Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878», sayfa 12
Another story of the same collection, and one of the author's best, is entitled Juan Paloma. The principal characters are Don Juan de Urrutia, nicknamed Juan Paloma ("dovelike"), a wealthy and crusty old bachelor, and Antonio de Molinar, a poor peasant, and his wife. The moral of the story is in Don Juan's last words: "Blessed be the family!" and in Juana's remark: "Alas for him who lives alone in the world, for only his dogs will weep for him when he dies!"
The other stories of this volume, "The Mother-in-Law," "The Judas of the Household" and "I Believe in God," all contain many charming scenes. In the last a young girl is educated by an infidel father, and after his death marries Diego, a village lad. She becomes a mother, but still retains in her heart the seeds of atheism sown there by her father. Her child, a girl, becomes ill, and a doctor is sent for from Bilbao.
"The doctor was long in coming, and Ascensita was devoured by impatience and uncertainty. He arrived at last, and examined the child attentively, observing a deep silence, which caused the poor mother the most sorrowful anxiety.
"'Will the daughter of my heart recover?' Ascensita asked him in tears. 'For God's sake, speak to me frankly, for this uncertainty is more cruel than the death of my daughter.'
"'Señora,' answered the doctor, 'God alone can save the child.'
"Ascensita fell senseless by the side of the cradle containing her dying child. When she returned to herself Diego alone was at her side. The unhappy mother placed her ear to the child's lips, and perceived that it still breathed.
"'Diego,' she exclaimed, 'take care of the child of my soul!' and flying down the stairs hastened to a hermitage near by, and falling on her knees before the Virgin of Consolation exclaimed in grief, 'Holy Virgin! pity me! Save the child of my heart! And if she has flown to heaven since I left her side to fall at thy feet, beg thy holy Son to restore her to life, as He did the maid of Galilee!'
"A woman who was praying in a corner of the temple arose weeping with joy and grief, and hastened to clasp the unhappy mother in her arms and call her daughter. It was her husband's mother, Agustina, who had also gone to the temple to pray for the restoration of the child.
"'Mother,' exclaimed Ascensita, 'I believe in God! I believe in God and hope in His mercy!'
"'My daughter, no one believes in it in vain,' answered Agustina, bursting into tears. And both again knelt and prayed."
The mother's prayer was heard and the child recovered.
In the Popular Narrations, Trueba works up themes already popular among the people, but clothes them in his own words and varies them to suit his own taste. He says in the preface: "The task which I undertook some time ago, and still continue, consists in collecting the narrations, tales or anecdotes that circulate among the people and are the work of the popular invention, which sometimes creates and at others imitates, if it does not plagiarize, trying when it imitates to give to the imitation the form of the original. Some of the writers or collectors abroad, and especially in Germany, who have devoted themselves to a similar task, have followed a method different from mine; since, like the Brothers Grimm, they reproduce the popular tales almost as they have collected them from the lips of the people. This system is not to my taste, because almost all popular tales, although they have a precious base, have an absurd form, and in order to enter worthily into the products of the literary art they need to be perfected by art, and have a moral or philosophical end, which nothing in the sphere of art should be without."
The subjects of some of these stories are well known out of Spain. "St. Peter's Doubts" (Las Dudas de San Pedro) is as old as the Gesta Romanorum (cap. 80), and is familiar to English readers from Parnell's Hermit. Another, "A Century in a Moment" (Un Siglo en un Momento), is the story of the woman allowed after death to come back to the earth and see her lover, whom she finds faithless. Still another, Tragaldabas, is familiar to the readers of Grimm's Household Tales, where it figures as "Godfather Death."
The volume of Popular Tales contains nineteen stories of the most varying description. Some are popular in the broadest sense, as "The Three Counsels" (Los Consejos), in which a soldier whose time of service has expired buys from his captain with his pay three pieces of advice: Always take the short cut on a road, Do not inquire into what does not concern you, and Do nothing without reflection. The soldier on his way home has occasion to put in practice all three counsels, and thereby saves his life and property. Others, are legendary, as Ofero, the legend of St. Christopher, and Casilda, the story of the Moorish king's daughter converted to the Christian religion by a physician from Judea, who proves to be Our Lord. One, "The Wife of the Architect" (La Mujer del Arquitecto), is a local tradition of Toledo, and another, "The Prince without a Memory" (El Principe Desmemoriado), is taken from Gracian Dantisco's Galateo Español.
We may say of this collection, as of the last, that, although the stories show much humor and skill, they are not among the author's best. He is most at home in the simple pictures of life in the Encartaciones or in the country near Madrid. The latter is the scene of the stories in the volume entitled Rural Tales (Cuentos campesinos), which contains some of the author's most charming productions. They are generally longer than the others—one, "Domestic Happiness" (La Felicidad domestica), filling over ninety-two octavo pages. "Seed-time and Harvest" (Las Siembras y las Cosechas) is a charming story of Pepe and his wife Pepa, the former of whom sows wheat in his fields, and the latter economy, love and virtue by the fireside. The best story of the collection, however—and, to our mind, one of the best that Trueba has written—is the one called "The Style is the Man" (El Estilo es el Hombre), which is so well worth a translation that we will not spoil it by an analysis.
We have said that Trueba's works have been great popular successes. He has endeared himself to all who love poetry and the simple, honest life of the Spanish people. His beloved province has not forgotten him, and in 1862 unanimously elected him archivist and chronicler of Biscay, with a salary of nine hundred dollars a year. The poet henceforth turned his attention to a history of Biscay, which has not yet appeared, though some preliminary studies have been published in a work entitled Chapters of a Book (Capitulos de un Libro). Trueba resided at this period of his life at Bilbao, which he was obliged to leave in haste during the last Carlist war, and he has since lived in Madrid. He has published there several volumes of romances and historical novels, some of which have been very successful; but Trueba's real strength is in his poetry and short stories, which may be favorably compared with the best of this class of literature—with Auerbach's Tales of the Black Forest, for example. The reader is at once attracted to the author, whose personality shines through most of his stories and is always apparent in his poetry. Simple, honest, patriotic, religious, he is a type of the best class of Spaniards—a class that will some day win for their country the respect of other nations and bring back a better glory than that founded on conquest.
T. F. Crane.
THROUGH WINDING WAYS
CHAPTER XVII
My first meeting with Georgy Lenox on the seashore was not my last. The habits of the family made it easy for us to have our interviews uninterrupted, and probably unperceived, for although we were all early risers we rarely met each other till breakfast-time. Helen went to her father's room at half-past seven, and they read and talked together until my mother called them at nine o'clock. As for my mother, purest of all women as she was, she felt she was not pure enough to meet the new day until she had spent an hour at her Bible and on her knees in prayer. There is a light that comes out of the west sometimes toward evening after a stormy day which seems to be sent straight from the fount of light itself. Such light was always in my mother's eyes when I kissed her good-morning, and I knew it had come to her as she knelt on bended knees. She was tranquil in these days with a Heaven-born tranquillity, but I know now that she had a pang of dread for every throb of love.
She spoke to me once of my increasing intimacy with Georgina. "There is nothing you are concealing from me, Floyd?" she said, her brown eyes reading my face.
She had come to my bedside after I had gone to rest for the night, impelled by a restlessness to be certain that all was well with her dear ones before she could close her eyes.
"I cannot think what you mean, mother," I answered. "I have nothing to conceal."
She sighed. "Georgy is a beautiful girl," she said quietly, "but she baits too many lures for men, Floyd. It seems to me she is trying to win you, my dear boy. She is born to make men unhappy. Do not trust her. Oh, why is she here?"
"Because Helen has asked her to remain, mother."
"Helen pities her and tries to please her. She is one too many in the house, Floyd: she will do some harm to some of us. She is cold and treacherous at heart, and she never sees us happy, contented together but that she hates us every one."
I thought my mother fanciful, and told her that she was prejudiced against the girl, who had grown up from infancy under her eyes.
"I know her better than you do, mother," I affirmed stubbornly.
She smiled a patient, melancholy smile. "If I am prejudiced," said she gently, "it is because of what her misconduct cost my son years ago. Do you think I can ever forget that but for her caprice and self-will you would never have had those years of suffering, Floyd? But we women know each other. It is at times a sad knowledge, and for our prescience the men whom we would serve misjudge us and tell us we hate each other. Georgina is in love this summer. You do not guess what man she has set her wishes upon?"
I stirred restlessly on my pillow, but I looked at her with something like anger against her growing in my heart.
"Good-night, mother," I returned. "It is none of my business to read any girl's heart through a sister-woman's cold trained eyes. If Miss Lenox is in love, God bless her! I say. I suppose I am not the lucky fellow."
My mother kissed me softly on my forehead and went out; and, alas! it was many a day afterward before there was perfect peace and confidence between us again. Not that we were cold or constrained—indeed, we were more than ever gentle and tender in our ways … but there was a subject which was heavy on our hearts of which we were not again to speak, and there may have been a meaning in my face which she did not venture to read, for I resented it if her look fastened upon me too closely.
But the pleasant country-house life went on quite unchecked by events of any sort. Few visitors were admitted, and it was understood at the Point that rigid seclusion from all society was the will of Miss Floyd. The young girl was much talked about: she held every advantage of youth, beauty, enormous wealth, and, almost more than all these, she possessed that prestige which inheres in families that maintain quietly and proudly their reserve, dignity and indifference to the transitory fashions of society. Georgy Lenox became more and more involved in the watering-place dissipations as the season advanced and the hotels filled. She came and went in shimmering toilettes of all hues with an air of radiant enjoyment, but her outgoings and incomings disturbed no one but myself. Helen would kiss her and tell her there was no one half so beautiful; Mr. Floyd would lean back in his chair and smile at her with the admiration in his eyes that all men who are not churls feel it a discourtesy to withhold from a pretty woman; and even my mother, with a conscientious wish to do her duty by the young girl, would inquire carefully about every chaperone, every invitation, and would herself direct what time the carriage should be sent to bring her home.
I have already spoken of our pleasant labors together in the study over poor Mr. Raymond's papers. Many a treasure did Mr. Floyd and Helen find there. After the death of his daughter Mr. Raymond had jealously taken possession of every scrap of paper which belonged to her, and now her husband was at last to see a hundred testimonials of her love for him of which he had never dreamed. There was the young girl's journal before she was married, bound in blue velvet and clasped with gold: there were the letters the poor little woman had written, shuddering before her great trial, to the husband and the child who should survive her. I believe all young mothers on the threshold of outward and visible maternity believe they are to die in their agony, but these tokens of his young wife's unspoken dread touched Mr. Floyd so closely we almost had cause to regret that he had seen them.
"She never told me of her premonition of death," he said to my mother over and over again. "She seemed very glad and proud that she was going to bring me a little child."
Helen had run off with her blue velvet-covered book.
"Some time," said Mr. Floyd, "I want to read every word she wrote, but these letters are enough now: I can bear nothing more." And even these he could not well endure until my mother had talked them over with him again and again.
The quiet, happy life which we led in these days suited Mr. Floyd's health, and there was no recurrence of the alarming symptoms which had filled me with dread a few months before. "I begin to think," he remarked often, "that by continuing this life, as simple as that which a bird leads flying from bough to bough, I am to grow stout and elderly, and go on getting gray, rubicund, with an amplitude of white waistcoat, until I am seventy years of age or so. My father and mother each died young, but both by accident as it were: the habit of both families was of long life and great strength. I confess I should like to live for a good many years yet. I suppose Helen will marry by and by. I should like to be a witness of her happiness, rounded, full, complete, sanctified by motherhood. Think, Mary, of my holding Helen's children on my knee!"
"I think often of grandmotherhood myself," my mother replied. "It is a symptom of advancing age, James."
I heard the talk, but Helen was far enough from guessing what plans her father was forming for his ultimate satisfaction, and I could fancy her superb disdain at such mention. It was easy for me to see that her love for her father was quite enough for her: she invested it with all the charming prettinesses that a dainty coquette uses with her lover. She was arch, gay, imperious, tender, all in a breath: I confess that I often felt that, let her once put forth her might, not Georgy Lenox could be more winning, sweet and seductive. But all her tenderness was for her father: with me she was sometimes proud and shy, sometimes wearing the manner of a loving little child. I often called her "little sister" in those days, and so, and in no other wise, I held her. When she was kind, we had pleasant talks together: when she treated me with coolness and reserve, I laughed and let her go. Her father needed her, and I did not; and I paid scant attention to her little caprices, although I scolded her for them now and then.
"Do you wish to treat me as you treat Thorpe?" I would ask. "I am not a tame cat yet."
"How do I treat Mr. Thorpe?" she inquired. "I intend to treat him as I do the man who places my chair."
"You don't always manage that, my dear child. For instance, last night, when you were going to sing, you showed plainly that you were vexed at his officiousness in opening the piano and placing your stool for you, and declined singing at once. Now, had Mills performed those slight services you would have said coolly, 'Thank you, Mills,' and not have wasted a thought on the matter more than if some interior mechanism had raised the cover of the instrument."
"But Mr. Thorpe looks at me as Mills would never dare to look. He thrusts his personality upon me," exclaimed Helen in a small fury. "Let him pay his compliments to Georgy: I do not want them. Think of it! he called me Miss Helen this morning!"
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him nothing: I looked–"
"I pity him then: I know how you can look."
"Am I so dreadful?" she asked coaxingly. "Tell me how to behave to young gentlemen, Floyd. Really, I don't know."
"To me you should behave in the most affectionate manner, mademoiselle. Granted that, the more disdainful you are to other fellows the more I shall admire you."
"Really, now?"
"Well, since you are in earnest, dear child, if I were you I would show nothing but kindness to my friends.
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike;
But, like the sun, they shine on all alike,
is a very pretty description of the manner of a successful woman."
"But I cannot be like that," she cried plaintively. "Would you like me to treat you and Mr. Thorpe in precisely the same way, Floyd?"
"Not at all. Don't count me in with the rest of your admirers: I must have the first, best, dearest place."
"I am sure you always do," she remonstrated in a tone of injury. "You come next after papa. If I behave badly to you sometimes, it is because I like to see if you mind my putting on little airs." That was candor.
"Well, Miss Kitten," said I, "you seem to know how to behave to young men. I shall waste no more advice upon you."
And indeed she did not require it. She possessed in an exquisite degree that gift of a delightful manner which generally comes through inheritance, and cannot be perfectly gained by education. But my suggestion regarding Thorpe bore fruit, and henceforward she was a little more queenly and indifferent to him than ever, but never displayed pique or asperity. Yet, however badly she treated him, he quite deserved my title of a "tame cat:" he bore every reverse patiently, and indeed at times displayed an absolute heroism in the face of her indifference, going on in fluent recital of something he believed would interest her while she utterly ignored him and his subject. However, Thorpe was a good actor, and could play his part, and do it well, in spite of his audience. I sometimes fancied that he was less cheerful in those times than he seemed. In fact, I was ready to believe that he was in reality, as he was in pretence, seeking to win Helen's attention. Mr. Floyd looked at the matter in the same light.
"When he gets his congé he cannot complain of having received encouragement," he said once or twice. "But he's no fool: can it be that he is in love with Miss Lenox all the time, and that he tries to pique her with a show of devotion to Helen?"
"Tony Thorpe will never be in love with a poor girl," I replied: "there is nothing of that sort."
"I don't like Helen's having lovers," said Mr. Floyd. "When I married my wife it was the pleasantest thing in the world to know that no other man had ever breathed a word of love in her ears. 'The hand of little employment hath the daintier sense.' The first sound of a lover's voice brings a thrill to a girl's heart which she never knows but once. Miss Lenox's perceptions in that way must be considerably toughened: sole-leather is nothing in thickness compared to the epidermis of a coquette's heart. Now, a man can love with delicacy, fervor, passion a score of times. Women are frail creatures, are they not? I would like to have my little girl give her heart once, receive unbounded love in return, and never think of another man all her life. But Fate will manage her affairs for her, as for us all."
I have said that my morning interviews with Miss Lenox on the beach continued for a time. Suddenly they ceased: she came to the rendezvous no more, and it was impossible for me to get near enough to her to seek an explanation. I had felt quite dissipated and like a man of the world when I jumped out of my bed half awake each morning with an appointment on my hands. I had not told myself that it was bliss to meet her, and in fact had smiled a little at the recollection that it had been she who had asked me to join her ramble. Once or twice I had designated the whole thing a bore, and had wished it might rain and let me have a comfortable morning's nap instead of an hour or two with the most beautiful of girls at a romantic trysting-place. But most men deceive themselves about their feelings concerning women. When the first time I did not find Georgina awaiting me (for my orders were to join her walk, not to have her join mine) I lay on the rocks and took a nap until Thorpe came along the beach as usual and awoke me. But when I had failed to find her the second morning I was restless and disturbed. After two more fruitless quests I grew by turns insanely jealous and wretchedly self-distrustful.
Had I vexed her? What had I said? what had I done? I went over and over again every word of our talks: every mood of hers, every blush and glance and smile, lived again for me. We had spoken of many things those mornings we had met, yet there had been small reference to our mutual relations; and certainly if there were love-making on my part, it had colored none of our moods to any passion. I had travelled and seen many people: I had been introduced in courts, and had, by Mr. Floyd's influence, penetrated into an exclusive and brilliant continental society, where I had found much to observe. These reminiscences of mine had delighted Georgina: she had the irresistible feminine instinct for details, the analysis of which made a mastery of brilliant results easily attainable to her who possessed, to begin with, remarkable beauty, and, if not tact, so bewildering a way of doing what she chose that in the eyes of men at least she lacked nothing which grace and good taste could teach her. She was always anxious, too, to hear everything concerning Mr. Floyd—his friends abroad, his habits, his vie intime at certain houses which had been his favorite lounge for years while he was minister at –. Garrulity was by no means my habit in those days, but I had talked to her very freely: indeed, she could do with me what she wished.
But why had she suddenly given me up? Had she tired of me, exhausted me, wrung my mind dry of interest; and flung me by like a squeezed orange? I lay in wait for her in the passages that I might speak to her, but she seemed never to be alone any more. I would lurk in her path for hours, only to be rewarded by the sight of her dress vanishing in another direction. I wrote her notes, to none of which would she reply. "If a woman flies, she flies to be pursued," I had heard all my life. Elusive, mocking goddess that she was, I felt every day more and more ardent in my pursuit, yet I rarely saw her now except at breakfast, when she was demure, a little weary, and altogether indifferent to me. I determined to follow her into society.
It was early in July now, and the watering-place life was at its gayest. I had hitherto accepted no invitations, from respect for the habits of the house where I was staying, but now I examined with interest every card and note brought to me. Accordingly, I set out on a round of pleasure-seeking, which soon transformed me from a boy whose foolish aim in life was to be as clever as other men into an impassioned lover. Other men may look back upon their first love with a certain pleasing sentimentality: in spite of all the years that now lie between me and the fever of those few months at The Headlands, I still suffer bitterly from the recollection of that time.
