Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878», sayfa 7

 
All the day I sigh and cry, love,
Hob y deri dando!
All the night I say and pray, love,
Hob y deri dando!¹
 

A hand-organ with monkey attachment is delighting a group of children on another part of the sands. Yonder, too, is a balladist with a guitar, bawling at the top of his lungs,

 
The dream 'as parst, the spell his broken,
'Opes 'ave faded one by one:
Th' w'isper'd words, so sweetly spoken,
Hall like faded flow'rs har gone.
Still that woice hin music lingers,
Loike er 'arp 'oose silver strings,
Softly swep' by fairy fingers,
Tell of hunforgotten things.
 

Nobody pays much attention to this wandering minstrel: he is happy if at the close of his song a penny finds its way into the battered hat he extends for largess. He is clearly a stranger to this part of the world, and has probably tramped down here from London by easy stages, and will have to tramp back again as he came, without much profit from his provincial tour.

The fashionable world which is sunning itself on the sands is made up, for the most part, of the usual types of a British watering-place—the pea-jacketed swell with blasé manner and one-eyed quizzing-glass; the occasional London cad in clothes of painful newness and exaggeration of style, such as no gentleman by any chance ever wears in Britain; the young sprig of nobility with effeminate face and "fast" inclinations, who smokes a cigarette and ogles the girls, and utters sentiments of profound ennui in a light boyish tenor voice. He is the son of an English nobleman who has a Welsh estate, upon which he passes a portion of his time, and can trace his lineage back to one of the Norman adventurers who came over with William the Conqueror. For an example of an older aristocracy than this, however, observe the ancient couple sitting near us in the shadow of a cliff-rock, the wife with a high-bridged nose and puffs of gray hair on her temples, the husband with an easy-fitting hat and a coat-collar which rolls so high as to give the impression he has no neck. These are aristocrats who, although untitled and owners only of a few modest acres back in Carmarthenshire, descend from ancestors that looked down on William the Conqueror as a plebeian upstart.

There are bathers in the surf, but they are so far away from the throngs on this vast plain of beach that they are as unindividual as if they were puppets. One's most intimate friend could not be recognized without the aid of a glass. The bathing-machines, which serve in lieu of the huts common at American seaside resorts, are merely huts on wheels instead of huts in stationary rows. They are cared for by women, who escort you to the door of an untenanted hut, collect sixpence and retire. You enter, and disrobe at your leisure. The machine proves to be a snug box lighted by one little unglazed window not large enough for you to put your head through, and having a solid shutter. If you close this shutter the box is as dark as night, for it is well built, with hardly a crevice in wall or roof or floor. A small and very bad looking-glass hangs on the wall, and there is a bench to sit on: that is the extent of the furniture. You have been provided with towels and with the regulation bathing-dress for men—linen breeches, to wit. While you are contemplating this garment and questioning of your modesty as to the propriety of donning it, there is a sound of rattling iron outside, and a tap on your door as a warning that your machine is about to start. The machine is dragged in lumbering fashion out into the sea by an antediluvian horse with a small boy astride, and there the boy unhitches the traces from the machine and goes ashore, leaving you with the waves breaking on the steps before your door. You peep out dubiously. A shoal of naked-shouldered men are swimming and splashing in the surf. Some fifty yards away is another school of bathers, whose back hair betrays their sex, and who are clad in garments made like those worn by feminine bathers at Long Branch, etc. There is no commingling of the sexes in the water, as our American custom is, but on the score of modesty I must confess to a prejudice in favor of the American plan, nevertheless. The British theory evidently presumes that men have no modesty among themselves. Custom regulates these matters, I suppose. I have never felt disposed to blush for my naked feet and arms while conversing with a lady on the beach at Long Branch, being snugly clad from head to foot in a flannel costume. But I confess to a shrinking sense of the incompleteness of the prescribed fig-leaves as I stand in the door of the bathing-machine at Tenby. To cover myself with the water as quickly as possible appears to be the only remedy, however, and I take a header from the doorsill. Ugh! The water is like ice! To one accustomed to the warm American bathing-suit the linen substitute of Tenby is a most insufficient protection. At home I have on occasion extended the revels of the surf for a full hour, being a pretty strong swimmer and exceedingly fond of the exercise. I get enough at Tenby in precisely two minutes, and hasten to don my customary clothing. Nevertheless, it is contended that the surf at Tenby is pleasant for bathers as late as Christmas, and I am told there really are Britons who bathe daily in the sea here quite up to the first snow. It is certain that the fashionable season does not end till November, and some stay straight on through the winter.

Among the lions of Tenby none is more interesting than St. Catharine's Island, a great rugged hill of solid limestone almost devoid of verdure and rent into innumerable fissures, with a succession of dark romantic coves and caverns and jagged projecting crags fringing its sides completely round. At high tide this islet is separated from the mainland by a deep rolling sea. At low tide its shores are left dry by the receding waters. It is a curious sight to watch this daily advance and retreat of the sea. To see the tides of ocean come and go is no novelty, but it becomes a novelty under circumstances like these, where every day a dry bridge of yellow sand is stretched forth from the islet to the mainland, across which a stream of humanity pours the moment the path is clear. At first only one person at a time can pass. Ten minutes later the sand-bridge is a broad road. Ten later, and all Tenby might cross in a crowd. There is an iron staircase built up the rocky face of the islet, winding about among its crags and fissures, and the isle is overrun with people during the time the tide is out. It has many attractions. The view is grand from those heights. Yawning gulfs fascinate you to look dizzily down into the secret heart of the isle. On the highest point of rock stood, a few years ago, an ancient chapel which had in Roman Catholic days been dedicated to St. Catharine. Within the past six years this chapel has given way to a fortress, its walls partly embedded in the solid rock. The people who throng to the islet between tides roam about, loiter with breeze-blown garments on the stairs and landings, peer into the fortress, or, perching themselves in the sheltered nooks which are innumerable among the crags, sit and sew, read, chat, make love and watch the pygmy bathers in the sea far down below. As long as the tide is low the tenants of the islet are safe to remain, but as soon as it turns those who are wise begin to gather up their things and clear out. Now and then incautious ones get caught; and then there are screaming, hurrying and a terrible fright, especially if the trapped ones are of the gentler sex, and still more especially if their proportions are ample. Such women are, as a rule, the cowardliest. Probably, they feel their amplitude a disadvantage in moments of peril, and know emotions which their scrawnier sisters escape. A case in point greets us this morning as we stand watching the rising of the tide. A roly-poly woman of forty or so is caught on the islet by the closing of old Ocean's drawbridge. She is a fair being with dark hair and eyes, a sweet smile, a clear complexion, and some two hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois, richly dressed, pleasant-mannered, and in all respects no doubt a lady to be admired and loved, as well as respected, in the social circle. But at present she is at a sad disadvantage. I noticed her a few minutes ago at the top of the iron staircase, and said to myself that she would have just time enough to come down, for there was an isthmus of sand some twenty feet wide as yet to be obliterated by the crawling tide. A quickly-tripping foot would have accomplished it, but the fair-fat-and-forty lady occupied one whole minute in coming down. Now that she has reached the bottom step there is a wide wash of sea between her and the mainland, and she raises her hands in horror. How is she to get over? There is no boat in sight. Shall she wade? There is a nervous motion of her fat white hands in the direction of her gaiters, but she hesitates. The woman who hesitates is lost: the water grows deeper and deeper every instant; in ten minutes it will be over her head. A bathing-machine boy comes trotting his horse through the water, and, backing up by the rock on which the distressed lady stands, bids her get on. Get on the back of a horrid bathing-horse! behind the back of a horrid boy! Had she been a sylph the prospect would have been most untempting, but a two-hundred-and-fifty-pounder! Nevertheless, the unhappy fair one begins to prepare for the sacrifice with grief and consternation in her face. "How can I do it?" her trembling lips whisper, and she looks about her on the rocks as if to say, "Oh, is there no other way out of this wretched predicament?" The boy, as he sits astride, is getting his feet wet by this time: the horse will have to swim for it presently. Still she hesitates, and throws a shrinking glance over the vast audience gathered on the sands silently attentive—the band, the organ-grinder and the balladist all breathlessly awaiting the issue, no doubt feeling that it would be mockery to indulge in music at such a moment. Suddenly a bare-headed and shirt-sleeved man is seen to dash through the water, regardless of danger and of wet trousers, who, seizing the fat lady round the knees in spite of her screams, dumps her on the horse's back all in a heap. Saved! saved! Such a giggling (for joy) has seldom been seen to shake a large assemblage. The emotion caused by the spectacle of beauty in distress is no doubt a pain to every masculine mind not hopelessly vitiated by the cynical tendencies of the age; but the pain produced by the emotion of mirth at seeing a fellow-creature at a ridiculous disadvantage is greater when you feel bound not to laugh.

There are four strange caves piercing St. Catharine's Island completely through from side to side. In rough weather the storming of the sea through these extraordinary tunnels creates a prodigious uproar. When the weather is still it is possible to take boat and sail quite through one of them: at low tide you may walk through. Marine zoological riches abound in these caverns, which have been for many years a real treasure-house for naturalists. The walls are studded with innumerable barnacles, dogwinkles and other shells—not dead and empty, but full of living creatures, requiring only the return of the tide to awaken them to an active existence. There are simply myriads of them: a random stone thrown against a wall will smash a whole colony; and there are besides polyps and sea-anemones and other strange animals of eccentric habits in unusual abundance. The visitors to Tenby find great diversion in these and the other caves on the coast: in fact, the whole coast as far as Milford Haven is one succession of natural curiosities and antiquities. One cavern bears the name of Merlin's Cave, and is hallowed by a legend of the enchanter, who was born at Carmarthen in the next county.

Wirt Sikes.

NOCTURNE

 
There'll come a day when the supremest splendor
Of earth or sky or sea,
Whate'er their miracles, sublime or tender,
Will wake no joy in me.
 
 
There'll come a day when all the aspiration,
Now with such fervor fraught,
As lifts to heights of breathless exaltation,
Will seem a thing of naught.
 
 
There'll come a day when riches, honor, glory,
Music and song and art,
Will look like puppets in a wornout story,
Where each has played his part.
 
 
There'll come a day when human love, the sweetest
Gift that includes the whole
Of God's grand giving—sovereignest, completest—
Shall fail to fill my soul.
 
 
There'll come a day—I will not care how passes
The cloud across my sight,
If only, lark-like, from earth's nested grasses,
I spring to meet its light.
 

Margaret J. Preston.

THROUGH WINDING WAYS

CHAPTER IV

It was soon decided that I was to set out for The Headlands the first week in October. I had studied too hard, and was growing so tall and slight that Harry Dart used to draw caricatures of me, taking me in sections, he declared, since no ordinary piece of paper would suffice for a full-length. I was glad of a change, yet felt some sorrow about it too. I knew nothing of what it was to miss the warm home-life and the constant companionship which had filled every idle hour with ever-recurring pleasures. I hated to part from my mother, who had grown of late so inestimably dear to me; I should miss the boys; what could make up to me for Georgy? I did not know that I was never again to enjoy the old Belfield routine, with all my untamed impulses making the wild, free physical life full of deep and passionate delight—never again to stand the peer of all my mates, running the familiar races, playing the familiar games. I did not know what a changed life awaited me, and I looked forward to my opening vistas of a bright future with longings inconceivably sweet.

I reached The Headlands one fine day in October a little past noon. Mr. Raymond's carriage met me at the station, and a grave elderly servant, who told me his name was Mills, put me inside and assumed all responsibilities concerning my luggage. I had plenty of time to remember with regret our homely, pleasant life at Belfield, and recall Thorpe's words when he heard that I had been invited to The Headlands. "It will be a glimpse of another life," he had remarked with his usual air of consummate knowledge of the world. "Even I, who am used to living on terms of intimacy with men of all ranks and positions, find it difficult to adjust the balance in that quiet, stately house, where everything goes on oiled wheels."

"But what makes it hard to get along?" I had inquired with a sort of awe.

"Oh, I can't describe it," he had returned with a wave of his white hand, "but you'll soon experience it for yourself."

But as I went on and the great sea opened before my eyes, I quite forgot my fears in the pleasure of such wide horizons, such magnificent scenery. The ocean was here in all its grandeur, yet there was no bleakness or bareness in these rock-bound shores, softly veiled in the haze of the October afternoon. The voices of the breakers greeted me as something vaguely familiar: I seemed to have been listening for them all my life. In such joys as I felt that day eyes and ears do but little—imagination works most wonders.

I had not noticed, so raptly was I watching the fleeting tints of opal, steel and blue which chased each other along the smooth slow waves, that we had entered enclosed grounds, and when the carriage stopped suddenly before a wide, pillared portico I was wholly taken by surprise. Mills opened the carriage-door, and I got down with a blank, dreamy feeling, and followed him up the steps through the wide portal and along the hall. He ushered me into the library, and left me while he went to announce my arrival.

I sat perfectly still in the lofty Gothic room. It was lined with books except on the west side, where were long oriel windows of stained glass, with figures of saints glorious in blue and gold and crimson and purple, with aureoles of wonderful splendor above their beautiful heads. The floor was of inlaid woods polished until it shone, and over it was laid a Persian carpet thick and soft as moss. The chimney-piece was of wonderful beauty, and extended into the room, leaving a sort of alcove on each side, and a low fire was burning in a quaintly-designed grate. Over the mantel hung a large picture which I did not know, but which made my heart beat as I looked: it was a copy of the Sistine Madonna. In front of the fire was an easy-chair piled with cushions, and beside it a low stool, while on either hand were painted screens: on one the field of brilliant azure was strewn with flowers of dazzling hues; the other was crossed by a flight of birds of gorgeous plumage.

I had looked at everything, had taken in every surprise of beautiful form and color: then my eyes were lifted again to the windows, and I was gazing at the meek saints with their shining raiment and radiant hair when I was suddenly recalled to a recollection of where I was and why I was there. A hand pushed aside the velvet curtain which hung across the doorway—a child's hand—and then a little girl entered, followed by a greyhound as tall as herself. I rose and stood waiting while she advanced, the same sunshine which transfigured the saints in the windows playing over her white dress in brilliant rainbow tints.

She was a very little girl, yet her large, serious dark eyes and her lithe way of carrying her slim height impressed me with a sort of awe which I might not have felt for a grown woman. When she neared me she stood perfectly still, regarding me silently with a deliberate glance. She was very pale, with a complexion like the inner leaves of a white rose, but her eyes lent fire to a face otherwise proud and cold. Her hair had evidently been cut short, and curled close to her head in loose brown curls. When she had fairly taken me in she held out her hand. "How do you do?" she asked in a clear, deliberate voice. "I am very glad to see you."

"Did you expect me?" I inquired shyly.

"Of course we did," she answered with some imperiousness, "or we should not have sent the carriage and servants to meet you."

Then we were both silent again, and went on mentally making up our minds concerning each other.

"Yes," she said presently, putting her hand into mine again, "you look just as I thought you did. I asked papa: he said you had brown hair and gray eyes, and that you were good-looking when you smiled. And am I like what you expected to see?"

I did not know, I told her. In fact, although I had heard much and thought some about Helen, she had hitherto possessed no personality for me except as Mr. Floyd's little girl. And now she impressed me differently from any person I had ever seen before, and if I had formed any previous conceptions, they all fled. She seemed, I will confess, a haughty, aristocratic little creature, with her slight form and somewhat imperious look, her deliberate, commanding voice and intense eyes: still, I liked her at once. Mr. Floyd had begged me to be kind to her, and it seemed easy for me to cherish and protect her: she appeared to need being taken care of with both strength and tenderness, for it was such a fragile little hand I held, and, with all its beauty, such a wan little face I looked upon.

"I hope you will like me, Helen," said I bluntly, "for your father wants you to enjoy my visit."

She smiled for the first time. "I like you very much already," she said in the same distinct, melancholy voice; and without more words she put up her little face to mine and kissed me softly on my lips. I was unused to caresses, and my cheeks burned; but I followed her, at her request, to the back lawn, where Mr. Raymond was waiting to see me.

"Grandfather is not strong," she explained, "and we save him all the steps we can. It is so sad to be old! Have you a grandfather?"

"No," I returned: "there is nobody in our family but mother and me."

"And I have got grandpa and papa too," said she thoughtfully. "Only papa is so busy: he is never here but a week at a time."

We had passed through the hall, crossed the rear piazza and descended the steps, and were advancing along the grassplat toward a summer-house which faced the sea. I could now for the first time gain an idea of the extent and grandeur of the place. The house towered above us solemnly with its towers, pillared arches, cornices and pediments, while, beyond, the glass roofs of numberless greenhouses lifted their domes to the warm afternoon sun. All around the lawn stood lofty trees, their foliage glorious with crimson, russet and gold, and their shadows crept stealthily toward us as if they were alive. And beyond house, lawns, gardens and tree-lined avenues was a pine wood which extended its solemn verdure all round the place, enclosing it almost to the edge of the bluff. All this on the right hand: on the left the mysterious sea, whose music filled the fair sunshiny world we two children were traversing hand in hand.

"There is grandpa," exclaimed Helen as we neared the summer-house; and I saw an old man sitting in an arm-chair in the sunshine, looking eagerly toward us as if in anxious expectation.

"You were gone a long time, Helen," he called out peevishly.

"Oh no, dear," she replied soothingly. "Here is Floyd, grandpa."

He had looked, when I first saw him from a distance, like a very old man, but when I was shaking hands with him I was surprised to discover that his face had little appearance of age. Even his thin dark hair was but sprinkled with gray at the curly ends on the temples: his eyebrows were a black silky thread, his eyes dark and full of a peculiar glitter. His features were finely formed and feminine in their delicacy, but the expression of his face was marred by the restlessness of his eyes, and made almost pathetic by the dejected, melancholy lines about his thin scarlet lips.

He shook hands with me gracefully, and made inquiries about my journey, then sank back into his chair listlessly, and allowed Helen to pull the tiger-skin which formed his lap-robe over his knees. There was a peculiar feebleness about his whole attitude as he sat—something almost abased in the sinking of his chin upon his breast. It was hard for me to realize that he was the owner of all this magnificence, and, dressed although he was with faultless elegance, and although luxurious appurtenances filled the summer-house, waiting for his momentary convenience, I was certain that his great wealth brought him no pleasure, and that, except for his little grandchild, he was comfortless in the world. He was full of complaints toward her. He was sure, he said, that now when I had come she would have no thought of him; that taking care of an old man was a dreary and thankless task; that only the young could be beloved by the young. And her way of listening and answering made me suspect that she was but too used to such querulousness. I was perhaps too young to understand mainsprings of action, yet nevertheless I seemed to know at once that her calm, mature manner and precocious imperiousness were the result of his weakness and wavering, of his selfish and morbid doubts.

"You are older than I thought," Mr. Raymond said to me, regarding me for the first time with languid curiosity. "I expected to see a velvet-coated little fellow of Helen's size. What is your age, my boy?"

I told him I should be fifteen the next spring, counting, as most young people do, by the milestone ahead of me, instead of the one I had passed.

"Oh, that is quite an age," said he with an air of relief. "Do not expect to make a playmate of Mr. Floyd Randolph, Helen: he is quite too old to care for a mere child like yourself."

"He is not nearly as old as papa." returned Helen quickly, "and papa will play with me all day long."

"Yes, yes," said Mr. Raymond, sinking back among his cushions and tiger-skins, "all the world can play but me. I must be content to sit outside the joy and the sunshine. I have lived too long. Only the young, bright people of the world are welcome even to my own little grandchild."

Helen threw her arm about his neck and stroked his cheek with her slim hand. "You know, grandpa," she said simply, "that I do not care for play, and I love our quiet times together; but you forget what Dr. Sharpe says—that I must run about out of doors and be as merry as I can, or else—"

He stopped her with a quick, shuddering gesture. "Oh no," said he, "I do not forget. Do not make me out worse than I am to Floyd, Helen." He rang a hand-bell on the table by his side, and began feebly to adjust the wrappings about his shoulders.—"I will go in, Frederick," he murmured to the servant, who advanced at once as if he had been waiting close by—"I will go in and sit by the fire.—Helen, you must show Floyd the place.—There are greenhouses, and the stables are worth seeing too," he added to me apologetically. "I hear that Robinson has some rare fowls, and Helen has dogs of all kinds, and a few deer. It will do her good to go about, you know." He broke off suddenly, a spasm crossing his face, and without more words he turned abruptly to his valet, took his arm and walked feebly toward the house.

We stood together looking after him—I a little shy and perplexed in my new position, Helen thoughtful and melancholy.

"Poor grandpa!" she said presently with a sigh: "he has only me, you know, Floyd. He has nothing else in the whole wide world, and it worries him to think that he cannot be with me always, that he cannot—"

She broke off, and the small face twitched as if she were about to cry, but she controlled herself.

The splendid house, with its gleaming windows and stately pillars, the wide grounds, the air of quiet magnificence which reigned over the whole place, had so much impressed me that I could not resist uttering an exclamation at her words. She spoke of Mr. Raymond as having nothing in the wide world but herself, yet he was rich enough to be master of what appeared to me the pomp of kings; and I told her so.

She regarded me curiously. "Is grandpa rich?" she asked. "He says sometimes that the greenhouses cost so much money that they will send him to the poorhouse. I do not think grandpa can be rich. But if he were rich," she cried out indignantly, "that makes no difference: he has nothing but me—nothing to care about. There was poor grandmamma: she died—oh so long ago!—and my uncles died when they were little boys not so old as I. And mamma—she stayed the longest: then she died. No, grandpa has nothing left but me."

"Your father too: he has only you. I wonder you do not live with your father, Helen."

She shook her head. "Oh, you don't know," she returned. "I couldn't leave grandpa. Oh, Floyd, if you knew how it hurts me to tell papa that I must stay here! He does not understand. He will say, 'I want my little girl: you can't guess how badly I want my little girl.'" She finished with a great sob which shook her from head to foot. I pitied her very much, and I could easily comprehend that she was too delicate still to be allowed to have any sort of trouble. So I asked her to go down to the shore with me, and while we went I told her all the funny things I could remember until I made her laugh. She was quick and sympathetic; and her spirit was so strong, yet so repressed, that the moment she was really glad it seemed to have the exuberance of a bird's joy at freedom after imprisonment.

I have reason, beyond that of mere admiration for its admirable picturesqueness, to remember and note down the form of the shore at The Headlands. The house stood on the highest part of the promontory, and there was a gradual descent to the end of the bluff, which terminated in a line of black rocks, some of which were firmly embedded in the soil, while others lay piled above each other as they had been tossed by some horrible convulsion of the sea. In one place there was a perpendicular precipice of eighty feet, washed by the waves at its base; but the beach was easily accessible from every other point, although in some places the descent needed sure feet and agile limbs. But I had always been the best climber in Belfield, and I ran up and down the rocks now with the ease of a monkey, until Helen begged me not to terrify her by any new exploits. Under the frowning citadel of rocks the beach was particularly fine, well pebbled below watermark and above a strip of shining sand. The tide was coming in with a strong dull roar, and every wave broke on the shore with curling cataracts of foam and a voice like thunder. It was hard for me to realize that above us on the headland the mild October sunshine was gilding and reddening the trees, for here we were in shadow, and the cry of storm and the din of tempest were in our ears. Yet beyond the bar opaline tints were playing along the sunlit sea, and the luminous, shifting-hued swell of crested waves merged into the iridescent sky. There was a secret and a mystery about the scene to me. I could not understand its influence upon me, and felt under a spell as I gazed at the distant white sails and listened to the roar of the waves as if I could never hear it enough.

After Helen had shown me all the strange, beautiful places of the beach, I helped her up the precipitous bank, where steps had been carefully cut in the rock or laid upon the crumbling sods. She took me to the stables, and I saw the horses, her pony and the blooded colt in training for her: her dogs had followed us about, leaping and fawning upon her and smelling suspiciously at me. Mr. Raymond disliked animals, and it was to the stables or the gardener's cottage that the child came to pet her hounds, her sheep-dog and her snowy Pomeranian: not even Beppo, the Italian greyhound, was domesticated at the house. Some shy deer peered out at us from their paddock, and a doe, less timid than the rest, approached us and gave me a good look out of her meek, beautiful eyes. Gold and silver pheasants lurked in the shrubberies, and peacocks spread their tails and paraded before us on the greensward. Everything seemed to be Helen's, and not a flower that bloomed or a bird that flew but she gave it an ample tenderness.