Kitabı oku: «Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, August, 1878», sayfa 9
CHAPTER VI
Mr. Floyd had again entered upon active life in Washington, and his duties were so absorbing that it was almost impossible for him to find any opportunity of joining me at The Headlands, as he had promised. But just as my visit was drawing to an end he came, and kept me on for the week of his stay. I had become used to the routine of life at Mr. Raymond's, and had again and again wondered if Mr. Floyd's presence there would make any difference; but the change in the entire aspect of the household after the advent of my guardian absolutely startled me. Mr. Raymond was again master of the house, and little Helen was left free of all care and responsibility. There seemed a tacit understanding between Mills and the child and her grandfather that Mr. Floyd was to gain not the faintest idea of the usual state of things. Mr. Raymond wore a dignity which was not without its pathetic side: he no longer touched wine, although a different vintage was offered with every course, and his selfish, peevish ways seemed entirely forgotten. Helen had grown steadily stronger every week of my stay, and now that her father was with her she rallied at once into a happy, careless state of mind which made her almost as light-hearted a child as one could wish. She had none of Georgy's gay boisterousness, but her blitheness of heart seemed like a lambent fire playing over profound depths of gladness and security.
Mr. Floyd was scarcely well pleased to find Georgy at The Headlands, and at once observed with solicitude the influence she had gained over his little girl. Georgy's idea of power was to put her foot on the neck of her subjects and hold them at her mercy; and Mr. Floyd showed his displeasure at her course by at once withdrawing Helen almost entirely from her society. Georgy rebelled defiantly at this; and I too felt keenly the injustice of leaving her so utterly alone as we did day after day when Mr. Floyd, Helen and I went riding through the woods together. Directly after breakfast my guardian and I mounted our horses, and Helen her pony, and off we started for the hills, where the keen autumn winds would put color into the little girl's pale cheeks. Far below us we could see the curving reaches of beach and promontory, the sparkling fall of the low surf, and in the offing the white-winged ships bringing all the wonders of the East and the richness of the tropics to our barren New England shores. What wonder if I have never forgotten a single incident of those too swiftly succeeding days? The glow, the enthusiasm, the wild gush of free, untrammelled enjoyment, were to go from me presently, and to return no more.
When Mr. Floyd first came he had shaken me roughly by the shoulder, laughing in my face as he told me he had just come from Belfield, where he had spent six hours with my mother. I felt ashamed to look him in the eyes when I remembered my interference, and I began to debate the question in my own mind whether I had not better yield my boyish whim of pride and exclusive, domineering affection to this noble, splendid gentleman, whom I loved better and better every day.
The week appointed for his visit at The Headlands had almost passed. It was a Thursday morning, and we were to set out early the ensuing day, when he asked me to walk with him an hour on the bluff, as he had something to speak to me about. It was a lovely day: the fogs were rolling off the water, and disclosed a sea of chrysoprase beneath.
"In my old courting-days," began Mr. Floyd at once, "I used to walk here with Alice. We were engaged six weeks, and looking back now eleven years the days seem all like this. It was the Indian summer-time."
I was dumb, but stared into his face, which showed emotion, and pressed his arm bashfully.
"I was thirty-four when I first met her," he went on, "and she was just half my age. She was an heiress and I was poor, yet the world called me no bad match for her. Still, I felt as if I could not marry a rich woman: I went away, and tried to forget her, but stole back to the Point, hoping to get one glimpse of her sweet face by stealth. Then when I saw her I could not go away again, nor did she want me to go. Mr. Raymond hated me in those days, yet we were so strong against him that he gave his consent, and we were married on just such a November day as this. It seems like a dream, Floyd, that I, so long a lonely man, without a private joy, could ever have been so happy as I was then. I loved her—the light of her eyes and the white lids that covered them when I looked at her; the smile on her parted lips; the way her hair curled away from her temples; the little dimples all over her hands; her voice, her little ways. And while I loved her like that, before the first year of my happiness had passed she was dead. I hope you will never know what that means. That she had left me a child was nothing to me: I was only a rapturous lover, and had not begun to long for baby voices and upturned children's faces. When, finally, I did turn to Helen, it was as you see now: to part her from her grandfather would be to wrench body from soul."
"Mr. Raymond is a very old man," I suggested.
"He has a surer life than mine: I doubt if anybody would insure mine at any price."
We were silent. I felt awkward and ashamed: I knew what was in his thoughts.
"You wise young people!" said he presently, throwing his arm over my shoulder—"oh, you wise young people!" Then turning me square about, he looked into my face: "Oh, you foolish, foolish young people!"
I felt foolish indeed—so foolish I could not meet his eyes.
"Why begrudge us a few years of happiness together?" he asked in his deliberate gentle voice. "Your mother is still young, and so beautiful that she deserves to shine in a sphere worthy of her. I will say nothing of my profound and respectful love for her. My love for Alice was my passionate worship of a singularly charming child: your mother commands a different feeling. But of that I will say nothing. Think, Floyd, what a life I can offer her! It seems to me that in marrying me she will gain much: what can she lose?"
What, indeed, could she lose? My doubt and dread shrank into insignificant and petty proportions: it seemed to me the noblest fate for any woman alive to gain the love of this man into whose face I was looking earnestly. Yet I could find no words to utter, and he went on as if trying to convince me against my will.
"You do not appear to entertain any aversion for me," he pursued, smiling, "and in our new relation I will take care that you do not like me less. You are dear to me now, yet when your mother is my wife you will be much dearer."
My self-control vanished: my lip trembled. "What does mother say?" I asked almost in a whisper.
He put his hands on my shoulders, laughing softly: "She says she has a son whose love and respect she so highly prizes she will do nothing to forfeit them."
"Does she love you, Mr. Floyd?" I questioned bluntly.
"I think she does—a little," he answered, dropping his eyes. "But," he went on more hurriedly, "in such a marriage love is not everything, Floyd, although it is much. There is sympathy, constant close companionship: of these both your mother and I have bitterly felt the need."
"Don't say any more, sir," I cried, humbled to the dust. "When I first saw what was coming I suppose I thought only of myself: now—"
"Now you think of two other people, and withdraw your opposition. I confess I can't see how you will be worse off. Come now, give me your hand, you young rascal! I shall go home with you to-morrow, and—"
"Will it take place at once?" I asked with a pang at my heart.
"What? our marriage? You are hurrying matters charmingly. Mrs. Randolph has not yet accepted me. But I will confess to you, my boy, that I shall be more than happy, more than proud, if I can persuade her to allow me to introduce her to my friends in Washington in December."
We walked about for more than an hour after, but said no more about the matter, although it was stirring below every thought and word of each of us. I felt the weariness of soul which succeeds a struggle, and my guardian tried, but unsuccessfully, to conceal the elation which follows victory. Yet subdued and unhappy though I was, haunted by a sense of terrible loss, I was proud and glad to have contented him. He talked to me intimately, and discussed my plans for the future. I was to enter college the next year, and he pointed out the fact, to which I was not insensible, that our old life at home would necessarily have been broken up when I left Belfield. He spoke of my pecuniary means, and frankly informed me that his property amounted to three hundred thousand dollars, and that this amount he had divided into thirds—one for my mother, one for Helen and one for me.
"Oh, sir," I burst out, "you must not be so generous to me."
"And why not? My little girl has too much already: it has always been one of the discomforts of my life that she is so rich, so raised above all human wants, that I have had it in my power to do nothing for her. I have seen poor men buying clothes and shoes for their little sunburned children, and envied them."
We had been lounging toward the house, and now had reached the terrace, where we found Mr. Raymond pacing feebly up and down in the mild sunshine leaning on Frederick's arm. Mr. Floyd stepped forward and took the valet's place, investing the slight courtesy with the charm of his grand manner.
"Where is Helen?" asked Mr. Raymond. "I supposed that she was with you, James."
"I have not seen her since breakfast.—Suppose you look her up, Floyd? I am afraid she is with Miss Georgy, and in mischief, no doubt.—I object, sir," Mr. Floyd added to his father-in-law, "to Helen's having too much of the society of Miss Lenox. She is a pretty little devil enough, but then I don't like pretty little devils."
"I have written to Mrs. Lenox to recall her," returned Mr. Raymond stiffly. "She is no favorite of mine. There is a look in her eyes at times that makes me shudder at the thought of the harm she is pretty sure to do. Floyd here is her only partisan."
I had already sprung along the terrace, and quickly crossed the lawn and garden to the rocks. I remembered having seen a blue and a scarlet jacket going toward the shore during my talk with Mr. Floyd; and, sure enough, on the rocks I found traces of the girls—a ribbon, the rind of Georgy's oranges which she was always nibbling, and Helen's book. Supposing they were on the beach, I descended the stone steps leading to the sands. There was a faint plashing and lisping of the waves, but otherwise no sound and no sight but the great rocks and the smooth sea lustrous and glittering like steel. I had no doubt but that Helen and Georgy were somewhere near me, and sat down to wait. My mind was full of thoughts that came and went, bringing clear but swiftly-shifting pictures of our old life and the new, which rose suddenly fresh and vivid before me. I could see my mother's face, the color coming and going like a young girl's, and the movement of her little hands clasping and unclasping in her lap. I could see her, too, by the side of Mr. Floyd in a bright, wonderful world of which I knew nothing. For a moment I felt already parted from her, and the pang of separation wrenched body from soul. I threw myself face downward on the sand and declared myself profoundly miserable.
Suddenly I started to my feet. I was vaguely terrified, yet could not tell what had aroused me from my brooding thoughts. I seemed conscious of having heard a cry, but so faint and inarticulate as hardly to differ from the distant note of a sea-bird. But as I ran frantically along the sands I distinctly heard my name, and knew that the entreaty was for help.
"I am coming!" I screamed at the top of my voice—"I am coming as fast as I can." The rocks gave back so many deceitful echoes that I was not certain from what point the imploring cry came; but I knew every inch of the beach for a mile up and down, and knew, too, that there was but one place in which with ordinary prudence there could be the slightest danger. So with unerring instinct I flew along the wet shingle to "Raymond's Cliff." At this point the beetling line of rocks which coiled and frowned along the coast terminated abruptly in precipitous crags. On one side it was sheer precipice, but on the other the cliff, exposed both to wind and wave, washed by the rains and gnawed at its base by ever-advancing and receding tides, had gradually been worn away in the centre by the constant crumbling of the sandy soil, so as to form a sort of ravine. It was a dangerous and gloomy place, and I had received many a warning from Mr. Raymond never to take Helen there.
"Helen!" I cried—"Helen! if you are here, answer me. I cannot see you." A gull flew away from the cliff with a scream, and I could hear no other sound. "Tell me, Helen, if you are here."
I heard a cry from above—almost inaudible it was so spiritless and faint—yet, gaze as I might toward the top, I could see nothing. I skirted the main rock and climbed as far as I easily could up the ravine. Here my attention was arrested by a dot of scarlet against the grim, bare face of the basalt. Yes, there she was, about forty feet above me, hanging on to a shelving rock with her little Italian greyhound in her arms. She was peering down, disclosing a pallid face. I saw at once that she had hung there until her strength was almost gone.
"Listen to me, Helen," said I, calmly and very gently, for I had a ghastly dread that she would fall before my very eyes. "Don't look down: just keep your eyes fixed on the rock, and hold on tight until I reach you." She obeyed me. "Now," I went on authoritatively, "drop the dog—drop him, I say!—Here, Beppo! here!"
She again obeyed me, and the dog scrambled down and fell—scratched and bruised, no doubt, yet otherwise unhurt—at my feet. "Helen, answer me one question," said I. "Can you wait until I go round up to the top and get a rope?"
She gave a little scream of pitiful anguish: I saw her slight figure sway, and some loose stones came rattling down. "I feel so sick, so dizzy!" she cried.
"I will climb up, then. Hold on tight for a few minutes more. Keep perfectly still, and don't look down: you know how well I can climb."
I was a capital climber, and could hold on like a cat where there was a crevice to fasten my feet or my hands. Still, I was anything but certain about these hollow, worn sides, which in places were as smooth as glass. But it had to be done, and done quickly. If the child fell she was dead or maimed to a certainty. She had crawled in some unheard-of way down from the top, and must go back the way she had come; and since I had no time to help her from above, I must go up to her. A spar had been washed up among the débris upon which I had mounted, and this helped me up a little way. Then I managed to creep a trifle farther, hand over hand: whenever I could take breath I called out to her that it was all right and I should be up in another minute. The necessity of keeping up her courage endowed me with miraculous strength, and in a little while I stood beside Helen on the narrow shelf, and waited for a moment to breathe freely and see what was yet beyond me. I smiled at her, and she looked steadily into my face, but said not a word.
"How in the world did you get here, Helen?" I asked.
"I came after Beppo," she returned, her lip trembling.
"How did Beppo get here?"
"Georgy flung him down," cried the child, bursting into tears. "Perhaps she did not mean to, but she was angry that he would not go by himself after the stone she flung."
I had looked to the top by this time, and saw at once that the worst part of the ascent was before me. It had been sheer rock beneath: here the strata were crumbled, and the interstices filled with earth and dried vegetation. The angle was much greater than it had been below, and it was easy to see that even Helen's light footstep had loosened every fragment it had touched. I gained a foothold above her; stretched out my hand and drew her up; then another and another. Once she lost her footing, but I caught the slim figure in my arms and went on, with her half fainting against my shoulder, her puny strength quite worn out.
When we were within a few feet of the top I told her to look up. "You see that we are almost there," I said gently. "Can you do what I tell you to do? When I raise you place one foot on my shoulder: … now, then, take hold of something firmly and clamber up."
My footing was precarious, and in order to lift her up I was obliged to unfasten my hold of the few scant wisps of withered grass. If she could but reach the top, I believed I could make a supreme effort to save myself; and I risked everything.
In an instant she was on the brow of the cliff. She gave a convulsive cry of joy and relief, and reached out her little hand to me. I almost stretched out to grasp it; then, remembering that with her slight weight I might easily drag her back into danger, I took hold of a little bush: it was dried to the roots, and came out in my hand. My footing gave way: I slipped down, with nothing to break my fall—not a shrub, not a fissure in the rocks. The blue sky had been above me, but that blessed glimpse of azure vanished, and I could see nothing but the frowning sides of the precipice as I went down, my pace accelerating every moment. I believed I could gain a hold or footing on the shelving rock where I had found Helen, but it gave way as I touched it and slid suddenly down the ravine. I was dizzy and bruised, but was wondering if Helen would give the alarm—if Georgy would be sorry. I thought with pity of my mother, who would surely weep for me. Then I heard Beppo barking joyfully, and I knew that I was at the bottom of the abyss. I suffered a few seconds of such terrible pain that I was glad when a sickening sort of quietude settled over me, and I felt that I must be dying.
Ellen W. Olney.
[TO BE CONTINUED.]
A SEA-SOUND
Hush! hush!
'Tis the voice of the sea to the land,
As it breaks on the desolate strand,
With a chime to the strenuous wave of life
That throbs in the quivering sand.
Hush! hush!
Each requiem tone as it dies,
With a soul that is parting, sighs;
For the tide rolls back from the pulseless clay
As the foam in the tempest flies.
Hush! hush!
O throb of the restless sea!
All hearts are attuned to thee—
All pulses beat with thine ebb and flow
To the rhyme of Eternity!
John B. Tabb.
THE BRITISH SOLDIER
I allude to the British soldier, more especially, as I lately observed and admired him at Aldershot, where, just now, he appears to particular advantage; but at any time during the past twelvemonth—since England and Russia have stood glaring at each other across the prostrate body of the expiring yet reviving Turk—this actually ornamental and potentially useful personage has been picturesquely, agreeably conspicuous. I say "agreeably," speaking from my own humble point of view, because I confess to a lively admiration of the military class. I exclaim, cordially, with Offenbach's Grand Duchess, "Ah, oui, j'aime les militaires!" Mr. Ruskin has said somewhere, very naturally, that he could never resign himself to living in a country in which, as in the United States, there should be no old castles. Putting aside the old castles, I should say, like Mr. Ruskin, that life loses a certain indispensable charm in a country destitute of an apparent standing army. Certainly, the army may be too apparent, too importunate, too terrible a burden to the state and to the conscience of the philosophic observer. This is the case, without a doubt, just now in the bristling empires of the Continent. In Germany and France, in Russia and Italy, there are many more soldiers than are needed to make the taxpayer thrifty or the lover of the picturesque happy. The huge armaments of continental Europe are an oppressive and sinister spectacle, and I have rarely derived a high order of entertainment from the sight of even the largest masses of homesick conscripts. The chair à canon—the cannon-meat—as they aptly term it in French, has always seemed to me dumbly, appealingly conscious of its destiny. I have seen it in course of preparation—seen it salted and dressed and packed and labelled, as it were, for consumption. In that marvellous France, indeed, which bears all burdens lightly, and whose good spirits and absence of the tragic pose alone prevent us from calling her constantly heroic, the army scarcely seems to be the heavy charge that it must be in fact. The little red-legged soldiers, always present and always moving, are as thick as the field-flowers in an abundant harvest, and amid the general brightness and mobility of French life they strike one at times simply as cheerful tokens of the national exuberance and fecundity. But in Germany and Italy the national levies impart a lopsided aspect to society: they seem to drag it under water. They hang like a millstone round its neck, so that it can't move: it has to sit still, looking wistfully at the long, forward road which it is unable to measure.
England, which is fortunate in so many things, is fortunate in her well-fed mercenaries, who suggest none of the dismal reflections provoked by the great foreign armies. It is true, of course, that they fail to suggest some of the inspiring ones. If Germany and France are burdened, at least they are defended—at least they are armed for conflict and victory. There seems to be a good deal of doubt as to how far this is true of the nation which has hitherto been known as the pre-eminently pugnacious one. Where France and Germany and Russia count by hundreds, England counts by tens; and it is only, strictly speaking, on the good old principle that one Englishman can buffet a dozen foreigners that a very hopeful view of an Anglo-continental collision can be maintained. This good old principle is far from having gone out of fashion: you may hear it proclaimed to an inspiring tune any night in the week in the London music-halls. One summer evening, in the country, an English gentleman was telling me about his little boy, a rosy, sturdy, manly child whom I had already admired, and whom he depicted as an infant Hercules. The surrounding influences at the moment were picturesque. An ancient lamp was suspended from the ceiling of the hall; the large door stood open upon a terrace; and outside the big, dense treetops were faintly stirring in the starlight. My companion dilated upon the pluck and muscle, the latent pugnacity, of his dear little son, and told me how bravely already he doubled his infant fist. There was a kind of Homeric simplicity about it. From this he proceeded to wider considerations, and observed that the English child was of necessity the bravest and sturdiest in the world, for the plain reason that he was the germ of the English man. What the English man was we of course both knew, but, as I was a stranger, my friend explained the matter in detail. He was a person whom, in the ordinary course of human irritation, every one else was afraid of. Nowhere but in England were such men made—men who could hit out as soon as think, and knock over persons of inferior race as you would brush away flies. They were afraid of nothing: the sentiment of hesitation to inflict a blow under rigidly proper circumstances was unknown to them. English soldiers and sailors in a row carried everything before them: foreigners didn't know what to make of such fellows, and were afraid to touch them. A couple of Englishmen were a match for a foreign mob. My friend's little boy was made like a statue: his little arms and legs were quite of the right sort. This was the greatness of England, and of this there was an infinite supply. The light, as I say, was dim in the great hall, and the rustle of the oaks in the park was almost audible. Their murmur seemed to offer a sympathetic undertone to the honest conversation of my companion, and I sat there as humble a ministrant to the simple and beautiful idea of British valor as the occasion could require. I made the reflection—by which I must justify my anecdote—that the ancient tradition as to the personal fighting-value of the individual Englishman flourishes in high as well as in low life, and forms a common ground of contact between them; with the simple difference that at the music-halls it is more poetically expressed than in the country-houses.
I am grossly ignorant of military matters, and hardly know the names of regiments or the designations of their officers; yet, as I said at the beginning of these remarks, I am always very much struck by the sight of a uniform. War is a detestable thing, and I would willingly see the sword dropped into its scabbard for ever. Only I should plead that in its sheathed condition the sword should still be allowed to play a certain part. Actual war is detestable, but there is something agreeable in possible war; and I have been thankful that I should have found myself on British soil at a moment when it was resounding to the tread of regiments. If the British army is small, it has during the last six months been making the most of itself. The rather dusky spectacle of British life has been lighted up by the presence in the foreground of considerable masses of that vivid color which is more particularly associated with the protection of British interests. The sunshine has appeared to rest upon scattered clusters of red-coats, while the background has been enveloped in a sort of chaotic and fuliginous dimness. The red-coats, according to their number, have been palpable and definite, though a great many other things have been inconveniently vague. At the beginning of the year, when Parliament was opened in the queen's name, the royal speech contained a phrase which that boisterous organ of the war-party, the Pall Mall Gazette, pronounced "sickening" in its pusillanimity. Her Majesty alluded to the necessity, in view of the complications in the East, of the government taking into consideration the making of "preparations for precaution." This was certainly an ineffective way of expressing a thirst for Russian blood, but the royal phraseology is never very felicitous; and the "preparations for precaution" have been extremely interesting. Indeed, for a person conscious of a desire to look into what may be called the psychology of politics, I can imagine nothing more interesting than the general spectacle of the public conduct of England during the last two years. I have watched it with a good deal of the same sort of entertainment with which one watches a five-act drama from a comfortable place in the stalls. There are moments of discomfort in the course of such a performance: the theatre is hot and crowded, the situations are too prolonged, the play seems to drag, some of the actors have no great talent. But the piece, as a whole, is intensely dramatic, the argument is striking, and you would not for the world leave your place before the dénouement is reached. My own pleasure all winter, I confess, has been partly marred by a bad conscience: I have felt a kind of shame at my inability to profit by a brilliant opportunity to make up my mind. This inability, however, was extreme, and my regret was not lightened by seeing every one about me set an admirable example of decision, and even of precision. Every one about me was either a Russian or a Turk, the Turks, however, being greatly the more numerous. It appeared necessary to one's self-respect to assume some foreign personality, and I felt keenly, for a while, the embarrassment of choice. At last it occurred to me simply that as an American I might be an Englishman; and the reflection became afterward very profitable.
When once I had undertaken the part, I played it with what the French call conviction. There are many obvious reasons why the rôle, at such a time as this, should accommodate itself to the American capacity. The feeling of race is strong, and a good American could not but desire that, with the eyes of Europe fixed upon it, the English race should make a passable figure. There would be much fatuity in his saying that at such a moment he deemed it of importance to give it the support of his own striking attitude, but there is at least a kind of filial piety in this feeling moved to draw closer to it. To see how the English race would behave, and to hope devoutly it would behave well,—this was the occupation of my thoughts. Old England was in a difficult pass, and all the world was watching her. The good American feels in all sorts of ways about Old England: the better American he is, the more acute are his moods, the more lively his variations. He can be, I think, everything but indifferent; and, for myself, I never hesitated to let my emotions play all along the scale. In the morning, over the Times, it was extremely difficult to make up one's mind. The Times seemed very mealy-mouthed—that impression, indeed, it took no great cleverness to gather—but the dilemma lay between one's sense of the brutality and cynicism of the usual utterances of the Turkish party and one's perception of the direful ills which Russian conquest was so liberally scattering abroad. The brutality of the Turkish tone, as I sometimes caught an echo of it in the talk of chance interlocutors, was not such as to quicken that race-feeling to which I just now alluded. English society is a tremendously comfortable affair, and the crudity of the sarcasm that I frequently heard levelled by its fortunate members at the victims of the fashionable Turk was such as to produce a good deal of resentful meditation. It was provoking to hear a rosy English gentleman, who had just been into Leicestershire for a week's hunting, deliver the opinion that the vulgar Bulgarians had really not been massacred half enough; and this in spite of the fact that one had long since made the observation that for a good plain absence of mawkish sentimentality a certain type of rosy English gentleman is nowhere to be matched. On the other hand, it was not very comfortable to think of the measureless misery in which these interesting populations were actually steeped, and one had to admit that the deliberate invasion of a country which professed the strongest desire to live in peace with its invaders was at least a rather striking anomaly. Such a course could only be justified by the most gratifying results, and brilliant consequences as yet had not begun to bloom upon the blood-drenched fields of Bulgaria.
