed them. I tried
to think it was caused by the jar of my steps
and the uneven flooring, but 1 felt the Bible
316 "&re tlje tDectfr
was right to forbid the calling of spirits. Had
not the Ghost Club brought all this horror
upon me? It made no odds that they had
been searching to prove there was no such
thing. There was the ugly story of the
hanged man, whose body was dissected and
his skull ground to dust; yet in the night the
bits were seen to join, one by one, till the
man was whole, and went out of the door.
I went back to the front room. Trying to
forget my fears, I raised the gauze screen from
the portrait over the mantel. It was not unlike
the face of the strange woman ! In my vexa-
tion toward her, I flung the veil against it
again. The next instant, my elbows were
fiercely gripped from behind. I was rushed
swiftly toward the window I had opened when
I first came in. My heart nearly stopped
beating. Years of torture seemed crowded into
that one moment. I was to be thrown out, to
fall from that great height to the street. I
shrieked in hopeless terror. I was suddenly
cast on the floor, and, when I could look round,
I saw that woman near the door, with her hard
face turned as if to listen.
Some one was on the steps. She glided out,
and was upstairs, as the front door, forced by
stronger hand than mine, opened, and, to my
tl) HJeair SDeaft?" 317
deep relief and joy, the pale young man came
in. Braced by the relief of his coming, then I
could talk to him. He only nodded once in a
while, but his eyes again held mine. To my
questions about the woman, he shook his head,
and seemed surprised when I said, " She was
here last night. "
So she had gone when he went out. I did
not wonder she was jealous, as I stood there,
hardly conscious of anything but the charm of
his presence, and the scent of the bit of breath-
of-heaven and blood-red pink he wore. And
he he kept the club rule of silence. But I
thought I knew what he was thinking. I had
not slept since I had last seen him. I passed
the night watching, as I lay in bed, the old
house looming dim and large against the
starry sky, or, half-dozing, dreamed of flitting
lights in the windows and echoing strains of
music.
I had not slept for thinking of him. Fancy-
ing what bliss his kisses might be, waked me
as fully as a real draught of wine. Heaven
help me! And he knew it he knew it; his
eyes told me that.
Those wonderful eyes! They seemed so
near and dear a part of myself, that I forgot we
were, as the world goes, strangers. Surely we
318 "&ru tlje SDeafc
had known each other for eternities. I forgot
that it was not a woman's part to woo. I
thought only of my love my love, fierce as
the wind, resistless as the sea, wide-spreading
as the sky ! I lost my senses.
"Where have you been all these years?"
I cried. "We must have known each other
before, for I love you, I love you, and it is no
new feeling. My life has been a dream, a
nightmare at last I am awake! Do not
leave me again, for I could not bear it.
Stay! Stay!"
"Oh, if it might only be !" he murmured.
He came nearer, bent over as if to kiss me,
when a white hand was laid on his shoulder.
He turned in amazement. She stood beside
him.
"You/" he groaned, with a gesture of de-
spair, and reeled back. He grew, if possible,
more bloodless than ever. I could see him
tremble. Dismay and dread in his face, and
a hunted look came into his eyes.
With a look of triumph at me, she beckoned
him. Making a motion toward me, as of
mingled farewell and warning, he slowly went
after her, though often turning to look back.
I followed. They passed along the hall, where
my dog lay dead, out of the front door, and
llje IDeab jDDeab?" 319
slowly down the long steps. At each landing
he stopped and gazed back, then followed her
into the dusk through which the members of
the club were toiling up among them Mr.
H - , with a lighted lantern. They paid no
heed to the figures going down, and were sur-
prised at my wild agitation.
" Look ! Look ! " I cried to Mr. H - .
"Why! Your eyes have been answered!"
he muttered, staring at me.
"What is it?" "Where?" "When?"
"What happened?" "What's the matter,
H -- ?" urged the club.
"Let us get away from this house!" he
cried, looking uneasily behind him, and sign-
ing to the doubter to lock the door. His hand
trembled so that the lantern shook, as he said :
"I came over, in case any of you were
here, to warn you. I have just heard Miss
Edith L - , who lived here, died in Paris last
night."
"Last night! at ten minutes of twelve
o'clock?" I gasped, suddenly faint.
"Well," he thought a moment, " yes
ten minutes past nine there would just make
it how did you know of it?"
" Tall, light eyes, a set, stern face not
without malice?" I stammered.
320 "Qlr* llje fttectfr
" I thought you never saw her?" he said.
" Tall, dark, with a face like an antique
bust, divine eyes?" I went on.
" Then you had seen him," said he. Struck
by a sudden thought, he added: "Do you
mean can it be that you how where?"
I caught his arm. "See there!" I cried,
pointing where the two forms one looking
up over his shoulder had paused on the
lowest landing, but now moved on. Could it
be that my touch made him see as I did ?
"My God!" he cried, his nerveless hand
dropping the lantern. "Then I was too late ! "
I sank, limp and helpless, on the top stair.
The glare of the lantern on the club's eager
faces round me, with their various looks of
wonder, doubt, content, fear, and pity; the
jeering sound of the fog-horn; the shock of
such an end to my romance ; a keen sense of
life's "raptures and desolations," all made
me hysterical, as I burst forth :
"You you think -- ?"
"I know" he answered, with awe-struck
face, white to the very lips that could scarcely
say the words, "you have seen the ghosts!"
TORED AT NRL
2106 00209 9361
