diff options
| -rw-r--r-- | .gitattributes | 3 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 9838.txt | 4434 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 9838.zip | bin | 0 -> 91235 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | LICENSE.txt | 11 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README.md | 2 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/sthrt10.txt | 4404 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | old/sthrt10.zip | bin | 0 -> 91894 bytes |
7 files changed, 8854 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/9838.txt b/9838.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a460477 --- /dev/null +++ b/9838.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4434 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Strong Hearts, by George W. Cable + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Strong Hearts + +Author: George W. Cable + +Posting Date: November 5, 2011 [EBook #9838] +Release Date: February, 2006 +First Posted: October 23, 2003 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRONG HEARTS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Lazar Liveanu and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + + + + + + +STRONG HEARTS + +By George W. Cable + + +1899 + + + +_CONTENTS_ + + +_The Solitary + +The Taxidermist + +The Entomologist + + + +In magazine form "The Solitary" appeared under the title of "Gregory's +Island."_ + + + +The Solitary + + + +I + + +"The dream of Pharaoh is one. The seven kine are seven years; and the +seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one.... And for that the +dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice, it is because the thing is +established."... + +In other words: Behind three or four subtitles and changes of time, scene, +characters, this tale of strong hearts is one. And for that the tale is +tripled or quadrupled unto you three or four times (the number will +depend); it is because in each of its three or four aspects--or separate +stories, if you insist--it sets forth, in heroic natures and poetic fates, +a principle which seems to me so universal that I think Joseph would say +of it also, as he said to the sovereign of Egypt, "The thing is +established of God." + +I know no better way to state this principle, being a man, not of letters, +but of commerce (and finance), than to say--what I fear I never should +have learned had I not known the men and women I here tell of--that +religion without poetry is as dead a thing as poetry without religion. In +our practical use of them, I mean; their infusion into all our doing and +being. As dry as a mummy, great Joseph would say. + +Shall I be more explicit? Taking that great factor of life which men, with +countless lights, shades, narrownesses and breadths of meaning, call +Religion, and taking it in the largest sense we can give it; in like +manner taking Poetry in the largest sense possible; this cluster of tales +is one, because from each of its parts, with no argument but the souls and +fates they tell of, it illustrates the indivisible twinship of Poetry and +Religion; a oneness of office and of culmination, which, as they reach +their highest plane, merges them into identity. Is that any clearer? You +see I am no scientist or philosopher, and I do not stand at any dizzy +height, even in my regular business of banking and insurance, except now +and then when my colleagues of the clearing-house or board want something +drawn up--"Whereas, the inscrutable wisdom of Providence has taken from +among us"--something like that. + +I tell the stories as I saw them occur. I tell them for your +entertainment; the truth they taught me you may do what you please with. +It was exemplified in some of these men and women by their failure to +incarnate it. Others, through the stained glass of their imperfect +humanity, showed it forth alive and alight in their own souls and bodies. +One there was who never dreamed he was a bright example of anything, in a +world which, you shall find him saying, God--or somebody--whoever is +responsible for civilization--had made only too good and complex and big +for him. We may hold that to make life a perfect, triumphant poem we must +keep in beautiful, untyrannous subordination every impulse of mere self- +provision, whether earthly or heavenly, while at the same time we give +life its equatorial circumference. I know that he so believed. Yet, under +no better conscious motive than an impulse of pure self-preservation, +finding his spiritual breadth and stature too small for half the practical +demands of such large theories, he humbly set to work to narrow down the +circumference of his life to limits within which he might hope to turn +_some_ of its daily issues into good poetry. This is the main reason why I +tell of him first, and why the parts of my story--or the stories--do not +fall into chronological order. I break that order with impunity, and adopt +that which I believe to be best in the interest of Poetry and themselves. +Only do not think hard if I get more interested in the story, or stories, +than in the interpretation thereof. + + + +II + + +The man of whom I am speaking was a tallish, slim young fellow, shaped +well enough, though a trifle limp for a Louisianian in the Mississippi +(Confederate) cavalry. Some camp wag had fastened on him the nickname of +"Crackedfiddle." Our acquaintance began more than a year before Lee's +surrender; but Gregory came out of the war without any startling record, +and the main thing I tell of him occurred some years later. + +I never saw him under arms or in uniform. I met him first at the house of +a planter, where I was making the most of a flesh-wound, and was, myself, +in uniform simply because I hadn't any other clothes. There were pretty +girls in the house, and as his friends and fellow-visitors--except me-- +wore the gilt bars of commissioned rank on their gray collars, and he, as +a private, had done nothing glorious, his appearance was always in +civilian's dress. Black he wore, from head to foot, in the cut fashionable +in New Orleans when the war brought fashion to a stand: coat-waist high, +skirt solemnly long; sleeves and trousers small at the hands and feet, and +puffed out--phew! in the middle. The whole scheme was dandyish, dashing, +zou-zou; and when he appeared in it, dark, good-looking, loose, +languorous, slow to smile and slower to speak, it was--confusing. + +One sunset hour as I sat alone on the planter's veranda immersed in a +romance, I noticed, too late to offer any serviceable warning, this +impressive black suit and its ungenerously nicknamed contents coming in at +the gate unprotected. Dogs, in the South, in those times, were not the +caressed and harmless creatures now so common. A Mississippi planter's +watch-dogs were kept for their vigilant and ferocious hostility to the +negro of the quarters and to all strangers. One of these, a powerful, +notorious, bloodthirsty brute, long-bodied, deer-legged--you may possibly +know that big breed the planters called the "cur-dog" and prized so highly +-darted out of hiding and silently sprang at the visitor's throat. Gregory +swerved, and the brute's fangs, whirling by his face, closed in the sleeve +and rent it from shoulder to elbow. At the same time another, one of the +old "bear-dog" breed, was coming as fast as the light block and chain he +had to drag would allow him. Gregory neither spoke, nor moved to attack or +retreat. At my outcry the dogs slunk away, and he asked me, diffidently, +for a thing which was very precious in those days--pins. + +But he was quickly surrounded by pitying eyes and emotional voices, and +was coaxed into the house, where the young ladies took his coat away to +mend it. While he waited for it in my room I spoke of the terror so many +brave men had of these fierce home-guards. I knew one such beast that was +sired of a wolf. He heard me with downcast eyes, at first with evident +pleasure, but very soon quite gravely. + +"They can afford to fear dogs," he replied, "when they've got no other +fear." And when I would have it that he had shown a stout heart he smiled +ruefully. + +"I do everything through weakness," he soliloquized, and, taking my book, +opened it as if to dismiss our theme. But I bade him turn to the preface, +where heavily scored by the same feminine hand which had written on the +blank leaf opposite, "Richard Thorndyke Smith, from C.O."--we read +something like this: + +The seed of heroism is in all of us. Else we should not forever relish, as +we do, stories of peril, temptation, and exploit. Their true zest is no +mere ticklement of our curiosity or wonder, but comradeship with souls +that have courage in danger, faithfulness under trial, or magnanimity in +triumph or defeat. We have, moreover, it went on to say, a care for human +excellence _in general_, by reason of which we want not alone our son, or +cousin, or sister, but _man everywhere_, the norm, _man_, to be strong, +sweet, and true; and reading stories of such, we feel this wish rebound +upon us as duty sweetened by a new hope, and have a new yearning for its +fulfilment in ourselves. + +"In short," said I, closing the book, "those imaginative victories of soul +over circumstance become essentially ours by sympathy and emulation, don't +they?" + +"O yes," he sighed, and added an indistinct word about "spasms of virtue." +But I claimed a special charm and use for unexpected and detached +heroisms, be they fact or fiction. "If adventitious virtue," I argued, +"can spring up from unsuspected seed and without the big roots of +character--" + +"You think," interrupted Gregory, "there's a fresh chance for me." + +"For all the common run of us!" I cried. "Why not? And even if there +isn't, hasn't it a beauty and a value? Isn't a rose a rose, on the bush or +off? Gold is gold wherever you find it, and the veriest spasm of true +virtue, coined into action, is true virtue, and counts. It may not work my +nature's whole redemption, but it works that way, and is just so much +solid help toward the whole world's uplift." I was young enough then to +talk in that manner, and he actually took comfort in my words, confessing +that it had been his way to count a good act which was not in character +with its doer as something like a dead loss to everybody. + +"I'm glad it's not," he said, "for I reckon my ruling motive is always +fear." + +"Was it fear this evening?" I asked. + +"Yes," he replied, "it was. It was fear of a coward's name, and a sort of +abject horror of being one." + +"Too big a coward inside," I laughed, "to be a big stout coward outside," +and he assented. + +"Smith," he said, and paused long, "if I were a hard drinker and should +try to quit, it wouldn't be courage that would carry me through, but fear; +quaking fear of a drunkard's life and a drunkard's death." + +I was about to rejoin that the danger was already at his door, but he read +the warning accusation in my eye. + +"I'm afraid so," he responded. "I had a strange experience once," he +presently added, as if reminded of it by what we had last said. "I took a +prisoner." + +"By the overwhelming power of fear?" I inquired. + +"Partly, yes. I saw him before he saw me and I felt that if I didn't take +him he'd either take me or shoot me, so I covered him and he surrendered. +We were in an old pine clearing grown up with oak bushes." + +"Would it have been less strange," I inquired, "if you had been in an old +oak clearing grown up with pine bushes?" + +"No, he'd have got away just the same." + +"What! you didn't bring him in?" + + +"Only part of the way. Then he broke and ran." + +"And you had to shoot him?" + +"No, I didn't even shoot at him. I couldn't, Smith; _he looked so much +like me_. It was like seeing my own ghost. All the time I had him +something kept saying to me, 'You're your own prisoner--you're your own +prisoner.' And--do you know?--that thing comes back to me now every time I +get into the least sort of a tight place!" + +"I wish it would come to me," I responded. A slave girl brought his coat +and our talk remained unfinished until five years after the war. + + + +III + + +Gregory had been brought up on the shore of Mississippi Sound, a beautiful +region fruitful mainly in apathy of character. He was a skilled lover of +sail-boats. When we all got back to New Orleans, paroled, and cast about +for a living in the various channels "open to gentlemen," he, largely, I +think, owing to his timid notion of his worth, went into the rough +business of owning and sailing a small, handsome schooner in the "Lake +trade," which, you know, includes Mississippi Sound. I married, and for +some time he liked much to come and see us--on rainy evenings, when he +knew we should be alone. He was in love yet, as he had been when we were +fellow-absentees from camp, and with the same girl. But his passion had +never presumed to hope, and the girl was of too true a sort ever to thrust +hope upon him. What his love lacked in courage it made up in constancy, +however, and morning, noon, and night--sometimes midnight too, I venture +to say--his all too patient heart had bowed mutely down toward its holy +city across the burning sands of his diffidence. When another fellow +stepped in and married her, he simply loved on, in the same innocent, +dumb, harmless way as before. He gave himself some droll consolations. One +of these was a pretty, sloop-rigged sail-boat, trim and swift, on which he +lavished the tendernesses he knew he should never bestow upon any living +she. He named her Sweetheart; a general term; but he knew that we all knew +it meant the mender of his coat. By and by his visits fell off and I met +him oftenest on the street. Sometimes we stopped for a moment's sidewalk +chat, New Orleans fashion, and I still envied the clear bronze of his fine +skin, which the rest of us had soon lost. But after a while certain +changes began to show for the worse, until one day in the summer of the +fifth year he tried to hurry by me. I stopped him, and was thinking what a +handsome fellow he was even yet, with such a quiet, modest fineness about +him, when he began, with a sudden agony of face, "My schooner's sold for +debt! You know the reason; I've seen you read it all over me every time we +have met, these twelve months--O _don't_ look at me!" + +His slim, refined hands--he gave me both?-were clammy and tremulous. +"Yes," he babbled on, "it's a fixed fact, Smith; the cracked fiddle's a +smashed fiddle at last!" + +I drew him out of the hot sun and into a secluded archway, he talking +straight on with a speed and pitiful grandiloquence totally unlike him. +"I've finished all the easy parts--the first ecstasies of pure license-- +the long down-hill plunge, with all its mad exhilarations--the wild vanity +of venturing and defying--that bigness of the soul's experiences which +makes even its anguish seem finer than the old bitterness of tame +propriety--they are all behind me, now?-the valley of horrors is before! +You can't understand it, Smith. O you can't understand----" + +O couldn't I! And, anyhow, one does not have to put himself through a +whole criminal performance to apprehend its spiritual experiences. I +understood all, and especially what he unwittingly betrayed even now; that +deep thirst for the dramatic element in one's own life, which, when social +conformity fails to supply it, becomes, to an eager soul, sin's cunningest +allurement. + +I tried to talk to him. "Gregory, that day the dogs jumped on you--you +remember?--didn't you say if ever you should reach this condition your +fear might save you?" + +He stared at me a moment. "Do you"--a ray of humor lighted his eyes--"do +you still believe in spasms of virtue?" + +"Thank heaven, yes!" laughed I. + +"Good-by," he said, and was gone. + +I heard of him twice afterward that day. About noon some one coming into +the office said: "I just now saw Crackedfiddle buying a great lot of +powder and shot and fishing-tackle. Here's a note. He says first read it +and then seal it and send it to his aunt." It read: + +_"Don't look for me. You can't find me. I'm not going to kill or hurt +myself, and I'll report again in a month."_ + +I delivered it in person on my way uptown, advising his kinswoman to trust +him on his own terms and hope for the best. Privately, of course, I was +distressed, and did not become less so when, on reaching home, Mrs. Smith +told me that he had been there and borrowed an arm-load of books, saying +he might return some of them in a month, but would probably keep others +for two. So he did; and one evening, when he brought the last of them +back, he told us fully, spiritual experiences and all, what had occurred +to him in the interval. + +The sale of the schooner had paid its debt and left him some cash over. +Better yet, it had saved Sweetheart. On the day of his disappearance she +was lying at the head of the New Basin, distant but a few minutes' walk +from the spot where we met and talked. When he left me he went there. At +the stores thereabout he bought a new hatchet and axe, an extra water-keg +or two, and a month's provisions. He filled all the kegs, stowed +everything aboard, and by the time the afternoon had half waned was +rippling down the New Canal under mule-tow with a strong lake breeze in +his face. + +At the lake (Pontchartrain), as the tow-line was cast off, he hoisted +sail, and, skimming out by lighthouse and breakwater, tripped away toward +Pointe-aux-Herbes and the eastern skyline beyond, he and Sweetheart alone, +his hand clasping hers--the tiller, that is--hour by hour, and the small +waves tiptoeing to kiss her southern cheek as she leaned the other away +from the saucy north wind. In time the low land, and then the lighthouse, +sank and vanished behind them; on the left the sun went down in the purple +black swamps of Manchac; the intervening waters turned crimson and bronze +under the fairer changes of the sky, while in front of them Fort Pike +Light began to glimmer through an opal haze, and by and by to draw near. +It passed. From a large inbound schooner gliding by in the twilight, came +in friendly recognition, the drone of a conch-shell, the last happy +salutation Sweetheart was ever to receive. Then the evening star silvered +their wake through the deep Rigolets, and the rising moon met them, her +and her lover, in Lake Borgne, passing the dark pines of Round Island, and +hurrying on toward the white sand-keys of the Gulf. + +The night was well advanced as they neared the pine-crested dunes of Cat +Island, in whose lee a more cautious sailor would have dropped anchor till +the morning. But to this pair every mile of these fickle waters, channel +and mud-lump, snug lagoon, open sea and hidden bar, each and all, were +known as the woods are known to a hunter, and, as he drew her hand closer +to his side, she turned across the track of the moon and bounded into the +wide south. A maze of marsh islands--huddling along that narrow, half- +drowned mainland of cypress swamp and trembling prairie which follows the +Mississippi out to sea--slept, leagues away, below the western waters. In +the east lay but one slender boundary between the voyager and the +shoreless deep, and this was so near that from its farther edge came now +and again its admonishing murmur, the surf-thunder of the open Gulf +rolling forever down the prone but unshaken battle-front of the sandy +Chandeleurs. + + + +IV + + +So all night, lest wind or resolve should fail next day, he sailed. How to +tell just where dawn found him I scarcely know. + +Somewhere in that blue wilderness, with no other shore in sight, yet not +over three miles northeast of a "pass" between two long tide-covered sand- +reefs, a ferment of delta silt--if science guesses right--had lifted +higher than most of the islands behind it in the sunken west one mere +islet in the shape of a broad crescent, with its outward curve to seaward +and a deep, slender lagoon on the landward side filling the whole length +of its bight. About half the island was flat and was covered with those +strong marsh grasses for which you've seen cattle, on the mainland, +venture so hungrily into the deep ooze. The rest, the southern half, rose +in dazzling white dunes twenty feet or more in height and dappled green +with patches of ragged sod and thin groups of dwarfed and wind-flattened +shrubs. As the sun rose, Sweetheart and her sailor glided through a gap in +the sand reef that closed the lagoon in, luffed, and as a great cloud of +nesting pelicans rose from their dirty town on the flats, ran softly upon +the inner sands, where a rillet, a mere thread of sweet water, trickled +across the white beach. Here he waded ashore with the utensils and +provisions, made a fire, washed down a hot breakfast of bacon and pone +with a pint of black coffee, returned to his boat and slept until +afternoon. Wakened at length by the canting of the sloop with the fall of +the tide, he rose, rekindled his fire, cooked and ate again, smoked two +pipes, and then, idly shouldering his gun, made a long half-circuit of the +beach to south and eastward, mounted the highest dune and gazed far and +wide. + +Nowhere on sand or sea under the illimitable dome was there sign of human +presence on the earth. Nor would there likely be any. Except by +misadventure no ship on any course ever showed more than a topmast above +this horizon. Of the hunters and fishermen who roamed the islands nearer +shore, with the Chandeleurs, the storm-drowned Grand Gosiers and the deep- +sea fishing grounds beyond, few knew the way hither, and fewer ever sailed +it. At the sound of his gun the birds of the beach--sea-snipe, curlew, +plover--showed the whites of their wings for an instant and fell to +feeding again. Save when the swift Wilderness--you remember the revenue +cutter?-chanced this way on her devious patrol, only the steamer of the +light-house inspection service, once a month, came up out of the southwest +through yonder channel and passed within hail on her way from the stations +of the Belize to those of Mississippi Sound; and he knew--had known before +he left the New Basin--that she had just gone by here the day before. + +But to Gregory this solitude brought no quick distress. With a bird or two +at his belt he turned again toward his dying fire. Once on the way he +paused, as he came in sight of the sloop, and gazed upon it with a +faintness of heart he had not known since his voyage began. However, it +presently left him, and hurrying down to her side he began to unload her +completely, and to make a permanent camp in the lee of a ridge of sand +crested with dwarfed casino bushes, well up from the beach. The night did +not stop him, and by the time he was tired enough for sleep he had +lightened the boat of everything stowed into her the previous day. Before +sunrise he was at work again, removing her sandbags, her sails, flags, +cordage, even her spars. The mast would have been heavy for two men to +handle, but he got it out whole, though not without hurting one hand so +painfully that he had to lie off for over two hours. But by midday he was +busy again, and when at low water poor Sweetheart comfortably turned upon +her side on the odorous, clean sand, it was never more to rise. The keen, +new axe of her master ended her days. + +"No! O no!" he said to me, "call it anything but courage! I felt--I don't +want to be sentimental--I'm sure I was not sentimental at the time, but--I +felt as though I were a murderer. All I knew was that it had to be done. I +trembled like a thief. I had to stoop twice before I could take up the +axe, and I was so cold my teeth chattered. When I lifted the first blow I +didn't know where it was going to fall. But it struck as true as a die, +and then I flew at it. I never chopped so fast or clean in my life. I +wasn't fierce; I was as full of self-delight as an overpraised child. And +yet when something delayed me an instant I found I was still shaking. +Courage," said he, "O no; I know what it was, and I knew then. But I had +no choice; it was my last chance." + +I told him that anyone might have thought him a madman chopping up his +last chance. + +"Maybe so," he replied, "but I wasn't; it was the one sane thing I could +do;" and he went on to tell me that when night fell the tallest fire that +ever leapt from those sands blazed from Sweetheart's piled ribs and keel. + +It was proof to him of his having been shrewd, he said, that for many days +he felt no repentance of the act nor was in the least lonely. There was an +infinite relief merely in getting clean away from the huge world of men, +with all its exactions and temptations and the myriad rebukes and rebuffs +of its crass propriety and thrift. He had endured solitude enough in it; +the secret loneliness of a spiritual bankruptcy. Here was life begun over, +with none to make new debts to except nature and himself, and no +besetments but his own circumvented propensities. What humble, happy +masterhood! Each dawn he rose from dreamless sleep and leaped into the +surf as into the embrace of a new existence. Every hour of day brought +some unfretting task or hale pastime. With sheath-knife and sail-needle he +made of his mainsail a handsome tent, using the mainboom for his ridge- +pole, and finishing it just in time for the first night of rain--when, +nevertheless, he lost all his coffee! + +He did not waste toil. He hoarded its opportunities as one might husband +salt on the mountains or water in the desert, and loitering in well +calculated idleness between thoughts many and things of sea and shore +innumerable, filled the intervals from labor to labor with gentle +entertainment. Skyward ponderings by night, canny discoveries under foot +by day, quickened his mind and sight to vast and to minute significancies, +until they declared an Author known to him hitherto only by tradition. +Every acre of the barren islet grew fertile in beauties and mysteries, and +a handful of sand at the door of his tent held him for hours guessing the +titanic battles that had ground the invincible quartz to that crystal meal +and fed it to the sea. + +I may be more rhetorical than he was, but he made all the more of these +conditions while experiencing them, because he knew they could not last +out the thirty days, nor half the thirty, and took modest comfort in a +will strong enough to meet all present demands, well knowing there was one +exigency yet to arise, one old usurer still to be settled with who had not +yet brought in his dun. + + + +V + + +It came--began to come--in the middle of the second week. At its familiar +approach he felt no dismay, save a certain inert dismay that it brought +none. Three, four, five times he went bravely to the rill, drowned his +thirst and called himself satisfied; but the second day was worse than the +first; the craving seemed better than the rill's brief cure of it, and +once he rose straight from drinking of the stream and climbed the dune to +look for a sail. + +He strove in vain to labor. The pleasures of toil were as stale as those +of idleness. His books were put aside with a shudder, and he walked abroad +with a changed gait; the old extortioner was levying on his nerves. And on +his brain. He dreamed that night of war times; found himself commander of +a whole battery of heavy guns, and lo, they were all quaker cannon. When +he would have fled, monstrous terrors met him at every turn, till he woke +and could sleep no more. Dawn widened over sky and sea, but its vast +beauty only mocked the castaway. All day long he wandered up and down and +along and across his glittering prison, no tiniest speck of canvas, no +faintest wreath of smoke, on any water's edge; the horror of his isolation +growing-growing?-like the monsters of his dream, and his whole nature wild +with a desire which was no longer a mere physical drought, but a passion +of the soul, that gave the will an unnatural energy and set at naught +every true interest of earth and heaven. Again and again he would have +shrieked its anguish, but the first note of his voice rebuked him to +silence as if he had espied himself in a glass. He fell on his face +voiceless, writhing, and promised himself, nay, pledged creation and its +Creator, that on the day of his return to the walks of men he would drink +the cup of madness and would drink it thenceforth till he died. + +When night came again he paced the sands for hours and then fell to work +to drag by long and toiling zigzags to a favorable point on the southern +end of the island the mast he had saved, and to raise there a flag of +distress. In the shortness of his resources he dared not choose the +boldest exposures, where the first high wind would cast it down; but where +he placed it it could be seen from every quarter except the north, and any +sail approaching from that direction was virtually sure to come within +hail even of the voice. + +Day had come again as he left the finished task, and once more from the +highest wind-built ridge his hungering eyes swept the round sea's edge. +But he saw no sail. Nerveless and exhausted he descended to the +southeastern beach and watched the morning brighten. The breezes, that for +some time had slept, fitfully revived, and the sun leaped from the sea and +burned its way through a low bank of dark and ruddy clouds with so unusual +a splendor that the beholder was in some degree both quickened and +tranquillized. He could even play at self-command, and in child fashion +bound himself not to mount the dunes again for a northern look within an +hour. This southern half circle must suffice. Indeed, unless these idle +zephyrs should amend, no sail could in that time draw near enough to +notice any signal he could offer. + +Playing at self-command gave him some earnest of it. In a whim of the +better man he put off his clothes and sprang into the breakers. He had +grown chill, but a long wrestle with the surf warmed his blood, and as he +reclothed himself and with a better step took his way along the beach +toward his tent a returning zest of manhood refreshed his spirit. The hour +was up, but in a kind of equilibrium of impulses and with much emptiness +of mind, he let it lengthen on, made a fire, and for the first time in two +days cooked food. He ate and still tarried. A brand in his camp fire, a +piece from the remnant of his boat, made beautiful flames. He idly cast in +another and was pleased to find himself sitting there instead of gazing +his eyes out for sails that never rose into view. He watched a third brand +smoke and blaze. And then, as tamely as if the new impulse were only +another part of a continued abstraction, he arose and once more climbed +the sandy hills. The highest was some distance from his camp. At one point +near its top a brief northeastward glimpse of the marsh's outer edge and +the blue waters beyond showed at least that nothing had come near enough +to raise the pelicans. But the instant his sight cleared the crown of the +ridge he rushed forward, threw up his arms, and lifted his voice in a +long, imploring yell. Hardly two miles away, her shapely canvas leaning +and stiffening in the augmented breeze, a small yacht had just gone about, +and with twice the speed at which she must have approached was, hurrying +back straight into the north. + +The frantic man dashed back and forth along the crest, tossing his arms, +waving his Madras handkerchief, cursing himself for leaving his gun so far +behind, and again and again repeating his vain ahoys in wilder and wilder +alternations of beseeching and rage. The lessening craft flew straight on, +no ear in her skilled enough to catch the distant cry, and no eye alert +enough to scan the dwindling sand-hills. He ceased to call, but still, +with heavy notes of distress to himself, waved and waved, now here, now +there, while the sail grew smaller and smaller. At length he stopped this +also and only stood gazing. Almost on first sight of the craft he had +guessed that the men in her had taken alarm at the signs of changing +weather, and seeing the freshening smoke of his fire had also inferred +that earlier sportsmen were already on the island. Oh, if he could have +fired one shot when she was nearest! But already she was as hopelessly +gone as though she were even now below the horizon. Suddenly he turned and +ran down to his camp. Not for the gun; not in any new hope of signalling +the yacht. No, no; a raft! a raft! Deliverance or destruction, it should +be at his own hand and should wait no longer! + +A raft forthwith he set about to make. Some stout portions of his boat +were still left. Tough shrubs of the sand-hills furnished trennels and +suppler parts. Of ropes there was no lack. The mast was easily dragged +down again to the beach to be once more a mast, and in nervous haste, yet +with skill and thoroughness, the tent was ripped up and remade into a +sail, and even a rude centreboard was rigged in order that one might tack +against unfavorable winds. + +Winds, at nightfall, when the thing began to be near completion, there +were none. The day's sky had steadily withdrawn its favor. The sun shone +as it sank into the waves, but in the northwest and southeast dazzling +thunderheads swelled from the sea's line high into the heavens, and in the +early dusk began with silent kindlings to challenge each other to battle. +As night swiftly closed down the air grew unnaturally still. From the +toiler's brow, worse than at noon, the sweat rolled off, as at last he +brought his work to a close by the glare of his leaping camp-fire. Now, +unless he meant only to perish, he must once more eat and sleep while he +might. Then let the storm fall; the moment it was safely over and the wind +in the right quarter he would sail. As for the thirst which had been such +a torture while thwarted, now that it ruled unchallenged, it was purely a +wild, glad zeal as full of method as of diligence. But first he must make +his diminished provisions and his powder safe against the elements; and +this he did, covering them with a waterproof stuff and burying them in a +northern slope of sand. + +He awoke in the small hours of the night. The stars of the zenith were +quenched. Blackness walled and roofed him in close about his crumbled +fire, save when at shorter and shorter intervals and with more and more +deafening thunders the huge clouds lit up their own forms, writhing one +upon another, and revealed the awe-struck sea and ghostly sands waiting +breathlessly below. He rose to lay on more fuel, and while he was in the +act the tornado broke upon him. The wind, as he had forecast, came out of +the southeast. In an instant it was roaring and hurtling against the +farther side of his island rampart like the charge of a hundred thousand +horse and tossing the sand of the dunes like blown hair into the +northwest, while the rain in one wild deluge lashed the frantic sea and +weltering lagoon as with the whips of the Furies. + +He had kept the sail on the beach for a protection from the storm, but +before he could crawl under it he was as wet as though he had been tossed +up by the deep, and yet was glad to gain its cover from the blinding +floods and stinging sand. Here he lay for more than an hour, the rage of +the tempest continually growing, the heavens in a constant pulsing glare +of lightnings, their terrific thunders smiting and bellowing round and +round its echoing vault, and the very island seeming at times to stagger +back and recover again as it braced itself against the fearful onsets of +the wind. Snuggling in his sailcloth burrow, he complacently recalled an +earlier storm like this, which he and Sweetheart, the only other time they +ever were here, had tranquilly weathered in this same lagoon. On the +mainland, in that storm, cane- and rice-fields had been laid low and half +destroyed, houses had been unroofed, men had been killed. A woman and a +boy, under a pecan tree, were struck by lightning; and three men who had +covered themselves with a tarpaulin on one of the wharves in New Orleans +were blown with it into the Mississippi, poor fellows, and were drowned; a +fact worthy of second consideration in the present juncture. + +This second thought had hardly been given it before he crept hastily from +his refuge and confronted the gale in quick alarm. The hurricane was +veering to southward. Let it shift but a point or two more, and its entire +force would sweep the lagoon and its beach. Before long the change came. +The mass of canvas at his feet leapt clear of the ground and fell two or +three yards away. He sprang to seize it, but in the same instant the whole +storm--rain, wind, and sand--whirled like a troop of fiends round the +southern end of the island, the ceaseless lightnings showing the way, and +came tearing and howling up its hither side. The white sail lifted, +bellied, rolled, fell, vaulted into the air, fell again, tumbled on, and +at the foot of a dune stopped until its wind-buffeted pursuer had almost +overtaken it. Then it fled again, faster, faster, higher, higher up the +sandy slope to its top, caught and clung an instant on some unseen bush, +and then with one mad bound into the black sky, unrolled, widened like a +phantom, and vanished forever. + +Gregory turned in desperation, and in the glare of the lightning looked +back toward his raft. Great waves were rolling along and across the +slender reef in wide obliques and beating themselves to death in the +lagoon, or sweeping out of it again seaward at its more northern end. On +the dishevelled crest of one he saw his raft, and on another its mast. He +could not look a second time. The flying sand blinded him and cut the +blood from his face. He could only cover his eyes and crawl under the +bushes in such poor lee as he could find; and there, with the first lull +of the storm, heavy with exhaustion and despair, he fell asleep and slept +until far into the day. When he awoke the tempest was over. + +Even more completely the tumult within him was quieted. He rose and stood +forth mute in spirit as in speech; humbled, yet content, in the +consciousness that having miserably failed first to save himself and then +to rue himself back to destruction, the hurricane had been his deliverer. +It had spared his supplies, his ammunition, his weapons, only hiding them +deeper under the dune sands; but scarce a vestige of his camp remained and +of his raft nothing. As once more from the highest sand-ridge he looked +down upon the sea weltering in the majestic after-heavings of its passion, +at the eastern beach booming under the shock of its lofty rollers, and +then into the sky still gray with the endless flight of southward-hurrying +scud, he felt the stir of a new attachment to them and his wild prison, +and pledged alliance with them thenceforth. + + + +VI + + +Here, in giving me his account, Gregory asked me if that sounded +sentimental. I said no, and thereupon he actually tried to apologize to me +as though I were a professional story-teller, for having had so few deep +feelings in the moments where the romancists are supposed to place them. I +told him what I had once seen a mechanic do on a steep, slated roof nearly +a hundred feet from the pavement. He had faced round from his work, which +was close to the ridge-tiles, probably to kick off the shabby shoes he had +on, when some hold failed him and he began to slide toward the eaves. We +people in the street below fairly moaned our horror, but he didn't utter a +sound. He held back with all his skill, one leg thrust out in front, the +other drawn up with the knee to his breast, and his hands flattened beside +him on the slates, but he came steadily on down till his forward foot +passed over the eaves and his heel caught on the tin gutter. Then he +stopped. We held our breath below. He slowly and cautiously threw off one +shoe, then the other, and then turned, climbed back up the roof and +resumed his work. And we two or three witnesses down in the street didn't +think any less of him because he did so without any show of our glad +emotion. + +"O, if I had that fellow's nerve," said Gregory, "that would be another +thing!" + +My wife and I smiled at each other. "How would it be 'another thing?'" we +asked. "Did _you_ not quietly get up and begin life over again as if +nothing had occurred?" + +"There wasn't anything else to do," he replied, with a smile. "The +feelings came later, too, in an easy sort o' gradual way. I never could +quite make out how men get such clear notions of what they call +'Providence,' but, just the same, I know by experience there's all the +difference of peace and misery, or life and death, whether you're in +partnership with the things that help the world on, or with those that +hold it back." + +"But with that feeling," my wife asked, "did not your longing for our +human world continue?" + +"No," he replied, "but I got a new liking for it--although, you +understand, _I_ never had anything against _it_, of course. It's too big +and strong for me, that's all; and that's my fault. Your man on that +slippery roof kicking his shoes off is a sort of parable to me. If your +hand or your foot offend you and you have to cut it off, that's a physical +disablement, and bad enough. But when your gloves and your shoes are too +much for you, and you have to pluck _them_ off and cast them from you, you +find each one is a great big piece of the civilized world, and you hardly +know how much you did like it, till you've lost it. And still, it's no use +longing, when you know your limitations, and I saw I'd got to keep _my_ +world trimmed down to where I could run barefooted on the sand." + +He told us that now he began for the first time since coming to the +island, to find his books his best source of interest and diversion. He +learned, he said, a way of reading by which sea, sky, book, island, and +absent humanity, all seemed parts of one whole, and all to speak together +in one harmony, while they toiled together for one harmony some day to be +perfected. Not all books, nor even all good books, were equally good for +that effect, he thought, and the best---- + +"You might not think it," he said, "but the best was a Bible I'd chanced +to carry along;" he didn't know precisely what kind, but "just one of +these ordinary Bibles you see lying around in people's houses." He +extolled the psalms and asked Mrs. Smith if she'd ever noticed the beauty +of the twenty-third. She smiled and said she believed she had. + +"Then there was one," he went on, "beginning, 'Lord, my heart is not +haughty, nor mine eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself in great +matters, or in things too wonderful for me;' and by and by it says, +'Surely, I have quieted myself as a child that is weaned: my soul is even +as a weaned child.'" + +One day, after a most marvellous sunset, he had been reading, he said, +"that long psalm with twenty-two parts in it--a hundred and seventy-six +verses." He had intended to read "Lord, my heart is not haughty" after it, +though the light was fast failing, but at the hundred and seventy-sixth +verse he closed the book. Thus he sat in the nearly motionless air, gazing +on the ripples of the lagoon as, now singly, and now by twos or threes, +they glided up the beach tinged with the colors of parting day as with a +grace of resignation, and sank into the grateful sands like the lines of +this last verse sinking into his heart; now singly--"I have gone astray +like a lost sheep;" and now by twos--"I have gone astray like a lost +sheep; save thy servant;" or by threes--"I have gone astray like a lost +sheep; save thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments." + +"I shouldn't tell that," he said to us, "if I didn't know so well how +little it counts for. But I knew at the time that when the next day but +one should bring the lighthouse steamer I shouldn't be any more fit to go +ashore, _to stay_, than a jellyfish." We agreed, he and I that there can +be as wide a distance between fine feelings and faithful doing as, he +said, "between listening to the band and charging a battery." + +On the islet the night deepened. The moon had not risen, and the stars +only glorified the dark, as it, in turn, revealed the unearthly beauties +of a phosphorescent sea. It was one of those rare hours in which the deep +confessed the amazing numbers of its own living and swarming +constellations. Not a fish could leap or dart, not a sinuous thing could +turn, but it became an animate torch. Every quick movement was a gleam of +green fire. No drifting, flaccid life could pulse so softly along but it +betrayed itself in lambent outlines. Each throb of the water became a beam +of light, and every ripple that widened over the strand--still whispering, +"I have gone astray"--was edged with luminous pearls. + +In an agreeable weariness of frame, untroubled in mind, and counting the +night too beautiful for slumber he reclined on the dry sands with an arm +thrown over a small pile of fagots which he had spent the day in gathering +from every part of the island to serve his need for the brief remainder of +his stay. In this search he had found but one piece of his boat, a pine +board. This he had been glad to rive into long splinters and bind together +again as a brand, with which to signal the steamer if--contrary to her +practice, I think he said--she should pass in the night. And so, without a +premonition of drowsiness, he was presently asleep, with the hours +radiantly folding and expiring one upon another like the ripples on the +beach. + +When he came to himself he was on his feet. The moon was high, his fire +was smouldering; his heart was beating madly and his eyes were fixed on +the steamer, looming large, moving at full speed, her green light showing, +her red light hid, and her long wake glowing with comet fire. In a moment +she would be passing. It was too late for beacon-flame or torch. He sprang +for his gun, and mounting the first low rise fired into the air, once!-- +twice! --and shouted, "Help!--help!" + +She kept straight on. She was passing, she was passing! In trembling haste +he loaded and fired again, again wailed out his cry for help, and still +she kept her speed. He had loaded for the third discharge, still +frantically calling the while, and was lifting his gun to fire when he saw +the white light at her foremast-head begin to draw nearer to the green +light at her waist and knew she was turning. He fired, shouted, and tried +to load again; but as her red light brightened into view beside the green, +he dropped his gun and leaped and crouched and laughed and wept for joy. + +* * * * * + +"Why, Gregory!" the naval lieutenant cried, as the castaway climbed from +the steamer's boat to her deck. "Why, you blasted old cracked fiddle! what +in----" + +"Right, the first guess!" laughed Gregory, "there's where I've been!" and +in the cabin he explained all. + +"The fiddle's mended," he concluded. "You can play a tune on it--by being +careful." + +"But what's your tune?" asked his hearer; "you cannot go back to that +island." + +"Yes, I'll be on it in a week--with a schooner-load of cattle. I can get +them on credit. Going to raise cattle there as a regular business. They'll +fatten in that marsh like blackbirds." + +True enough, before the week was up the mended fiddle was playing its +tune. It was not until Gregory's second return from his island that he +came to see us and told us his simple story. We asked him how it was that +the steamer, that first time, had come so much earlier than she generally +did. + +"She didn't," he replied. "I had miscounted one day." + +"Don't you," asked my wife, who would have liked a more religious tone in +Gregory's recital, "don't you have trouble to keep run of your Sabbaths +away out there alone?" + +"Why"--he smiled--"it's always Sunday there. Here almost everybody feels +duty bound to work harder than somebody else, or else make somebody else +work harder than he, and you need a day every now and then for Sunday--or +Sabbath, at least. Oh, I suppose it's all one in the end, isn't it? You +take your's in a pill, I take mine in a powder. Not that it's the least +bit like a dose, however, except for the good it does." + +"And you're really prospering, even in a material way!" I said. + +"Yes," he answered. "O yes; the island's already too small for us." + +"It's certainly very dangerously exposed," said my wife, and I guessed her +thought was on Last Island, which, you remember, though very large and +populous, had been, within our recollection, totally submerged, with +dreadful loss of life. + +"O yes," he responded, "there's always something wherever you are. One of +these days some storm's going to roll the sea clean over the whole thing." + +"Then, why don't you move to a bigger island closer inshore?" she asked. + +"I'm afraid," said Gregory, and smiled. + +"Afraid!" said my wife, incredulously. + +"Yes," he responded. "I'm afraid my prisoner'll get away from me." + +As his hand closed over hers in good-by I saw, what he could not, that she +had half a notion to kiss it. I told her so when he was gone, and kissed +hers--for him. + +"I don't care," she said, dreamily, as it lingered in mine, "I'm glad I +mended his coat for him that time." + + +* * * * * + + +The Taxidermist + + + +I + + +One day a hummingbird got caught in a cobweb in our greenhouse. It had no +real need to seek that damp, artificial heat. We were in the very heart of +that Creole summer-time when bird-notes are many as the sunbeams. The +flowers were in such multitude they seemed to follow one about, offering +their honeys and perfumes and begging to be gathered. Our little boy saw +the embodied joy fall, a joy no longer, seized it, and clasping it too +tightly, brought it to me dead. + + +He cried so over the loss that I promised to have the body stuffed. This +is how I came to know Manouvrier, the Taxidermist in St. Peter Street. + +I passed his place twice before I found it. The front shop was very small, +dingily clean and scornfully unmercantile. Of the very few specimens of +his skill to be seen round about not one was on parade, yet everyone was +somehow an achievement, a happy surprise, a lasting delight. I admit that +taxidermy is not classed among the fine arts; but you know there is a way +of making everything--anything--an art instead of a craft or a commerce, +and such was the way of this shop's big, dark, hairy-faced, shaggy-headed +master. I saw his unsmiling face soften and his eye grow kind as mine +lighted up with approbation of his handiwork. + +When I handed him the hummingbird he held it tenderly in his wide palm, +and as I was wondering to myself how so huge a hand as that could +manipulate frail and tiny things and bring forth delicate results, he +looked into my face and asked, with a sort of magisterial gentleness: + +"How she git kill', dat lill' bird?" + +I told him. I could feel my mood and words take their tone from him, +though he outwardly heard me through with no show of feeling; and when I +finished, I knew we were friends. I presently ventured to praise the +specimen of his skill nearest at hand; a wild turkey listening alarmedly +as if it would the next instant utter that ringing "quit!" which makes +each separate drop of a hunter's blood tingle. But with an odd languor in +his gravity, he replied: + +"Naw, dass not well make; lill' bit worse, bad enough to put in front +window. I take you inside; come." + + + +II + + +We passed through into a private workroom immediately behind the shop. His +wife sat there sewing; a broad, motherly woman of forty-five, fat, +tranquil, kind, with an old eye, a young voice, and a face that had got +its general flabbiness through much paddling and gnawing from other +women's teething babes. She sat still, unintroduced, but welcomed me with +a smile. + +I was saying to her husband that a hummingbird was a very small thing to +ask him to stuff. But he stopped me with his lifted palm. + +"My fran', a hummingbird has de pas-sione'--de ecstacie! One drop of blood +wid the pas-sione in it"--He waved his hand with a jerk of the thumb in +disdain of spoken words, and it was I who added, + +"Is bigger than the sun?" + +"Hah!" was all he uttered in approval, turning as if to go to work. I +feared I had disappointed him. + +"God measures by the soul, not by the size," I suggested. But he would say +no more, and his wife put in as softly as a kettle beginning to sing, + +"Ah, ha, ha! I t'ink dass where de good God show varrie good sanse." + +I began looking here and there in heartiest admiration of the products of +his art and presently we were again in full sympathy and talking eagerly. +As I was going he touched my arm: + +"You will say de soul is parted from dat lill' bird. And--yass; but"--he +let a gesture speak the rest. + +"I know," replied I; "you propose to make the soul seem to come back and +leave us its portrait. I believe you will." Whereupon he gave me his +first, faint smile, and detained me with another touch. + +"Msieu Smeet; when you was bawn?" + +"I? December 9, 1844. Why do you ask?" + +"O nut'n'; only I thing you make me luck; nine, h-eighteen, fawty-fo'--I +play me doze number' in de lott'ree to-day." + +"Why, pshaw! you don't play the lottery, do you?" + +"Yass. I play her; why not? She make me reech some of doze day'. Win fifty +dollah one time las' year." + +The soft voice of the wife spoke up--"And spend it all to the wife of my +dead brother. What use him be reech? I think he don't stoff bird' no +betteh." + +But the husband responded more than half to himself, + +"Yass, I think mebbe I stoff him lill' more betteh." + +When, some days afterward I called again, thinking as I drew near how much +fineness of soul and life, seen or unseen, must have existed in earlier +generations to have produced this man, I noticed the in conspicuous sign +over his door, P.T.B. Manouvrier, and as he led me at once into the back +room I asked him playfully what such princely abundance of initials might +stand for. + +"Doze? Ah, doze make only Pas-Trop-Bon." + + +I appealed to his wife; but she, with her placid laugh, would only confirm +him: + +"Yass; Pastropbon; he like that name. Tha's all de way I call him-- +Pastropbon." + + + +III + + +The hummingbird was ready for me. I will not try to tell how lifelike and +beautiful the artist had made it. Even with him I took pains to be +somewhat reserved. As I stood holding and admiring the small green wonder, +I remarked that I was near having to bring him that morning another and +yet finer bird. A shade of displeasure (and, I feared, of suspicion also) +came to his face as he asked me how that was. I explained. + +Going into my front hall, whose veranda-door framed in a sunny picture of +orange-boughs, jasmine-vines, and white-clouded blue sky, I had found a +male ruby-throat circling about the ceiling, not wise enough to stoop, fly +low, and pass out by the way it had come in. It occurred to me that it +might be the mate of the one already mine. For some time all the efforts I +could contrive, either to capture or free it, were vain. Round and round +it flew, silently beating and bruising its exquisite little head against +the lofty ceiling, the glory of its luminous red throat seeming to +heighten into an expression of unspeakable agony. At last Mrs. Smith ran +for a long broom, and, as in her absence I stood watching the self-snared +captive's struggle, the long, tiny beak which had never done worse than go +twittering with rapture to the grateful hearts of thousands of flowers, +began to trace along the smooth, white ceiling a scarlet thread of pure +heart's blood. The broom came. I held it up, the flutterer lighted upon +it, and at first slowly, warily, and then triumphantly, I lowered it under +the lintel out into the veranda, and the bird darted away into the garden +and was gone like a soul into heaven. + +In the middle of my short recital Manouvrier had sunk down upon the arm of +his wife's rocking-chair with one huge hand on both of hers folded over +her sewing, and as I finished he sat motionless, still gazing into my +face. + + +"But," I started, with sudden pretence of business impulse, "how much am I +to pay?" + +He rose, slowly, and looked dreamily at his wife; she smiled at him, and +he grunted, + +"Nut'n'." + +"Oh, my friend," I laughed, "that's absurd!" + +But he had no reply, and his wife, as she resumed her sewing, said, +sweetly, as if to her needle, "Ah, I think Pastropbon don't got to charge +nut'n' if he don't feel like." And I could not move them. + +As I was leaving them, a sudden conjecture came to me. + +"Did those birthday numbers bring you any luck?" + +The taxidermist shook his head, good-naturedly, but when his wife laughed +he turned upon her. + +"Wait! I dawn't be done wid doze number' yet." + +I guessed that, having failed with them in the daily drawings, he would +shift the figures after some notion of magical significance and venture a +ticket, whole or fractional, in the monthly drawing. + +Scarcely ten days after, as I sat at breakfast with my newspaper spread +beside my plate, I fairly spilled my coffee as my eye fell upon the name +of P.T.B. Manouvrier, of No.--St. Peter Street. Old Pastropbon had drawn +seventy-five thousand dollars in the lottery. + + + +IV + + +All the first half of the day, wherever I was, in the street-car, at my +counting-desk, on the exchange, no matter to what I gave my attention, my +thought was ever on my friend the taxidermist. At luncheon it was the +same. He was rich! And what, now? What next? And what--ah! what?-at last? +Would the end be foul or fair? I hoped, yet feared. I feared again; and +yet I hoped. + +A familiar acquaintance, a really good fellow, decent, rich, "born of +pious parents," and determined to have all the ready-made refinements and +tastes that pure money could buy, came and sat with me at my lunch table. + +"I wonder," he began, "if you know where you are, or what you're here for. +I've been watching you for five minutes and I don't believe you do. See +here; what sort of an old donkey is that bird-stuffer of yours?" + +"You know, then, his good fortune of yesterday, do you?" + +"No, I don't. I know my bad fortune with him last week." + +I dropped my spoon into my soup. "Why, what?" + +"Oh, no great shakes. Only, I went to his place to buy that wild turkey +you told me about. I wanted to stand it away up on top of that beautiful +old carved buffet I picked up in England last year. I was fully prepared +to buy it on your say-so, but, all the same, I saw its merits the moment I +set eyes on it. It has but one fault; did you notice that? I don't believe +you did. I pointed it out to him." + +"You pointed--what did he say?" + +"He said I was right." + +"Why, what was the fault?" + +"Fault? Why, the perspective is bad; not exactly bad, but poor; lacks +richness and rhythm." + +"And yet you bought the thing." + +"No, I didn't." + +"You didn't buy it?" + +"No, sir, I didn't buy it. I began by pricing three or four other things +first, so he couldn't know which one to stick the fancy price on to, and +incidentally I thought I would tell him--you'd told me, you remember, how +your accounts of your two birds had warmed him up and melted his +feelings----" + +"I didn't tell you. My wife told your wife, and your wife, I----" + +"Yes, yes. Well, anyhow, I thought I'd try the same game, so I told him +how I had stuffed a bird once upon a time myself. It was a pigeon, with +every feather as white as snow; a fan-tail. It had belonged to my little +boy who died. I thought it would make such a beautiful emblem at his +funeral, rising with wings outspread, you know, typical of the +resurrection--we buried him from the Sunday-school, you remember. And so I +killed it and wired it and stuffed it myself. It was hard to hang it in a +soaring attitude, owing to its being a fan-tail, but I managed it." + +"And you told that to Manouvrier! What did he say?" + +"Say? He never so much as cracked a smile. When I'd done he stood so +still, looking at me, that I turned and sort o' stroked the turkey and +said, jestingly, says I, 'How much a pound for this gobbler?'" + +"That ought to have warmed him up." + +"Well, it didn't. He smiled like a dancing-master, lifted my hand off the +bird and says, says he, 'She's not for sale.' Then he turned to go into +his back room and leave me standing there. Well, that warmed _me_ up. Says +I, 'What in thunder is it here for, then? and if it ain't for sale, come +back here and show me what is!' + +"'Nawtin',' says 'e, with the same polite smile. 'Nawtin' for sale. I come +back when you gone.' His voice was sweet as sugar, but he slammed the +door. I would have followed him in and put some better manners into him +with a kick, but the old orang-outang had turned the key inside, and when +I'd had time to remember that I was a deacon and Sunday-school teacher I +walked away. What do you mean by his good fortune of yesterday?" + +"I mean he struck Charlie Howard for seventy-five thousand." + +My hearer's mouth dropped open. He was equally amazed and amused. "Well, +well, well! That accounts for his silly high-headedness." + +"Ah! no: that matter of yours was last week and the drawing was only +yesterday." + +"Oh, that's so. I don't keep run of that horrible lottery business. It +makes me sick at heart to see the hideous canker poisoning the character +and blasting the lives of every class of our people--why, don't you think +so?" + +"Oh, yes, I--I do. Yes, I certainly do!" + +"But your conviction isn't exactly red-hot, I perceive. Come, wake up." + +We rose. At the first street corner, as we were parting, I noticed he was +still talking of the lottery. + +"Pestilential thing," he was calling it. "Men blame it lightly on the +ground that there are other forms of gambling which our laws don't reach. +I suppose a tiger in a village mustn't be killed till we have killed all +the tigers back in the woods!" + +I assented absently and walked away full of a vague shame. For I know as +well as anyone that a man without a quick, strong, aggressive, insistent +indignation against undoubted evil is a very poor stick. + + + +V + + +At dinner that evening, Mrs. Smith broke a long silence with the question: + +"Did you go to see Manouvrier?" + +"Nn--o." + +She looked at me drolly. "Did you go half way and turn back?" + +"Yes," said I, "that's precisely what I did." And we dropped the subject. + +But in the night I felt her fingers softly touch my shoulder. + +"Warm night," I remarked. + +"Richard," said she, "it will be time enough to be troubled about your +taxidermist when he's given you cause." + +"I'm not troubled; I'm simply interested. I'll go down to-morrow and see +him." A little later it rained, very softly, and straight down, so that +there was no need to shut the windows, and I slept like an infant until +the room was full of sunshine. + +All the next day and evening, summer though it was and the levee and sugar +sheds and cotton-yards virtually empty, I was kept by unexpected business +and could not go near St. Peter Street. Both my partners were away on +their vacations. But on the third afternoon our office regained its summer +quiet and I was driving my pen through the last matter that prevented my +going where I pleased, when I was disturbed by the announcement of a +visitor. I pushed my writing on to a finish though he stood just at my +back. Then I turned to bid him talk fast as my time was limited, when who +should it be but Manouvrier. I took him into my private office, gave him a +chair and said: + +"I was just coming to see you." + +"You had somet'in' to git stoff'?" + +"No; I--Oh, I didn't know but you might like to see me." + +"Yass?--Well--yass. I wish you come yesterday." + +"Indeed? Why so; to protect you from reporters and beggars?" + +"Naw; my wife she keep off all doze Peter an' John. Naw; one man bring me +one wile cat to stoff. Ah! a _so_ fine as I never see! Beautiful like da +dev'l! Since two day' an' night' I can't make out if I want to fix dat +wile cat stan'in' up aw sittin' down!" + +"Did you decide at last?" + +"Yass, I dis-ide. How you think I diside?" + +"Ah! you're too hard for me. But one thing I know." + +"Yass? What you know?" + +"That you will never do so much to anything as to leave my imagination +nothing to do. You will always give my imagination strong play and never a +bit of hard work." + +"Come! Come and see!" + +I took my hat. "Is that what you called to see me about?" + +"Ah!" He started in sudden recollection and brought forth the lottery +company's certified check for the seventy-five thousand dollars. "You keep +dat?--lill' while?--for me? Yass; till I mek out how I goin' to spend +her." + +"Manouvrier, may I make one condition?" + +"Yass." + +"It is that you will never play the lottery again." + +"Ah! Yass, I play her ag'in! You want know whan ole Pastropbon play her +ag'in? One doze fine mawning--mebbee--dat sun--going rise hisself in de +wes'. Well: when ole Pastropbon see dat, he play dat lott'ree ag'in. But +biffo' he see dat"--He flirted his thumb. + +Not many days later a sudden bereavement brought our junior partner back +from Europe and I took my family North for a more stimulating air. Before +I went I called on my St. Peter Street friend to say that during my +absence either of my partners would fulfil any wish of his concerning the +money. In his wife's sewing-basket in the back room I noticed a batch of +unopened letters, and ventured a question which had been in my mind for +several days. + +"Manouvrier, you must get a host of letters these days from people who +think you ought to help them because you have got money and they haven't. +Do you read them?" + +"Naw!" He gave me his back, bending suddenly over some real or pretended +work. "I read some--first day. Since dat time I give 'em to old woman-- +wash hand--go to work ag'in--naw use." + +"Ah! no use?" piped up the soft-voiced wife. "I use them to light those +fire to cook those soup." But I felt the absence of her accustomed laugh. + +"Well, it's there whenever you want it," I said to the husband as I was +leaving. + +"What?" The tone of the response was harsh. "What is where?" + +"Why, the money. It's in the bank." + +"Hah!" he said, with a contemptuous smile and finished with his thumb. +That was the first time I ever saw a thumb swear. But in a moment his +kindly gravity was on him again and he said, "Daz all right; I come git +her some day." + + + +VI + + +I did not get back to New Orleans till late in the fall. In the office +they told me that Manouvrier had been in twice to see if I had returned, +and they had promised to send him word of my arrival. But I said no, and +went to see him. + +I found new lines of care on his brow, but the old kindness was still in +his eye. We exchanged a few words of greeting and inquiry, and then there +came a pause, which I broke. + +"Well, stuffing birds better than ever, I suppose." + +"Naw," he looked around upon his work, "I dawn't think. I dunno if I stoff +him quite so good like biffo'." Another pause. Then, "I think I mek out +what I do wid doze money now." + +"Indeed," said I, and noticed that his face was averted from his wife. + +She lifted her eyes to his broad back with a quizzical smile, glanced at +me knowingly, and dropped them again upon her sewing, sighed: + +"Ah-bah!" Then she suddenly glanced at me with a pretty laugh and added, +"Since all that time he dunno what he goin' to make with it. If he trade +with it I thing he don't stoff bird no mo', and I thing he lose it +bis-ide--ha, ha, ha!--and if he keep it all time lock in doze bank +I thing, he jiz well not have it." She laughed again. + +But he quite ignored her and resumed, as if out of a revery, "Yass, at de +las' I mek dat out." And the wife interrupted him in a tone that was like +the content of a singing hen. + +"I think it don't worth while to leave it to our chillun, en't it?" + +"Ah!" said the husband, entirely to me, "daz de troub'! You see?--we +dawn't got some ba-bee'! Dat neveh arrive to her. God know' dass not de +fault of us." + +"Yass," put in his partner, smiling to her needle, "the good God know' +that verrie well." And the pair exchanged a look of dove-like fondness. + +"Yass," Manouvrier mused aloud once more, "I think I build my ole woman +one fine house." + +"Ah! I don't want!" + +"But yass! Foudre tonnerre! how I goin' spend her else? w'iskee? hosses? +women? what da dev'l! Naw, I build a fine 'ouse. You see! she want dat +house bad enough when she see her. Yass; fifty t'ousan' dollah faw house +and twenty-five t'ousan'"--he whisked his thumb at me and I said for him, + +"Yes, twenty-five thousand at interest to keep up the establishment." + +"Yass. Den if Pastropbon go first to dat boneyard--" And out went his +thumb again, while his hairy lip curled at the grim prospect of beating +Fate the second time, and as badly, in the cemetery, as the first time, in +the lottery. + +He built the house--farther down town and much farther from the river. +Both husband and wife found a daily delight in watching its slow rise and +progress. In the room behind the shop he still plied his art and she her +needle as they had done all their married life, with never an inroad upon +their accustomed hours except the calls of the shop itself; but on every +golden morning of that luxurious summer-land, for a little while before +the carpenters and plasterers arrived and dragged off their coats, the +pair spent a few moments wandering through and about the building +together, she with her hen-like crooning, he with his unsmiling face. + +Yet they never showed the faintest desire to see the end. The contractor +dawdled by the month. I never saw such dillydallying. They only abetted +it, and when once he brought an absurd and unasked-for excuse to the +taxidermist's shop, its proprietor said--first shutting the door between +them and the wife in the inner room: + +"Tek yo' time. Mo' sloweh she grow, mo' longeh she stan'." + +I doubt that either Manouvrier or his wife hinted to the other the true +reason for their apathy. But I guessed it, only too easily, and felt its +pang. It was that with the occupancy and care of the house must begin the +wife's absence from her old seat beside her husband at his work. + +Another thing troubled me. I did persuade him to put fittings into his +cistern which fire-engines could use in case of emergency, but he would +not insure the building. + +"Naw! Luck bring me dat--I let luck take care of her." + +"Ah! yass," chimed the wife, "yet still I think mebbee the good God tell +luck where to bring her. I'm shoe he got fing-er in that pie." + +"Ah-ha? Daz all right! If God want to burn his own fing-er----" + +At length the house was finished and was beautiful within and without. It +was of two and a half stories, broad and with many rooms. Two spacious +halls crossed each other, and there were wide verandas front and back, and +a finished and latticed basement. The basement and the entire grounds, +except a few bright flower-borders, were flagged, as was also the +sidewalk, with the manufactured stone which in that nearly frostless +climate makes such a perfect and beautiful pavement, and on this fair +surface fell the large shadows of laburnum, myrtle, orange, oleander, +sweet-olive, mespelus, and banana, which the taxidermist had not spared +expense to transplant here in the leafy prime of their full growth. + +Then almost as slowly the dwelling was furnished. In this the brother-in- +law's widow co-operated, and when it was completed Manouvrier suggested +her living in it a few days so that his wife might herself move in as +leisurely as she chose. And six months later, there, in the old back room +in St. Peter Street, the wife still sat sewing and now and then saying +small, wise, dispassionate things to temper the warmth of her partner's +more artistic emotions. Every fair day, about the hour of sunset, they +went to see the new house. It was plain they loved it; loved it only less +than their old life; but only the brother-in-law's widow lived in it. + + + +VII + + + + +I happened about this time to be acting as president of an insurance +company on Canal Street. Summer was coming in again. One hot sunny day, +when the wind was high and gusty, the secretary was remarking to me what +sad ruin it might work if fire should start among the frame tenement +cottages which made up so many neighborhoods that were destitute of +watermains, when right at our ear the gong sounded for just such a region +and presently engine after engine came thundering and smoking by our open +windows. Fire had broken out in the street where Manouvrier's new house +stood, four squares from that house, but straight to windward of it. + +We knew only too well, without being there to witness, that our firemen +would find nothing with which to fight the flames except a few shallow +wells of surface water and the wooden rain-water cisterns above ground, +and that both these sources were almost worthless owing to a drouth. A man +came in and sat telling me of his new device for lessening the risks of +fire. + +"Where?" asked I, quickly. + +"Why, as I was saying, on steamboats loaded with cotton." + +"Oh, yes," said I, "I understand." But I did not. For the life of me I +couldn't make sense of what he said. I kept my eyes laboriously in his +face, but all I could see was a vision of burning cottages; hook-and- +ladder-men pulling down sheds and fences; ruined cisterns letting just +enough water into door-yards and street-gutters to make sloppy walking; +fire-engines standing idle and dropping cinders into their own puddles in +a kind of shame for their little worth; here and there one furiously +sucking at an exhausted well while its firemen stood with scorching faces +holding the nozzles almost in the flames and cursing the stream of +dribbling mud that fell short of their gallant endeavor. I seemed to see +streets populous with the sensation-seeking crowd; sidewalks and alleys +filled with bedding, chairs, bureaus, baskets of crockery and calico +clothing with lamps spilling into them, cheap looking-glasses unexpectedly +answering your eye with the boldness of an outcast girl, broken tables, +pictures of the Virgin, overturned stoves, and all the dear mantlepiece +trash which but an hour before had been the pride of the toiling +housewife, and the adornment of the laborer's home. + +"Where can I see this apparatus?" I asked my patient interviewer. + +"Well--ahem! it isn't what you'd call an apparatus, exactly. I have +here----" + +"Yes; never mind that just now; I'm satisfied you've got a good thing and +--I'll tell you! Can you come in to-morrow at this hour? Good! I wish you +would! Well, good-day." + +The secretary was waiting to speak to me. The fire, he said, had entirely +burned up one square and was half through a second. "By the way, isn't +that the street where old P.T.B.----" + +"Yes," I replied, taking my hat; "if anyone wants to see me, you'd better +tell him to call to-morrow." + +I found the shop in St. Peter's Street shut, and went on to the new +residence. As I came near it, its beauty seemed to me to have consciously +increased under the threatenings of destruction. + +In the front gate stood the brother-in-law's widow, full of gestures and +distressful smiles as she leaned out with nervously folded arms and looked +up and down the street. "Manouvrier? he is ad the fire since a whole hour. +He will break his heart if dat fire ketch to dat 'ouse here. He cannot +know 'ow 'tis in danger! Ah! sen' him word? I sen' him fo' five time'--he +sen' back I stay righd there an' not touch nut'n'! Ah! my God! I fine dat +varrie te-de-ous, me, yass!" + +"Is his wife with him?" + +"Assuredly! You see, dey git 'fraid 'bout dat 'ouse of de Sister', you +know?" + +"No, where is it?" + +"No? You dunno dat lill' 'ouse where de Sister' keep dose orphelin' +ba-bee'?-juz big-inning sinse 'bout two week' ago?-round de corner--one +square mo' down town--'alf square mo' nearer de swamp? Well, I thing 'f +you pass yondeh you fine Pastropbon." + + + +VIII + + +Through smoke, under falling cinders, and by distracted and fleeing +households I went. The moment I turned the second corner I espied the +house. It was already half a square from the oncoming fire, but on the +northern side of the street, just out of its probable track and not in +great danger except from sparks. But it was old and roofed with shingles; +a decrepit Creole cottage sitting under dense cedars in a tangle of rose +and honeysuckle vines, and strangely beautified by a flood of smoke-dimmed +yellow sunlight. + +As I hurried forward, several men and boys came from the opposite +direction at a run and an engine followed them, jouncing and tilting +across the sidewalk opposite the little asylum, into a yard, to draw from +a fresh well. Their leader was a sight that drew all eyes. He was coatless +and hatless; his thin cotton shirt, with its sleeves rolled up to the +elbows, was torn almost off his shaggy breast, his trousers were drenched +with water and a rude bandage round his head was soaked with blood. He +carried an axe. The throng shut him from my sight, but I ran to the spot +and saw him again standing before the engine horses with his back close to +their heads. A strong, high board fence shut them off from the well and +against it stood the owner of the property, pale as death, guarding the +precious water with a shotgun at full cock. I heard him say: + +"The first fellow that touches this fence----" + +But he did not finish. Quicker than his gun could flash and bang +harmlessly in the air the man before him had dropped the axe and leaped +upon him with the roar of a lion. The empty gun flew one way and its owner +another and almost before either struck the ground the axe was swinging +and crashing into the fence. + +As presently the engine rolled through the gap and shouting men backed her +to the edge of the well, the big axeman paused to wipe the streaming sweat +from his begrimed face with his arm. I clutched him. + +"Manouvrier!" + +A smile of recognition shone for an instant and vanished as I added, + +"Come to your own house! Come, you can't save it here." + +He turned a quick, wild look at the fire, seized me by the arm and with a +gaze of deepest gratitude, asked: + +"You tryin' save her?" + +"I'll do anything I can." + +"Oh, dass right!" His face was full of mingled joy and pain. "You go +yondeh--mek yo' possible!" We were hurrying to the street--"Oh, yass, faw +God's sake go, mek yo' possible!" + +"But, Manouvrier, you must come too! Where's your wife? The chief danger +to your house isn't here, it's where the fire's between it and the wind!" + +His answer was a look of anguish. "Good God! my fran'. We come yondeh so +quick we can! But--foudre tonnerre!--look that house here fill' with +ba-bee'! What we goin' do? Those Sister' can't climb on roof with bocket' +wateh. You see I got half-dozen boy' up yondeh; if I go 'way they dis-cend +and run off at the fire, spark' fall on roof an'--" his thumb flew out. + +"Sparks! Heavens! Manouvrier, your house is in the path of the _flames!_" + +The man flew at me and hung over me, his strong locks shaking, his great +black fist uplifted and the only tears in his eyes I ever saw there. +"Damnession! She's not mine! I trade her to God faw these one! Go! tell +him she's his, he kin burn her if he feel like'!" He gave a half laugh, +fresh witness of his distress, and went into the gate of the asylum. + +I smiled--what could I do?--and was turning away, when I saw the chief of +the fire department. It took but one moment to tell him my want, and in +another he had put the cottage roof under the charge of four of his men +with instructions not to leave it till the danger was past or the house +burning. The engine near us had drawn the well dry and was coming away. He +met it, pointed to where, beneath swirling billows of black smoke, the +pretty gable of the taxidermist's house shone like a white sail against a +thundercloud, gave orders and disappeared. + +The street was filling with people. A row of cottages across the way was +being emptied. The crackling flames were but half a square from +Manouvrier's house. I called him once more to come. He waved his hand +kindly to imply that he knew what I had done. He and his wife were in the +Sisters' front garden walk conversing eagerly with the Mother Superior. +They neared the gate. Suddenly the Mother Superior went back, the +lay-sister guarding the gate let the pair out and the three of us +hurried off together. + +We found ourselves now in the uproar and vortex of the struggle. Only at +intervals could we take our attention from the turmoil that impeded or +threatened us, to glance forward at the white gable or back--as Manouvrier +persisted in doing--to the Sisters' cottage. Once I looked behind and +noticed, what I was loath to tell, that the firemen on its roof had grown +busy; but as I was about to risk the truth, the husband and wife, glancing +at their own roof, in one breath groaned aloud. Its gleaming gable had +begun to smoke. + +"Ah! that good God have pity on uz!" cried the wife, in tears, but as she +started to run forward I caught her arm and bade her look again. A strong, +white stream of water was falling on the smoking spot and it smoked no +more. + +The next minute, with scores of others, choking and blinded with the +smoke, we were flying from the fire. The wind had turned. + +"It is only a gust," I cried, "it will swing round again. We must turn the +next corner and reach the house from the far side." I glanced back to see +why my companions lagged and lo! they had vanished. + + + +IX + + +I reached the house just in time to save its front grounds from the +invasion of the rabble. The wind had not turned back again. The brother-in +law's widow was offering prayers of thanksgiving. The cisterns were empty +and the garden stood glistening in the afternoon sun like a May queen +drenched in tears; but the lovely spot was saved. + +I left its custodian at an upper window, looking out upon the fire, and +started once more to find my friends. Half-way round to the Sisters' +cottage I met them. With many others I stepped aside to make a clear way +for the procession they headed. The sweet, clean wife bore in her arms an +infant; the tattered, sooty, bloody-headed husband bore two; and after +them, by pairs and hand in hand, with one gray sister in the rear, came a +score or more of pink-frocked, motherless little girls. An amused rabble +of children and lads hovered about the diminutive column, with leers and +jests and happy antics, and the wife smiled foolishly and burned red with +her embarrassment; but in the taxidermist's face shone an exaltation of +soul greater than any I had ever seen. I felt too petty for such a moment +and hoped he would go by without seeing me; but he smiled an altogether +new smile and said, + +"My fran', God A'mighty, he know a good bargain well as anybody!" + +I ran ahead with no more shame of the crowd than Zaccheus of old. I threw +open the gate, bounded up the steps and spread wide the door. In the hall, +the widow, knowing naught of this, met me with wet eyes crying, + +"Ah! ah! de 'ouse of de orphelin' is juz blaze' up h-all over h-at once!" +and hushed in amazement as the procession entered the gate. + +P.T.B. Manouvrier, Taxidermist! + +When the fire was out the owner of that sign went back to his shop and to +his work, and his wife sat by him sewing as before. But the orphans stayed +in their new and better home. Two or three years ago the Sisters--the +brother-in-law's widow is one of them--built a large addition behind; but +the house itself stands in the beauty in which it stood on that day of +destruction, and my friend always leaves his work on balmy afternoons in +time to go with his wife and see that pink procession, four times as long +now as it was that day, march out the gate and down the street for its +daily walk. + +"Ah! Pastropbon, we got ba-bee' enough presently, en't it?" + +"Ole woman, nobody else ever strock dat lott'ree for such a prize like +dat." + + +* * * * * + + +The Entomologist + + + +I + + +An odd feature of New Orleans is the way homes of all ranks, in so many +sections of it, are mingled. The easy, bright democracy of the thing is +what one might fancy of ancient Greeks; only, here there is a general +wooden frailty. + +A notable phase of this characteristic is the multitude of small, frame, +ground-story double cottages fronting endwise to the street, on lots that +give either side barely space enough for one row of twelve-foot rooms with +windows on a three-foot alley leading to the narrow backyard. + +Thus they lie, deployed in pairs or half-dozens, by hundreds, in the +variable intervals that occur between houses and gardens of dignity and +elegance; hot as ovens, taking their perpetual bath of the great cleanser, +sunshine. Sometimes they open directly upon the banquette (sidewalk), but +often behind as much as a fathom of front-yard, as gay with flowers as a +girl's hat, and as fragrant of sweet-olive, citronelle, and heliotrope as +her garments. In the right-hand half of such a one, far down on the Creole +side of Canal street, and well out toward the swamp, lived our friend the +entomologist. + +Just a glance at it was enough to intoxicate one's fancy. It seemed to +confess newness of life, joy, passion, temperance, refinement, aspiration, +modest wisdom, and serene courage. You would say there must live two +well-mated young lovers--but one can't always tell. + + + +II + + +We first came to know the entomologist through our opposite neighbors, the +Fontenettes, when we lived in the street that still bears the romantic +name, Sixth. What a pity nothing rhymes to it. _Their_ ground-story +cottage was of a much better sort. It lay broadside to the street, +two-thirds across a lot of forty feet width, in the good old Creole +fashion, its front garden twelve feet deep, and its street fence, of white +palings, higher than the passer's head. The parlor and dining-room were on +the left, and the two main bedrooms on the right, next the garden; Mrs. +Fontenette's in front, opening into the parlor, Monsieur's behind, letting +into the dining-room. For there had been a broader garden on the parlor +and dining-room side, but that had been sold and built on. I fancy that if +Mrs. Fontenette--who was not a Creole, as her husband was, but had once +been a Miss Bangs, or something, and still called blackberries +"blackbries," and made root rhyme with foot--I fancy if she had been +doomed to our entomologist's sort of a house she would have been too +broken in spirit to have made anybody's acquaintance. + +For our pretty blonde neighbor had ambitions, or _had_ had, as she once +hinted to me with a dainty sadness. When I somehow let slip to her that I +had repeated her delicately balanced words to my wife she gave me one +melting glance of reproach, and thenceforth confided in me no more beyond +the limits of literary criticism and theology--and botany. I remember we +were among the few roses of her small flower-beds at the time, and I was +trying to show her what was blighting them all in the bud. She called them +"rose-es." + +They rarely bloomed for her; she was always for being the rose herself--as +Monsieur Fontenette once said; but he said it with a glance of fond +admiration. Her name was Flora, and yet not flowers, but their book-lore, +best suited her subtle capriciousness. She made such a point of names that +she could not let us be happy with the homely monosyllable by which we +were known, until we allowed her to hyphenate us as the Thorndyke-Smiths. + +There hung in our hall an entire unmarred beard of the beautiful gray +Spanish moss, eight feet long. I had got this unusual specimen by +tiptoeing from the thwarts of a skiff with twelve feet of yellow crevasse- +waters beneath, the shade of the vast cypress forest above, and the bough +whence it hung brought within hand's reach for the first time in a +century. Thus I explained it one day to Mrs. Fontenette, as she touched +its ends with a delicate finger. + +"Tillandsia"--was her one word of response. She loved no other part of +botany quite so much as its Latin. + +"The Baron ought to see that," said Monsieur. He was a man of quiet +manners, not over-social, who had once enjoyed a handsome business income, +but had early--about the time of his marriage--been made poor through the +partial collapse of the house in Havre whose cotton-buyer he had been, +and, in a scant way, still was. "When a cotton-buyer geds down, he stays," +was all the explanation he ever gave us. He had unfretfully let adversity +cage him for life in the only occupation he knew, while the wife he adored +kept him pecuniarily bled to death, without sharing his silent resigna-- +There I go again! Somehow I can't talk about her without seeming unjust +and rude. I felt it just now, even, when I quoted her husband's fond word, +that she always chose to be the rose herself. Well, she nearly always +succeeded; she was a rose--with some of the rose's drawbacks. + +When we asked who the Baron might be it was she who told us, but in a +certain disappointed way, as if she would rather have kept him unknown a +while longer. He was, she said, a profoundly learned man, graduate of one +of those great universities over in his native Germany, and a naturalist. +Young? Well, eh--comparatively--yes. At which the silent husband smiled +his dissent. + +The Baron was an entomologist. Both the Fontenettes thought we should be +fascinated with the beauty of some of his cases of moths and butterflies. + +"And coleoptera," said the soft rose-wife. She could ask him to bring them +to us. Take us to him?--Oh!--eh--her embarrassment made her prettier, as +she broke it to us gently that the Baroness was a seamstress. She hushed +at her husband's mention of shirts; but recovered when he harked back to +the Baron, and beamed her unspoken apologies for the great, brave scholar +who daily, silently bore up under this awful humiliation. + + + +III + + +Toward the close of the next afternoon she brought the entomologist. I can +see yet the glad flutter she could not hide as they came up our front +garden walk in an air spiced by the "four-o'clocks," with whose small +trumpets--red, white, and yellow--our children were filling their laps and +stringing them on the seed-stalks of the cocoa-grass. He was bent and +spectacled, of course; _l'entomologie oblige_; but, oh, besides!-- + +"Comparatively young," Mrs. Fontenette had said, and I naturally used her +husband, who was thirty-one, for the comparison. Why, this man? It would +have been a laughable flattery to have guessed his age to be forty-five. +Yet that was really the fact. Many a man looks younger at sixty--oh, at +sixty-five! He was dark, bloodless, bowed, thin, weatherbeaten, ill-clad-- +a picture of decent, incurable penury. The best thing about his was his +head. It was not imposing at all, but it was interesting, albeit very +meagrely graced with fine brown hair, dry and neglected. I read him +through without an effort before we had been ten minutes together; a leaf +still hanging to humanity's tree, but faded and shrivelled around some +small worm that was feeding on its juices. + +And there was no mistaking that worm; it was the avarice of knowledge. He +had lost life by making knowledge its ultimate end, and was still delving +on, with never a laugh and never a cheer, feeding his emaciated heart on +the locusts and wild honey of entomology and botany, satisfied with them +for their own sake, without reference to God or man; an infant in +emotions, who time and again would no doubt have starved outright but for +his wife, whom there and then I resolved we should know also. I was amused +to see, by stolen glances, Mrs. Smith study him. She did not know she +frowned, nor did he; but Mrs. Fontenette knew it every time. + +We all had the advantage of him as to common sight. His glasses were +obviously of a very high power, yet he could scarcely see anything till he +clapped his face close down and hunted for it. When he pencilled for me +the new Latin name he had given to a small, slender, almost dazzling +green, beetle inhabiting the Spanish moss--his own scientific discovery-- +he wrote it so minutely that I had to use a lens to read it. + +As we sat close around the library lamp, I noticed how often his poor +clothing had been mended by a woman's needle. His linen was discouraging, +his cravat awry and dingy, and his hands--we had better pass his hands; +yet they were slender and refined. + +Also they shook, though not from any habit commonly called vicious. You +could see that no vice of the body nor any lust of material things had +ever led him captive. He gave one the tender despair with which we look on +a blind babe. + +When we expressed regret that his wife had not come with him, he only bent +with a deeper greed into a book I had handed him, and after a moment laid +it down disappointedly, saying that it was "fool of plundters." Mrs. +Fontenette asking to be shown one of them, they reopened the book +together, she all consciousness as she bent against him over the page, he +oblivious of everything but the phrase they were hunting. He gave his +forehead a tap of despair as he showed where the book called this same +Tillandsia, or Spanish moss, a parasite. + +"It iss no baraseet," he explained, in a mellow falsetto, "it iss an +epipheet!" + +"An air-plant!" said his fair worshipper, softly drinking in a bosomful of +gladness as she made the distance between them more discreet. + +Distances were all one to him. He seemed like a burnt log, still in shape +but gone to ashes, except in one warm spot where glowed this self- +consuming, world-sacrificing adoration of knowledge; knowledge sought, as +I say, purely for its own sake and narrowed down to names and technical +descriptions. Men of _perverted_ principles and passions you may find +anywhere; but I never had seen anyone so totally undeveloped in all the +emotions, affections, tastes that make life _life_. + + + +IV + + +A few afternoons later I went to his house. For pretext I carried a huge +green worm, but I went mainly to see just how unluckily he was married. He +was not at home. I found his partner a small, bright, toil-worn, pretty +woman of hardly twenty-eight or nine, whose two or three children had died +in infancy, and who had blended wifehood and motherhood together, and was +taking care of the Baron as a widow would care for a crippled son, and at +the same time reverencing him as if he were a demigod. Of his utter +failure to provide their daily living she confessed herself by every +implication, simply--proud! What else should a demigod's wife expect? At +the same time, without any direct statement, she made it clear that she +had no disdain, but only the broadest charity, for men who make a living. +It was odd how few her smiles were, and droll how much sweetness--what a +sane winsomeness--she managed to radiate without them. I left her in her +clean, bright cottage, like a nesting bird in a flowery bush, and entered +my own home, declaring, with what I was gently told was unnecessary +enthusiasm, that the Baron's wife was the "unluckily married" one, and the +best piece of luck her husband had ever had. I had seen women make a +virtue of necessity, but I had never before seen one make a conviction, +comfort, and joy of it, and I should try to like the Baron, I said, if +only for her sake. + +Of course I became, in some degree, a source of revenue to him. +Understand, there was always a genuine exchange of so much for so much; he +was not a "baraseet"--oh, no!--yet he hung on. We still have, stowed +somewhere, a large case of butterflies, another of splendid moths, and a +smaller one of glistening beetles. Nor can I begrudge their cost, of +whatever sort, even now when my delight in them is no longer a constant +enthusiasm. The cases of specimens have passed from daily sight, but +thenceforth, as never before, our garden was furnished with guests--pages, +ladies, poets, fairies, emperors, goddesses--coming and going on gorgeous +wings, and none ever a stranger more than once. My non-parasitic friend +"opened a new world" to me; a world that so flattered one with its grace +and beauty, its marvellous delicacy and minuteness, its glory of color and +curiousness of marking, and its exquisite adaptation of form to need and +function, that in my meaner depths, or say my childish shallows--I +resented Mrs. Fontenette's making the same avowal for herself--I didn't +believe her! + +I do not say she was consciously shamming; but I could see she drank in +the Baron's revelations with no more true spiritual exaltation than the +quivering twilight moths drew from our veranda honeysuckles. Yet it was +mainly her vanity that feasted, not any lower impulse--of which, you know, +there are several--and, possibly, all her vanity craved at first was the +tinsel distinction of unusual knowledge. + +One night she got into my dreams. I seemed to be explaining to Monsieur +Fontenette apologetically that this newly opened world was not at all +separate from my old one, but shone everywhere in it, like our winged +guests in our garden, and followed and surrounded me far beyond the +Baron's company, terminology, and magnifying-glass, lightening the burdens +and stress of the very counting-room and exchange. Whereat he seemed to +flare up! + +"Ah!--you--I believe yes! But she?" he waved his hand in fierce unbelief. + +I awoke concerned, and got myself to sleep again only by remembering the +utter absence of vanity in the Baron himself. I lay smiling in the dark to +think how much less all our verbal caressings were worth to him than the +drone of the most familiar beetle, and how his life-long delving in books +and nature had opened up this fairy world to him only at the cost of +shutting up all others. If education means calling forth and perfecting +our powers and affections, he was ten times more uneducated than his wife, +even as we knew her then. He appeared to care no more for human interests, +far or near, in large or small, than a crab cares for the stars. I fell +asleep chuckling in remembrance of an occasion when Mrs. Fontenette, +taking her cue from me, spoke to him of his plant-and-insect lore as one +of the many worlds there are within _the_ world, no more displacing it +than light displaces air, or than fragrance displaces form or sound. He +made her say it all over again, and then asked: "Vhere vas dat?" + +His whole world was not really as wide as Gregory's island was to its +gentle hermit. No butterfly raptures for him; he devoured the one kind of +facts he cared for, as a caterpillar devours leaves. + + + +V + + +How Mrs. Fontenette got Mrs. "Thorndyke-Smith" and me entangled with some +six or eight others in her project for a botanizing and butterfly-chasing +picnic I do not know; but she did. On the evening before the appointed day +I perfidiously crawfished out of it, and our house furnished only one +delegate, whom I urged to go rather than break up the party--I never break +up a party if I can avoid it. "But as for me going," I said, "my business +simply won't let me!" At which our pretty neighbor expressed her regrets +with a ready resignation that broke into open sunshine as she lamented the +same inability in her husband. To my suggestion that the Baroness be +invited, Mrs. Fontenette smiled a sweet amusement that was perfect in its +way, and said she hoped the weather would be propitious; people were so +timid about rain. + +It was. When I came home, tardily, that afternoon, the picnickers had not +returned, though the oleanders and crape-myrtles on the grounds next ours +cast shadows three times their length across our lawn. In an aimless way I +roamed from the house down into our small rear garden, thinking oftenest, +of course, of the absentees, and admiring the refined good sense with +which Monsieur Fontenette seemed to have decided to let this unperilous +attack of silliness run itself out in the woman he loved with so much +tenderness and with so much passion. + +"How much distress he is saving himself and all of us," I caught myself +murmuring, audibly, out among my fig-trees. + +Finding two or three figs fully ripe, I strolled over the way to see him +among his trees and maybe find chance for a little neighborly boasting. As +our custom with each other was, I ignored the bell on his gate, drew the +bolt, and, passing in among Mrs. Fontenette's invalid roses, must have +moved, without intention, quite noiselessly from one to another, until I +came around behind the house, where a strong old cloth-of-gold rose-vine +half covered the latticed side of the cistern shed. In the doorway I +stopped in silent amaze. A small looking-glass hanging against the wooden +cistern showed me--although I was in much the stronger light--Monsieur +Fontenette. He was just straightening up from an oil-stone he had been +using, and the reflection of his face fell full on the glass. Once before, +but once only, had I seen such agony of countenance--such fierce and awful +looking in and out at the same time; that was on a man who was still +trying to get the best of a fight in which he knew he was mortally shot. +Fontenette did not see me. I suppose the rose-vine screened me, and his +glance did not rise quite to the mirror, but followed the soft thumbings +with which he tried the two edges and point of as murderous a knife as +ever I saw. + + +As softly as a shadow I drew out of sight, turned away, and went almost +back to the gate before I let my footfall be heard, and called, "M'sieu' +Fontenette!" + +He hallooed from the shed in a playful sham of being a mile or so away, +and emerged from the lattice and vine with that accustomed light of +equanimity on his features which made him always so thoroughly good- +looking. He came hitching his waistband with both hands in that innocent +Creole way that belongs to the latitude, and how I knew I cannot tell you, +but I did know--I didn't merely feel or think, but I knew!--_positively_-- +that he had that hideous thing on his person. + +Against what contingency I could only ask myself and wonder, but I +instantly decided to get him away from home and keep him away until the +picnickers had got back and scattered. So I proposed a walk, a diversion +we had often enjoyed together. + +"Yes?" he said, "to pazz the time whilse they don't arrive? With the +greates' of pleasu'e!" + +I dare say we were both more preoccupied than we thought we were, for +outside the gate we fairly ran into a lady--yes; a seamstress--the wife of +the entomologist. My stars! She had seemed winning enough before, but now +--what a rise in values! As we conversed it was all I could do to keep my +eyes from saying: "A man with you for a wife belongs at home whenever he +can be there!" But whether they spoke it or not, in some way, without word +or glance, by simple radiations from the whole sweet woman, she revealed +that to make that fact plain to him, to _her_, and to all of us, was what +this new emphasis of charm was for. + +She had come, she said--and scarcely on the lips of the loveliest Creole +did I ever hear a more bewitching broken-English--she had come according +to a half-promise made to Mrs. Fontenette to show her--"I tidn't etsectly +promised, I chust said I vill some time come----" + +"And Mrs. Fontenette didn't object," I playfully interrupted-- + +"No," said the unruffled speaker, "I chust said I vill come; yes; to show +her a new vay to remoof, remoof? is sat English? So? A new vay to remoof +old stains." + +"A new way--" responded Fontenette, with an air of gravest interest in all +matters of laundry. + +"Yes," she repeated, as simply as a babe, "a new vay; and I sought I come +now so to go home viss mine hussbandt." There, at last, she smiled, and to +make the caressing pride of her closing tone still prettier, lifted her +figured muslin out sidewise between thumb and forefinger of each hand with +even more archaic grace than playfulness. + +As the three of us crossed over and took seats on my veranda, we were +joined by the neighbor whose garden-trees I have mentioned; the man of +whom I have told you, how he failed to strike a bargain with old +Manouvrier, the taxidermist. He was a Missourian, in the produce business, +a thoroughly good fellow, but--well--oh--! + +He came perspiring, flourishing a palm-leaf fan and a large handkerchief, +to say I might keep all the shade his tall house and trees dropped on my +side of the fence. And presently what does the simple fellow do but begin +to chaff the three of us on the absence of our three partners! + + + +VI + + +I held my breath in dismay! The more I strove to change the subject the +more our fat wag, fancying he was teasing me to the delight of the others, +harped on the one string, until with pure apprehension of what Fontenette +might presently do or say, my blood ran hot and cold. But Monsieur showed +neither amusement nor annoyance, only a perfectly gracious endurance. Yet +how could I know what instant his forbearance might give way, or what +serpent's eggs the joker's inanities might in the next day or hour turn +out to be, laid in the hot heart of the Creole gentleman? Then it was that +this slender little German seamstress-wife shone forth like the first star +of the breathless twilight. + +Seamstress? no; she had left the seamstress totally behind her. You might +have thought the finest tactics of the drawing-room--not of to-day, but of +the times when gentlemen wore swords and dirks--had been at her finger-ends +all her life. She took our good neighbor's giddy pleasantries as deep +truths lightly put, and answered them in such graceful, mild earnest, and +with such a modest, yet fetching, quaintness, that we were all preached to +more effectively than we could have been by seven priests from one pulpit. +Or, at any rate, that was my feeling; every note she uttered was +melodiously kind, but every sentence was an arrow sent home. + +"You make me," she said, "you make me sink of se aunt of my musser, vhat +she said to my musser vhen my musser iss getting married. 'Senda,' she +said, 'vonce in a vhile'--is sat right, 'vonce in a vhile?'--so?--'vonce +in a vhile your Rudolph going to see a voman he better had married san +you. Sen he going to fall a little vay--maybe a good vay--in love viss +her; and sen if Rudolph iss a scoundtrel, or if you iss a fool, sare be +trouble. But if Rudolph don't be a scoundtrel and you don't be a fool he +vill pretty soon straight' up himself and say, One man can't ever'sing +have, and mine Senda she is enough!'... Sat vas my Aunt Senda." + +"Your mother was named for her?" + +"Yes, my musser, and me; I am name' Senda, se same. She vas se Countess +von (Something)--sat aunt of my musser. She vas a fine voman." + +"Still," said our joker, "you know she was only about half right in that +advice." + +"No," she replied, putting on a drowsy tone, "I don't know; and I sink you +don't know eeser." + +"I reckon I do," he insisted. "We're all made of inflammable stuff. Any +_man_ knows that. We couldn't, any of us, pull through life decently if we +didn't let each other be each other's keeper; could we, Fontenette?" + +No sound from Fontenette. "Hmm!" hummed the little woman, in such soft +derision that only he and I heard it; and after a moment she said, "Yes, +it is so. But, you know who is se only good keeper? Sat is love." + +"And jealousy," suggested Bulk; "the blindfold boy and the green-eyed +monster." + +"Se creen-eyedt--no, I sink not. Chalousie have destroyed--is sat +correct?--yes? Chalousie have destroyed a sowsand-sowsand times so much +happiness as it ever saved--ah! see se lightening! I sink sat is se +displeasu'e of heaven to my so bad English. Ah? see it again? vell, I vill +stop." + +"You ought to be in a better world than this," laughed our fat neighbor. + +"No," she chanted, "I rasser sis one. I sink mine hussbandt never be +satisfied viss a vorld not full of vorms and bugs; and I am glad to stay +alvays viss mine hussbandt." + +"And I reckon he thinks you're big enough world for him, just yourself, +doesn't he?" + + +"No." She seemed to speak more than half to herself. "A man--see se +lightening!--a man who can be satisfied viss a vorld no bigger as I can by +mineself gif him--mine Kott! I vould not haf such a man! See se +lightening! but I sink sare vill be no storm; sare is no sunder viss se +ligh'--Ah! sare are se trhuants!" We rose to meet them. First came the +children, vaunting their fatigue, then a black maid or two, with twice +their share of baskets, and then our three spouses; the Baron came last +and was mute. The two ladies called cheery, weary good-byes to another +contingent, that passed on by the gate, and hail and farewell to our fat +neighbor as he went home. Then they yielded their small burdens to us, +climbed the veranda stairs and entered the house. + + + +VII + + +No battle, it is said, is ever fought, and I dare say no game--worth +counting--is ever played, exactly as previously planned. One of our +company had planned, very secretly, as he thought, a battle; another, +almost openly, was already waging hers; while a third was playing a game-- +though probably, I admit, fighting, inwardly, her poor weak battle also; +and none of the three offered an exception to this rule. The first clear +proof of it--which it still gives me a low sort of pleasure to recall--was +my prompt discovery, as we gathered around the tea-board, to eat the +picnic's remains, that our Flora was out of humor with the Baron. It was +plain that the whole day's flood of small experiences had been to her +pretty vanity a Tantalus's cup. She was quick to tell, with an irritation, +which she genuinely tried to conceal, and with scarcely an ounce of words +to a ton of dead-sweet insinuation, what a social failure he had chosen to +be. Evidently he had spent every golden hour of sweet spiritual +opportunity--I speak from her point of view, or, at least, my notion of +it--not in catching and communicating the charm of any scene or incident, +nor in thrilling comparisons of sentiment with anyone, nor in any +impartation of inspiring knowledge, nor in any mirthful exchange of +compliments or gay glances over the salad and sandwiches; but in +constantly poking and plodding through thicket and mire and solitarily +peering and prying on the under sides of leaves and stems and up and down +and all around the bark of every rough-trunked tree. + +She made the picture amusing, none the less, and to no one more so than to +the Baron's wife, whose presence among us at the board was as fragrant, so +to speak, as that of a violet among its leaves and sisters. "Ah! Gustaf," +she said, with a cadenced gravity more taking than mirth, "sat iss a +treat-ment nobody got a right to but me. But tell me, tell se company, +vhat new sings have you found? I know you have not hunt' all se day and +nussing new found." + +But the Baron had found nothing new. He told us so with his mouth dripping +and his nose in the trough--his plate I should say. You could hear him +chew across the room. Suddenly, however, he ceased eating and began to +pour forth an account of his day's observation; in response to which M. +Fontenette, to my amused mystification, led us all in the interest with +which we listened. The Baron forgot his food, and when reminded of it, +pushed it away with a grunt and talked on and on, while we almost forgot +our own. + +As we rose to return to the veranda, the Creole still offered him an +undivided attention, which the Baron rewarded with his continued +discourse. As I gave Fontenette a light for his cigarette I held his eye +for a moment with a brightness of face into which I put as significant +approval as I dared; for I fancied the same unuttered word was brooding in +both our hearts: "A new vay to remoof old stains." + +Then he turned and gave all his attention once more to the entomologist, +as they walked out upon the gallery together behind their wives. And the +German woman courted the pretty New Englander as sweetly as the Creole +courted her husband, and with twice the energy. She was a bubbling spring +of information in the Baron's science; she was a well of sweet philosophy +on life and conduct, and at every turn of their conversation, always +letting Mrs. Fontenette turn it, she showed her own to be the better mind +and the better training. + +When Mrs. Fontenette, before any one else, rose to go--maybe my dislike of +her only made it seem so--but I believed she did it out of pure bafflement +and chagrin. + +Not so believed her husband. He responded gratefully; yet lingered, still +listening to the entomologist, until she fondlingly chid him for +forgetting that while he had been all day in his swivel-chair, she had +passed the hours in unusual fatigues! + +She declined his arm in our garden walk, and positively forbade me to cut +a rose for her--but with a grace almost maidenly. As I let them out, the +heat-lightning gleamed again low in the west. A playfulness came into M. +Fontenette's face and he murmured to me, "See se lightening." + +"Yes," I replied, pressing his hand, "but I sink sare vill be no storm if +sare iss no sunder." + +Mrs. Fontenette gave a faint gasp of impatience and left us at a run, +tripping fairily across the rough street at the only point visible to +those on the veranda. Fontenette scowled unaware as he started to follow, +and the next moment a short "aha!" escaped him. For, at her gate, to my +unholy joy, she stumbled just enough to make the whole performance +unspeakably ridiculous, and flirted into her cottage---- + +"In tears!" I offered to bet myself as I turned to rejoin my companions on +the veranda, and wished with all my soul the goggled Baron could have seen +it. + + + +VIII + + +But the best of eyes would not have counted this time, for he was not +there. He had accepted the offer of a room, where he was giving the day's +specimens certain treatments which he believed, or pretended, could not +wait until he should reach his far downtown cottage. His hostess and his +wife had gone with him, but now some light discussion of house adornment +was drawing them to the parlor. As this room was being lighted I saw our +guest, evidently through force of an early habit, turn a critical glance +to the music on the piano, and as quickly withdraw it. Both of us motioned +her solicitously to the music-stool. + +"No, I do not play." + +"Then you sing." + +"No, not now, any more yet." But when she had let us tease her a wee bit +just for one little German song, she went to the instrument, talking +slowly as she went, and closing the door in the entomologist's direction +as she talked. + +"Siss a great vhile I haf not done siss," she concluded, as her fingers +began to drift over the keys, and then she sang, very gently, even +guardedly, but oh, so sweetly! + +We were amazed. Here, without the slightest splendor of achievement or +adventure, seemed to be the most incredible piece of real life we had ever +seen. Why, I asked myself, was this woman so short even of German friends +as to be condemned to a seamstress's penury? And my best guess was to lay +it to the zeal of her old-fashioned--and yet not merely old-fashioned- +wifehood, which could accept no friendship that did not unqualifiedly +accept him; and he?--Goodness! + +When she ceased neither listener spoke; the tears were in our throats. She +bent her head slightly over the keys, and said, "I like to sing you +anusser." We accepted eagerly, and she sang again. There was nothing of +personal application in either song, yet now, near the end, where there +was a purposed silence in the melody, the silence hung on and on until it +was clear she was struggling with herself; but again the strain arose +without a tremor, and so she finished. "Oh, no, no," she replied, to our +solicitation, with the grateful emphasis of one who declines a third +glass, "se sooneh I stop, se betteh for ever'body," meaning specially +herself, I fancy, speaking, as she rose, in a tone of such happy decision, +and yet so melodiously, that two or three strings in the piano replied. + +Her hostess took her hands and said there was one thing she could and +must do; she and her husband must spend the night with us. There was a +bed-chamber connected with the room where the Baron was still at work, and, +really--this and that, and that and this--until in the heat of argument +they called each other "My dear," and presently the ayes had it. The last +word I heard from our fair guest was to her hostess at the door of her +chamber, the farthest down the hall. It was as to shutting or not shutting +the windows. "No," she said, "I sink sare vill be no storm, because sare +is yet no sunder vis se lightening." And so it turned out. But at the same +time---- + + + +IX + + +My room adjoined the Baron's in frontas his wife's did farther back. A +door of his and window of mine stood wide open on the one balcony, from +which a flight of narrow steps led down into the side garden. Thus, for +some time after I was in bed I heard him stirring; but by and by, with no +sound to betoken it except the shutting of this door, it was plain he had +lain down. + +I awoke with a sense of having been some hours asleep, and in fact the +full moon, shining gloriously, had passed the meridian. The balcony was +lighted up by it like noon, and on it stood the entomologist, entirely +dressed. The door was shut behind him. He was looking in at my window, but +he did not know the room was mine, and with eyes twice as good as he had +he could not have seen through my mosquito-bar. I wondered, but lay still +till he had started softly down the steps. Then I sprang out of bed on the +dark side, and dressed faster than a fireman. + +When half-clad I went and looked out a parlor window. He was trying the +gate, which was locked. But he knew where the key always hung, behind the +post, and turned to get it. I went back and finished dressing, stole down +the inner, basement stairs and out into the deep shadows of the garden, +and presently saw my guest passing in through the Fontenettes' gate, whose +bolt he had drawn from the outside. As angry now as I had been amazed I +hurried after. + +To avoid the moonlight I followed the shadows of the sidewalk-trees down +to the next corner, to cross there and come back under a like cover on the +other side. But squarely on the crossing I was met and stopped by a +belated drunkard, who had a proposition to make to me which he thought no +true gentleman, such as he was, for instance, could decline. I was alone, +he asked me to notice; and he was alone; but if he should go with me, +which he would be glad to do, why, then, you see, we should be together. +He stuck like a bur, and it was minutes before I got him well started off +in his own right direction. I slipped to the Fontenettes' gate, as near as +was best, and instantly saw, between one of its posts and a very black +myrtle-orange, Fontenette himself, standing as still as the trees. I was +not in so deep a shade as he, but I might have stepped right out into the +moonlight without his seeing me, so intensely was he watching his wife's +front door. For there stood the entomologist. He had evidently been +knocking, and was about to knock again when there came some response from +within, to which he replied, in a suppressed yet eager and agitated voice, +"Mine Psyche! Oh, mine Psyche! She is come to me undt she is bringing me +already more as a hoondredt--vhat?" He had been interrupted from within. +"Vhat you say?" + +Fontenette drew his knife. + +I stood ready to spring the instant he should stir to advance. I realized +almost unbearably my position, stealing thus at such a moment on the heels +of my neighbor and friend, but this is not a story of feelings, at any +rate, not of mine. + +"Vhat?" said the entomologist. "Go avay? Mien Gott! No, I vill not ko +avay. Mien gloryform! Gif me first mine gloryform! Dot Psyche hass come +out fon ter grysalis! she hass drawn me dot room full mit oder Psyches, +undt you haf mine pottle of gloryform in your pocket yet! Yes, ko kit ut; +I vait; ach!" Presently he seemed to hear from inside a second approach. +Then the door opened an inch or so, and with another "Ach!" and never a +word of thanks, he, snatched the vial and, turning to make off with it, +came nose to nose with M. Fontenette, who stood in the moonlight gateway +holding a blazing match to his cigarette. + +"Well, sir, good-evening again," said the Creole. I noticed the perfection +of his dress; evidently he had not as yet loosed as much as a shoestring. +And then I observed also that the visitor so close before him was without +his shoes. + +"Good-evening--or, good-morning, perchance," said Fontenette. "I suepose +thaz a great thing to remove those old stain' that chloro_form_, eh?" + +"Ach! it iss you? Ach, you must coom--coom undt hellup me! Coom! you shall +see _someding_." + +"A moment," said the Creole. "May I inquire you how is that, that you call +on us in yo' sock feet?" + +"Ach! I am already t'e socks putting on pefore I remember I do not need +t'em! But coom! coom! see a vonderfool!" He led, and Fontenette, when he +had blown a cloud of smoke through his nose, followed, saying exclusively +for his own ear: + +"A wonder fool, yes! But a fool is no wonder to me any more; I find myself +to be that kind." + + + +X + + +When, hypocritically clad in dressing-gown and slippers, I stopped at my +guest's inner door and Fontenette opened it just enough to let me enter, I +saw, indeed, a wonderful sight. The entomologist had lighted up the room, +and it was filled, filled! with gorgeous moths as large as my hand and all +of a kind, dancing across one another's airy paths in a bewildering maze +or alighting and quivering on this thing and that. The mosquito-net, +draping almost from ceiling to floor, was beflowered with them +majestically displaying in splendid alternation their upper and under +colors, or, with wings lifted and vibrant, tipping to one side and another +as they crept up the white mesh, like painted and gilded sails in a +fairies' regatta. + +And all this life and beauty, this gay glory and tremorous ecstasy and +effort was here for moth-love of one incarnate fever of frail-winged +loveliness! Oh! to what unguessed archangelic observation, to what +infinite seraphic compassion, may not our own swarming race, who dare not +too much pity ourselves, be but just such dainty ephemera! Splendid in +purposes, intelligence, and affections as these in colors and grace, +glorious when on the wing, and marvellous still, riddles of wonder, even +when crawling and quivering, tipping and swerving from the upright and +true, like these palpitating flowers of desire, now this way and now that, +forever drawn and driven by the sweet tyrannies of instinct and impulse. + +So rushed the thought in upon me, and if it was not of the divinest or +manliest inspiration, at least it took some uncharity out of me for the +moment. As in mechanical silence Fontenette obeyed the busy requests of +the entomologist, I presently looked more on those two than on the winged +multitude, and thought on, of the myriad true tales of love-weakness and +love-wrath for which they and their two pretty mates were just now so +unlucky as to stand; of the awful naturalness of such things; of the +butterfly beauty and wonder--nay, rather the divine possibilities of the +lives such things so naturally speed to wreck; and then of Tom Moore +almost too playfully singing: + + + Ah! did we take for Heaven above + But half such pains as we + Take, day and night, for woman's love, + What Angels we should be! + +But while I moralized there came a change. Beneath the entomologist's dark +hand, as it searched and hurried throughout the room, the flutter of wings +had ceased as under a wind of death. + +"You must have a hundred and fifty of them," I said as the last victim +ceased to flutter. + +"Yes." + +"Their sale is slow, of course, but every time you sell one, you ought to +get"--I was judging by some prices he had charged me--"you ought to get +two dollars." And I secretly rejoiced for Senda. + +"I not can afford to sell t'em," he replied, with his back to me. + +"Why, how so?" + +"No, it iss t'is kind vhat I can exshange for five, six, maybe seven +specimenss fon Ahfrica undt Owstrahlia. No, I vill not sell t'em." + +"Oh, I see," said I, in mortal disgust. "Fontenette, I'm going to bed." +And Fontenette went too. + +The next day was cloudless--in two hearts; Senda's, and Fontenette's. As +to the sky, that is another matter; one of the charms of that warm wet +land is that, with all its sunshine, it is almost never without clouds. +And indeed it would be truer to say of my two friends' skies, that they +had clouds, but the clouds were silvered through with happy reassurances. +Jealousy, we are told, once set on fire, burns without fuel; but I must +think that that is oftenest, if not always, the jealousy of a selfish +love. Or, rather--let me quote Senda, as she spoke the only other time she +ever touched upon the subject with us. Our fat neighbor had dragged it in +again as innocently as a young dog brings an old shoe into the parlor, +and, the Fontenettes being absent, she had the nerve and wisdom not to +avoid it. Said she: + +"Some of us--not all--have great power to love. Some, not all, who have +sis power--to love--have also se power to trust. Me, I rasser be trustet +and not loved, san to be loved and not trustet." + +"How about a little of each?" asked our neighbor. + +"Oh! If se _nature_ iss little, sat iss, maybe, very vell--?" She spoke as +kindly as a mother to her babe, but he stole a slow glance here and there, +as though some one had shot him with a pea in church, and dropped the +theme. + +Which I, too, will do when I have noted the one thing I had particularly +in mind to say, of Fontenette: that, as Senda remarked--for the above is +an abridgment--"I rasser see chalousie vissout cause, san cause vissout +chalousie;" and that even while I was witness of the profound ferocity of +his jealousy when roused, and more and more as time passed on, I was +impressed with its sweet reasonableness. + + + +XI + + +Time did pass--in days and weeks of that quiet sort which make us forget +in actual life that such is the way in good stories also. Innumerable +crops were growing in the fields, countless ships were sailing or steaming +the monotonous leagues of their long wanderings from port to port, some +empty, some heavy-laden, like bees between garden and hive: + + The corn-tops were ripe and the meadows were in bloom + And the birds made music all the day. + +Many of our days must not be the wine, but only small bits of the vine, of +life. We cannot gather or eat _them_; we can only let them grow, branch, +blossom, get here and there green grapes, scarce a tenth of a tithe, in +bulk or weight, of the whole growth, and "in due season--if we faint not" +pluck the purpled clusters. And as the vine is--much, too, as the vine is +tended, so will be the raisins and the wine. There is nothing in life for +which to be more thankful, or in which to be more diligent, than its +intermissions. This is not my sermonizing. I am not going to put +everything off upon "Senda," but really this was hers. I have edited it a +trifle; her inability to make, in her pronunciation, a due difference +between wine and vine rather dulled the point of her moral. + +Fontenette remarked to her one Sunday afternoon in our garden, that she +must have got her English first from books. + +"Yes," she said, "I didt. Also I have many, many veeks English +conversations lessons befo'e Ame'ica. But I cannot se p'onunciation get; +because se spelling. Hah! I can _not_ sat spelling get!" + +O, but didn't I want to offer my services? But, like Bunyan's Christian, I +recalled a text and so got by; which text was the wise saying of that +female Solomon, "se aunt of my muss-er"--"One man can't ever'sing have, +and mine"--establishment is already complete. + +Meantime, Mrs. Fontenette, from farthest off in our group, had slipped +around to the Baroness. She spoke something low, stroking her downy fan +and blushing with that damsel sweetness of which her husband was so openly +fond. + +"O no, I sank you!" answered Senda, in an undulating voice. "I sank you +v'ey much, but I cannot take se time to come to yo' house, and I cannot +let you take se trouble _too_ come _too_ mine. No, if I can have me only +se right soughts, and find me se right vords for se right soughts, I sink +I leave se p'onunciation to se mercy of P'ovidence." + +Mrs. Fontenette blushed as prettily as a child, and let her husband take +her hand as he said, "The Providence that wou'n' have mercy on such a +pronunshation like that--ah well, 'twould have to become v'ey unpopular!" + +"Anyhow," cooed Senda, "I risk it;" and then to his wife--"For se present, +siss betteh I sew for you san spell for you." + +Thus was our fair neighbor at every turn overmatched by the trustful love +of the man and watchful love of the woman, whose fancied inferiority was +her excuse for an illicit infatuation; an infatuation which little by +little became a staring fact--only not to Fontenette. You know, you can +hide such a thing from those who love and trust you, but not long from +those who do not; and if you are not old in sin--Flora and the Baron were +infants--you will almost certainly think that a condition hid from those +who love and trust you is hid from all! O fools! the very urchins of the +playground will presently have found you out and be guessing at broken +laws, though there be only broken faiths and the anguish of first steps in +perfidy. + +We could not help but see, and yet for all our seeing we could not help. +The matter never took on flagrancy enough to give ever so kind an +intervener a chance to speak with effect. It was pitiful to see how little +gratification they got out of it; especially she, with that silly belief +in her ability to rekindle his spiritual energies and lift him into the +thin air of her transcendentalisms; slipping, nevertheless, bit by bit, +down the precipitous incline between her vaporous refinements and his +wallowing animalisms; too destitute of the love that loves to give, or of +courage, or of cunning, to venture into the fires of real passion, but +forever craving flattery and caresses, and for their sake forever holding +him over the burning coals of unfulfilled desire. + +How could we know these things so positively? + +By the entomologist; the child of science. Science yearns ever to know and +to tell. Truth for truth's sake! He had no strong _moral_ feeling against +a lie; but he had never had the slightest _use_ for a lie, and a +prevarication on his tongue would have been as strange to him as castanets +in his palms. Guile takes alertness, adroitness; and the slim pennyworth +of these that he could command he used up, no doubt, on Fontenette. I +noticed that after an hour with the Creole he always looked tortured and +exhausted. With us he was artless to the tips of his awful finger-nails. + +Nor was Mrs. Fontenette a skilful dissembler; she over-concealed things so +revealingly. Then she was so helplessly enamoured and in so childish a +way. I venture one of the penalties almost any woman may have to pay for +bringing to the altar only the consent to be loved is to find herself, +some time, at last, far from the altar, a Titania, a love's fool. Our +Titania pointed us to the fact that the Baron's wife never tried to divert +his mind from the one pursuit that enthralled it; and she borrowed one of +our garden alleys in which to teach him--grace-hoops! He never caught one +from her nor threw one that she could catch; but, ah! with her coaxing and +commanding, her sweet taunting and reprimanding and his utter lack of +surprise at them, how much she betrayed! Fontenette came, learned in a few +throws, and was charmed with the toys--a genuine lover always takes to +them kindly--but Mrs. Fontenette was by this time tired, and she never +again felt rested when her husband mentioned the game. + +Furthermore, their countenances!--hers and the entomologist's--especially +when in repose--you could read the depths of experience they had sounded, +by the lines and shadows that came and went, or stayed, as one may read +the depths of a bay by the passing of wind and light, day by day, over its +waters--particularly if the waters are not very deep. + +They made painful reading. What degrees of heart-wretchedness came and +went or stayed with them, we may have over--we may have underestimated. +God knows. In two months Mrs. Fontenette grew visibly older and less +pretty, yet more nearly beautiful; while he, by every sign, was gradually +awakening back--or, shall we not say, being now first born?--to life, +through the pangs of a torn mind; mind, not conscience; but pangs never of +sated, always of the famished sort. + + + +XII + + +It was he who finally put the very seal of confirmation upon both our +hopes and our fears. + +The time was the evening of the same Sunday in whose afternoon his wife +had declined those transparent spelling-lessons. A certain preacher, noted +for his boldness, was drawing crowds by a series of sermons on the text +"Be thou clean," and our fat neighbor and his wife took us, all six, to +hear him. Their pew was well to the front and we were late, so that going +down the aisle unushered, with them in the lead--husband and spouse, +husband and spouse, four couples--we made a procession which became +embarrassingly amusing as the preacher simultaneously closed the Scripture +lesson with, "And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' +wives with him into the ark." + +That has been our fat neighbor's best joke ever since, though he always +says after it, "The poor Baron!" and often adds--"and poor Mrs. +Fontenette! Little did we think," etc. But he has never even suspected +their secret. + +The entomologist was the last of our pew-full to give heed to the pulpit. +When the preacher said that because it was a year of state elections, for +which we ought already to be preparing, he had in his first discourse +touched upon political purity--cleanness of citizenship--the Baron showed +no interest. He still showed none when the speaker said again, that +because the pestilence was once more with us--that was in the terrible +visitation of 1878--he had devoted his second discourse to the hideous +crime of a great city whose voters and tax-payers do not enable and compel +it to keep the precept, "Be thou clean." I thought of the clean little +home from whose master beside me came no evidence that he thought at all. +But the moment the preacher declared his purpose to consider now the +application of this great command to the individual life and character of +man and woman as simply man and woman, the entomologist became the closest +listener in the crowded throng. + +The sermon was a daring one. I was struck by the shrewd concessions with +which the speaker defined personal purity and the various false +conceptions of it that pass current; abandoning the entrenched hills, so +to speak, of his church's traditional rigor and of many conventional +rules, and drawing after him into the unfortified plain his least +persuadable hearers of whatever churchly or unchurchly prejudice, to +surround them finally at one wide sweep and receive their unconditional +surrender. His periods were not as embarrassing to a mixed audience as my +citations would indicate. Those that I bring together were wisely +subordinated and kept apart in the discourse, and ran together only in +minds like my own, eager for one or two other hearers to be specially +impressed by them. And one, at least, was. Before the third sentence of +the main discourse was finished the fierceness of the Baron's attention +was provoking me to ask myself whether a conscience also was not coming to +birth in him. + +In a spiritual-material being, said the speaker, the spirit has a +rightful, happy share in every physical delight, and no physical delight +need be unclean in which the spirit can freely enjoy its just share as +senior member in the partnership of soul and body. Without this spiritual +participation it could not be clean, though church, state, and society +should jointly approve and command it. Mark, I do not answer for the truth +of these things; I believe them, but that is quite outside of our story. + +The commonest error, he said, of those who covet spiritual cleanness is to +seek a purification of self for self-purification's sake. + +The Baron grunted. He was drinking in the words; had forgotten his +surroundings. + +Only those are clean, continued the speaker, whose every act, motive, +condition is ordered according to their best knowledge of the general +happiness, whether that happiness is for the time embodied in millions, or +in but one beyond themselves. Through errors of judgment they may fall +into manifest outward uncleannesses; but they, and none but they, are +clean within. + +Because women, he went on, are in every way more delicately made than men, +we easily take it for granted they are more spiritual. From Genesis to +Revelation the Bible never does so. It is amazing how feeble a sense of +condemnation women--even as compared with men--often show for the _spirit_ +of certain misdeeds if only it be unaccompanied by the misdeed's +performance; or what loathing so many of them--"of you," he really said, +and the Baron grunted as though his experience had been with droves of +them--what loathing so many of you heap upon certain things without +reference to the spirit by which they are accompanied and on which their +nobility or baseness, their cleanness or foulness, entirely depends. + +Nothing is unclean that is to no one anywhere unjust or unkind; and +nothing is unjust, unkind, or unclean which cannot easily be shown to be +so without inventing an eleventh commandment. To him, he said, no +uncleanness was more foul than that which, not for kindness, or for +righteousness, but for a fantastical, self-centred refinement, invents +some eleventh commandment to call that common which God hath cleansed; to +call anything brutish which the incarnation of the soul has made sacred to +spotless affections. + +The Baron muttered something in German, and Fontenette shut his mouth +tight and straightened up in approbation. + + +At the close of the service we were not out of the pew before our escort +was introducing Senda to his friends in front and behind as busily and +elaborately as if that was what we had come for. Twice and again she cast +so anxious an eye upon her husband--from whom Mrs. Fontenette had wisely +taken shelter behind hers--that I softly said to her, "We'll take care of +him." + +A care he was! All the way down the aisle, amid the peals of the organ, he +commented on the sermon aloud, mostly to himself but also to whichever of +us he could rub his glasses against. Sometimes he mistook others for us +until they stared. His face showed a piteous, weary distress, his thin +hair went twenty ways, he seemed scarcely to know where he was or how to +take his steps, and presently was saying to a strange lady crowded against +him, as though it was with her he had been talking all along: + +"Undt vhy shall we haf t'at owfool troubple? No-o, t'at vould kill me! I +am not a cat to keep me alvays clean--no more as a hogk to keep me always +not clean. No, I keep me--owdside--inside--always so clean as it comes +eassy, undt I leave me so dirty as it comes eassy." + + + +XIII + + +I took his arm into mine--his hand was hot--and drew him on alone. "Undt +t'ose vomens," he persisted in the vestibule, "t'ey are more troubple yet +as t'eir veight in goldt! I vish, mine Gott! t'ere be no more any vomens +ut all, undt we haf t'e shiltern by mutchinery." + +On the outer steps I sprang with others to save a young girl, who had +stumbled, from pitching headlong to the sidewalk. Once on her feet again, +after a limp or two she walked away uninjured; but when I looked around +for my real charge he was not in sight. I hurried to Fontenette and his +wife a few steps away, but he was not with them. The three of us turned +back and came upon the rest of our group, but neither had they seen him. +Our other neighbor said he must have got into a car. I asked Senda if it +was likely he would go home without trying to find us, and she replied +that he might; but when we had all looked at one another for a moment she +dded, with a distinct tremor of voice--and I saw that she feared +temptation and conscience had unsettled his wits--"I sink he iss not ve'y +vell. I sink he is maybe--I ton't know, but--I--I sink he iss not ve'y +vell." She averted her face. + +She agreed with us, of course, that there was no call for alarm, and Mrs. +Smith and I had to plead that we could not, the six of us, let her go +home, away downtown, alone, while we should go as far the other way and +remain all night ignorant of her husband's whereabouts. So our next door +neighbor, my wife and I went with her, and his wife and the Fontenettes +went home; for a conviction probably common to us all, but which no one +cared to put into downright words, was that the entomologist, whether +dazed or not, might wander up to one of our homes in preference to his +own. In the street-car and afterward for a full hour at her house, Senda +was very silent, only saying now a little and then a little more. + +"_He_ iss all right! _He_ vill sure come. Many times he been avay se +_whole_ night. Sat is se first time I am eveh afraid; is sat se vay when +commencing to grow old? Yes, I sink sat is se reason." + +When we had been at her cottage for nearly an hour, my neighbor started +out on a systematic search; and half an hour later, I left Mrs. Smith with +her and went also. + +About one o'clock in the night, I came back as far as the corner nearest +her house, but waited there, by appointment, with my neighbor; and very +soon--stepping softly--he appeared. + +"No sign of him?" + +"None." + +"You don't suppose he's done himself any violence, do you?" he asked. + +"No, no. O no." + +"And yet," he said, "I think we ought to tell the police at once." + +I advanced some obvious objections. "At any rate," I said, "go in, will +you, please, and see if he hasn't come home, while we were away." + +"Why, yes, that _is_ the first thing," laughed he, and went. + +As I waited for him in the still street, I heard far away a quick +footstep. By and by I saw a man pass under a distant lamp, coming toward +me. I looked with all my eyes. Just then my neighbor came back. "Listen," +I murmured. "Watch when that man comes under the next light." + +He watched. "It's Fontenette!" + +"Well," said the Creole as he joined us, "he's yondeh all right--except +sick. + +"Yes, he cou'n't tell anybody where to take him, and a doctor found that +letteh on him print' outside with yo' uptown address; and so he put him in +a cab an' sen' him yondeh, and sen' word he muz 'ave been sick sinze sev'l +hours, an' get him in bed quick don't lose a minute." + +"And so he's in bed at my house!" I put in approvingly. + +"Ah, no! I coul'n' do like that; but I do the bes' I could; he is at _my_ +'ouse in bed. An' my own doctor sen' word what to do an' he'll come in the +mawning. And (to our neighbor) yo' madame do uz that kineness to remain +with Madame Fontenette whiles I'm bringing his wife." + +At the cottage my companions remained outside. As I entered Senda caught +one glance and exclaimed, "Ah, mine hussbandt is foundt and is anyhow +alife!" + +"Yes," I replied, "but he's ill. Mr. Fontenette met him and took him to +his house. He's there now with Mrs. Fontenette and Mrs. Blank. Get a +change of dress and come, we'll all go together." + +Senda stared. "A shange of dtress?" Then, with a most significant mingling +of relief and new disturbance, she said, "Ah, I see!" and looking from me +to Mrs. Smith and from Mrs. Smith to me, while she whipped her bonnet +ribbons into a bow, she cried, with shaking voice and streaming eyes: + +"Oh, sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow feveh." + + + +XIV + + +No sick man could have been better cared for than was the entomologist at +our neighbor's over the way. "The fever," as in the Creole city it used to +be sufficiently distinguished, is not so deadly, nor so treacherous, nor +nearly so repulsive, as some other maladies, but none requires closer +attention. After successive days and nights of unremitting vigilance, +should there occur a momentary closing of the nurse's eyes, or a turning +from the bedside for a quarter of a minute, the irresponsible patient may +attempt to rise and may fall back dying or dead. So, the attendant must +have an attendant. In the case of the entomologist, his wife became the +bedside nurse and sentinel. + +In the next room, now and then Mrs. Smith, and now and then our fat +neighbor's wife, waited on her, but by far the most of the time, Mrs. +Fontenette was her assistant. When Senda, while the patient dozed, stole +brief moments of sleep to keep what she could of her overtasked powers, +her place, at the bedside, was always filled by Fontenette, who as often +kept his promise to call her the instant her husband should rouse. + +Thus we brought our precious entomologist through the disorder's first +crisis, which generally comes exactly on the seventy-second hour, and in +due time through the second, which falls, if I remember aright, on the +ninth day. What I do recall with certainty, was that it came on one of the +days of the city's heaviest mortality and that two of our children, and my +next neighbor's wife, came down with the scourge. + +And O, the beautiful days and the beautiful nights! It seemed the illusion +of a dream, that between such land and sky, there should be not one street +in that embowered city unsmitten by sorrow and death. Out of yonder fair +home on the right, they carried yesterday, the loved mother of five +children--but the Baron is better. From this one on the left, will be +borne to-morrow such a man as no city can lightly spare, till now a living +fulfilment of the word "Be thou clean"--but the entomologist will be ever +so much better. + +To be glad of it, you needed only to hear Senda allude to him as "Mine +hussbandt." Why did she never mention him in any other way? The little +woman was a riddle to me. I did not see how she could give such a man such +a love, and yet I never could see but she was as frank as a public record. +Stranger still was it how she could be the marital partner--the mate, to +speak plainly--of such a one, without showing or feeling the slightest +spiritual debasement. Finally, however, I caught some light. I had stepped +over to ask after "Mine hussbandt," everyone else of us being busy with +our own sick. Senda was letting Fontenette take her place in the +sick-room, which, of course, was shut close. I silently entered the room +in front of it, and perceiving that Mrs. Fontenette had drawn her into the +other front room, adjoining--a door stood half open between--and was +tempting her with refreshments, I sat down to await their next move. So +presently I began to hear what they said to each other in their gentle +speculations. + +"A wife who has realized her ideal," Mrs. Fontenette was saying, when +Senda interrupted: + +"Ah! vhat vife is sat? In vhat part of se vorldt does she lif, and how +long she is marriedt? No-o, no! Sare is only vun _kindt_ of vife in se +_whole_ vorldt vhat realize her ideal hussbandt; and sat is se vife vhat +idealize her real hussbandt. Also not se hussbandt and se vife only; I +sink you even cannot much Christ-yanity practice vis anybody--close +related--vissout you idealize sem. But ze hussbandt and vife-- + +"You remembeh sat sehmon, 'Be'--O yes, of course. Vell, sat is vun sing se +preacher forget to say--May be he haf not se time, but I sink he forget: +sat sare is no hussbandt in se whole vorldt--and also sare is no vife--so +sp'--spirit'--spirited? no? Ah, yes--spiritual!--yes, sank you. Vhen I +catch me a bigk vord I am so proudt, yet, as I hadt a fish caught!" + +I was willing to believe it, but thought how still more true it was of +Mrs. Fontenette. But the gentle speaker had not paused. "Sare iss no vife +so _spiritual_," she repeated, triumphantly, "and who got a hussbandt so +spiritual, sat eeser vun--do you say 'eeser vun'?" + +"Either one," said her hostess, reassuringly. + +"Yes, so spiritual sat eeser vun can keep sat rule inside--to be pairfect' +clean, if sat vun do not see usseh vun _idealize_." + +I made a stir--"Hmm!" Whereupon she came warily to the door. I sat +engrossed in a book and wishing I could silently crawl under it snake +fashion; but I could feel her eyes all over me, and with them was a +glimmering smile that helped them to make me tingle as she softly spoke. + +"Ah!--See se book-vorm! He iss all eyes--and ee-ahs. Iss it _not_ so?" + +"Pardon," I murmured; "did you spe'--has any one been speaking and I have +failed to give attention?" + +"O no, sir! I sink not! Vell, you are velcome to all you haf heardt; but I +am ve'y much oblige' to you for yo' 'hmm.' It vas se right sing in se +right place. But do you not sink I shouldt haf been a pre-eacheh? I love +to preach." + +I said I knew of three men in one neighborhood with whom she might start a +church, and asked how was the Baron. + +Improving--would soon be able to sit up. She inquired after my children. + +It was quite in accord with a late phase of Mrs. Fontenette's demeanor +that on this occasion she did not appear until I mentioned her. She had +not come near me by choice since the night the Baron was found and sent to +my address, although I certainly was in every way as nice to her as I had +ever been, and I was not expecting now to be less so. + +When she appeared I asked her if a superb rose blooming late in August was +not worth crossing to our side of the way to see. She knew, of course, +that sooner or later, as the best of a bad choice, she must allow me an +interview; yet now she was about to decline on some small excuse, when her +eyes met mine, and she saw that in my opinion the time had come. So she +made her excuses to her guest and went with me. + +She gave the rose generous notice and praise, and as she led the way back +lingered admiringly over flower after flower. Yet she said little; more +than once she paused entirely to let me if I chose change the subject, and +when at the gate I did so, she stood like a captive, looking steadily into +my face with eyes as helpless as a half-fledged bird's and as lovely as +its mother's. When I drew something from my breastpocket, they did not +move. + +"This," I said, "is the letter that was found on the Baron the night he +was taken ill. Your husband handed it to me supposing, of course, I had +written it, as it was in one of my envelopes, and he happens not to know +my handwriting. But I did not write it. I had never seen it, yet it was +sent in one of my envelopes. I haven't mentioned it to anyone else, +because--you see?--I hope you do. I thought--well, frankly, I thought if I +should mention it first to you I might never need to mention it to anyone +else." I waited a moment and then asked, eyes and all: "Who could have +sent it?" + +"Isn't," she began, but her voice failed, and when it came again it was +hardly more than a whisper, "isn't it signed?" + +Now, that was just what I did not know. Whatever the thing was, I had +never taken it from the envelope. But the moment she asked I knew. I knew +it bore no signature. We gazed into each other's eyes for many seconds +until hers tried to withdraw. Then I said--and the words seemed to drop +from my lips unthought--"It didn't have to be signed, Mrs. Fontenette, +although the handwriting is disguised." + +Poor Flora! I can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been +kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her +up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or +wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick +pavement with her tiny boots--and tremble. + + +"I--I had to write it," she began to reply, and her words, though they +quivered, were as mechanical as mine. "He was so--so--imprudent--my +husband's happiness required----" + +I stopped her. "Please don't say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but-- +not that, please." I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told +her what ebb tides she had given that husband's happiness; what he had +been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute +christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed +ever to have occurred to her; but that was his secret, not mine. + +She broke a silence with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the +eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. "You +wouldn't despise me if you knew the half I've suffered or how I've striv-- +--" + +I interrupted again. "O Mrs. Fontenette, any true gentleman--at thirty- +five--knows it _all--himself_. And he had better go and cut his throat +than give himself airs, even of pity, over a lady who has made a misstep +she cannot retrace." + +Her foot played with a brick that was loose in the pavement, but she gave +me a melting glance of gratitude. After a considerable pause she murmured, +"I will retrace it." + +"I have kept you here a good while," I said. "After a moment or so drop +your handkerchief, and as I return it to you the letter will be with it. +Or, better, if you choose to trust me, we'll not do that, but as soon as I +get into the house I'll burn it." + +"I can trust you," she replied, "but----" + +"What; the Baron--when he misses it? O I'll settle that." + +She gave a start as though I had shouted. + +I thought it a bad sign for the future, and the words that followed seemed +to me worse. "Isn't it my duty," she asked--and her eyes betrayed +unconsciously the desperateness of her desire--"to explain to him myself?" + +I answered with a question. "Would that be in the line of retracement, +Mrs. Fontenette?" + +"It would!" she responded, with solemn eagerness. "O it would be! It shall +be! I promise you!" + +"Mrs. Fontenette," said I, "consider. If his wife"--she flinched; she +could do so now, for the sudden semi-tropical darkness had fallen--"if his +wife-or your husband"--she bit her lip--"knew all--would they think that +your duty? Would it take them an instant to refuse their consent? Would +they not firmly insist that it is your duty never again to see him alone?" + +Her only reply was an involuntary moan and a whitening of the face, and +for the first time I saw how deep into her soul the poison had gone. + +"My friend," I continued, "you must not think me meddlesome--officious. I +can no more wait for your permission to help you than if you were +drowning. Perhaps for good reasons within _me_, I know, better than you, +that you-and he--are on a slippery incline, and that whether you can stop +your descent and creep back to higher ground than either of you has +slipped from is not to be told by the fineness of your promises or +resolves. I cannot tell; you cannot tell; only God knows." ... + +"Please, sir," said a new maid--in place of one who had gone home fever +struck and had died--"yo' lady saunt me fo' to tell you yo' little boy a +sett'n on de back steps an' sayin' his head does ache him, an' she wish +you'd 'ten' to him, 'caze she cayn't leave his lill' sisteh, 'caze she +threaten with convulsion'." + + + +XV + + +Mrs. Fontenette and the maid silently ran in ahead of me; I went first to +the mother. When I found Mrs. Fontenette again she had the child undressed +and in his crib, and I remembered how often I had, in my heart, called her +a coward. + +She saw me pencil on a slip of paper at the mantelpiece, and went and read +-"You mustn't stay. He has the fever. You've never had it." + +She wrote beneath--"I should have got it weeks ago if God paid wages every +day. Don't turn me off." + +I dropped the paper into the small firegrate, added the other from my +breastpocket, and set them ablaze, and the new maid, entering, praised +burning paper as one of the best deodorizers known. + +So my dainty rose-neighbor stayed; stayed all night, and all the next day +and night, and on and on with only flying visits to her home over the way, +until we were amazed at her endurance. The little fellow was never at ease +with her out of his wild eyes. Her touch was balm to him, and her words +peace. Oh, that they might have been healing also! But that was beyond the +reach of all our striving. His days were as the flowers and winged things +of the garden-kingdom, wherein he had been--without ever guessing it-- +their citizen-king. + +It awakens all the tenderness at once that I ever had for Mrs. Fontenette, +to recall what she was to him in those hours, and to us when his agonies +were all past, and he lay so stately on his short bier, and she could not +be done going to it and looking--looking--with streaming eyes. + +As she stood close by the tomb, while we dumbly watched the masons seal +it, I began to believe that she blamed herself for the child's sickness +and death, and presently I knew it must be so. One of those quaint burial +societies of Negro women, in another quarter of the grounds, but within +plain hearing, chose for the ending of their burial service--with what +fitness to their burial service I cannot say, maybe none--a hymn borrowed, +I judge, from the rustic whites, as usual, but Africanized enough to +thrill the dullest nerves; and the moment it began my belief was +confirmed. + + + My sin is so dahk, Lawd, so dahk and so deep, + My grief is so po', Lawd, so po' and so mean, + I wisht I could weep, Lawd, I wisht I could weep, + Oh, I wisht I could weep like Mary Mahgaleen! + + Oh, Sorroh! sweet Sorroh! come, welcome, and stay! + I'd welcome thy swode howsomever so keen, + If I could jes' pray, Lawd, if I could jes' pray, + Oh! if I could jes' pray, like Mary Mahgaleen! + + +My belief was confirmed, I say; but I was glad to see also that no one +else read as I read the signs by which I was guided. At the cemetery gate +I heard some one call--"Yo' madam is sick, sih," and, turning, saw Mrs. +Fontenette, deathly white, lift her blue eyes to her husband and he get +his arm about her just in time to save her from falling. She swooned but a +moment, and, in the carriage, before it started off, tried to be quite +herself, though very pale. + +"It's nothing but the reaction," said to me the lady who fanned her, and +we agreed it was a wonder she had held up so long. + +"Hyeh, honey," put in the child's old black nurse, in a voice that never +failed to soothe, however grotesque its misinterpretations, "lay yo' head +on me; an' lay it heavy: dass what I'm use-en to. Blessed is de pyo in +haht; she shall res' in de fea' o' de Lawd, an' he shall lafe at heh +calamity." + +I was glad to send the old woman with them, for as we turned away to our +own carriage, I said in my mind, "All that little lady needs is enough +contrition, and she'll give away the total of any secret of which she owns +an undivided half." + +But a night and a day passed, and a second, and a third, and I perceived +she had told nothing. + +It was a terrible time, with many occasions of suspense more harrowing +than that. Our other children were getting on, yet still needed vigilant +care; the Baron was to be let out of his room in a day or two, but my fat +neighbor had come down with the disease, while his wife still lay between +life and death--how they finally got well, I have never quite made out, +they were so badly nursed--and all about us were new cases, and cases +beyond hope, and retarded recoveries, and relapses, and funerals, and +nurses too few, and ice scarce, and everybody worn out with watching-- +physicians compelled to limit themselves to just so many cases at a time, +to avoid utterly breaking down. + +As I was in my fat neighbor's sick chamber one evening, giving his nurse a +respite, word came that Fontenette was at my gate. I went to him with +misgivings that only increased as we greeted. He was dejected and +agitated. His grasp was damp and cold. + +"It cou'n' stay from me always," he said in an anguished voice, and I +cried in my soul, "She's told him!" + +But she had not. I asked him what his bad news was that had come at last, +but his only reply was, + +"Can you take _him_? Can you take him out of my house--to-night--this +evening--now?" + +"Who, the Baron? Why, certainly, if you desire it?" I responded; wondering +if the entomologist, by some slip, had betrayed _her_. There was an awe in +my visitor's eyes that was almost fright. + +"Fontenette," I exclaimed, "what have you heard--what have you done?" + +"My frien', 'tis not what I 'ave heard, neitheh what I 'ave done; 'tis +what I 'ave got." + +"Got? Why, you've got nothing, you Creole of the Creoles. Your skin's as +cool as mine." + +"Feel my pulse," he said. I felt it. It wasn't less than a hundred and +fifty. + +"Go, get into bed while I bring the Baron over here," I said, and by the +time I had done this and got back to him his skin was hot enough! An hour +or two after, I recrossed the street on the way to my night's rest, +leaving his wife to nurse him, and Senda to attend on her and keep house. +I paused in the garden and gazed up among the benignant stars. And then I +looked onward, through and beyond their ranks, seemingly so confused, yet +where such amazing hidden order is, and said, for our good Fontenette, and +for his watching wife, and for all of us--even for my wife and me in our +unutterable loss--"Sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow fevah!" + + + +XVI + + +Three days more. In the third evening I found the doctor saying to Mrs. +Fontenette: + + +"Nine o'clock. It's now seven-thirty. Well, you'd better begin pretty soon +to watch for the change. + +"O, you'll know it when you see it, it will be as plain as something +sinking in water right before your eyes. Then give him the beef-tea, just +a teaspoonful; then, by and by, another, and another, as I told you, +always keeping his head on the pillow--mind that." + +Out beside his carriage he continued to me: "O yes, a nurse or patient may +break that rule, or almost any rule, and the patient may live. I had a +patient, left alone for a moment on the climacteric day, who was found +standing at her mirror combing her hair, and to-day she's as well as you +or I. I had another who got out of bed, walked down a corridor, fell face +downward and lay insensible at the crack of a doorsill with the rain +blowing in on him under the door--and he got well. As to Fontenette, all +his symptoms so far are good. Well--I'll be back in the morning." + +So ran the time. There were no more new cases in our house; Mrs. Smith and +I had had the scourge years before, as also had Senda, who remained over +the way. Fontenette passed from one typical phase of the disorder to +another "charmingly" as the doctor said, yet he specially needed just such +exceptionally delicate care as his wife was giving him. In the city at +large the deaths per day were more and more, and one night when it +showered and there was a heavenly cooling of the air, the increase in the +mortality was horrible. But the weather, as a rule, was steady and +tropically splendid; the sun blazed; the moonlight was marvellous; the +dews were like rains; the gardens were gay with butterflies. Our +convalescent little ones hourly forgot how gravely far they were from +being well, and it became one of our heavy cares to keep the entomologist +from entomologizing--and from overeating. + +From time to time, when shorthanded we had used skilled nurses; but when +Mrs. Fontenette grew haggard and we mentioned them, she said +distressfully: "O! no hireling hands! I can't bear the thought of it!" and +indeed the thought of the average hired "fever-nurse" of those days was +not inspiring; so I served as her alternate when she would accept any and +throw herself on the couch Senda had spread in the little parlor. + + + +XVII + + +At length one day I was called up at dawn and went over to take her place +once more, and when after several hours had passed I was still with him, +Fontenette said, while I bent down, + +"I have the fear thad's going to go hahd with my wife, being of the +Nawth." + +"Why, what's going to go hard, old fellow?" + +"The feveh. My dear frien', don't I know tha'z the only thing would keep +heh f'om me thad long?" + +"Still, you don't know her case will be a hard one; it may be very light. +But don't talk now." + +"Well--I hope _so_. Me, I wou'n' take ten thousand dollahs faw thad feveh +myself--to see that devotion of my wife. You muz 'ave observe', eh?" + +"Yes, indeed, old man; nobody could help observing. I wouldn't talk any +more just now." + +"No," he insisted, "nobody could eveh doubt. 'Action speak loudeh than +word,' eh?" + +"Yes, but we don't want either from you just now." I put his restless arms +back under the cover; not to keep the outer temperature absolutely even +was counted a deadly risk. "Besides," I said, "you're talking out of +character, old boy." + +He looked at me mildly, steadily, for several moments, as if something +about me gave him infinite comfort. It was a man's declaration of love to +a man, and as he read the same in my eyes, he closed his own and drowsed. + +Though he dozed only at wide intervals and briefly, he asked no more +questions until night; then--"Who's with my wife?" + +"Mine." + +He closed his eyes again, peacefully. It was in keeping with his perfect +courtesy not to ask how the new patient was. If she was doing well,--well; +and if not, he would spare us the pain of informing or deceiving him. + +Senda became a kind of chief-of-staff for both sides of the street. She +would have begged to be Mrs. Fontenette's nurse, but for one other +responsibility, which we felt it would be unsafe, and she thought it would +be unfair, for her to put thus beyond her own reach: "se care of mine +hussbandt." + +She wore a plain path across the unpaved street to our house, and another +to our neighbor's. "Sat iss a too great risk," she compassionately +maintained, "to leaf even in se daytime sose shiltren--so late sick--alone +viss only mine hussbandt and se sairvants!" + +The doctor was concerned for Mrs. Fontenette from the beginning. "Terribly +nervous," he said, "and full from her feet to her eyes, of a terror of +death--merely a part of the disease, you know." But in this case I did not +know. + +"Pathetic," he called the fevered satisfaction she took in the hovering +attentions of our old black nurse, who gave us brief respites in the two +sick-rooms by turns, and who had according to Mrs. Fontenette, "such a +beautiful faith!" The doctor thought it mostly words, among which "de Lawd +willin'" so constantly recurred that out of the sick-room he always +alluded to her as D.V., though never without a certain sincere regard. +This kind old soul had nursed much yellow fever in her time, and it did +not occur to us that maybe her time was past. + +When Mrs. Fontenette had been ill something over a week, the doctor one +evening made us glad by saying as he came through the little dining-room +and jerked a thumb back toward Fontenette's door, "Just keep him as he is +for one more night and, I promise you, he'll get well; but!"--He sat down +on the couch--Senda's--in the parlor, and pointed at the door to Mrs. +Fontenette's room--"You've got to be careful _how_ you let even that be +known--in there! She can get well too--if--" And he went on to tell how in +this ailment all the tissues of the body sink into such frail +deterioration, that so slight a thing as the undue thrill of an emotion, +may rend some inner part of the soul's house and make it hopelessly +untenable. + +"Iss sat not se condition vhat make it so easy to relapse?" asked Senda. + +He said it was, I think, and went his way, little knowing to what a night +he was leaving us--except for its celestial beauty, upon which he +expatiated as I stepped with him to the gate. + + + +XVIII + + +He had not been gone long enough for me to get back into the house- +Fonteette's--when I espied coming to me, in piteous haste from her home +around the corner, the young daughter of another neighbor. Her hair was +about her eyes and as she saw the physician had gone, she wrung her hands +and burst into violent weeping. I ran to her outside the gate, pointing +backward at Mrs. Fontenette's room, with entreating signs for quiet as she +called--"Oh, _where_ is he gone? Which way did he go?" + +"I can't tell you, my dear girl!" I murmured. "I don't know! What is the +trouble?" + +"My father!" she hoarsely whispered. + +"My father's dying! dying in a raging delirium, and we can't hold him in +bed! O, come and help us!" She threw her hands above her head in wild +despair, and gnawed her fingers and lips and shook and writhed as she +gulped down her sobs, and laid hold of me and begged as though I had +refused. + +I found her words true. It took four men to keep him down. I did not have +to stay to the end, and when I reached Fontenette's side again, was glad +to find I had been away but little over an hour. + +I sent the old black woman home and to bed, and may have sat an hour more, +when she came back to tell us, that one of the children was very wakeful +and feverish. Senda went to see into the matter for us, and the old woman +took her place in the little parlor. Mrs. Smith was with Mrs. Fontenette. + +Fontenette slept. Loath to see him open his eyes, I kept very still, while +nearly another hour dragged by, listening hard for Senda's return, but +hearing only, once or twice, through the narrow stairway and closets +between the two bedrooms, a faint stir that showed Mrs. Fontenette was +awake and being waited on. + +I was grateful for the rarity of outdoor sounds; a few tree-frogs piped, +two or three solitary wayfarers passed in the street; twice or more the +sergeant of the night-watch trilled his whistle in a street or two behind +us, and twice or more in front; and once, and once again, came the distant +bellow of steamboats passing each other--not the famous boats whose +whistle you would know one from another, for they were laid up. I doubt if +I have forgotten any sound that I noticed that night. I remember the +drowsy rumble of the midnight horse-car and tinkle of its mule's bell, +first in Prytania street and then in Magazine. It was just after these +that at last a black hand beckoned me to the door, and under her breath +the old nurse told me she was just back from our house, where her mistress +had sent her, and that--"De-eh--de-eh"-- + +"The Baroness?" + +"Yass, sih, de--de outlayndish la-ady--" + +Senda had sent word that the child had only an indigestion--a thing +serious enough in such a case--and though still slightly feverish was now +asleep, but restless. + +"Sih? Yass, sir--awnressless--dass 'zac'ly what I say!" + +Wherefore Senda would either remain in the nursery or return to us, as we +should elect. + +"O no, sih, she no need to come back right now, anyhow; yass, sih, dass +what de Mis' say, too." + +"Then you'll stay here," I whispered. + +"Yass, sih, ef de Lawd wil'--I mean ef you wants me, sih--yass, sih, +thaynk you, sih. I loves to tend on Mis' Fontenette, she got sich a bu'ful +fa aith, same like she say I got. Yass, sih, I dess loves to set an' watch +her--wid dat sweet samtimonious fa-ace." + +Fontenette being still asleep I gave her my place for a moment, and went +to the door between the parlor and his wife's room. Mrs. Smith came to it, +barely breathing the triumphant word--"Just dropped asleep!" + +When I replied that I would take a little fresh air at the front door she +asked if at my leisure I would empty and bring in from the window-sill, +around on the garden side of her patient's room a saucer containing the +over-sweetened remains of some orange-leaf tea, that "D.V." had made "for +to wrench out de nerves." She wanted the saucer. + +I went outside a step or two and took in a long draught of good air--the +air of a yellow-fever room is dreadful. It was my first breath of mental +relief also; almost the first that night, and the last. + +I paced once or twice the short narrow walk between the front flower-beds, +surprised at their well-kept and blooming condition until I remembered +Senda. The moths were out in strong numbers, and it was delightful to +forget graver things for a moment and see the flowers bend coyly under +their passionate kisses and blushingly rise again when the sweet robbery +was finished. So it happened that I came where a glance across to my own +garden showed me, on the side farthest from the nursery, a favorite bush, +made pale by a light that could come only from the entomologist's window! +I went in promptly, told what I proposed to do, and hurried out again. + + + +XIX + + +I crossed into my garden and silently mounted the balcony stairs I have +mentioned once before. His balcony door was ajar. His room was empty. He +had occupied the bed. A happy thought struck me--to feel the spot where he +had lain; it was still warm. Good! But his clothes were all gone except +his shoes, and they, you remember, were no proof that he was indoors. + +I stole down into the garden once more, and looked hurriedly in several +directions, but saw no sign of him. I am not a ferocious man even when +alone, but as I came near the fence of our fat neighbor--once fat, poor +fellow, and destined to be so again in time--and still saw no one, I was +made conscious of waving my fist and muttering through my gritting teeth, +by hearing my name softly called. It was an unfamiliar female voice that +spoke, from a window beyond the fence, and it flashed on my remembrance +that two kinswomen of my neighbor were watching with his wife, whose case +was giving new cause for anxiety. It was Mrs. Soandso, the voice +explained, and could I possibly come in there a moment?--if only to the +window! + +"Is our friend the Baron over here?" I asked, as I came to it. He was not. +"Well, never mind," I said; "how is your patient?" + +"Oh that's just what we wish we knew. In some ways she seems better, but +she's more unquiet. She's had some slight nausea and it seems to increase. +Do you think that is important?" + +"Yes," I said, "very. I hear some one cracking ice; you are keeping ice on +her throat--no? Well, begin it at once, and persuade her to lie on her +back as quietly as she can, and get her to sleep if possible! Doctor--no; +he wouldn't come before morning, anyhow; but I'll send Mrs. Smith right +over to you, if she possibly can come." + +I turned hurriedly away and had taken only a few steps, when I lit upon +the entomologist. "Well, I'll just--what _are_ you doing here? Where were +you when I was in your room just now?" His shoes were on. + +"Vhat you vanted mit me? I vas by dot librair' going. For vhat you moof +dot putterfly-net fon t'e mandtelpiece? You make me _too_ much troubple to +find dot vhen I vas in a hurry!" He shook it at me. + +"Hurry!" In my anger and distress I laughed. "My friend"--laying a hand on +him--"you'll hurry across the street with me." + +He waved me off. "Yes; go on, you; I coom py undt py; I dtink t'ere iss +vun maud come into dot gardten, vhat I haf not pefore seen since more as +acht years, alreadty!" + +"Yes," I retorted, "and so you're here at the gate alone. Now come right +along with me! Aren't there enough lives in danger to-night, but you must" +-He stopped me in the middle of the street. + +"Mine Gott! vhat iss dot you say? Who--_who_--mine Gott! _who_ iss her +life in dtanger? Iss dot--mine Gott! is dot he-ere?" He pointed to Mrs. +Fontenette's front window. + +I could hardly keep my fist off him. "Hush! you--For one place it's +_here_." I pushed him with my finger. + +"Ach!" he exclaimed in infinite relief. "I dt'ought you mean--I--I +dt'ought--hmm!--hmm! I am dtired." He leaned on me like a sick child and +we went into the cottage parlor. The moment he saw the lounge he lay down +upon it, or I should have taken him back into the dining-room. + +"Sha'n't I put that net away for you?" I murmured, as I dropped a light +covering over him. + +But he only hugged the toy closer. "No; I geep it--hmm!--hmm!--I am +dtired--" + + + +XX + + +Both patients, I found, were drowsing; the husband peacefully, the wife +with troubled dreams. When the Baron spoke her eyes opened with a look, +first eager and then distressful, but closed again. We put the old black +woman temporarily into her room and Mrs. Smith hurried to our other +neighbors, whence she was to despatch one of their servants to bid Senda +come to us at once. But "No battle"--have I already used the proverb? She +gave the message to the servant, but it never reached Senda. Somebody +forgot. As I sat by Fontenette with ears alert for Senda's coming and was +wondering at the unbroken silence, he opened his eyes on me and smiled. + +"Ah!" he softly said, "thad was a pleasan' dream!" + +"A pleasant dream, was it?" + +"Yes; I was having the dream thad my wife she was showing me those rose- +_bushes_; an' every rose-_bush_ it had roses, an' every rose it was +perfect." + +I leaned close and said that he had been mighty good not to ask about her +all these many days, and that if he would engage to do as well for as long +a time again, and to try now to have another good dream I would tell him +that she was sleeping and was without any alarming symptoms. O lucky +speech! It was true when it was uttered; but how soon the hour belied it! + +As he obediently closed his eyes, his hand stole out from the side of the +covers and felt for mine. I gave it and as he kept it his thought seemed +to me to flow into my brain. I could feel him, as it were, thinking of his +wife, loving her through all the deeps of his still nature with seven-- +yes, seventy--times the passion that I fancied would ever be possible to +that young girl I had seen a few hours earlier showing her heart to the +world, with falling hair and rending sobs. As he lay thus trying to court +back his dream of perfect roses, I had my delight in knowing he would +never dream-what Senda saw so plainly, yet with such faultless modesty-- +that all true love draws its strength and fragrance from the riches not of +the loved one's, but of the lover's soul. + +His grasp had begun to loosen, when I thought I heard from the wife's room +a sudden sound that made my mind flash back to the saucer I had failed to +bring in. It was as though the old-fashioned, unweighted window-sash, +having been slightly lifted, had slipped from the fingers and fallen shut. +I hearkened, and the next instant there came softly searching through +doors, through walls, through my own flesh and blood, a long half-wailing +sigh. Fontenette tightened on my hand, then dropped it, and opening his +eyes sharply, asked, "What was that?" + +"What was what, old fellow?" I pretended to have been more than half +asleep myself. + +"Did I only dream I 'eard it, thad noise?" + +"That isn't a hard thing to do in your condition," I replied, with my +serenest smile, and again he closed his eyes. Yet for two or three minutes +it was plain he listened; but soon he forbore and began once more to +slumber. Then very soon I faintly detected a stir in the parlor, and +stealing to the door to listen through the dining-room, came abruptly upon +the old black woman. Disaster was written on her face and when she spoke +tears came into her eyes. + +"De madam want you," she said, and passed in to take my place. + +As I went on to the parlor, Mrs. Smith, just inside Mrs. Fontenette's +door, beckoned me. As I drew near I made an inquiring motion in the +direction of our neighbor across the way. + +"I'm hopeful," was her whispered reply; "but--in here"--she shook her +head. Just then the new maid came from our house, and Mrs. Smith whispered +again-- "Go over quickly to the Baron; he's in his room. 'Twas he came for +me. He'll tell you all. But he'll not tell his wife, and she mustn't +know." + +As I ran across the street I divined almost in full what had taken place. + +I had noticed the possibility of some of the facts when I had left the +Baron asleep on the parlor lounge, but they could have done no harm, even +when Senda did not come, had it not been for two other facts which I had +failed to foresee; one, that we had unwittingly overtasked our willing old +nurse, and in her chair in Mrs. Fontenette's room she was going to fall +asleep; and the other that the entomologist would waken. + + + +XXI + + +And now see what a cunning trap the most innocent intentions may sometimes +set. There was a mirror in the sick-room purposely so placed that, with +the parlor door ajar, the watcher, but not the patient, could see into the +parlor, and could be seen from the parlor when sitting anywhere between +the mirror and the window beyond it. This window was the one that looked +into the side garden. Purposely, too, the lounge had been placed so as to +give and receive these advantages. A candle stood on the window's inner +ledge and was screened from the unseen bed, but shone outward through the +window and inward upon the mirror. The front door of the parlor opened +readily to anyone within or without who knew enough to use its two latches +at once, but neither within nor without to--the Baron, say--who did not +know. + +Do you see it? As he lay awake on the lounge his eye was, of course, drawn +constantly to the mirror by the reflected light of the candle, and to its +images of the nodding watcher and of the window just beyond. So lying and +gazing, he had suddenly beheld that which brought him from the lounge in +an instant, net in hand, and tortured to find the front door--by which he +would have slipped out and around to the window--fastened! What he saw was +the moth--the moth so many years unseen. Now it sipped at the saucer of +sweet stuff, now hovered over it, now was lost in the dark, and now +fluttered up or slid down the pane, lured by the beam of the candle. + +If he was not to lose it, there was but one thing to do. With his eyes +fixed, moth-mad, on the window, he glided in, passed the two sleepers, and +stealthily lifted the sash with one hand, the other poising the net. The +moth dropped under, the net swept after it, and the sash slipped and fell. +Mrs. Fontenette rose wildly, and when she saw first the old woman, half +starting from her seat with frightened stare, and then the entomologist +speechless, motionless, and looming like an apparition, she gave that cry +her husband heard, and fell back upon the pillow in a convulsion. + +I found the Baron sitting on the side of his bed like a child trying to be +awake without waking. No, not _trying_ to do or be anything; but aimless, +dazed, silent, lost. + +He obeyed, automatically, my every request. I set about getting him to bed +at once, putting his clothes beyond his reach, and even locking his +balcony door, without a sign of objection from him. Then I left him for a +moment, and calling Senda from the nursery to the parlor told her the +state of the different patients, including her husband, but without the +hows and whys except that I had found him in our garden with his precious +net. "And now, as it will soon be day, Mrs. Smith and I--with the servants +and others--can take care of the four." + +"If I"--meekly interrupted the sweet woman--"vill go for se doctors? I +vill go." Soon she was off. + +Then I went back to her husband, and finding his mood so changed that he +was eager to explain everything, I let him talk; which I soon saw was a +blunder; for he got pitifully excited, and wanted to go over the same +ground again and again. One matter I was resolved to fix in his mind +without delay. "Mark you," I charged him, "your wife must never know a +word of this!" + +"Eh?--No"--and the next instant the sick woman across the way was filling +all his thought: "Mine Gott! she rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!" +and up he would start. Then as I pressed him down--"Mine Gott! I vould not +go in, if I dhink she would do dot. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!--Undt I tidt not +t'e mawdt get. + +"Hmm! Even I titn't saw vhere it iss gone. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry! + +"Undt dot door kit shtuck! Hmm! Undt dot vindow iss not right made. Hmm! + +"I tidn't vant to do dot--you know? Hmm! I am sorry!--Ach, mine Gott! she +rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!" Thus round and round. What to do +for him I did not know! + +Yet he grew quiet, and was as good as silent, when Senda, long before I +began to look for her, stood unbonneted at my side in a soft glow of +physical animation, her anxiety all hidden and with a pink spot on each +cheek. I was startled. Had _I_ slept--or had she somehow ridden? + +"Are the street-cars running already?" I asked. + +"No," she murmured, producing a vial and looking for a glass. "'Tis I haf +been running alreadty. Sat iss not so tiresome as to valk. Also it is +safeh. I runned all se vay. Vill you sose drops drop faw me?" Her hand +trembled. + +I took the vial but did not meet her glance: for I was wondering if there +was anything in the world she could ask of me that I would not do, and at +such a time it is good for anyone as weak as I am to look at inanimate +things. + +"You got word to all three doctors?" + +"Yes;" she gave her chin the drollest little twist--"sey are all coming +--vhen sey get ready." + + + +XXII + + +That is what they did; but the first who came, and the second, brought +fresh courage; for the Baron--"would most likely be all right again, +before the day was over"; our child was "virtually well"; and from next +door-"better!" was the rapturous news. The third physician, too, was +pleased with Fontenette's case, and we began at once to send the night- +watchers to their rest by turns. + +But there the gladness ended. At Mrs. Fontenette's bedside he asked no +questions. In the parlor he said to us: + +"Well, ... you've done your best; ... I've done mine; ... and it's of no +use." + +"Oh, Doctor!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith. + +"Why, didn't you know it?" He jerked his thumb toward the sick-room. "She +knows it. She told me she knew it, with her first glance." + +He pondered. "I wish she were not so near _him_. If she were only in here +--you see?" + +Yes, we saw; the two patients would then be, on their either hand, one +whole room apart, as if in two squares of a checkerboard that touch only +at one corner. + +"Well," he said, "we must move her at once. I'll show you how; I'll stay +and help you." + +It seemed more as though we helped him--a very little--as we first moved +her and then took the light bedstead apart, set it up again in the parlor, +and laid her in it, all without a noticeable sound, and with only great +comfort of mind to her--for she knew why we did it. Then I made all haste +to my own house again and had the relief to see, as Senda came toward me +from her husband's room, that he had told her nothing. "Vell?" she eagerly +asked. + +"Well, Monsieur Fontenette is greatly improved!" + +"O sat iss goodt! And se Madame; she, too, is betteh?--a little?--eh-- +no-o?" + +I said that what the doctor had feared, a "lesion," had taken place, and +that there was no longer any hope of her life. At which she lighted up +with a lovely defiance. + +"Ho-o! no long-eh any hope! Yes, sare _iss_ long-er any hope! Vhere iss +sat doc-toh? Sare _shall_ be hope! Kif _me_ sat patient! I can keep se +vatch of mine huss-bandt at se _same_ time. He hass not a relapse! Kif me +se patient! Many ossehs befo'e I haf savedt vhen hadt sose doctohs no +long-eh any hope! Mine Gott! vas sare so much hope vhen she and her +hussbandt mine sick hussbandt and me out of se street took in? Vill you +let stay by mine hussbandt, anyhow a short vhile, one of yo' so goodt +sairvants?" The instant I assented she flew down the veranda steps, +through the garden, and out across the street. + +I lingered a few moments with the entomologist before leaving him with +others. He asked me only one question: "Hmm! Hmm! How she iss?" + +"Why," said I, brightly, "I think she feels rather more comfortable than +she did." + +"Hmm!--Hmm!--I am sorry--Hmm!--Ach! mine Gott, I am so hoongary!--Hmm! I +am so dtired mit dot sou-oup undt dose creckers!--Hmm! I vish I haf vonce +a whole pifshtea-ak undt a glahss beer--hmm!" + +"Hmm!" I echoed, "your subsequent marketing wouldn't cost much." I went +down town on some imperative office business, came back in a cab, gave +word to be called at such an hour, and lay down. But while I slept my +order was countermanded and when I awakened it was once more midnight. I +went to my open window and heard, through his balcony door--locked, now, +and its key in my pocket--the Baron, snoring. Then I sprang into my +clothes and sped across the street. + +I went first around to the outer door of the dining-room, and was briefly +told the best I could have hoped, of Fontenette. I returned to the front +and stepped softly into what had been Mrs. Fontenette's room. Finding no +one in it I waited, and when I presently heard voices in the other room, I +touched its door-knob. Mrs. Smith came out, closed the door carefully, and +sank into a seat. + +"It's been a noble fight!" she said, smiling up through her tears. "When +the doctor came back and saw how wonderfully the--the worst--had been held +off, he joined in the battle! He's been here three times since!" + +"And can it be that she is going to pull through?" + +My wife's face went down into her hands. "O, no--no. She's dying now-- +dying in Senda's arms!" + +Her ear, quicker than mine, heard some sign within and she left me. But +she was back almost at once, whispering: + +"She knows you're here, and says she has a message to her husband which +she can give only to you." + +We gazed into each other's eyes. "Go in," she said. + +As I entered, Senda tenderly disengaged herself, went out, and closed the +door. + +I drew near in silence and she began at once to speak, bidding me take the +chair Senda had left, and with a tender smile thanking me for coming. + +Then she said faintly and slowly, but with an unfaltering voice, "I want +you to know one or two things so that if it ever should be my husband's +affliction to find out how foolish and undutiful I have been, you can tell +them to him. Tell him my wrongdoing was, from first to last, almost +totally--almost totally----" + +"Do you mean--intangible?" + +"Yes, yes, intangible. Then if he should say that the intangible part is +the priceless part--the life, the beauty, the very essence of the whole +matter--isn't it strange that we women are slower than men to see that-- +tell him I saw it, saw it and confessed it when for his sake I was +slipping away from him by stealth out of life up to my merciful Judge. + +"I may not be saying these things in their right order, but--tell him I +wish he'd marry again; only let him first be sure the woman loves him as +truly and deeply as he is sure to love her. I find I've never truly loved +him till now. If he doesn't know it don't ever tell him; but tell him I +died loving him and blessing him--for the unearned glorious love he gave +me all my days. That's all. That's all to him. But I would like to send +one word to"--she lifted her hand-- + +"Across the street?" I murmured. + +Her eyes said yes. "Tell _him_--you may never see the right time for it, +but if you do--tell him I craved his forgiveness." + +I shook my head. + +"Yes--yes, tell him so; it was far the most my fault; he is such a child; +such a child of nature, I mean. Tell him I said it sounds very pretty to +call ourselves and each other children of nature, but we have no right to +be such. The word is 'Be thou clean,' and if we are not masters of nature +we can't do it. Tell him that, will you? And tell him he has nothing to +grieve for; I was only a dangerous toy, and I want him to love the dear +Father for taking it away from him before he had hurt himself. + +"Now I am ready to go--only--that hymn those black women--in the cemetery +--you remember? I've made another verse to it. You'll find it--afterward-- +on a scrap of paper between the leaves of my Bible. It isn't good poetry, +of course; it's the only verse I ever composed. May I say it to you just +for my--my testimony? It's this: + + Yet though I have sinned, Lord, all others above, + Though feeble my prayers, Lord; my tears all unseen; + I'll trust in thy love, Lord; I'll trust in thy love-- + O I'll trust in thy love like Mary Mahgaleen." + +An exalted smile lighted her face as she sunk deeper into the pillows. She +tried to speak again, but her voice failed. I bent my ear and she +whispered--"Senda." + +As I beckoned Senda in, Mrs. Smith motioned for me to come to her where +she stood at a window whose sash she had slightly lifted; the same to +which the moth had once been lured by the little puddle of sweet drink and +the candle. + +"Do you want to see a parable?" she whispered, and all but blinded with +tears, she pointed to the lost moth lying half in, half out of the window, +still beautiful but crushed; crushed with its wings full spread, not by +anyone's choice, but because there are so many things in this universe +that not even God can help from being as they are. + +At a whispered call we turned, and Senda, in the door, herself all tears, +made eager signs for us to come. The last summons had surprised even the +dying. We went in noiseless haste, and found her just relaxing on Senda's +arm. Yet she revived an instant; a quiver went through her frame like the +dying shudder of a butterfly, her eyes gazed appealingly into Senda's, +then fixed, and our poor little Titania was gone. + + + +XXIII + + +The story is nearly told. Before I close let me confess how heartlessly I +have told it. Pardon that; and pardon, too, the self-consciousness that +makes me beg not to be remembered as I seem to myself in the tale--a +tiptoeing, peeping figure prowling by night after undue revelations, and +using them--to the humiliation of souls cleaner than mine could ever +pretend to be. + +Next day, by stealth again, we buried the little rose-lady, unknown to her +husband. We could not keep the fact long from the entomologist, for he was +up and about the house again. Nor was there equal need. So when the last +rites were over I told him, but without giving any part of her message--I +couldn't do it! I just said she had left us. + +His eye did not moisten, but he paled, trembled, wiped his brow. Then I +handed him the crushed moth, and he was his convalescent self again. + +"Hmm!--Dot iss a pity she kit smashed; I titn't vant to do dot." + +I thought maybe he felt more than he showed, for he fretted to be allowed +to take a walk alone beyond the gate and the corner. With some misgivings +his wife let him go, and when she was almost anxious enough over his tardy +stay to start after him he came back looking very much better. But the +next morning, when we found him in the burning fever of an unmistakable +relapse, he confessed that the German keeper of an eating-stall in the +neighboring market, for his hunger's and the Fatherland's sake, had +treated him to his "whole pifshtea-ak undt glahss be-eh." + +He lived only a few days. Through all his deliriums he hunted butterflies +and beetles, and died insensible to his wife's endearments, repeating the +Latin conjugations of his inconceivable boyhood. + +So they both, caterpillar and rose, were gone; but the memory of them +stays, green--yes, and fragrant--not alone with Fontenette, and not only +with Senda besides, but with us also. How often I recall the talks on +theology I had used sometimes to let myself fall into with the little +unsuccessful mistress of "rose-es" who first brought the miser of +knowledge into our garden, and whenever I do so I wonder, and wonder, and +lose my bearings and find and lose them again, and wonder and wonder--what +God has done with the entomologist. + +We never had to tell Fontenette that he was widowed. We had only to be +long enough silent, and when he ceased, for a time, to get better, and +rather lost the strength he had been gaining, and on entering his room we +found him always with his face to the wall, we saw that he knew. So for +his sake I was glad when one day, without facing round to me, his hand +tightened on mine in a wild tremor and he groaned, "Tell it me--tell it." + +I told it. I thought it well to give him one of her messages and withhold +the rest, like the unscrupulous friend I always try to be; and when he had +heard quite through--"Tell him I died loving him and blessing him for the +unearned glorious love he gave me all our days"--he made as if to say the +word was beyond all his deserving, turned upon his face, and soaked the +pillow with his tears. But from that day he began slowly but steadily to +get well. + +We kept Senda with us as long as we could, and when at length she put her +foot down so that you might have heard it--say like the dropping of a nut +in the wood--and declared that go she must-must-must! we first laughed, +then scoffed, and then grew violent, and the battle forced her backward. +But when we tried to salary her to stay, _she_ laughed, scoffed, grew +violent, and retook her entrenchments. And then, when she offered the +ultimatum that we must take pay for keeping her, we took our turn again at +the three forms of demonstration, and a late moon rose upon a drawn +battle. Since then we have learned to count it one of our dearest rights +to get "put out" at Senda's outrageous reasonableness, but she doesn't +fret, for "sare is neveh any sundeh viss se lightening." + +The issue of this first contest was decided the next day by Fontenette, +still on his bed of convalescence. "Can I raise enough money in yo' office +to go at France?" + +"You can raise twice enough, Fontenette, if it's to try to bring back some +new business." + +"Well--yes, 'tis for that. Of co'se, besides--" + +"Yes, I know: of course." + +"But tha'z what puzzle' me. What I'm going do with that house heah, whilse +I'm yondeh! I wou'n' sell it--ah no! I wou'n' sell one of those roses! An' +no mo' I wou'n' rent it. Tha's a monument, that house heah, you know?" + +"Yes, I know." He never found out how well I knew. + +"Fontenette, I'll tell you what to do with it." + +"No, you don't need; I know whad thad is. An' thaz the same I want--me. +Only--you thing thad wou'n' be hasking her too much troub'?" + +"No, indeed. There's nothing else you could name that she'd be so glad to +do." + +When I told Senda I had said that, the tears stood in her eyes. "Ah, sat +vass ri-ight! O, sare shall neveh a veed be in sat karten two dayss oldt! +An' sose roses--sey shall be pairfect ever' vun!" + + + +XXIV + + +As perfect as roses every one were her words kept. And Fontenette got his +new business but could not come back that year, nor the second, nor the +third. The hither-side of his affairs he assigned for the time to a +relative, a very young fellow, but ever so capable--"a hustler," as our +fat friend would say in these days. We missed the absentee constantly, but +forgave his detention the easier because incidentally he was clearing up a +matter of Senda's over there, in which certain displeased kindred had +overreached her. Also because of his letters to her, which she so often +did us the honor to show us. + +The first few were brief, formal and colorless; but after some time they +began to take on grace after grace, until at length we had to confess that +to have known him only as we had known him hitherto would have been to +have been satisfied with the reverse of the tapestry, and never fully to +have seen the excellence of his mind or the modest nobility of his spirit. +Frequently we felt very sure we saw also that no small share of their +captivating glow was reflected from Senda's replies--of which she never +would tell us a word. The faults in his written English were surprisingly +few, and to our minds only the more endeared it and him. Maybe we were not +judicial critics. + +Yet we could pass strictures, and as the months lengthened out into years +these winged proxies stirred up, on our side of the street, a profound and +ever-growing impatience. O, yes, every letter was a garden of beautiful +thoughts, still; but think of it! _pansies_ where roses might have been; +and a garden wherein--to speak figuratively--the nightingale never sang. + +On a certain day of All Saints, the fourth after the scourge, Senda sat at +tea with us. Our mood was chastened, but peaceful. We had come from +visiting at the sunset hour the cemetery where in the morning the two +women and our old nurse had decked the tombs of our dead with flowers. I +had noticed that at no tomb front were these tokens piled more abundantly, +or more beautifully or fragrantly, than at those of Flora and the +entomologist; it was always so. I had remarked this on the spot, and +Senda, with her rearranging touch still caressing their splendid masses, +replied, + +"So?--vell--I hope siss shall mine vork and mine pleassure be until +mineself I shall fade like se floweh." + +I inwardly resented the speech, but said nothing. I suppose it was over my +head. + +Now, at the table, she explained as to certain costly blooms about which I +had inquired, that they were Fontenette's special offering, for which he +always sent the purchase money ahead of time and with detailed requests. +Whereat, remembering how she had formerly glozed and gilded the +entomologist's unthrift, I remarked, one-fourth in play, three-fourths in +earnest, + +"A good plain business man isn't the least noble work of God, after all." + +"No," said Senda, without looking up; and, after a long, meditative +breath, she added, very slowly, + +"Se koot Kott makes not all men for se same high calling. If Kott make a +man to do no betteh san make a living or a fawtune, it iss right for se +man to make it; se _man_ iss not to blame. And now I vant to tell you se +news of sat letteh from----" + +"The other side," we suggested, and invited her smile, but without +success. + +"Yes, from se osseh si-ide; sat letteh vhat you haf brought me since more +as a veek ago; and also vhy I haf not sat letteh given you to read. Sat +iss--if you like to know--yes? + +"Vell, sen I vill tell you. And sare are two sings to tell. Se fairst is a +ve'y small, but se secondt iss a ve'y lahge. And se fairst is sat that _I_ +am now se Countess. + +"So? you are glad? I sank you ve'y much. I sink sat iss not much trouble +--to be a countess--in Ame'ica? + +"Se secondt sing"--here a servant entered, and, it seemed to me, never +would go out, but Senda waited till we were again alone--"se secondt-- +pahdon me, I sink I shall betteh se secondt sing divide again into two aw +sree. And se fairst is sat Monsieur Fontenette vill like ve'y--ve'y much +to come home--now--right avay." + +We lifted hands to clap and opened mouths to hurrah, but she raised a +warning hand. + +"No, vait--if you pleass. + +"Se secondt of sose two or sree sings--it is sat--he--Monsieur Fontenette +--hass ask me--" Our hearts rose slowly into our throats--"Ze vun +qvestion to vich sare can be only--se--vun--answeh." + +At this we gulped our breath like schoolgirls and glowed. But the more +show we made of hopeful and pleading smiles, the more those dear eyes, so +seldom wet, filled up with tears. + +"_He_ sinks sare can two answehs be, and he like to heah which is se +answeh I shall gif him, so he shall know if he shall come--now--aw if he +shall come--neveh. + +"O my sweet friend,"--to Mrs. Smith, down whose, face the salt drops stole +unhindered--"sare iss nossing faw _you_ to cry." She smiled heroically. + +I could be silent no longer. "Senda, what have you answered?" + +"I haf answered"--her lips quivered till she gnawed them cruelly--"I am +sorry to take such a long time to tell you sat--but--I--I find sat--ve'y +hahd--to tell." She smiled and gnawed her lips again. "I haf answered-- + +"Do you sink, my deah, sat siss is ri-ight to tell the we'y vords sat I +haf toldt him?--yes?--vell--he tell me I shall se answeh make in vun +vord--is sat not like a man? + +"But I had to take six. And sey are sese: I cannot vhispeh across se +ocean." + + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Strong Hearts, by George W. Cable + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRONG HEARTS *** + +***** This file should be named 9838.txt or 9838.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/9/8/3/9838/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Lazar Liveanu and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you +do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the +rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose +such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and +research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do +practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is +subject to the trademark license, especially commercial +redistribution. + + + +*** START: FULL LICENSE *** + +THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE +PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK + +To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free +distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work +(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project +Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project +Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at +https://gutenberg.org/license). + + +Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic works + +1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to +and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property +(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all +the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy +all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession. +If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the +terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or +entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8. + +1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be +used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who +agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few +things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works +even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See +paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement +and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. See paragraph 1.E below. + +1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation" +or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the +collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an +individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are +located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from +copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative +works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg +are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project +Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by +freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of +this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with +the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by +keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project +Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others. + +1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern +what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in +a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check +the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement +before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or +creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project +Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning +the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United +States. + +1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg: + +1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate +access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently +whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the +phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project +Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, +copied or distributed: + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + +1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived +from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is +posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied +and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees +or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work +with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the +work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 +through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the +Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or +1.E.9. + +1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted +with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution +must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional +terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked +to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the +permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work. + +1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this +work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm. + +1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this +electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without +prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with +active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project +Gutenberg-tm License. + +1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, +compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any +word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or +distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than +"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version +posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org), +you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a +copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon +request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other +form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm +License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1. + +1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, +performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works +unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9. + +1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing +access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided +that + +- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from + the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method + you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is + owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he + has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the + Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments + must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you + prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax + returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and + sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the + address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to + the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies + you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he + does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm + License. You must require such a user to return or + destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium + and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of + Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any + money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the + electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days + of receipt of the work. + +- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free + distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works. + +1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm +electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set +forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from +both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael +Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the +Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below. + +1.F. + +1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable +effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread +public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm +collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain +"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual +property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a +computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by +your equipment. + +1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right +of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project +Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal +fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT +LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE +PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE +TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE +LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR +INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH +DAMAGE. + +1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a +defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can +receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a +written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you +received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with +your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with +the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a +refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity +providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to +receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy +is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further +opportunities to fix the problem. + +1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth +in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO +WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE. + +1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied +warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. +If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the +law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be +interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by +the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any +provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions. + +1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the +trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone +providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance +with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, +promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works, +harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, +that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do +or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm +work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any +Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause. + + +Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm + +Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of +electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers +including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists +because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from +people in all walks of life. + +Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the +assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's +goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will +remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project +Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure +and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations. +To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 +and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org. + + +Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive +Foundation + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit +501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the +state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal +Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification +number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at +https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent +permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws. + +The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S. +Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered +throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at +809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email +business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact +information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official +page at https://pglaf.org + +For additional contact information: + Dr. Gregory B. Newby + Chief Executive and Director + gbnewby@pglaf.org + + +Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg +Literary Archive Foundation + +Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide +spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of +increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be +freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest +array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations +($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt +status with the IRS. + +The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating +charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United +States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a +considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up +with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations +where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To +SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any +particular state visit https://pglaf.org + +While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we +have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition +against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who +approach us with offers to donate. + +International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make +any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from +outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff. + +Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation +methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other +ways including including checks, online payments and credit card +donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate + + +Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic +works. + +Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm +concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared +with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project +Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support. + + +Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S. +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/9838.zip b/9838.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4c4ee12 --- /dev/null +++ b/9838.zip diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1cef40b --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #9838 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9838) diff --git a/old/sthrt10.txt b/old/sthrt10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..300f7db --- /dev/null +++ b/old/sthrt10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4404 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Strong Hearts, by George W. Cable + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Strong Hearts + +Author: George W. Cable + +Release Date: February, 2006 [EBook #9838] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on October 23, 2003] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRONG HEARTS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Lazar Liveanu +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +STRONG HEARTS + +By George W. Cable + + +1899 + + + +_CONTENTS_ + + +_The Solitary + +The Taxidermist + +The Entomologist + + + +In magazine form "The Solitary" appeared under the title of "Gregory's +Island."_ + + + +The Solitary + + + +I + + +"The dream of Pharaoh is one. The seven kine are seven years; and the +seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one.... And for that the +dream was doubled unto Pharaoh twice, it is because the thing is +established."... + +In other words: Behind three or four subtitles and changes of time, scene, +characters, this tale of strong hearts is one. And for that the tale is +tripled or quadrupled unto you three or four times (the number will +depend); it is because in each of its three or four aspects--or separate +stories, if you insist--it sets forth, in heroic natures and poetic fates, +a principle which seems to me so universal that I think Joseph would say +of it also, as he said to the sovereign of Egypt, "The thing is +established of God." + +I know no better way to state this principle, being a man, not of letters, +but of commerce (and finance), than to say--what I fear I never should +have learned had I not known the men and women I here tell of--that +religion without poetry is as dead a thing as poetry without religion. In +our practical use of them, I mean; their infusion into all our doing and +being. As dry as a mummy, great Joseph would say. + +Shall I be more explicit? Taking that great factor of life which men, with +countless lights, shades, narrownesses and breadths of meaning, call +Religion, and taking it in the largest sense we can give it; in like +manner taking Poetry in the largest sense possible; this cluster of tales +is one, because from each of its parts, with no argument but the souls and +fates they tell of, it illustrates the indivisible twinship of Poetry and +Religion; a oneness of office and of culmination, which, as they reach +their highest plane, merges them into identity. Is that any clearer? You +see I am no scientist or philosopher, and I do not stand at any dizzy +height, even in my regular business of banking and insurance, except now +and then when my colleagues of the clearing-house or board want something +drawn up--"Whereas, the inscrutable wisdom of Providence has taken from +among us"--something like that. + +I tell the stories as I saw them occur. I tell them for your +entertainment; the truth they taught me you may do what you please with. +It was exemplified in some of these men and women by their failure to +incarnate it. Others, through the stained glass of their imperfect +humanity, showed it forth alive and alight in their own souls and bodies. +One there was who never dreamed he was a bright example of anything, in a +world which, you shall find him saying, God--or somebody--whoever is +responsible for civilization--had made only too good and complex and big +for him. We may hold that to make life a perfect, triumphant poem we must +keep in beautiful, untyrannous subordination every impulse of mere self- +provision, whether earthly or heavenly, while at the same time we give +life its equatorial circumference. I know that he so believed. Yet, under +no better conscious motive than an impulse of pure self-preservation, +finding his spiritual breadth and stature too small for half the practical +demands of such large theories, he humbly set to work to narrow down the +circumference of his life to limits within which he might hope to turn +_some_ of its daily issues into good poetry. This is the main reason why I +tell of him first, and why the parts of my story--or the stories--do not +fall into chronological order. I break that order with impunity, and adopt +that which I believe to be best in the interest of Poetry and themselves. +Only do not think hard if I get more interested in the story, or stories, +than in the interpretation thereof. + + + +II + + +The man of whom I am speaking was a tallish, slim young fellow, shaped +well enough, though a trifle limp for a Louisianian in the Mississippi +(Confederate) cavalry. Some camp wag had fastened on him the nickname of +"Crackedfiddle." Our acquaintance began more than a year before Lee's +surrender; but Gregory came out of the war without any startling record, +and the main thing I tell of him occurred some years later. + +I never saw him under arms or in uniform. I met him first at the house of +a planter, where I was making the most of a flesh-wound, and was, myself, +in uniform simply because I hadn't any other clothes. There were pretty +girls in the house, and as his friends and fellow-visitors--except me-- +wore the gilt bars of commissioned rank on their gray collars, and he, as +a private, had done nothing glorious, his appearance was always in +civilian's dress. Black he wore, from head to foot, in the cut fashionable +in New Orleans when the war brought fashion to a stand: coat-waist high, +skirt solemnly long; sleeves and trousers small at the hands and feet, and +puffed out--phew! in the middle. The whole scheme was dandyish, dashing, +zou-zou; and when he appeared in it, dark, good-looking, loose, +languorous, slow to smile and slower to speak, it was--confusing. + +One sunset hour as I sat alone on the planter's veranda immersed in a +romance, I noticed, too late to offer any serviceable warning, this +impressive black suit and its ungenerously nicknamed contents coming in at +the gate unprotected. Dogs, in the South, in those times, were not the +caressed and harmless creatures now so common. A Mississippi planter's +watch-dogs were kept for their vigilant and ferocious hostility to the +negro of the quarters and to all strangers. One of these, a powerful, +notorious, bloodthirsty brute, long-bodied, deer-legged--you may possibly +know that big breed the planters called the "cur-dog" and prized so highly +-darted out of hiding and silently sprang at the visitor's throat. Gregory +swerved, and the brute's fangs, whirling by his face, closed in the sleeve +and rent it from shoulder to elbow. At the same time another, one of the +old "bear-dog" breed, was coming as fast as the light block and chain he +had to drag would allow him. Gregory neither spoke, nor moved to attack or +retreat. At my outcry the dogs slunk away, and he asked me, diffidently, +for a thing which was very precious in those days--pins. + +But he was quickly surrounded by pitying eyes and emotional voices, and +was coaxed into the house, where the young ladies took his coat away to +mend it. While he waited for it in my room I spoke of the terror so many +brave men had of these fierce home-guards. I knew one such beast that was +sired of a wolf. He heard me with downcast eyes, at first with evident +pleasure, but very soon quite gravely. + +"They can afford to fear dogs," he replied, "when they've got no other +fear." And when I would have it that he had shown a stout heart he smiled +ruefully. + +"I do everything through weakness," he soliloquized, and, taking my book, +opened it as if to dismiss our theme. But I bade him turn to the preface, +where heavily scored by the same feminine hand which had written on the +blank leaf opposite, "Richard Thorndyke Smith, from C.O."--we read +something like this: + +The seed of heroism is in all of us. Else we should not forever relish, as +we do, stories of peril, temptation, and exploit. Their true zest is no +mere ticklement of our curiosity or wonder, but comradeship with souls +that have courage in danger, faithfulness under trial, or magnanimity in +triumph or defeat. We have, moreover, it went on to say, a care for human +excellence _in general_, by reason of which we want not alone our son, or +cousin, or sister, but _man everywhere_, the norm, _man_, to be strong, +sweet, and true; and reading stories of such, we feel this wish rebound +upon us as duty sweetened by a new hope, and have a new yearning for its +fulfilment in ourselves. + +"In short," said I, closing the book, "those imaginative victories of soul +over circumstance become essentially ours by sympathy and emulation, don't +they?" + +"O yes," he sighed, and added an indistinct word about "spasms of virtue." +But I claimed a special charm and use for unexpected and detached +heroisms, be they fact or fiction. "If adventitious virtue," I argued, +"can spring up from unsuspected seed and without the big roots of +character--" + +"You think," interrupted Gregory, "there's a fresh chance for me." + +"For all the common run of us!" I cried. "Why not? And even if there +isn't, hasn't it a beauty and a value? Isn't a rose a rose, on the bush or +off? Gold is gold wherever you find it, and the veriest spasm of true +virtue, coined into action, is true virtue, and counts. It may not work my +nature's whole redemption, but it works that way, and is just so much +solid help toward the whole world's uplift." I was young enough then to +talk in that manner, and he actually took comfort in my words, confessing +that it had been his way to count a good act which was not in character +with its doer as something like a dead loss to everybody. + +"I'm glad it's not," he said, "for I reckon my ruling motive is always +fear." + +"Was it fear this evening?" I asked. + +"Yes," he replied, "it was. It was fear of a coward's name, and a sort of +abject horror of being one." + +"Too big a coward inside," I laughed, "to be a big stout coward outside," +and he assented. + +"Smith," he said, and paused long, "if I were a hard drinker and should +try to quit, it wouldn't be courage that would carry me through, but fear; +quaking fear of a drunkard's life and a drunkard's death." + +I was about to rejoin that the danger was already at his door, but he read +the warning accusation in my eye. + +"I'm afraid so," he responded. "I had a strange experience once," he +presently added, as if reminded of it by what we had last said. "I took a +prisoner." + +"By the overwhelming power of fear?" I inquired. + +"Partly, yes. I saw him before he saw me and I felt that if I didn't take +him he'd either take me or shoot me, so I covered him and he surrendered. +We were in an old pine clearing grown up with oak bushes." + +"Would it have been less strange," I inquired, "if you had been in an old +oak clearing grown up with pine bushes?" + +"No, he'd have got away just the same." + +"What! you didn't bring him in?" + + +"Only part of the way. Then he broke and ran." + +"And you had to shoot him?" + +"No, I didn't even shoot at him. I couldn't, Smith; _he looked so much +like me_. It was like seeing my own ghost. All the time I had him +something kept saying to me, 'You're your own prisoner--you're your own +prisoner.' And--do you know?--that thing comes back to me now every time I +get into the least sort of a tight place!" + +"I wish it would come to me," I responded. A slave girl brought his coat +and our talk remained unfinished until five years after the war. + + + +III + + +Gregory had been brought up on the shore of Mississippi Sound, a beautiful +region fruitful mainly in apathy of character. He was a skilled lover of +sail-boats. When we all got back to New Orleans, paroled, and cast about +for a living in the various channels "open to gentlemen," he, largely, I +think, owing to his timid notion of his worth, went into the rough +business of owning and sailing a small, handsome schooner in the "Lake +trade," which, you know, includes Mississippi Sound. I married, and for +some time he liked much to come and see us--on rainy evenings, when he +knew we should be alone. He was in love yet, as he had been when we were +fellow-absentees from camp, and with the same girl. But his passion had +never presumed to hope, and the girl was of too true a sort ever to thrust +hope upon him. What his love lacked in courage it made up in constancy, +however, and morning, noon, and night--sometimes midnight too, I venture +to say--his all too patient heart had bowed mutely down toward its holy +city across the burning sands of his diffidence. When another fellow +stepped in and married her, he simply loved on, in the same innocent, +dumb, harmless way as before. He gave himself some droll consolations. One +of these was a pretty, sloop-rigged sail-boat, trim and swift, on which he +lavished the tendernesses he knew he should never bestow upon any living +she. He named her Sweetheart; a general term; but he knew that we all knew +it meant the mender of his coat. By and by his visits fell off and I met +him oftenest on the street. Sometimes we stopped for a moment's sidewalk +chat, New Orleans fashion, and I still envied the clear bronze of his fine +skin, which the rest of us had soon lost. But after a while certain +changes began to show for the worse, until one day in the summer of the +fifth year he tried to hurry by me. I stopped him, and was thinking what a +handsome fellow he was even yet, with such a quiet, modest fineness about +him, when he began, with a sudden agony of face, "My schooner's sold for +debt! You know the reason; I've seen you read it all over me every time we +have met, these twelve months--O _don't_ look at me!" + +His slim, refined hands--he gave me both?-were clammy and tremulous. +"Yes," he babbled on, "it's a fixed fact, Smith; the cracked fiddle's a +smashed fiddle at last!" + +I drew him out of the hot sun and into a secluded archway, he talking +straight on with a speed and pitiful grandiloquence totally unlike him. +"I've finished all the easy parts--the first ecstasies of pure license-- +the long down-hill plunge, with all its mad exhilarations--the wild vanity +of venturing and defying--that bigness of the soul's experiences which +makes even its anguish seem finer than the old bitterness of tame +propriety--they are all behind me, now?-the valley of horrors is before! +You can't understand it, Smith. O you can't understand----" + +O couldn't I! And, anyhow, one does not have to put himself through a +whole criminal performance to apprehend its spiritual experiences. I +understood all, and especially what he unwittingly betrayed even now; that +deep thirst for the dramatic element in one's own life, which, when social +conformity fails to supply it, becomes, to an eager soul, sin's cunningest +allurement. + +I tried to talk to him. "Gregory, that day the dogs jumped on you--you +remember?--didn't you say if ever you should reach this condition your +fear might save you?" + +He stared at me a moment. "Do you"--a ray of humor lighted his eyes--"do +you still believe in spasms of virtue?" + +"Thank heaven, yes!" laughed I. + +"Good-by," he said, and was gone. + +I heard of him twice afterward that day. About noon some one coming into +the office said: "I just now saw Crackedfiddle buying a great lot of +powder and shot and fishing-tackle. Here's a note. He says first read it +and then seal it and send it to his aunt." It read: + +_"Don't look for me. You can't find me. I'm not going to kill or hurt +myself, and I'll report again in a month."_ + +I delivered it in person on my way uptown, advising his kinswoman to trust +him on his own terms and hope for the best. Privately, of course, I was +distressed, and did not become less so when, on reaching home, Mrs. Smith +told me that he had been there and borrowed an arm-load of books, saying +he might return some of them in a month, but would probably keep others +for two. So he did; and one evening, when he brought the last of them +back, he told us fully, spiritual experiences and all, what had occurred +to him in the interval. + +The sale of the schooner had paid its debt and left him some cash over. +Better yet, it had saved Sweetheart. On the day of his disappearance she +was lying at the head of the New Basin, distant but a few minutes' walk +from the spot where we met and talked. When he left me he went there. At +the stores thereabout he bought a new hatchet and axe, an extra water-keg +or two, and a month's provisions. He filled all the kegs, stowed +everything aboard, and by the time the afternoon had half waned was +rippling down the New Canal under mule-tow with a strong lake breeze in +his face. + +At the lake (Pontchartrain), as the tow-line was cast off, he hoisted +sail, and, skimming out by lighthouse and breakwater, tripped away toward +Pointe-aux-Herbes and the eastern skyline beyond, he and Sweetheart alone, +his hand clasping hers--the tiller, that is--hour by hour, and the small +waves tiptoeing to kiss her southern cheek as she leaned the other away +from the saucy north wind. In time the low land, and then the lighthouse, +sank and vanished behind them; on the left the sun went down in the purple +black swamps of Manchac; the intervening waters turned crimson and bronze +under the fairer changes of the sky, while in front of them Fort Pike +Light began to glimmer through an opal haze, and by and by to draw near. +It passed. From a large inbound schooner gliding by in the twilight, came +in friendly recognition, the drone of a conch-shell, the last happy +salutation Sweetheart was ever to receive. Then the evening star silvered +their wake through the deep Rigolets, and the rising moon met them, her +and her lover, in Lake Borgne, passing the dark pines of Round Island, and +hurrying on toward the white sand-keys of the Gulf. + +The night was well advanced as they neared the pine-crested dunes of Cat +Island, in whose lee a more cautious sailor would have dropped anchor till +the morning. But to this pair every mile of these fickle waters, channel +and mud-lump, snug lagoon, open sea and hidden bar, each and all, were +known as the woods are known to a hunter, and, as he drew her hand closer +to his side, she turned across the track of the moon and bounded into the +wide south. A maze of marsh islands--huddling along that narrow, half- +drowned mainland of cypress swamp and trembling prairie which follows the +Mississippi out to sea--slept, leagues away, below the western waters. In +the east lay but one slender boundary between the voyager and the +shoreless deep, and this was so near that from its farther edge came now +and again its admonishing murmur, the surf-thunder of the open Gulf +rolling forever down the prone but unshaken battle-front of the sandy +Chandeleurs. + + + +IV + + +So all night, lest wind or resolve should fail next day, he sailed. How to +tell just where dawn found him I scarcely know. + +Somewhere in that blue wilderness, with no other shore in sight, yet not +over three miles northeast of a "pass" between two long tide-covered sand- +reefs, a ferment of delta silt--if science guesses right--had lifted +higher than most of the islands behind it in the sunken west one mere +islet in the shape of a broad crescent, with its outward curve to seaward +and a deep, slender lagoon on the landward side filling the whole length +of its bight. About half the island was flat and was covered with those +strong marsh grasses for which you've seen cattle, on the mainland, +venture so hungrily into the deep ooze. The rest, the southern half, rose +in dazzling white dunes twenty feet or more in height and dappled green +with patches of ragged sod and thin groups of dwarfed and wind-flattened +shrubs. As the sun rose, Sweetheart and her sailor glided through a gap in +the sand reef that closed the lagoon in, luffed, and as a great cloud of +nesting pelicans rose from their dirty town on the flats, ran softly upon +the inner sands, where a rillet, a mere thread of sweet water, trickled +across the white beach. Here he waded ashore with the utensils and +provisions, made a fire, washed down a hot breakfast of bacon and pone +with a pint of black coffee, returned to his boat and slept until +afternoon. Wakened at length by the canting of the sloop with the fall of +the tide, he rose, rekindled his fire, cooked and ate again, smoked two +pipes, and then, idly shouldering his gun, made a long half-circuit of the +beach to south and eastward, mounted the highest dune and gazed far and +wide. + +Nowhere on sand or sea under the illimitable dome was there sign of human +presence on the earth. Nor would there likely be any. Except by +misadventure no ship on any course ever showed more than a topmast above +this horizon. Of the hunters and fishermen who roamed the islands nearer +shore, with the Chandeleurs, the storm-drowned Grand Gosiers and the deep- +sea fishing grounds beyond, few knew the way hither, and fewer ever sailed +it. At the sound of his gun the birds of the beach--sea-snipe, curlew, +plover--showed the whites of their wings for an instant and fell to +feeding again. Save when the swift Wilderness--you remember the revenue +cutter?-chanced this way on her devious patrol, only the steamer of the +light-house inspection service, once a month, came up out of the southwest +through yonder channel and passed within hail on her way from the stations +of the Belize to those of Mississippi Sound; and he knew--had known before +he left the New Basin--that she had just gone by here the day before. + +But to Gregory this solitude brought no quick distress. With a bird or two +at his belt he turned again toward his dying fire. Once on the way he +paused, as he came in sight of the sloop, and gazed upon it with a +faintness of heart he had not known since his voyage began. However, it +presently left him, and hurrying down to her side he began to unload her +completely, and to make a permanent camp in the lee of a ridge of sand +crested with dwarfed casino bushes, well up from the beach. The night did +not stop him, and by the time he was tired enough for sleep he had +lightened the boat of everything stowed into her the previous day. Before +sunrise he was at work again, removing her sandbags, her sails, flags, +cordage, even her spars. The mast would have been heavy for two men to +handle, but he got it out whole, though not without hurting one hand so +painfully that he had to lie off for over two hours. But by midday he was +busy again, and when at low water poor Sweetheart comfortably turned upon +her side on the odorous, clean sand, it was never more to rise. The keen, +new axe of her master ended her days. + +"No! O no!" he said to me, "call it anything but courage! I felt--I don't +want to be sentimental--I'm sure I was not sentimental at the time, but--I +felt as though I were a murderer. All I knew was that it had to be done. I +trembled like a thief. I had to stoop twice before I could take up the +axe, and I was so cold my teeth chattered. When I lifted the first blow I +didn't know where it was going to fall. But it struck as true as a die, +and then I flew at it. I never chopped so fast or clean in my life. I +wasn't fierce; I was as full of self-delight as an overpraised child. And +yet when something delayed me an instant I found I was still shaking. +Courage," said he, "O no; I know what it was, and I knew then. But I had +no choice; it was my last chance." + +I told him that anyone might have thought him a madman chopping up his +last chance. + +"Maybe so," he replied, "but I wasn't; it was the one sane thing I could +do;" and he went on to tell me that when night fell the tallest fire that +ever leapt from those sands blazed from Sweetheart's piled ribs and keel. + +It was proof to him of his having been shrewd, he said, that for many days +he felt no repentance of the act nor was in the least lonely. There was an +infinite relief merely in getting clean away from the huge world of men, +with all its exactions and temptations and the myriad rebukes and rebuffs +of its crass propriety and thrift. He had endured solitude enough in it; +the secret loneliness of a spiritual bankruptcy. Here was life begun over, +with none to make new debts to except nature and himself, and no +besetments but his own circumvented propensities. What humble, happy +masterhood! Each dawn he rose from dreamless sleep and leaped into the +surf as into the embrace of a new existence. Every hour of day brought +some unfretting task or hale pastime. With sheath-knife and sail-needle he +made of his mainsail a handsome tent, using the mainboom for his ridge- +pole, and finishing it just in time for the first night of rain--when, +nevertheless, he lost all his coffee! + +He did not waste toil. He hoarded its opportunities as one might husband +salt on the mountains or water in the desert, and loitering in well +calculated idleness between thoughts many and things of sea and shore +innumerable, filled the intervals from labor to labor with gentle +entertainment. Skyward ponderings by night, canny discoveries under foot +by day, quickened his mind and sight to vast and to minute significancies, +until they declared an Author known to him hitherto only by tradition. +Every acre of the barren islet grew fertile in beauties and mysteries, and +a handful of sand at the door of his tent held him for hours guessing the +titanic battles that had ground the invincible quartz to that crystal meal +and fed it to the sea. + +I may be more rhetorical than he was, but he made all the more of these +conditions while experiencing them, because he knew they could not last +out the thirty days, nor half the thirty, and took modest comfort in a +will strong enough to meet all present demands, well knowing there was one +exigency yet to arise, one old usurer still to be settled with who had not +yet brought in his dun. + + + +V + + +It came--began to come--in the middle of the second week. At its familiar +approach he felt no dismay, save a certain inert dismay that it brought +none. Three, four, five times he went bravely to the rill, drowned his +thirst and called himself satisfied; but the second day was worse than the +first; the craving seemed better than the rill's brief cure of it, and +once he rose straight from drinking of the stream and climbed the dune to +look for a sail. + +He strove in vain to labor. The pleasures of toil were as stale as those +of idleness. His books were put aside with a shudder, and he walked abroad +with a changed gait; the old extortioner was levying on his nerves. And on +his brain. He dreamed that night of war times; found himself commander of +a whole battery of heavy guns, and lo, they were all quaker cannon. When +he would have fled, monstrous terrors met him at every turn, till he woke +and could sleep no more. Dawn widened over sky and sea, but its vast +beauty only mocked the castaway. All day long he wandered up and down and +along and across his glittering prison, no tiniest speck of canvas, no +faintest wreath of smoke, on any water's edge; the horror of his isolation +growing-growing?-like the monsters of his dream, and his whole nature wild +with a desire which was no longer a mere physical drought, but a passion +of the soul, that gave the will an unnatural energy and set at naught +every true interest of earth and heaven. Again and again he would have +shrieked its anguish, but the first note of his voice rebuked him to +silence as if he had espied himself in a glass. He fell on his face +voiceless, writhing, and promised himself, nay, pledged creation and its +Creator, that on the day of his return to the walks of men he would drink +the cup of madness and would drink it thenceforth till he died. + +When night came again he paced the sands for hours and then fell to work +to drag by long and toiling zigzags to a favorable point on the southern +end of the island the mast he had saved, and to raise there a flag of +distress. In the shortness of his resources he dared not choose the +boldest exposures, where the first high wind would cast it down; but where +he placed it it could be seen from every quarter except the north, and any +sail approaching from that direction was virtually sure to come within +hail even of the voice. + +Day had come again as he left the finished task, and once more from the +highest wind-built ridge his hungering eyes swept the round sea's edge. +But he saw no sail. Nerveless and exhausted he descended to the +southeastern beach and watched the morning brighten. The breezes, that for +some time had slept, fitfully revived, and the sun leaped from the sea and +burned its way through a low bank of dark and ruddy clouds with so unusual +a splendor that the beholder was in some degree both quickened and +tranquillized. He could even play at self-command, and in child fashion +bound himself not to mount the dunes again for a northern look within an +hour. This southern half circle must suffice. Indeed, unless these idle +zephyrs should amend, no sail could in that time draw near enough to +notice any signal he could offer. + +Playing at self-command gave him some earnest of it. In a whim of the +better man he put off his clothes and sprang into the breakers. He had +grown chill, but a long wrestle with the surf warmed his blood, and as he +reclothed himself and with a better step took his way along the beach +toward his tent a returning zest of manhood refreshed his spirit. The hour +was up, but in a kind of equilibrium of impulses and with much emptiness +of mind, he let it lengthen on, made a fire, and for the first time in two +days cooked food. He ate and still tarried. A brand in his camp fire, a +piece from the remnant of his boat, made beautiful flames. He idly cast in +another and was pleased to find himself sitting there instead of gazing +his eyes out for sails that never rose into view. He watched a third brand +smoke and blaze. And then, as tamely as if the new impulse were only +another part of a continued abstraction, he arose and once more climbed +the sandy hills. The highest was some distance from his camp. At one point +near its top a brief northeastward glimpse of the marsh's outer edge and +the blue waters beyond showed at least that nothing had come near enough +to raise the pelicans. But the instant his sight cleared the crown of the +ridge he rushed forward, threw up his arms, and lifted his voice in a +long, imploring yell. Hardly two miles away, her shapely canvas leaning +and stiffening in the augmented breeze, a small yacht had just gone about, +and with twice the speed at which she must have approached was, hurrying +back straight into the north. + +The frantic man dashed back and forth along the crest, tossing his arms, +waving his Madras handkerchief, cursing himself for leaving his gun so far +behind, and again and again repeating his vain ahoys in wilder and wilder +alternations of beseeching and rage. The lessening craft flew straight on, +no ear in her skilled enough to catch the distant cry, and no eye alert +enough to scan the dwindling sand-hills. He ceased to call, but still, +with heavy notes of distress to himself, waved and waved, now here, now +there, while the sail grew smaller and smaller. At length he stopped this +also and only stood gazing. Almost on first sight of the craft he had +guessed that the men in her had taken alarm at the signs of changing +weather, and seeing the freshening smoke of his fire had also inferred +that earlier sportsmen were already on the island. Oh, if he could have +fired one shot when she was nearest! But already she was as hopelessly +gone as though she were even now below the horizon. Suddenly he turned and +ran down to his camp. Not for the gun; not in any new hope of signalling +the yacht. No, no; a raft! a raft! Deliverance or destruction, it should +be at his own hand and should wait no longer! + +A raft forthwith he set about to make. Some stout portions of his boat +were still left. Tough shrubs of the sand-hills furnished trennels and +suppler parts. Of ropes there was no lack. The mast was easily dragged +down again to the beach to be once more a mast, and in nervous haste, yet +with skill and thoroughness, the tent was ripped up and remade into a +sail, and even a rude centreboard was rigged in order that one might tack +against unfavorable winds. + +Winds, at nightfall, when the thing began to be near completion, there +were none. The day's sky had steadily withdrawn its favor. The sun shone +as it sank into the waves, but in the northwest and southeast dazzling +thunderheads swelled from the sea's line high into the heavens, and in the +early dusk began with silent kindlings to challenge each other to battle. +As night swiftly closed down the air grew unnaturally still. From the +toiler's brow, worse than at noon, the sweat rolled off, as at last he +brought his work to a close by the glare of his leaping camp-fire. Now, +unless he meant only to perish, he must once more eat and sleep while he +might. Then let the storm fall; the moment it was safely over and the wind +in the right quarter he would sail. As for the thirst which had been such +a torture while thwarted, now that it ruled unchallenged, it was purely a +wild, glad zeal as full of method as of diligence. But first he must make +his diminished provisions and his powder safe against the elements; and +this he did, covering them with a waterproof stuff and burying them in a +northern slope of sand. + +He awoke in the small hours of the night. The stars of the zenith were +quenched. Blackness walled and roofed him in close about his crumbled +fire, save when at shorter and shorter intervals and with more and more +deafening thunders the huge clouds lit up their own forms, writhing one +upon another, and revealed the awe-struck sea and ghostly sands waiting +breathlessly below. He rose to lay on more fuel, and while he was in the +act the tornado broke upon him. The wind, as he had forecast, came out of +the southeast. In an instant it was roaring and hurtling against the +farther side of his island rampart like the charge of a hundred thousand +horse and tossing the sand of the dunes like blown hair into the +northwest, while the rain in one wild deluge lashed the frantic sea and +weltering lagoon as with the whips of the Furies. + +He had kept the sail on the beach for a protection from the storm, but +before he could crawl under it he was as wet as though he had been tossed +up by the deep, and yet was glad to gain its cover from the blinding +floods and stinging sand. Here he lay for more than an hour, the rage of +the tempest continually growing, the heavens in a constant pulsing glare +of lightnings, their terrific thunders smiting and bellowing round and +round its echoing vault, and the very island seeming at times to stagger +back and recover again as it braced itself against the fearful onsets of +the wind. Snuggling in his sailcloth burrow, he complacently recalled an +earlier storm like this, which he and Sweetheart, the only other time they +ever were here, had tranquilly weathered in this same lagoon. On the +mainland, in that storm, cane- and rice-fields had been laid low and half +destroyed, houses had been unroofed, men had been killed. A woman and a +boy, under a pecan tree, were struck by lightning; and three men who had +covered themselves with a tarpaulin on one of the wharves in New Orleans +were blown with it into the Mississippi, poor fellows, and were drowned; a +fact worthy of second consideration in the present juncture. + +This second thought had hardly been given it before he crept hastily from +his refuge and confronted the gale in quick alarm. The hurricane was +veering to southward. Let it shift but a point or two more, and its entire +force would sweep the lagoon and its beach. Before long the change came. +The mass of canvas at his feet leapt clear of the ground and fell two or +three yards away. He sprang to seize it, but in the same instant the whole +storm--rain, wind, and sand--whirled like a troop of fiends round the +southern end of the island, the ceaseless lightnings showing the way, and +came tearing and howling up its hither side. The white sail lifted, +bellied, rolled, fell, vaulted into the air, fell again, tumbled on, and +at the foot of a dune stopped until its wind-buffeted pursuer had almost +overtaken it. Then it fled again, faster, faster, higher, higher up the +sandy slope to its top, caught and clung an instant on some unseen bush, +and then with one mad bound into the black sky, unrolled, widened like a +phantom, and vanished forever. + +Gregory turned in desperation, and in the glare of the lightning looked +back toward his raft. Great waves were rolling along and across the +slender reef in wide obliques and beating themselves to death in the +lagoon, or sweeping out of it again seaward at its more northern end. On +the dishevelled crest of one he saw his raft, and on another its mast. He +could not look a second time. The flying sand blinded him and cut the +blood from his face. He could only cover his eyes and crawl under the +bushes in such poor lee as he could find; and there, with the first lull +of the storm, heavy with exhaustion and despair, he fell asleep and slept +until far into the day. When he awoke the tempest was over. + +Even more completely the tumult within him was quieted. He rose and stood +forth mute in spirit as in speech; humbled, yet content, in the +consciousness that having miserably failed first to save himself and then +to rue himself back to destruction, the hurricane had been his deliverer. +It had spared his supplies, his ammunition, his weapons, only hiding them +deeper under the dune sands; but scarce a vestige of his camp remained and +of his raft nothing. As once more from the highest sand-ridge he looked +down upon the sea weltering in the majestic after-heavings of its passion, +at the eastern beach booming under the shock of its lofty rollers, and +then into the sky still gray with the endless flight of southward-hurrying +scud, he felt the stir of a new attachment to them and his wild prison, +and pledged alliance with them thenceforth. + + + +VI + + +Here, in giving me his account, Gregory asked me if that sounded +sentimental. I said no, and thereupon he actually tried to apologize to me +as though I were a professional story-teller, for having had so few deep +feelings in the moments where the romancists are supposed to place them. I +told him what I had once seen a mechanic do on a steep, slated roof nearly +a hundred feet from the pavement. He had faced round from his work, which +was close to the ridge-tiles, probably to kick off the shabby shoes he had +on, when some hold failed him and he began to slide toward the eaves. We +people in the street below fairly moaned our horror, but he didn't utter a +sound. He held back with all his skill, one leg thrust out in front, the +other drawn up with the knee to his breast, and his hands flattened beside +him on the slates, but he came steadily on down till his forward foot +passed over the eaves and his heel caught on the tin gutter. Then he +stopped. We held our breath below. He slowly and cautiously threw off one +shoe, then the other, and then turned, climbed back up the roof and +resumed his work. And we two or three witnesses down in the street didn't +think any less of him because he did so without any show of our glad +emotion. + +"O, if I had that fellow's nerve," said Gregory, "that would be another +thing!" + +My wife and I smiled at each other. "How would it be 'another thing?'" we +asked. "Did _you_ not quietly get up and begin life over again as if +nothing had occurred?" + +"There wasn't anything else to do," he replied, with a smile. "The +feelings came later, too, in an easy sort o' gradual way. I never could +quite make out how men get such clear notions of what they call +'Providence,' but, just the same, I know by experience there's all the +difference of peace and misery, or life and death, whether you're in +partnership with the things that help the world on, or with those that +hold it back." + +"But with that feeling," my wife asked, "did not your longing for our +human world continue?" + +"No," he replied, "but I got a new liking for it--although, you +understand, _I_ never had anything against _it_, of course. It's too big +and strong for me, that's all; and that's my fault. Your man on that +slippery roof kicking his shoes off is a sort of parable to me. If your +hand or your foot offend you and you have to cut it off, that's a physical +disablement, and bad enough. But when your gloves and your shoes are too +much for you, and you have to pluck _them_ off and cast them from you, you +find each one is a great big piece of the civilized world, and you hardly +know how much you did like it, till you've lost it. And still, it's no use +longing, when you know your limitations, and I saw I'd got to keep _my_ +world trimmed down to where I could run barefooted on the sand." + +He told us that now he began for the first time since coming to the +island, to find his books his best source of interest and diversion. He +learned, he said, a way of reading by which sea, sky, book, island, and +absent humanity, all seemed parts of one whole, and all to speak together +in one harmony, while they toiled together for one harmony some day to be +perfected. Not all books, nor even all good books, were equally good for +that effect, he thought, and the best---- + +"You might not think it," he said, "but the best was a Bible I'd chanced +to carry along;" he didn't know precisely what kind, but "just one of +these ordinary Bibles you see lying around in people's houses." He +extolled the psalms and asked Mrs. Smith if she'd ever noticed the beauty +of the twenty-third. She smiled and said she believed she had. + +"Then there was one," he went on, "beginning, 'Lord, my heart is not +haughty, nor mine eyes lofty; neither do I exercise myself in great +matters, or in things too wonderful for me;' and by and by it says, +'Surely, I have quieted myself as a child that is weaned: my soul is even +as a weaned child.'" + +One day, after a most marvellous sunset, he had been reading, he said, +"that long psalm with twenty-two parts in it--a hundred and seventy-six +verses." He had intended to read "Lord, my heart is not haughty" after it, +though the light was fast failing, but at the hundred and seventy-sixth +verse he closed the book. Thus he sat in the nearly motionless air, gazing +on the ripples of the lagoon as, now singly, and now by twos or threes, +they glided up the beach tinged with the colors of parting day as with a +grace of resignation, and sank into the grateful sands like the lines of +this last verse sinking into his heart; now singly--"I have gone astray +like a lost sheep;" and now by twos--"I have gone astray like a lost +sheep; save thy servant;" or by threes--"I have gone astray like a lost +sheep; save thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments." + +"I shouldn't tell that," he said to us, "if I didn't know so well how +little it counts for. But I knew at the time that when the next day but +one should bring the lighthouse steamer I shouldn't be any more fit to go +ashore, _to stay_, than a jellyfish." We agreed, he and I that there can +be as wide a distance between fine feelings and faithful doing as, he +said, "between listening to the band and charging a battery." + +On the islet the night deepened. The moon had not risen, and the stars +only glorified the dark, as it, in turn, revealed the unearthly beauties +of a phosphorescent sea. It was one of those rare hours in which the deep +confessed the amazing numbers of its own living and swarming +constellations. Not a fish could leap or dart, not a sinuous thing could +turn, but it became an animate torch. Every quick movement was a gleam of +green fire. No drifting, flaccid life could pulse so softly along but it +betrayed itself in lambent outlines. Each throb of the water became a beam +of light, and every ripple that widened over the strand--still whispering, +"I have gone astray"--was edged with luminous pearls. + +In an agreeable weariness of frame, untroubled in mind, and counting the +night too beautiful for slumber he reclined on the dry sands with an arm +thrown over a small pile of fagots which he had spent the day in gathering +from every part of the island to serve his need for the brief remainder of +his stay. In this search he had found but one piece of his boat, a pine +board. This he had been glad to rive into long splinters and bind together +again as a brand, with which to signal the steamer if--contrary to her +practice, I think he said--she should pass in the night. And so, without a +premonition of drowsiness, he was presently asleep, with the hours +radiantly folding and expiring one upon another like the ripples on the +beach. + +When he came to himself he was on his feet. The moon was high, his fire +was smouldering; his heart was beating madly and his eyes were fixed on +the steamer, looming large, moving at full speed, her green light showing, +her red light hid, and her long wake glowing with comet fire. In a moment +she would be passing. It was too late for beacon-flame or torch. He sprang +for his gun, and mounting the first low rise fired into the air, once!-- +twice! --and shouted, "Help!--help!" + +She kept straight on. She was passing, she was passing! In trembling haste +he loaded and fired again, again wailed out his cry for help, and still +she kept her speed. He had loaded for the third discharge, still +frantically calling the while, and was lifting his gun to fire when he saw +the white light at her foremast-head begin to draw nearer to the green +light at her waist and knew she was turning. He fired, shouted, and tried +to load again; but as her red light brightened into view beside the green, +he dropped his gun and leaped and crouched and laughed and wept for joy. + +* * * * * + +"Why, Gregory!" the naval lieutenant cried, as the castaway climbed from +the steamer's boat to her deck. "Why, you blasted old cracked fiddle! what +in----" + +"Right, the first guess!" laughed Gregory, "there's where I've been!" and +in the cabin he explained all. + +"The fiddle's mended," he concluded. "You can play a tune on it--by being +careful." + +"But what's your tune?" asked his hearer; "you cannot go back to that +island." + +"Yes, I'll be on it in a week--with a schooner-load of cattle. I can get +them on credit. Going to raise cattle there as a regular business. They'll +fatten in that marsh like blackbirds." + +True enough, before the week was up the mended fiddle was playing its +tune. It was not until Gregory's second return from his island that he +came to see us and told us his simple story. We asked him how it was that +the steamer, that first time, had come so much earlier than she generally +did. + +"She didn't," he replied. "I had miscounted one day." + +"Don't you," asked my wife, who would have liked a more religious tone in +Gregory's recital, "don't you have trouble to keep run of your Sabbaths +away out there alone?" + +"Why"--he smiled--"it's always Sunday there. Here almost everybody feels +duty bound to work harder than somebody else, or else make somebody else +work harder than he, and you need a day every now and then for Sunday--or +Sabbath, at least. Oh, I suppose it's all one in the end, isn't it? You +take your's in a pill, I take mine in a powder. Not that it's the least +bit like a dose, however, except for the good it does." + +"And you're really prospering, even in a material way!" I said. + +"Yes," he answered. "O yes; the island's already too small for us." + +"It's certainly very dangerously exposed," said my wife, and I guessed her +thought was on Last Island, which, you remember, though very large and +populous, had been, within our recollection, totally submerged, with +dreadful loss of life. + +"O yes," he responded, "there's always something wherever you are. One of +these days some storm's going to roll the sea clean over the whole thing." + +"Then, why don't you move to a bigger island closer inshore?" she asked. + +"I'm afraid," said Gregory, and smiled. + +"Afraid!" said my wife, incredulously. + +"Yes," he responded. "I'm afraid my prisoner'll get away from me." + +As his hand closed over hers in good-by I saw, what he could not, that she +had half a notion to kiss it. I told her so when he was gone, and kissed +hers--for him. + +"I don't care," she said, dreamily, as it lingered in mine, "I'm glad I +mended his coat for him that time." + + +* * * * * + + +The Taxidermist + + + +I + + +One day a hummingbird got caught in a cobweb in our greenhouse. It had no +real need to seek that damp, artificial heat. We were in the very heart of +that Creole summer-time when bird-notes are many as the sunbeams. The +flowers were in such multitude they seemed to follow one about, offering +their honeys and perfumes and begging to be gathered. Our little boy saw +the embodied joy fall, a joy no longer, seized it, and clasping it too +tightly, brought it to me dead. + + +He cried so over the loss that I promised to have the body stuffed. This +is how I came to know Manouvrier, the Taxidermist in St. Peter Street. + +I passed his place twice before I found it. The front shop was very small, +dingily clean and scornfully unmercantile. Of the very few specimens of +his skill to be seen round about not one was on parade, yet everyone was +somehow an achievement, a happy surprise, a lasting delight. I admit that +taxidermy is not classed among the fine arts; but you know there is a way +of making everything--anything--an art instead of a craft or a commerce, +and such was the way of this shop's big, dark, hairy-faced, shaggy-headed +master. I saw his unsmiling face soften and his eye grow kind as mine +lighted up with approbation of his handiwork. + +When I handed him the hummingbird he held it tenderly in his wide palm, +and as I was wondering to myself how so huge a hand as that could +manipulate frail and tiny things and bring forth delicate results, he +looked into my face and asked, with a sort of magisterial gentleness: + +"How she git kill', dat lill' bird?" + +I told him. I could feel my mood and words take their tone from him, +though he outwardly heard me through with no show of feeling; and when I +finished, I knew we were friends. I presently ventured to praise the +specimen of his skill nearest at hand; a wild turkey listening alarmedly +as if it would the next instant utter that ringing "quit!" which makes +each separate drop of a hunter's blood tingle. But with an odd languor in +his gravity, he replied: + +"Naw, dass not well make; lill' bit worse, bad enough to put in front +window. I take you inside; come." + + + +II + + +We passed through into a private workroom immediately behind the shop. His +wife sat there sewing; a broad, motherly woman of forty-five, fat, +tranquil, kind, with an old eye, a young voice, and a face that had got +its general flabbiness through much paddling and gnawing from other +women's teething babes. She sat still, unintroduced, but welcomed me with +a smile. + +I was saying to her husband that a hummingbird was a very small thing to +ask him to stuff. But he stopped me with his lifted palm. + +"My fran', a hummingbird has de pas-sione'--de ecstacie! One drop of blood +wid the pas-sione in it"--He waved his hand with a jerk of the thumb in +disdain of spoken words, and it was I who added, + +"Is bigger than the sun?" + +"Hah!" was all he uttered in approval, turning as if to go to work. I +feared I had disappointed him. + +"God measures by the soul, not by the size," I suggested. But he would say +no more, and his wife put in as softly as a kettle beginning to sing, + +"Ah, ha, ha! I t'ink dass where de good God show varrie good sanse." + +I began looking here and there in heartiest admiration of the products of +his art and presently we were again in full sympathy and talking eagerly. +As I was going he touched my arm: + +"You will say de soul is parted from dat lill' bird. And--yass; but"--he +let a gesture speak the rest. + +"I know," replied I; "you propose to make the soul seem to come back and +leave us its portrait. I believe you will." Whereupon he gave me his +first, faint smile, and detained me with another touch. + +"Msieu Smeet; when you was bawn?" + +"I? December 9, 1844. Why do you ask?" + +"O nut'n'; only I thing you make me luck; nine, h-eighteen, fawty-fo'--I +play me doze number' in de lott'ree to-day." + +"Why, pshaw! you don't play the lottery, do you?" + +"Yass. I play her; why not? She make me reech some of doze day'. Win fifty +dollah one time las' year." + +The soft voice of the wife spoke up--"And spend it all to the wife of my +dead brother. What use him be reech? I think he don't stoff bird' no +betteh." + +But the husband responded more than half to himself, + +"Yass, I think mebbe I stoff him lill' more betteh." + +When, some days afterward I called again, thinking as I drew near how much +fineness of soul and life, seen or unseen, must have existed in earlier +generations to have produced this man, I noticed the in conspicuous sign +over his door, P.T.B. Manouvrier, and as he led me at once into the back +room I asked him playfully what such princely abundance of initials might +stand for. + +"Doze? Ah, doze make only Pas-Trop-Bon." + + +I appealed to his wife; but she, with her placid laugh, would only confirm +him: + +"Yass; Pastropbon; he like that name. Tha's all de way I call him-- +Pastropbon." + + + +III + + +The hummingbird was ready for me. I will not try to tell how lifelike and +beautiful the artist had made it. Even with him I took pains to be +somewhat reserved. As I stood holding and admiring the small green wonder, +I remarked that I was near having to bring him that morning another and +yet finer bird. A shade of displeasure (and, I feared, of suspicion also) +came to his face as he asked me how that was. I explained. + +Going into my front hall, whose veranda-door framed in a sunny picture of +orange-boughs, jasmine-vines, and white-clouded blue sky, I had found a +male ruby-throat circling about the ceiling, not wise enough to stoop, fly +low, and pass out by the way it had come in. It occurred to me that it +might be the mate of the one already mine. For some time all the efforts I +could contrive, either to capture or free it, were vain. Round and round +it flew, silently beating and bruising its exquisite little head against +the lofty ceiling, the glory of its luminous red throat seeming to +heighten into an expression of unspeakable agony. At last Mrs. Smith ran +for a long broom, and, as in her absence I stood watching the self-snared +captive's struggle, the long, tiny beak which had never done worse than go +twittering with rapture to the grateful hearts of thousands of flowers, +began to trace along the smooth, white ceiling a scarlet thread of pure +heart's blood. The broom came. I held it up, the flutterer lighted upon +it, and at first slowly, warily, and then triumphantly, I lowered it under +the lintel out into the veranda, and the bird darted away into the garden +and was gone like a soul into heaven. + +In the middle of my short recital Manouvrier had sunk down upon the arm of +his wife's rocking-chair with one huge hand on both of hers folded over +her sewing, and as I finished he sat motionless, still gazing into my +face. + + +"But," I started, with sudden pretence of business impulse, "how much am I +to pay?" + +He rose, slowly, and looked dreamily at his wife; she smiled at him, and +he grunted, + +"Nut'n'." + +"Oh, my friend," I laughed, "that's absurd!" + +But he had no reply, and his wife, as she resumed her sewing, said, +sweetly, as if to her needle, "Ah, I think Pastropbon don't got to charge +nut'n' if he don't feel like." And I could not move them. + +As I was leaving them, a sudden conjecture came to me. + +"Did those birthday numbers bring you any luck?" + +The taxidermist shook his head, good-naturedly, but when his wife laughed +he turned upon her. + +"Wait! I dawn't be done wid doze number' yet." + +I guessed that, having failed with them in the daily drawings, he would +shift the figures after some notion of magical significance and venture a +ticket, whole or fractional, in the monthly drawing. + +Scarcely ten days after, as I sat at breakfast with my newspaper spread +beside my plate, I fairly spilled my coffee as my eye fell upon the name +of P.T.B. Manouvrier, of No.--St. Peter Street. Old Pastropbon had drawn +seventy-five thousand dollars in the lottery. + + + +IV + + +All the first half of the day, wherever I was, in the street-car, at my +counting-desk, on the exchange, no matter to what I gave my attention, my +thought was ever on my friend the taxidermist. At luncheon it was the +same. He was rich! And what, now? What next? And what--ah! what?-at last? +Would the end be foul or fair? I hoped, yet feared. I feared again; and +yet I hoped. + +A familiar acquaintance, a really good fellow, decent, rich, "born of +pious parents," and determined to have all the ready-made refinements and +tastes that pure money could buy, came and sat with me at my lunch table. + +"I wonder," he began, "if you know where you are, or what you're here for. +I've been watching you for five minutes and I don't believe you do. See +here; what sort of an old donkey is that bird-stuffer of yours?" + +"You know, then, his good fortune of yesterday, do you?" + +"No, I don't. I know my bad fortune with him last week." + +I dropped my spoon into my soup. "Why, what?" + +"Oh, no great shakes. Only, I went to his place to buy that wild turkey +you told me about. I wanted to stand it away up on top of that beautiful +old carved buffet I picked up in England last year. I was fully prepared +to buy it on your say-so, but, all the same, I saw its merits the moment I +set eyes on it. It has but one fault; did you notice that? I don't believe +you did. I pointed it out to him." + +"You pointed--what did he say?" + +"He said I was right." + +"Why, what was the fault?" + +"Fault? Why, the perspective is bad; not exactly bad, but poor; lacks +richness and rhythm." + +"And yet you bought the thing." + +"No, I didn't." + +"You didn't buy it?" + +"No, sir, I didn't buy it. I began by pricing three or four other things +first, so he couldn't know which one to stick the fancy price on to, and +incidentally I thought I would tell him--you'd told me, you remember, how +your accounts of your two birds had warmed him up and melted his +feelings----" + +"I didn't tell you. My wife told your wife, and your wife, I----" + +"Yes, yes. Well, anyhow, I thought I'd try the same game, so I told him +how I had stuffed a bird once upon a time myself. It was a pigeon, with +every feather as white as snow; a fan-tail. It had belonged to my little +boy who died. I thought it would make such a beautiful emblem at his +funeral, rising with wings outspread, you know, typical of the +resurrection--we buried him from the Sunday-school, you remember. And so I +killed it and wired it and stuffed it myself. It was hard to hang it in a +soaring attitude, owing to its being a fan-tail, but I managed it." + +"And you told that to Manouvrier! What did he say?" + +"Say? He never so much as cracked a smile. When I'd done he stood so +still, looking at me, that I turned and sort o' stroked the turkey and +said, jestingly, says I, 'How much a pound for this gobbler?'" + +"That ought to have warmed him up." + +"Well, it didn't. He smiled like a dancing-master, lifted my hand off the +bird and says, says he, 'She's not for sale.' Then he turned to go into +his back room and leave me standing there. Well, that warmed _me_ up. Says +I, 'What in thunder is it here for, then? and if it ain't for sale, come +back here and show me what is!' + +"'Nawtin',' says 'e, with the same polite smile. 'Nawtin' for sale. I come +back when you gone.' His voice was sweet as sugar, but he slammed the +door. I would have followed him in and put some better manners into him +with a kick, but the old orang-outang had turned the key inside, and when +I'd had time to remember that I was a deacon and Sunday-school teacher I +walked away. What do you mean by his good fortune of yesterday?" + +"I mean he struck Charlie Howard for seventy-five thousand." + +My hearer's mouth dropped open. He was equally amazed and amused. "Well, +well, well! That accounts for his silly high-headedness." + +"Ah! no: that matter of yours was last week and the drawing was only +yesterday." + +"Oh, that's so. I don't keep run of that horrible lottery business. It +makes me sick at heart to see the hideous canker poisoning the character +and blasting the lives of every class of our people--why, don't you think +so?" + +"Oh, yes, I--I do. Yes, I certainly do!" + +"But your conviction isn't exactly red-hot, I perceive. Come, wake up." + +We rose. At the first street corner, as we were parting, I noticed he was +still talking of the lottery. + +"Pestilential thing," he was calling it. "Men blame it lightly on the +ground that there are other forms of gambling which our laws don't reach. +I suppose a tiger in a village mustn't be killed till we have killed all +the tigers back in the woods!" + +I assented absently and walked away full of a vague shame. For I know as +well as anyone that a man without a quick, strong, aggressive, insistent +indignation against undoubted evil is a very poor stick. + + + +V + + +At dinner that evening, Mrs. Smith broke a long silence with the question: + +"Did you go to see Manouvrier?" + +"Nn--o." + +She looked at me drolly. "Did you go half way and turn back?" + +"Yes," said I, "that's precisely what I did." And we dropped the subject. + +But in the night I felt her fingers softly touch my shoulder. + +"Warm night," I remarked. + +"Richard," said she, "it will be time enough to be troubled about your +taxidermist when he's given you cause." + +"I'm not troubled; I'm simply interested. I'll go down to-morrow and see +him." A little later it rained, very softly, and straight down, so that +there was no need to shut the windows, and I slept like an infant until +the room was full of sunshine. + +All the next day and evening, summer though it was and the levee and sugar +sheds and cotton-yards virtually empty, I was kept by unexpected business +and could not go near St. Peter Street. Both my partners were away on +their vacations. But on the third afternoon our office regained its summer +quiet and I was driving my pen through the last matter that prevented my +going where I pleased, when I was disturbed by the announcement of a +visitor. I pushed my writing on to a finish though he stood just at my +back. Then I turned to bid him talk fast as my time was limited, when who +should it be but Manouvrier. I took him into my private office, gave him a +chair and said: + +"I was just coming to see you." + +"You had somet'in' to git stoff'?" + +"No; I--Oh, I didn't know but you might like to see me." + +"Yass?--Well--yass. I wish you come yesterday." + +"Indeed? Why so; to protect you from reporters and beggars?" + +"Naw; my wife she keep off all doze Peter an' John. Naw; one man bring me +one wile cat to stoff. Ah! a _so_ fine as I never see! Beautiful like da +dev'l! Since two day' an' night' I can't make out if I want to fix dat +wile cat stan'in' up aw sittin' down!" + +"Did you decide at last?" + +"Yass, I dis-ide. How you think I diside?" + +"Ah! you're too hard for me. But one thing I know." + +"Yass? What you know?" + +"That you will never do so much to anything as to leave my imagination +nothing to do. You will always give my imagination strong play and never a +bit of hard work." + +"Come! Come and see!" + +I took my hat. "Is that what you called to see me about?" + +"Ah!" He started in sudden recollection and brought forth the lottery +company's certified check for the seventy-five thousand dollars. "You keep +dat?--lill' while?--for me? Yass; till I mek out how I goin' to spend +her." + +"Manouvrier, may I make one condition?" + +"Yass." + +"It is that you will never play the lottery again." + +"Ah! Yass, I play her ag'in! You want know whan ole Pastropbon play her +ag'in? One doze fine mawning--mebbee--dat sun--going rise hisself in de +wes'. Well: when ole Pastropbon see dat, he play dat lott'ree ag'in. But +biffo' he see dat"--He flirted his thumb. + +Not many days later a sudden bereavement brought our junior partner back +from Europe and I took my family North for a more stimulating air. Before +I went I called on my St. Peter Street friend to say that during my +absence either of my partners would fulfil any wish of his concerning the +money. In his wife's sewing-basket in the back room I noticed a batch of +unopened letters, and ventured a question which had been in my mind for +several days. + +"Manouvrier, you must get a host of letters these days from people who +think you ought to help them because you have got money and they haven't. +Do you read them?" + +"Naw!" He gave me his back, bending suddenly over some real or pretended +work. "I read some--first day. Since dat time I give 'em to old woman-- +wash hand--go to work ag'in--naw use." + +"Ah! no use?" piped up the soft-voiced wife. "I use them to light those +fire to cook those soup." But I felt the absence of her accustomed laugh. + +"Well, it's there whenever you want it," I said to the husband as I was +leaving. + +"What?" The tone of the response was harsh. "What is where?" + +"Why, the money. It's in the bank." + +"Hah!" he said, with a contemptuous smile and finished with his thumb. +That was the first time I ever saw a thumb swear. But in a moment his +kindly gravity was on him again and he said, "Daz all right; I come git +her some day." + + + +VI + + +I did not get back to New Orleans till late in the fall. In the office +they told me that Manouvrier had been in twice to see if I had returned, +and they had promised to send him word of my arrival. But I said no, and +went to see him. + +I found new lines of care on his brow, but the old kindness was still in +his eye. We exchanged a few words of greeting and inquiry, and then there +came a pause, which I broke. + +"Well, stuffing birds better than ever, I suppose." + +"Naw," he looked around upon his work, "I dawn't think. I dunno if I stoff +him quite so good like biffo'." Another pause. Then, "I think I mek out +what I do wid doze money now." + +"Indeed," said I, and noticed that his face was averted from his wife. + +She lifted her eyes to his broad back with a quizzical smile, glanced at +me knowingly, and dropped them again upon her sewing, sighed: + +"Ah-bah!" Then she suddenly glanced at me with a pretty laugh and added, +"Since all that time he dunno what he goin' to make with it. If he trade +with it I thing he don't stoff bird no mo', and I thing he lose it +bis-ide--ha, ha, ha!--and if he keep it all time lock in doze bank +I thing, he jiz well not have it." She laughed again. + +But he quite ignored her and resumed, as if out of a revery, "Yass, at de +las' I mek dat out." And the wife interrupted him in a tone that was like +the content of a singing hen. + +"I think it don't worth while to leave it to our chillun, en't it?" + +"Ah!" said the husband, entirely to me, "daz de troub'! You see?--we +dawn't got some ba-bee'! Dat neveh arrive to her. God know' dass not de +fault of us." + +"Yass," put in his partner, smiling to her needle, "the good God know' +that verrie well." And the pair exchanged a look of dove-like fondness. + +"Yass," Manouvrier mused aloud once more, "I think I build my ole woman +one fine house." + +"Ah! I don't want!" + +"But yass! Foudre tonnerre! how I goin' spend her else? w'iskee? hosses? +women? what da dev'l! Naw, I build a fine 'ouse. You see! she want dat +house bad enough when she see her. Yass; fifty t'ousan' dollah faw house +and twenty-five t'ousan'"--he whisked his thumb at me and I said for him, + +"Yes, twenty-five thousand at interest to keep up the establishment." + +"Yass. Den if Pastropbon go first to dat boneyard--" And out went his +thumb again, while his hairy lip curled at the grim prospect of beating +Fate the second time, and as badly, in the cemetery, as the first time, in +the lottery. + +He built the house--farther down town and much farther from the river. +Both husband and wife found a daily delight in watching its slow rise and +progress. In the room behind the shop he still plied his art and she her +needle as they had done all their married life, with never an inroad upon +their accustomed hours except the calls of the shop itself; but on every +golden morning of that luxurious summer-land, for a little while before +the carpenters and plasterers arrived and dragged off their coats, the +pair spent a few moments wandering through and about the building +together, she with her hen-like crooning, he with his unsmiling face. + +Yet they never showed the faintest desire to see the end. The contractor +dawdled by the month. I never saw such dillydallying. They only abetted +it, and when once he brought an absurd and unasked-for excuse to the +taxidermist's shop, its proprietor said--first shutting the door between +them and the wife in the inner room: + +"Tek yo' time. Mo' sloweh she grow, mo' longeh she stan'." + +I doubt that either Manouvrier or his wife hinted to the other the true +reason for their apathy. But I guessed it, only too easily, and felt its +pang. It was that with the occupancy and care of the house must begin the +wife's absence from her old seat beside her husband at his work. + +Another thing troubled me. I did persuade him to put fittings into his +cistern which fire-engines could use in case of emergency, but he would +not insure the building. + +"Naw! Luck bring me dat--I let luck take care of her." + +"Ah! yass," chimed the wife, "yet still I think mebbee the good God tell +luck where to bring her. I'm shoe he got fing-er in that pie." + +"Ah-ha? Daz all right! If God want to burn his own fing-er----" + +At length the house was finished and was beautiful within and without. It +was of two and a half stories, broad and with many rooms. Two spacious +halls crossed each other, and there were wide verandas front and back, and +a finished and latticed basement. The basement and the entire grounds, +except a few bright flower-borders, were flagged, as was also the +sidewalk, with the manufactured stone which in that nearly frostless +climate makes such a perfect and beautiful pavement, and on this fair +surface fell the large shadows of laburnum, myrtle, orange, oleander, +sweet-olive, mespelus, and banana, which the taxidermist had not spared +expense to transplant here in the leafy prime of their full growth. + +Then almost as slowly the dwelling was furnished. In this the brother-in- +law's widow co-operated, and when it was completed Manouvrier suggested +her living in it a few days so that his wife might herself move in as +leisurely as she chose. And six months later, there, in the old back room +in St. Peter Street, the wife still sat sewing and now and then saying +small, wise, dispassionate things to temper the warmth of her partner's +more artistic emotions. Every fair day, about the hour of sunset, they +went to see the new house. It was plain they loved it; loved it only less +than their old life; but only the brother-in-law's widow lived in it. + + + +VII + + + + +I happened about this time to be acting as president of an insurance +company on Canal Street. Summer was coming in again. One hot sunny day, +when the wind was high and gusty, the secretary was remarking to me what +sad ruin it might work if fire should start among the frame tenement +cottages which made up so many neighborhoods that were destitute of +watermains, when right at our ear the gong sounded for just such a region +and presently engine after engine came thundering and smoking by our open +windows. Fire had broken out in the street where Manouvrier's new house +stood, four squares from that house, but straight to windward of it. + +We knew only too well, without being there to witness, that our firemen +would find nothing with which to fight the flames except a few shallow +wells of surface water and the wooden rain-water cisterns above ground, +and that both these sources were almost worthless owing to a drouth. A man +came in and sat telling me of his new device for lessening the risks of +fire. + +"Where?" asked I, quickly. + +"Why, as I was saying, on steamboats loaded with cotton." + +"Oh, yes," said I, "I understand." But I did not. For the life of me I +couldn't make sense of what he said. I kept my eyes laboriously in his +face, but all I could see was a vision of burning cottages; hook-and- +ladder-men pulling down sheds and fences; ruined cisterns letting just +enough water into door-yards and street-gutters to make sloppy walking; +fire-engines standing idle and dropping cinders into their own puddles in +a kind of shame for their little worth; here and there one furiously +sucking at an exhausted well while its firemen stood with scorching faces +holding the nozzles almost in the flames and cursing the stream of +dribbling mud that fell short of their gallant endeavor. I seemed to see +streets populous with the sensation-seeking crowd; sidewalks and alleys +filled with bedding, chairs, bureaus, baskets of crockery and calico +clothing with lamps spilling into them, cheap looking-glasses unexpectedly +answering your eye with the boldness of an outcast girl, broken tables, +pictures of the Virgin, overturned stoves, and all the dear mantlepiece +trash which but an hour before had been the pride of the toiling +housewife, and the adornment of the laborer's home. + +"Where can I see this apparatus?" I asked my patient interviewer. + +"Well--ahem! it isn't what you'd call an apparatus, exactly. I have +here----" + +"Yes; never mind that just now; I'm satisfied you've got a good thing and +--I'll tell you! Can you come in to-morrow at this hour? Good! I wish you +would! Well, good-day." + +The secretary was waiting to speak to me. The fire, he said, had entirely +burned up one square and was half through a second. "By the way, isn't +that the street where old P.T.B.----" + +"Yes," I replied, taking my hat; "if anyone wants to see me, you'd better +tell him to call to-morrow." + +I found the shop in St. Peter's Street shut, and went on to the new +residence. As I came near it, its beauty seemed to me to have consciously +increased under the threatenings of destruction. + +In the front gate stood the brother-in-law's widow, full of gestures and +distressful smiles as she leaned out with nervously folded arms and looked +up and down the street. "Manouvrier? he is ad the fire since a whole hour. +He will break his heart if dat fire ketch to dat 'ouse here. He cannot +know 'ow 'tis in danger! Ah! sen' him word? I sen' him fo' five time'--he +sen' back I stay righd there an' not touch nut'n'! Ah! my God! I fine dat +varrie te-de-ous, me, yass!" + +"Is his wife with him?" + +"Assuredly! You see, dey git 'fraid 'bout dat 'ouse of de Sister', you +know?" + +"No, where is it?" + +"No? You dunno dat lill' 'ouse where de Sister' keep dose orphelin' +ba-bee'?-juz big-inning sinse 'bout two week' ago?-round de corner--one +square mo' down town--'alf square mo' nearer de swamp? Well, I thing 'f +you pass yondeh you fine Pastropbon." + + + +VIII + + +Through smoke, under falling cinders, and by distracted and fleeing +households I went. The moment I turned the second corner I espied the +house. It was already half a square from the oncoming fire, but on the +northern side of the street, just out of its probable track and not in +great danger except from sparks. But it was old and roofed with shingles; +a decrepit Creole cottage sitting under dense cedars in a tangle of rose +and honeysuckle vines, and strangely beautified by a flood of smoke-dimmed +yellow sunlight. + +As I hurried forward, several men and boys came from the opposite +direction at a run and an engine followed them, jouncing and tilting +across the sidewalk opposite the little asylum, into a yard, to draw from +a fresh well. Their leader was a sight that drew all eyes. He was coatless +and hatless; his thin cotton shirt, with its sleeves rolled up to the +elbows, was torn almost off his shaggy breast, his trousers were drenched +with water and a rude bandage round his head was soaked with blood. He +carried an axe. The throng shut him from my sight, but I ran to the spot +and saw him again standing before the engine horses with his back close to +their heads. A strong, high board fence shut them off from the well and +against it stood the owner of the property, pale as death, guarding the +precious water with a shotgun at full cock. I heard him say: + +"The first fellow that touches this fence----" + +But he did not finish. Quicker than his gun could flash and bang +harmlessly in the air the man before him had dropped the axe and leaped +upon him with the roar of a lion. The empty gun flew one way and its owner +another and almost before either struck the ground the axe was swinging +and crashing into the fence. + +As presently the engine rolled through the gap and shouting men backed her +to the edge of the well, the big axeman paused to wipe the streaming sweat +from his begrimed face with his arm. I clutched him. + +"Manouvrier!" + +A smile of recognition shone for an instant and vanished as I added, + +"Come to your own house! Come, you can't save it here." + +He turned a quick, wild look at the fire, seized me by the arm and with a +gaze of deepest gratitude, asked: + +"You tryin' save her?" + +"I'll do anything I can." + +"Oh, dass right!" His face was full of mingled joy and pain. "You go +yondeh--mek yo' possible!" We were hurrying to the street--"Oh, yass, faw +God's sake go, mek yo' possible!" + +"But, Manouvrier, you must come too! Where's your wife? The chief danger +to your house isn't here, it's where the fire's between it and the wind!" + +His answer was a look of anguish. "Good God! my fran'. We come yondeh so +quick we can! But--foudre tonnerre!--look that house here fill' with +ba-bee'! What we goin' do? Those Sister' can't climb on roof with bocket' +wateh. You see I got half-dozen boy' up yondeh; if I go 'way they dis-cend +and run off at the fire, spark' fall on roof an'--" his thumb flew out. + +"Sparks! Heavens! Manouvrier, your house is in the path of the _flames!_" + +The man flew at me and hung over me, his strong locks shaking, his great +black fist uplifted and the only tears in his eyes I ever saw there. +"Damnession! She's not mine! I trade her to God faw these one! Go! tell +him she's his, he kin burn her if he feel like'!" He gave a half laugh, +fresh witness of his distress, and went into the gate of the asylum. + +I smiled--what could I do?--and was turning away, when I saw the chief of +the fire department. It took but one moment to tell him my want, and in +another he had put the cottage roof under the charge of four of his men +with instructions not to leave it till the danger was past or the house +burning. The engine near us had drawn the well dry and was coming away. He +met it, pointed to where, beneath swirling billows of black smoke, the +pretty gable of the taxidermist's house shone like a white sail against a +thundercloud, gave orders and disappeared. + +The street was filling with people. A row of cottages across the way was +being emptied. The crackling flames were but half a square from +Manouvrier's house. I called him once more to come. He waved his hand +kindly to imply that he knew what I had done. He and his wife were in the +Sisters' front garden walk conversing eagerly with the Mother Superior. +They neared the gate. Suddenly the Mother Superior went back, the +lay-sister guarding the gate let the pair out and the three of us +hurried off together. + +We found ourselves now in the uproar and vortex of the struggle. Only at +intervals could we take our attention from the turmoil that impeded or +threatened us, to glance forward at the white gable or back--as Manouvrier +persisted in doing--to the Sisters' cottage. Once I looked behind and +noticed, what I was loath to tell, that the firemen on its roof had grown +busy; but as I was about to risk the truth, the husband and wife, glancing +at their own roof, in one breath groaned aloud. Its gleaming gable had +begun to smoke. + +"Ah! that good God have pity on uz!" cried the wife, in tears, but as she +started to run forward I caught her arm and bade her look again. A strong, +white stream of water was falling on the smoking spot and it smoked no +more. + +The next minute, with scores of others, choking and blinded with the +smoke, we were flying from the fire. The wind had turned. + +"It is only a gust," I cried, "it will swing round again. We must turn the +next corner and reach the house from the far side." I glanced back to see +why my companions lagged and lo! they had vanished. + + + +IX + + +I reached the house just in time to save its front grounds from the +invasion of the rabble. The wind had not turned back again. The brother-in +law's widow was offering prayers of thanksgiving. The cisterns were empty +and the garden stood glistening in the afternoon sun like a May queen +drenched in tears; but the lovely spot was saved. + +I left its custodian at an upper window, looking out upon the fire, and +started once more to find my friends. Half-way round to the Sisters' +cottage I met them. With many others I stepped aside to make a clear way +for the procession they headed. The sweet, clean wife bore in her arms an +infant; the tattered, sooty, bloody-headed husband bore two; and after +them, by pairs and hand in hand, with one gray sister in the rear, came a +score or more of pink-frocked, motherless little girls. An amused rabble +of children and lads hovered about the diminutive column, with leers and +jests and happy antics, and the wife smiled foolishly and burned red with +her embarrassment; but in the taxidermist's face shone an exaltation of +soul greater than any I had ever seen. I felt too petty for such a moment +and hoped he would go by without seeing me; but he smiled an altogether +new smile and said, + +"My fran', God A'mighty, he know a good bargain well as anybody!" + +I ran ahead with no more shame of the crowd than Zaccheus of old. I threw +open the gate, bounded up the steps and spread wide the door. In the hall, +the widow, knowing naught of this, met me with wet eyes crying, + +"Ah! ah! de 'ouse of de orphelin' is juz blaze' up h-all over h-at once!" +and hushed in amazement as the procession entered the gate. + +P.T.B. Manouvrier, Taxidermist! + +When the fire was out the owner of that sign went back to his shop and to +his work, and his wife sat by him sewing as before. But the orphans stayed +in their new and better home. Two or three years ago the Sisters--the +brother-in-law's widow is one of them--built a large addition behind; but +the house itself stands in the beauty in which it stood on that day of +destruction, and my friend always leaves his work on balmy afternoons in +time to go with his wife and see that pink procession, four times as long +now as it was that day, march out the gate and down the street for its +daily walk. + +"Ah! Pastropbon, we got ba-bee' enough presently, en't it?" + +"Ole woman, nobody else ever strock dat lott'ree for such a prize like +dat." + + +* * * * * + + +The Entomologist + + + +I + + +An odd feature of New Orleans is the way homes of all ranks, in so many +sections of it, are mingled. The easy, bright democracy of the thing is +what one might fancy of ancient Greeks; only, here there is a general +wooden frailty. + +A notable phase of this characteristic is the multitude of small, frame, +ground-story double cottages fronting endwise to the street, on lots that +give either side barely space enough for one row of twelve-foot rooms with +windows on a three-foot alley leading to the narrow backyard. + +Thus they lie, deployed in pairs or half-dozens, by hundreds, in the +variable intervals that occur between houses and gardens of dignity and +elegance; hot as ovens, taking their perpetual bath of the great cleanser, +sunshine. Sometimes they open directly upon the banquette (sidewalk), but +often behind as much as a fathom of front-yard, as gay with flowers as a +girl's hat, and as fragrant of sweet-olive, citronelle, and heliotrope as +her garments. In the right-hand half of such a one, far down on the Creole +side of Canal street, and well out toward the swamp, lived our friend the +entomologist. + +Just a glance at it was enough to intoxicate one's fancy. It seemed to +confess newness of life, joy, passion, temperance, refinement, aspiration, +modest wisdom, and serene courage. You would say there must live two +well-mated young lovers--but one can't always tell. + + + +II + + +We first came to know the entomologist through our opposite neighbors, the +Fontenettes, when we lived in the street that still bears the romantic +name, Sixth. What a pity nothing rhymes to it. _Their_ ground-story +cottage was of a much better sort. It lay broadside to the street, +two-thirds across a lot of forty feet width, in the good old Creole +fashion, its front garden twelve feet deep, and its street fence, of white +palings, higher than the passer's head. The parlor and dining-room were on +the left, and the two main bedrooms on the right, next the garden; Mrs. +Fontenette's in front, opening into the parlor, Monsieur's behind, letting +into the dining-room. For there had been a broader garden on the parlor +and dining-room side, but that had been sold and built on. I fancy that if +Mrs. Fontenette--who was not a Creole, as her husband was, but had once +been a Miss Bangs, or something, and still called blackberries +"blackbries," and made root rhyme with foot--I fancy if she had been +doomed to our entomologist's sort of a house she would have been too +broken in spirit to have made anybody's acquaintance. + +For our pretty blonde neighbor had ambitions, or _had_ had, as she once +hinted to me with a dainty sadness. When I somehow let slip to her that I +had repeated her delicately balanced words to my wife she gave me one +melting glance of reproach, and thenceforth confided in me no more beyond +the limits of literary criticism and theology--and botany. I remember we +were among the few roses of her small flower-beds at the time, and I was +trying to show her what was blighting them all in the bud. She called them +"rose-es." + +They rarely bloomed for her; she was always for being the rose herself--as +Monsieur Fontenette once said; but he said it with a glance of fond +admiration. Her name was Flora, and yet not flowers, but their book-lore, +best suited her subtle capriciousness. She made such a point of names that +she could not let us be happy with the homely monosyllable by which we +were known, until we allowed her to hyphenate us as the Thorndyke-Smiths. + +There hung in our hall an entire unmarred beard of the beautiful gray +Spanish moss, eight feet long. I had got this unusual specimen by +tiptoeing from the thwarts of a skiff with twelve feet of yellow crevasse- +waters beneath, the shade of the vast cypress forest above, and the bough +whence it hung brought within hand's reach for the first time in a +century. Thus I explained it one day to Mrs. Fontenette, as she touched +its ends with a delicate finger. + +"Tillandsia"--was her one word of response. She loved no other part of +botany quite so much as its Latin. + +"The Baron ought to see that," said Monsieur. He was a man of quiet +manners, not over-social, who had once enjoyed a handsome business income, +but had early--about the time of his marriage--been made poor through the +partial collapse of the house in Havre whose cotton-buyer he had been, +and, in a scant way, still was. "When a cotton-buyer geds down, he stays," +was all the explanation he ever gave us. He had unfretfully let adversity +cage him for life in the only occupation he knew, while the wife he adored +kept him pecuniarily bled to death, without sharing his silent resigna-- +There I go again! Somehow I can't talk about her without seeming unjust +and rude. I felt it just now, even, when I quoted her husband's fond word, +that she always chose to be the rose herself. Well, she nearly always +succeeded; she was a rose--with some of the rose's drawbacks. + +When we asked who the Baron might be it was she who told us, but in a +certain disappointed way, as if she would rather have kept him unknown a +while longer. He was, she said, a profoundly learned man, graduate of one +of those great universities over in his native Germany, and a naturalist. +Young? Well, eh--comparatively--yes. At which the silent husband smiled +his dissent. + +The Baron was an entomologist. Both the Fontenettes thought we should be +fascinated with the beauty of some of his cases of moths and butterflies. + +"And coleoptera," said the soft rose-wife. She could ask him to bring them +to us. Take us to him?--Oh!--eh--her embarrassment made her prettier, as +she broke it to us gently that the Baroness was a seamstress. She hushed +at her husband's mention of shirts; but recovered when he harked back to +the Baron, and beamed her unspoken apologies for the great, brave scholar +who daily, silently bore up under this awful humiliation. + + + +III + + +Toward the close of the next afternoon she brought the entomologist. I can +see yet the glad flutter she could not hide as they came up our front +garden walk in an air spiced by the "four-o'clocks," with whose small +trumpets--red, white, and yellow--our children were filling their laps and +stringing them on the seed-stalks of the cocoa-grass. He was bent and +spectacled, of course; _l'entomologie oblige_; but, oh, besides!-- + +"Comparatively young," Mrs. Fontenette had said, and I naturally used her +husband, who was thirty-one, for the comparison. Why, this man? It would +have been a laughable flattery to have guessed his age to be forty-five. +Yet that was really the fact. Many a man looks younger at sixty--oh, at +sixty-five! He was dark, bloodless, bowed, thin, weatherbeaten, ill-clad-- +a picture of decent, incurable penury. The best thing about his was his +head. It was not imposing at all, but it was interesting, albeit very +meagrely graced with fine brown hair, dry and neglected. I read him +through without an effort before we had been ten minutes together; a leaf +still hanging to humanity's tree, but faded and shrivelled around some +small worm that was feeding on its juices. + +And there was no mistaking that worm; it was the avarice of knowledge. He +had lost life by making knowledge its ultimate end, and was still delving +on, with never a laugh and never a cheer, feeding his emaciated heart on +the locusts and wild honey of entomology and botany, satisfied with them +for their own sake, without reference to God or man; an infant in +emotions, who time and again would no doubt have starved outright but for +his wife, whom there and then I resolved we should know also. I was amused +to see, by stolen glances, Mrs. Smith study him. She did not know she +frowned, nor did he; but Mrs. Fontenette knew it every time. + +We all had the advantage of him as to common sight. His glasses were +obviously of a very high power, yet he could scarcely see anything till he +clapped his face close down and hunted for it. When he pencilled for me +the new Latin name he had given to a small, slender, almost dazzling +green, beetle inhabiting the Spanish moss--his own scientific discovery-- +he wrote it so minutely that I had to use a lens to read it. + +As we sat close around the library lamp, I noticed how often his poor +clothing had been mended by a woman's needle. His linen was discouraging, +his cravat awry and dingy, and his hands--we had better pass his hands; +yet they were slender and refined. + +Also they shook, though not from any habit commonly called vicious. You +could see that no vice of the body nor any lust of material things had +ever led him captive. He gave one the tender despair with which we look on +a blind babe. + +When we expressed regret that his wife had not come with him, he only bent +with a deeper greed into a book I had handed him, and after a moment laid +it down disappointedly, saying that it was "fool of plundters." Mrs. +Fontenette asking to be shown one of them, they reopened the book +together, she all consciousness as she bent against him over the page, he +oblivious of everything but the phrase they were hunting. He gave his +forehead a tap of despair as he showed where the book called this same +Tillandsia, or Spanish moss, a parasite. + +"It iss no baraseet," he explained, in a mellow falsetto, "it iss an +epipheet!" + +"An air-plant!" said his fair worshipper, softly drinking in a bosomful of +gladness as she made the distance between them more discreet. + +Distances were all one to him. He seemed like a burnt log, still in shape +but gone to ashes, except in one warm spot where glowed this self- +consuming, world-sacrificing adoration of knowledge; knowledge sought, as +I say, purely for its own sake and narrowed down to names and technical +descriptions. Men of _perverted_ principles and passions you may find +anywhere; but I never had seen anyone so totally undeveloped in all the +emotions, affections, tastes that make life _life_. + + + +IV + + +A few afternoons later I went to his house. For pretext I carried a huge +green worm, but I went mainly to see just how unluckily he was married. He +was not at home. I found his partner a small, bright, toil-worn, pretty +woman of hardly twenty-eight or nine, whose two or three children had died +in infancy, and who had blended wifehood and motherhood together, and was +taking care of the Baron as a widow would care for a crippled son, and at +the same time reverencing him as if he were a demigod. Of his utter +failure to provide their daily living she confessed herself by every +implication, simply--proud! What else should a demigod's wife expect? At +the same time, without any direct statement, she made it clear that she +had no disdain, but only the broadest charity, for men who make a living. +It was odd how few her smiles were, and droll how much sweetness--what a +sane winsomeness--she managed to radiate without them. I left her in her +clean, bright cottage, like a nesting bird in a flowery bush, and entered +my own home, declaring, with what I was gently told was unnecessary +enthusiasm, that the Baron's wife was the "unluckily married" one, and the +best piece of luck her husband had ever had. I had seen women make a +virtue of necessity, but I had never before seen one make a conviction, +comfort, and joy of it, and I should try to like the Baron, I said, if +only for her sake. + +Of course I became, in some degree, a source of revenue to him. +Understand, there was always a genuine exchange of so much for so much; he +was not a "baraseet"--oh, no!--yet he hung on. We still have, stowed +somewhere, a large case of butterflies, another of splendid moths, and a +smaller one of glistening beetles. Nor can I begrudge their cost, of +whatever sort, even now when my delight in them is no longer a constant +enthusiasm. The cases of specimens have passed from daily sight, but +thenceforth, as never before, our garden was furnished with guests--pages, +ladies, poets, fairies, emperors, goddesses--coming and going on gorgeous +wings, and none ever a stranger more than once. My non-parasitic friend +"opened a new world" to me; a world that so flattered one with its grace +and beauty, its marvellous delicacy and minuteness, its glory of color and +curiousness of marking, and its exquisite adaptation of form to need and +function, that in my meaner depths, or say my childish shallows--I +resented Mrs. Fontenette's making the same avowal for herself--I didn't +believe her! + +I do not say she was consciously shamming; but I could see she drank in +the Baron's revelations with no more true spiritual exaltation than the +quivering twilight moths drew from our veranda honeysuckles. Yet it was +mainly her vanity that feasted, not any lower impulse--of which, you know, +there are several--and, possibly, all her vanity craved at first was the +tinsel distinction of unusual knowledge. + +One night she got into my dreams. I seemed to be explaining to Monsieur +Fontenette apologetically that this newly opened world was not at all +separate from my old one, but shone everywhere in it, like our winged +guests in our garden, and followed and surrounded me far beyond the +Baron's company, terminology, and magnifying-glass, lightening the burdens +and stress of the very counting-room and exchange. Whereat he seemed to +flare up! + +"Ah!--you--I believe yes! But she?" he waved his hand in fierce unbelief. + +I awoke concerned, and got myself to sleep again only by remembering the +utter absence of vanity in the Baron himself. I lay smiling in the dark to +think how much less all our verbal caressings were worth to him than the +drone of the most familiar beetle, and how his life-long delving in books +and nature had opened up this fairy world to him only at the cost of +shutting up all others. If education means calling forth and perfecting +our powers and affections, he was ten times more uneducated than his wife, +even as we knew her then. He appeared to care no more for human interests, +far or near, in large or small, than a crab cares for the stars. I fell +asleep chuckling in remembrance of an occasion when Mrs. Fontenette, +taking her cue from me, spoke to him of his plant-and-insect lore as one +of the many worlds there are within _the_ world, no more displacing it +than light displaces air, or than fragrance displaces form or sound. He +made her say it all over again, and then asked: "Vhere vas dat?" + +His whole world was not really as wide as Gregory's island was to its +gentle hermit. No butterfly raptures for him; he devoured the one kind of +facts he cared for, as a caterpillar devours leaves. + + + +V + + +How Mrs. Fontenette got Mrs. "Thorndyke-Smith" and me entangled with some +six or eight others in her project for a botanizing and butterfly-chasing +picnic I do not know; but she did. On the evening before the appointed day +I perfidiously crawfished out of it, and our house furnished only one +delegate, whom I urged to go rather than break up the party--I never break +up a party if I can avoid it. "But as for me going," I said, "my business +simply won't let me!" At which our pretty neighbor expressed her regrets +with a ready resignation that broke into open sunshine as she lamented the +same inability in her husband. To my suggestion that the Baroness be +invited, Mrs. Fontenette smiled a sweet amusement that was perfect in its +way, and said she hoped the weather would be propitious; people were so +timid about rain. + +It was. When I came home, tardily, that afternoon, the picnickers had not +returned, though the oleanders and crape-myrtles on the grounds next ours +cast shadows three times their length across our lawn. In an aimless way I +roamed from the house down into our small rear garden, thinking oftenest, +of course, of the absentees, and admiring the refined good sense with +which Monsieur Fontenette seemed to have decided to let this unperilous +attack of silliness run itself out in the woman he loved with so much +tenderness and with so much passion. + +"How much distress he is saving himself and all of us," I caught myself +murmuring, audibly, out among my fig-trees. + +Finding two or three figs fully ripe, I strolled over the way to see him +among his trees and maybe find chance for a little neighborly boasting. As +our custom with each other was, I ignored the bell on his gate, drew the +bolt, and, passing in among Mrs. Fontenette's invalid roses, must have +moved, without intention, quite noiselessly from one to another, until I +came around behind the house, where a strong old cloth-of-gold rose-vine +half covered the latticed side of the cistern shed. In the doorway I +stopped in silent amaze. A small looking-glass hanging against the wooden +cistern showed me--although I was in much the stronger light--Monsieur +Fontenette. He was just straightening up from an oil-stone he had been +using, and the reflection of his face fell full on the glass. Once before, +but once only, had I seen such agony of countenance--such fierce and awful +looking in and out at the same time; that was on a man who was still +trying to get the best of a fight in which he knew he was mortally shot. +Fontenette did not see me. I suppose the rose-vine screened me, and his +glance did not rise quite to the mirror, but followed the soft thumbings +with which he tried the two edges and point of as murderous a knife as +ever I saw. + + +As softly as a shadow I drew out of sight, turned away, and went almost +back to the gate before I let my footfall be heard, and called, "M'sieu' +Fontenette!" + +He hallooed from the shed in a playful sham of being a mile or so away, +and emerged from the lattice and vine with that accustomed light of +equanimity on his features which made him always so thoroughly good- +looking. He came hitching his waistband with both hands in that innocent +Creole way that belongs to the latitude, and how I knew I cannot tell you, +but I did know--I didn't merely feel or think, but I knew!--_positively_-- +that he had that hideous thing on his person. + +Against what contingency I could only ask myself and wonder, but I +instantly decided to get him away from home and keep him away until the +picnickers had got back and scattered. So I proposed a walk, a diversion +we had often enjoyed together. + +"Yes?" he said, "to pazz the time whilse they don't arrive? With the +greates' of pleasu'e!" + +I dare say we were both more preoccupied than we thought we were, for +outside the gate we fairly ran into a lady--yes; a seamstress--the wife of +the entomologist. My stars! She had seemed winning enough before, but now +--what a rise in values! As we conversed it was all I could do to keep my +eyes from saying: "A man with you for a wife belongs at home whenever he +can be there!" But whether they spoke it or not, in some way, without word +or glance, by simple radiations from the whole sweet woman, she revealed +that to make that fact plain to him, to _her_, and to all of us, was what +this new emphasis of charm was for. + +She had come, she said--and scarcely on the lips of the loveliest Creole +did I ever hear a more bewitching broken-English--she had come according +to a half-promise made to Mrs. Fontenette to show her--"I tidn't etsectly +promised, I chust said I vill some time come----" + +"And Mrs. Fontenette didn't object," I playfully interrupted-- + +"No," said the unruffled speaker, "I chust said I vill come; yes; to show +her a new vay to remoof, remoof? is sat English? So? A new vay to remoof +old stains." + +"A new way--" responded Fontenette, with an air of gravest interest in all +matters of laundry. + +"Yes," she repeated, as simply as a babe, "a new vay; and I sought I come +now so to go home viss mine hussbandt." There, at last, she smiled, and to +make the caressing pride of her closing tone still prettier, lifted her +figured muslin out sidewise between thumb and forefinger of each hand with +even more archaic grace than playfulness. + +As the three of us crossed over and took seats on my veranda, we were +joined by the neighbor whose garden-trees I have mentioned; the man of +whom I have told you, how he failed to strike a bargain with old +Manouvrier, the taxidermist. He was a Missourian, in the produce business, +a thoroughly good fellow, but--well--oh--! + +He came perspiring, flourishing a palm-leaf fan and a large handkerchief, +to say I might keep all the shade his tall house and trees dropped on my +side of the fence. And presently what does the simple fellow do but begin +to chaff the three of us on the absence of our three partners! + + + +VI + + +I held my breath in dismay! The more I strove to change the subject the +more our fat wag, fancying he was teasing me to the delight of the others, +harped on the one string, until with pure apprehension of what Fontenette +might presently do or say, my blood ran hot and cold. But Monsieur showed +neither amusement nor annoyance, only a perfectly gracious endurance. Yet +how could I know what instant his forbearance might give way, or what +serpent's eggs the joker's inanities might in the next day or hour turn +out to be, laid in the hot heart of the Creole gentleman? Then it was that +this slender little German seamstress-wife shone forth like the first star +of the breathless twilight. + +Seamstress? no; she had left the seamstress totally behind her. You might +have thought the finest tactics of the drawing-room--not of to-day, but of +the times when gentlemen wore swords and dirks--had been at her finger-ends +all her life. She took our good neighbor's giddy pleasantries as deep +truths lightly put, and answered them in such graceful, mild earnest, and +with such a modest, yet fetching, quaintness, that we were all preached to +more effectively than we could have been by seven priests from one pulpit. +Or, at any rate, that was my feeling; every note she uttered was +melodiously kind, but every sentence was an arrow sent home. + +"You make me," she said, "you make me sink of se aunt of my musser, vhat +she said to my musser vhen my musser iss getting married. 'Senda,' she +said, 'vonce in a vhile'--is sat right, 'vonce in a vhile?'--so?--'vonce +in a vhile your Rudolph going to see a voman he better had married san +you. Sen he going to fall a little vay--maybe a good vay--in love viss +her; and sen if Rudolph iss a scoundtrel, or if you iss a fool, sare be +trouble. But if Rudolph don't be a scoundtrel and you don't be a fool he +vill pretty soon straight' up himself and say, One man can't ever'sing +have, and mine Senda she is enough!'... Sat vas my Aunt Senda." + +"Your mother was named for her?" + +"Yes, my musser, and me; I am name' Senda, se same. She vas se Countess +von (Something)--sat aunt of my musser. She vas a fine voman." + +"Still," said our joker, "you know she was only about half right in that +advice." + +"No," she replied, putting on a drowsy tone, "I don't know; and I sink you +don't know eeser." + +"I reckon I do," he insisted. "We're all made of inflammable stuff. Any +_man_ knows that. We couldn't, any of us, pull through life decently if we +didn't let each other be each other's keeper; could we, Fontenette?" + +No sound from Fontenette. "Hmm!" hummed the little woman, in such soft +derision that only he and I heard it; and after a moment she said, "Yes, +it is so. But, you know who is se only good keeper? Sat is love." + +"And jealousy," suggested Bulk; "the blindfold boy and the green-eyed +monster." + +"Se creen-eyedt--no, I sink not. Chalousie have destroyed--is sat +correct?--yes? Chalousie have destroyed a sowsand-sowsand times so much +happiness as it ever saved--ah! see se lightening! I sink sat is se +displeasu'e of heaven to my so bad English. Ah? see it again? vell, I vill +stop." + +"You ought to be in a better world than this," laughed our fat neighbor. + +"No," she chanted, "I rasser sis one. I sink mine hussbandt never be +satisfied viss a vorld not full of vorms and bugs; and I am glad to stay +alvays viss mine hussbandt." + +"And I reckon he thinks you're big enough world for him, just yourself, +doesn't he?" + + +"No." She seemed to speak more than half to herself. "A man--see se +lightening!--a man who can be satisfied viss a vorld no bigger as I can by +mineself gif him--mine Kott! I vould not haf such a man! See se +lightening! but I sink sare vill be no storm; sare is no sunder viss se +ligh'--Ah! sare are se trhuants!" We rose to meet them. First came the +children, vaunting their fatigue, then a black maid or two, with twice +their share of baskets, and then our three spouses; the Baron came last +and was mute. The two ladies called cheery, weary good-byes to another +contingent, that passed on by the gate, and hail and farewell to our fat +neighbor as he went home. Then they yielded their small burdens to us, +climbed the veranda stairs and entered the house. + + + +VII + + +No battle, it is said, is ever fought, and I dare say no game--worth +counting--is ever played, exactly as previously planned. One of our +company had planned, very secretly, as he thought, a battle; another, +almost openly, was already waging hers; while a third was playing a game-- +though probably, I admit, fighting, inwardly, her poor weak battle also; +and none of the three offered an exception to this rule. The first clear +proof of it--which it still gives me a low sort of pleasure to recall--was +my prompt discovery, as we gathered around the tea-board, to eat the +picnic's remains, that our Flora was out of humor with the Baron. It was +plain that the whole day's flood of small experiences had been to her +pretty vanity a Tantalus's cup. She was quick to tell, with an irritation, +which she genuinely tried to conceal, and with scarcely an ounce of words +to a ton of dead-sweet insinuation, what a social failure he had chosen to +be. Evidently he had spent every golden hour of sweet spiritual +opportunity--I speak from her point of view, or, at least, my notion of +it--not in catching and communicating the charm of any scene or incident, +nor in thrilling comparisons of sentiment with anyone, nor in any +impartation of inspiring knowledge, nor in any mirthful exchange of +compliments or gay glances over the salad and sandwiches; but in +constantly poking and plodding through thicket and mire and solitarily +peering and prying on the under sides of leaves and stems and up and down +and all around the bark of every rough-trunked tree. + +She made the picture amusing, none the less, and to no one more so than to +the Baron's wife, whose presence among us at the board was as fragrant, so +to speak, as that of a violet among its leaves and sisters. "Ah! Gustaf," +she said, with a cadenced gravity more taking than mirth, "sat iss a +treat-ment nobody got a right to but me. But tell me, tell se company, +vhat new sings have you found? I know you have not hunt' all se day and +nussing new found." + +But the Baron had found nothing new. He told us so with his mouth dripping +and his nose in the trough--his plate I should say. You could hear him +chew across the room. Suddenly, however, he ceased eating and began to +pour forth an account of his day's observation; in response to which M. +Fontenette, to my amused mystification, led us all in the interest with +which we listened. The Baron forgot his food, and when reminded of it, +pushed it away with a grunt and talked on and on, while we almost forgot +our own. + +As we rose to return to the veranda, the Creole still offered him an +undivided attention, which the Baron rewarded with his continued +discourse. As I gave Fontenette a light for his cigarette I held his eye +for a moment with a brightness of face into which I put as significant +approval as I dared; for I fancied the same unuttered word was brooding in +both our hearts: "A new vay to remoof old stains." + +Then he turned and gave all his attention once more to the entomologist, +as they walked out upon the gallery together behind their wives. And the +German woman courted the pretty New Englander as sweetly as the Creole +courted her husband, and with twice the energy. She was a bubbling spring +of information in the Baron's science; she was a well of sweet philosophy +on life and conduct, and at every turn of their conversation, always +letting Mrs. Fontenette turn it, she showed her own to be the better mind +and the better training. + +When Mrs. Fontenette, before any one else, rose to go--maybe my dislike of +her only made it seem so--but I believed she did it out of pure bafflement +and chagrin. + +Not so believed her husband. He responded gratefully; yet lingered, still +listening to the entomologist, until she fondlingly chid him for +forgetting that while he had been all day in his swivel-chair, she had +passed the hours in unusual fatigues! + +She declined his arm in our garden walk, and positively forbade me to cut +a rose for her--but with a grace almost maidenly. As I let them out, the +heat-lightning gleamed again low in the west. A playfulness came into M. +Fontenette's face and he murmured to me, "See se lightening." + +"Yes," I replied, pressing his hand, "but I sink sare vill be no storm if +sare iss no sunder." + +Mrs. Fontenette gave a faint gasp of impatience and left us at a run, +tripping fairily across the rough street at the only point visible to +those on the veranda. Fontenette scowled unaware as he started to follow, +and the next moment a short "aha!" escaped him. For, at her gate, to my +unholy joy, she stumbled just enough to make the whole performance +unspeakably ridiculous, and flirted into her cottage---- + +"In tears!" I offered to bet myself as I turned to rejoin my companions on +the veranda, and wished with all my soul the goggled Baron could have seen +it. + + + +VIII + + +But the best of eyes would not have counted this time, for he was not +there. He had accepted the offer of a room, where he was giving the day's +specimens certain treatments which he believed, or pretended, could not +wait until he should reach his far downtown cottage. His hostess and his +wife had gone with him, but now some light discussion of house adornment +was drawing them to the parlor. As this room was being lighted I saw our +guest, evidently through force of an early habit, turn a critical glance +to the music on the piano, and as quickly withdraw it. Both of us motioned +her solicitously to the music-stool. + +"No, I do not play." + +"Then you sing." + +"No, not now, any more yet." But when she had let us tease her a wee bit +just for one little German song, she went to the instrument, talking +slowly as she went, and closing the door in the entomologist's direction +as she talked. + +"Siss a great vhile I haf not done siss," she concluded, as her fingers +began to drift over the keys, and then she sang, very gently, even +guardedly, but oh, so sweetly! + +We were amazed. Here, without the slightest splendor of achievement or +adventure, seemed to be the most incredible piece of real life we had ever +seen. Why, I asked myself, was this woman so short even of German friends +as to be condemned to a seamstress's penury? And my best guess was to lay +it to the zeal of her old-fashioned--and yet not merely old-fashioned- +wifehood, which could accept no friendship that did not unqualifiedly +accept him; and he?--Goodness! + +When she ceased neither listener spoke; the tears were in our throats. She +bent her head slightly over the keys, and said, "I like to sing you +anusser." We accepted eagerly, and she sang again. There was nothing of +personal application in either song, yet now, near the end, where there +was a purposed silence in the melody, the silence hung on and on until it +was clear she was struggling with herself; but again the strain arose +without a tremor, and so she finished. "Oh, no, no," she replied, to our +solicitation, with the grateful emphasis of one who declines a third +glass, "se sooneh I stop, se betteh for ever'body," meaning specially +herself, I fancy, speaking, as she rose, in a tone of such happy decision, +and yet so melodiously, that two or three strings in the piano replied. + +Her hostess took her hands and said there was one thing she could and +must do; she and her husband must spend the night with us. There was a +bed-chamber connected with the room where the Baron was still at work, and, +really--this and that, and that and this--until in the heat of argument +they called each other "My dear," and presently the ayes had it. The last +word I heard from our fair guest was to her hostess at the door of her +chamber, the farthest down the hall. It was as to shutting or not shutting +the windows. "No," she said, "I sink sare vill be no storm, because sare +is yet no sunder vis se lightening." And so it turned out. But at the same +time---- + + + +IX + + +My room adjoined the Baron's in frontas his wife's did farther back. A +door of his and window of mine stood wide open on the one balcony, from +which a flight of narrow steps led down into the side garden. Thus, for +some time after I was in bed I heard him stirring; but by and by, with no +sound to betoken it except the shutting of this door, it was plain he had +lain down. + +I awoke with a sense of having been some hours asleep, and in fact the +full moon, shining gloriously, had passed the meridian. The balcony was +lighted up by it like noon, and on it stood the entomologist, entirely +dressed. The door was shut behind him. He was looking in at my window, but +he did not know the room was mine, and with eyes twice as good as he had +he could not have seen through my mosquito-bar. I wondered, but lay still +till he had started softly down the steps. Then I sprang out of bed on the +dark side, and dressed faster than a fireman. + +When half-clad I went and looked out a parlor window. He was trying the +gate, which was locked. But he knew where the key always hung, behind the +post, and turned to get it. I went back and finished dressing, stole down +the inner, basement stairs and out into the deep shadows of the garden, +and presently saw my guest passing in through the Fontenettes' gate, whose +bolt he had drawn from the outside. As angry now as I had been amazed I +hurried after. + +To avoid the moonlight I followed the shadows of the sidewalk-trees down +to the next corner, to cross there and come back under a like cover on the +other side. But squarely on the crossing I was met and stopped by a +belated drunkard, who had a proposition to make to me which he thought no +true gentleman, such as he was, for instance, could decline. I was alone, +he asked me to notice; and he was alone; but if he should go with me, +which he would be glad to do, why, then, you see, we should be together. +He stuck like a bur, and it was minutes before I got him well started off +in his own right direction. I slipped to the Fontenettes' gate, as near as +was best, and instantly saw, between one of its posts and a very black +myrtle-orange, Fontenette himself, standing as still as the trees. I was +not in so deep a shade as he, but I might have stepped right out into the +moonlight without his seeing me, so intensely was he watching his wife's +front door. For there stood the entomologist. He had evidently been +knocking, and was about to knock again when there came some response from +within, to which he replied, in a suppressed yet eager and agitated voice, +"Mine Psyche! Oh, mine Psyche! She is come to me undt she is bringing me +already more as a hoondredt--vhat?" He had been interrupted from within. +"Vhat you say?" + +Fontenette drew his knife. + +I stood ready to spring the instant he should stir to advance. I realized +almost unbearably my position, stealing thus at such a moment on the heels +of my neighbor and friend, but this is not a story of feelings, at any +rate, not of mine. + +"Vhat?" said the entomologist. "Go avay? Mien Gott! No, I vill not ko +avay. Mien gloryform! Gif me first mine gloryform! Dot Psyche hass come +out fon ter grysalis! she hass drawn me dot room full mit oder Psyches, +undt you haf mine pottle of gloryform in your pocket yet! Yes, ko kit ut; +I vait; ach!" Presently he seemed to hear from inside a second approach. +Then the door opened an inch or so, and with another "Ach!" and never a +word of thanks, he, snatched the vial and, turning to make off with it, +came nose to nose with M. Fontenette, who stood in the moonlight gateway +holding a blazing match to his cigarette. + +"Well, sir, good-evening again," said the Creole. I noticed the perfection +of his dress; evidently he had not as yet loosed as much as a shoestring. +And then I observed also that the visitor so close before him was without +his shoes. + +"Good-evening--or, good-morning, perchance," said Fontenette. "I suepose +thaz a great thing to remove those old stain' that chloro_form_, eh?" + +"Ach! it iss you? Ach, you must coom--coom undt hellup me! Coom! you shall +see _someding_." + +"A moment," said the Creole. "May I inquire you how is that, that you call +on us in yo' sock feet?" + +"Ach! I am already t'e socks putting on pefore I remember I do not need +t'em! But coom! coom! see a vonderfool!" He led, and Fontenette, when he +had blown a cloud of smoke through his nose, followed, saying exclusively +for his own ear: + +"A wonder fool, yes! But a fool is no wonder to me any more; I find myself +to be that kind." + + + +X + + +When, hypocritically clad in dressing-gown and slippers, I stopped at my +guest's inner door and Fontenette opened it just enough to let me enter, I +saw, indeed, a wonderful sight. The entomologist had lighted up the room, +and it was filled, filled! with gorgeous moths as large as my hand and all +of a kind, dancing across one another's airy paths in a bewildering maze +or alighting and quivering on this thing and that. The mosquito-net, +draping almost from ceiling to floor, was beflowered with them +majestically displaying in splendid alternation their upper and under +colors, or, with wings lifted and vibrant, tipping to one side and another +as they crept up the white mesh, like painted and gilded sails in a +fairies' regatta. + +And all this life and beauty, this gay glory and tremorous ecstasy and +effort was here for moth-love of one incarnate fever of frail-winged +loveliness! Oh! to what unguessed archangelic observation, to what +infinite seraphic compassion, may not our own swarming race, who dare not +too much pity ourselves, be but just such dainty ephemera! Splendid in +purposes, intelligence, and affections as these in colors and grace, +glorious when on the wing, and marvellous still, riddles of wonder, even +when crawling and quivering, tipping and swerving from the upright and +true, like these palpitating flowers of desire, now this way and now that, +forever drawn and driven by the sweet tyrannies of instinct and impulse. + +So rushed the thought in upon me, and if it was not of the divinest or +manliest inspiration, at least it took some uncharity out of me for the +moment. As in mechanical silence Fontenette obeyed the busy requests of +the entomologist, I presently looked more on those two than on the winged +multitude, and thought on, of the myriad true tales of love-weakness and +love-wrath for which they and their two pretty mates were just now so +unlucky as to stand; of the awful naturalness of such things; of the +butterfly beauty and wonder--nay, rather the divine possibilities of the +lives such things so naturally speed to wreck; and then of Tom Moore +almost too playfully singing: + + + Ah! did we take for Heaven above + But half such pains as we + Take, day and night, for woman's love, + What Angels we should be! + +But while I moralized there came a change. Beneath the entomologist's dark +hand, as it searched and hurried throughout the room, the flutter of wings +had ceased as under a wind of death. + +"You must have a hundred and fifty of them," I said as the last victim +ceased to flutter. + +"Yes." + +"Their sale is slow, of course, but every time you sell one, you ought to +get"--I was judging by some prices he had charged me--"you ought to get +two dollars." And I secretly rejoiced for Senda. + +"I not can afford to sell t'em," he replied, with his back to me. + +"Why, how so?" + +"No, it iss t'is kind vhat I can exshange for five, six, maybe seven +specimenss fon Ahfrica undt Owstrahlia. No, I vill not sell t'em." + +"Oh, I see," said I, in mortal disgust. "Fontenette, I'm going to bed." +And Fontenette went too. + +The next day was cloudless--in two hearts; Senda's, and Fontenette's. As +to the sky, that is another matter; one of the charms of that warm wet +land is that, with all its sunshine, it is almost never without clouds. +And indeed it would be truer to say of my two friends' skies, that they +had clouds, but the clouds were silvered through with happy reassurances. +Jealousy, we are told, once set on fire, burns without fuel; but I must +think that that is oftenest, if not always, the jealousy of a selfish +love. Or, rather--let me quote Senda, as she spoke the only other time she +ever touched upon the subject with us. Our fat neighbor had dragged it in +again as innocently as a young dog brings an old shoe into the parlor, +and, the Fontenettes being absent, she had the nerve and wisdom not to +avoid it. Said she: + +"Some of us--not all--have great power to love. Some, not all, who have +sis power--to love--have also se power to trust. Me, I rasser be trustet +and not loved, san to be loved and not trustet." + +"How about a little of each?" asked our neighbor. + +"Oh! If se _nature_ iss little, sat iss, maybe, very vell--?" She spoke as +kindly as a mother to her babe, but he stole a slow glance here and there, +as though some one had shot him with a pea in church, and dropped the +theme. + +Which I, too, will do when I have noted the one thing I had particularly +in mind to say, of Fontenette: that, as Senda remarked--for the above is +an abridgment--"I rasser see chalousie vissout cause, san cause vissout +chalousie;" and that even while I was witness of the profound ferocity of +his jealousy when roused, and more and more as time passed on, I was +impressed with its sweet reasonableness. + + + +XI + + +Time did pass--in days and weeks of that quiet sort which make us forget +in actual life that such is the way in good stories also. Innumerable +crops were growing in the fields, countless ships were sailing or steaming +the monotonous leagues of their long wanderings from port to port, some +empty, some heavy-laden, like bees between garden and hive: + + The corn-tops were ripe and the meadows were in bloom + And the birds made music all the day. + +Many of our days must not be the wine, but only small bits of the vine, of +life. We cannot gather or eat _them_; we can only let them grow, branch, +blossom, get here and there green grapes, scarce a tenth of a tithe, in +bulk or weight, of the whole growth, and "in due season--if we faint not" +pluck the purpled clusters. And as the vine is--much, too, as the vine is +tended, so will be the raisins and the wine. There is nothing in life for +which to be more thankful, or in which to be more diligent, than its +intermissions. This is not my sermonizing. I am not going to put +everything off upon "Senda," but really this was hers. I have edited it a +trifle; her inability to make, in her pronunciation, a due difference +between wine and vine rather dulled the point of her moral. + +Fontenette remarked to her one Sunday afternoon in our garden, that she +must have got her English first from books. + +"Yes," she said, "I didt. Also I have many, many veeks English +conversations lessons befo'e Ame'ica. But I cannot se p'onunciation get; +because se spelling. Hah! I can _not_ sat spelling get!" + +O, but didn't I want to offer my services? But, like Bunyan's Christian, I +recalled a text and so got by; which text was the wise saying of that +female Solomon, "se aunt of my muss-er"--"One man can't ever'sing have, +and mine"--establishment is already complete. + +Meantime, Mrs. Fontenette, from farthest off in our group, had slipped +around to the Baroness. She spoke something low, stroking her downy fan +and blushing with that damsel sweetness of which her husband was so openly +fond. + +"O no, I sank you!" answered Senda, in an undulating voice. "I sank you +v'ey much, but I cannot take se time to come to yo' house, and I cannot +let you take se trouble _too_ come _too_ mine. No, if I can have me only +se right soughts, and find me se right vords for se right soughts, I sink +I leave se p'onunciation to se mercy of P'ovidence." + +Mrs. Fontenette blushed as prettily as a child, and let her husband take +her hand as he said, "The Providence that wou'n' have mercy on such a +pronunshation like that--ah well, 'twould have to become v'ey unpopular!" + +"Anyhow," cooed Senda, "I risk it;" and then to his wife--"For se present, +siss betteh I sew for you san spell for you." + +Thus was our fair neighbor at every turn overmatched by the trustful love +of the man and watchful love of the woman, whose fancied inferiority was +her excuse for an illicit infatuation; an infatuation which little by +little became a staring fact--only not to Fontenette. You know, you can +hide such a thing from those who love and trust you, but not long from +those who do not; and if you are not old in sin--Flora and the Baron were +infants--you will almost certainly think that a condition hid from those +who love and trust you is hid from all! O fools! the very urchins of the +playground will presently have found you out and be guessing at broken +laws, though there be only broken faiths and the anguish of first steps in +perfidy. + +We could not help but see, and yet for all our seeing we could not help. +The matter never took on flagrancy enough to give ever so kind an +intervener a chance to speak with effect. It was pitiful to see how little +gratification they got out of it; especially she, with that silly belief +in her ability to rekindle his spiritual energies and lift him into the +thin air of her transcendentalisms; slipping, nevertheless, bit by bit, +down the precipitous incline between her vaporous refinements and his +wallowing animalisms; too destitute of the love that loves to give, or of +courage, or of cunning, to venture into the fires of real passion, but +forever craving flattery and caresses, and for their sake forever holding +him over the burning coals of unfulfilled desire. + +How could we know these things so positively? + +By the entomologist; the child of science. Science yearns ever to know and +to tell. Truth for truth's sake! He had no strong _moral_ feeling against +a lie; but he had never had the slightest _use_ for a lie, and a +prevarication on his tongue would have been as strange to him as castanets +in his palms. Guile takes alertness, adroitness; and the slim pennyworth +of these that he could command he used up, no doubt, on Fontenette. I +noticed that after an hour with the Creole he always looked tortured and +exhausted. With us he was artless to the tips of his awful finger-nails. + +Nor was Mrs. Fontenette a skilful dissembler; she over-concealed things so +revealingly. Then she was so helplessly enamoured and in so childish a +way. I venture one of the penalties almost any woman may have to pay for +bringing to the altar only the consent to be loved is to find herself, +some time, at last, far from the altar, a Titania, a love's fool. Our +Titania pointed us to the fact that the Baron's wife never tried to divert +his mind from the one pursuit that enthralled it; and she borrowed one of +our garden alleys in which to teach him--grace-hoops! He never caught one +from her nor threw one that she could catch; but, ah! with her coaxing and +commanding, her sweet taunting and reprimanding and his utter lack of +surprise at them, how much she betrayed! Fontenette came, learned in a few +throws, and was charmed with the toys--a genuine lover always takes to +them kindly--but Mrs. Fontenette was by this time tired, and she never +again felt rested when her husband mentioned the game. + +Furthermore, their countenances!--hers and the entomologist's--especially +when in repose--you could read the depths of experience they had sounded, +by the lines and shadows that came and went, or stayed, as one may read +the depths of a bay by the passing of wind and light, day by day, over its +waters--particularly if the waters are not very deep. + +They made painful reading. What degrees of heart-wretchedness came and +went or stayed with them, we may have over--we may have underestimated. +God knows. In two months Mrs. Fontenette grew visibly older and less +pretty, yet more nearly beautiful; while he, by every sign, was gradually +awakening back--or, shall we not say, being now first born?--to life, +through the pangs of a torn mind; mind, not conscience; but pangs never of +sated, always of the famished sort. + + + +XII + + +It was he who finally put the very seal of confirmation upon both our +hopes and our fears. + +The time was the evening of the same Sunday in whose afternoon his wife +had declined those transparent spelling-lessons. A certain preacher, noted +for his boldness, was drawing crowds by a series of sermons on the text +"Be thou clean," and our fat neighbor and his wife took us, all six, to +hear him. Their pew was well to the front and we were late, so that going +down the aisle unushered, with them in the lead--husband and spouse, +husband and spouse, four couples--we made a procession which became +embarrassingly amusing as the preacher simultaneously closed the Scripture +lesson with, "And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons' +wives with him into the ark." + +That has been our fat neighbor's best joke ever since, though he always +says after it, "The poor Baron!" and often adds--"and poor Mrs. +Fontenette! Little did we think," etc. But he has never even suspected +their secret. + +The entomologist was the last of our pew-full to give heed to the pulpit. +When the preacher said that because it was a year of state elections, for +which we ought already to be preparing, he had in his first discourse +touched upon political purity--cleanness of citizenship--the Baron showed +no interest. He still showed none when the speaker said again, that +because the pestilence was once more with us--that was in the terrible +visitation of 1878--he had devoted his second discourse to the hideous +crime of a great city whose voters and tax-payers do not enable and compel +it to keep the precept, "Be thou clean." I thought of the clean little +home from whose master beside me came no evidence that he thought at all. +But the moment the preacher declared his purpose to consider now the +application of this great command to the individual life and character of +man and woman as simply man and woman, the entomologist became the closest +listener in the crowded throng. + +The sermon was a daring one. I was struck by the shrewd concessions with +which the speaker defined personal purity and the various false +conceptions of it that pass current; abandoning the entrenched hills, so +to speak, of his church's traditional rigor and of many conventional +rules, and drawing after him into the unfortified plain his least +persuadable hearers of whatever churchly or unchurchly prejudice, to +surround them finally at one wide sweep and receive their unconditional +surrender. His periods were not as embarrassing to a mixed audience as my +citations would indicate. Those that I bring together were wisely +subordinated and kept apart in the discourse, and ran together only in +minds like my own, eager for one or two other hearers to be specially +impressed by them. And one, at least, was. Before the third sentence of +the main discourse was finished the fierceness of the Baron's attention +was provoking me to ask myself whether a conscience also was not coming to +birth in him. + +In a spiritual-material being, said the speaker, the spirit has a +rightful, happy share in every physical delight, and no physical delight +need be unclean in which the spirit can freely enjoy its just share as +senior member in the partnership of soul and body. Without this spiritual +participation it could not be clean, though church, state, and society +should jointly approve and command it. Mark, I do not answer for the truth +of these things; I believe them, but that is quite outside of our story. + +The commonest error, he said, of those who covet spiritual cleanness is to +seek a purification of self for self-purification's sake. + +The Baron grunted. He was drinking in the words; had forgotten his +surroundings. + +Only those are clean, continued the speaker, whose every act, motive, +condition is ordered according to their best knowledge of the general +happiness, whether that happiness is for the time embodied in millions, or +in but one beyond themselves. Through errors of judgment they may fall +into manifest outward uncleannesses; but they, and none but they, are +clean within. + +Because women, he went on, are in every way more delicately made than men, +we easily take it for granted they are more spiritual. From Genesis to +Revelation the Bible never does so. It is amazing how feeble a sense of +condemnation women--even as compared with men--often show for the _spirit_ +of certain misdeeds if only it be unaccompanied by the misdeed's +performance; or what loathing so many of them--"of you," he really said, +and the Baron grunted as though his experience had been with droves of +them--what loathing so many of you heap upon certain things without +reference to the spirit by which they are accompanied and on which their +nobility or baseness, their cleanness or foulness, entirely depends. + +Nothing is unclean that is to no one anywhere unjust or unkind; and +nothing is unjust, unkind, or unclean which cannot easily be shown to be +so without inventing an eleventh commandment. To him, he said, no +uncleanness was more foul than that which, not for kindness, or for +righteousness, but for a fantastical, self-centred refinement, invents +some eleventh commandment to call that common which God hath cleansed; to +call anything brutish which the incarnation of the soul has made sacred to +spotless affections. + +The Baron muttered something in German, and Fontenette shut his mouth +tight and straightened up in approbation. + + +At the close of the service we were not out of the pew before our escort +was introducing Senda to his friends in front and behind as busily and +elaborately as if that was what we had come for. Twice and again she cast +so anxious an eye upon her husband--from whom Mrs. Fontenette had wisely +taken shelter behind hers--that I softly said to her, "We'll take care of +him." + +A care he was! All the way down the aisle, amid the peals of the organ, he +commented on the sermon aloud, mostly to himself but also to whichever of +us he could rub his glasses against. Sometimes he mistook others for us +until they stared. His face showed a piteous, weary distress, his thin +hair went twenty ways, he seemed scarcely to know where he was or how to +take his steps, and presently was saying to a strange lady crowded against +him, as though it was with her he had been talking all along: + +"Undt vhy shall we haf t'at owfool troubple? No-o, t'at vould kill me! I +am not a cat to keep me alvays clean--no more as a hogk to keep me always +not clean. No, I keep me--owdside--inside--always so clean as it comes +eassy, undt I leave me so dirty as it comes eassy." + + + +XIII + + +I took his arm into mine--his hand was hot--and drew him on alone. "Undt +t'ose vomens," he persisted in the vestibule, "t'ey are more troubple yet +as t'eir veight in goldt! I vish, mine Gott! t'ere be no more any vomens +ut all, undt we haf t'e shiltern by mutchinery." + +On the outer steps I sprang with others to save a young girl, who had +stumbled, from pitching headlong to the sidewalk. Once on her feet again, +after a limp or two she walked away uninjured; but when I looked around +for my real charge he was not in sight. I hurried to Fontenette and his +wife a few steps away, but he was not with them. The three of us turned +back and came upon the rest of our group, but neither had they seen him. +Our other neighbor said he must have got into a car. I asked Senda if it +was likely he would go home without trying to find us, and she replied +that he might; but when we had all looked at one another for a moment she +dded, with a distinct tremor of voice--and I saw that she feared +temptation and conscience had unsettled his wits--"I sink he iss not ve'y +vell. I sink he is maybe--I ton't know, but--I--I sink he iss not ve'y +vell." She averted her face. + +She agreed with us, of course, that there was no call for alarm, and Mrs. +Smith and I had to plead that we could not, the six of us, let her go +home, away downtown, alone, while we should go as far the other way and +remain all night ignorant of her husband's whereabouts. So our next door +neighbor, my wife and I went with her, and his wife and the Fontenettes +went home; for a conviction probably common to us all, but which no one +cared to put into downright words, was that the entomologist, whether +dazed or not, might wander up to one of our homes in preference to his +own. In the street-car and afterward for a full hour at her house, Senda +was very silent, only saying now a little and then a little more. + +"_He_ iss all right! _He_ vill sure come. Many times he been avay se +_whole_ night. Sat is se first time I am eveh afraid; is sat se vay when +commencing to grow old? Yes, I sink sat is se reason." + +When we had been at her cottage for nearly an hour, my neighbor started +out on a systematic search; and half an hour later, I left Mrs. Smith with +her and went also. + +About one o'clock in the night, I came back as far as the corner nearest +her house, but waited there, by appointment, with my neighbor; and very +soon--stepping softly--he appeared. + +"No sign of him?" + +"None." + +"You don't suppose he's done himself any violence, do you?" he asked. + +"No, no. O no." + +"And yet," he said, "I think we ought to tell the police at once." + +I advanced some obvious objections. "At any rate," I said, "go in, will +you, please, and see if he hasn't come home, while we were away." + +"Why, yes, that _is_ the first thing," laughed he, and went. + +As I waited for him in the still street, I heard far away a quick +footstep. By and by I saw a man pass under a distant lamp, coming toward +me. I looked with all my eyes. Just then my neighbor came back. "Listen," +I murmured. "Watch when that man comes under the next light." + +He watched. "It's Fontenette!" + +"Well," said the Creole as he joined us, "he's yondeh all right--except +sick. + +"Yes, he cou'n't tell anybody where to take him, and a doctor found that +letteh on him print' outside with yo' uptown address; and so he put him in +a cab an' sen' him yondeh, and sen' word he muz 'ave been sick sinze sev'l +hours, an' get him in bed quick don't lose a minute." + +"And so he's in bed at my house!" I put in approvingly. + +"Ah, no! I coul'n' do like that; but I do the bes' I could; he is at _my_ +'ouse in bed. An' my own doctor sen' word what to do an' he'll come in the +mawning. And (to our neighbor) yo' madame do uz that kineness to remain +with Madame Fontenette whiles I'm bringing his wife." + +At the cottage my companions remained outside. As I entered Senda caught +one glance and exclaimed, "Ah, mine hussbandt is foundt and is anyhow +alife!" + +"Yes," I replied, "but he's ill. Mr. Fontenette met him and took him to +his house. He's there now with Mrs. Fontenette and Mrs. Blank. Get a +change of dress and come, we'll all go together." + +Senda stared. "A shange of dtress?" Then, with a most significant mingling +of relief and new disturbance, she said, "Ah, I see!" and looking from me +to Mrs. Smith and from Mrs. Smith to me, while she whipped her bonnet +ribbons into a bow, she cried, with shaking voice and streaming eyes: + +"Oh, sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow feveh." + + + +XIV + + +No sick man could have been better cared for than was the entomologist at +our neighbor's over the way. "The fever," as in the Creole city it used to +be sufficiently distinguished, is not so deadly, nor so treacherous, nor +nearly so repulsive, as some other maladies, but none requires closer +attention. After successive days and nights of unremitting vigilance, +should there occur a momentary closing of the nurse's eyes, or a turning +from the bedside for a quarter of a minute, the irresponsible patient may +attempt to rise and may fall back dying or dead. So, the attendant must +have an attendant. In the case of the entomologist, his wife became the +bedside nurse and sentinel. + +In the next room, now and then Mrs. Smith, and now and then our fat +neighbor's wife, waited on her, but by far the most of the time, Mrs. +Fontenette was her assistant. When Senda, while the patient dozed, stole +brief moments of sleep to keep what she could of her overtasked powers, +her place, at the bedside, was always filled by Fontenette, who as often +kept his promise to call her the instant her husband should rouse. + +Thus we brought our precious entomologist through the disorder's first +crisis, which generally comes exactly on the seventy-second hour, and in +due time through the second, which falls, if I remember aright, on the +ninth day. What I do recall with certainty, was that it came on one of the +days of the city's heaviest mortality and that two of our children, and my +next neighbor's wife, came down with the scourge. + +And O, the beautiful days and the beautiful nights! It seemed the illusion +of a dream, that between such land and sky, there should be not one street +in that embowered city unsmitten by sorrow and death. Out of yonder fair +home on the right, they carried yesterday, the loved mother of five +children--but the Baron is better. From this one on the left, will be +borne to-morrow such a man as no city can lightly spare, till now a living +fulfilment of the word "Be thou clean"--but the entomologist will be ever +so much better. + +To be glad of it, you needed only to hear Senda allude to him as "Mine +hussbandt." Why did she never mention him in any other way? The little +woman was a riddle to me. I did not see how she could give such a man such +a love, and yet I never could see but she was as frank as a public record. +Stranger still was it how she could be the marital partner--the mate, to +speak plainly--of such a one, without showing or feeling the slightest +spiritual debasement. Finally, however, I caught some light. I had stepped +over to ask after "Mine hussbandt," everyone else of us being busy with +our own sick. Senda was letting Fontenette take her place in the +sick-room, which, of course, was shut close. I silently entered the room +in front of it, and perceiving that Mrs. Fontenette had drawn her into the +other front room, adjoining--a door stood half open between--and was +tempting her with refreshments, I sat down to await their next move. So +presently I began to hear what they said to each other in their gentle +speculations. + +"A wife who has realized her ideal," Mrs. Fontenette was saying, when +Senda interrupted: + +"Ah! vhat vife is sat? In vhat part of se vorldt does she lif, and how +long she is marriedt? No-o, no! Sare is only vun _kindt_ of vife in se +_whole_ vorldt vhat realize her ideal hussbandt; and sat is se vife vhat +idealize her real hussbandt. Also not se hussbandt and se vife only; I +sink you even cannot much Christ-yanity practice vis anybody--close +related--vissout you idealize sem. But ze hussbandt and vife-- + +"You remembeh sat sehmon, 'Be'--O yes, of course. Vell, sat is vun sing se +preacher forget to say--May be he haf not se time, but I sink he forget: +sat sare is no hussbandt in se whole vorldt--and also sare is no vife--so +sp'--spirit'--spirited? no? Ah, yes--spiritual!--yes, sank you. Vhen I +catch me a bigk vord I am so proudt, yet, as I hadt a fish caught!" + +I was willing to believe it, but thought how still more true it was of +Mrs. Fontenette. But the gentle speaker had not paused. "Sare iss no vife +so _spiritual_," she repeated, triumphantly, "and who got a hussbandt so +spiritual, sat eeser vun--do you say 'eeser vun'?" + +"Either one," said her hostess, reassuringly. + +"Yes, so spiritual sat eeser vun can keep sat rule inside--to be pairfect' +clean, if sat vun do not see usseh vun _idealize_." + +I made a stir--"Hmm!" Whereupon she came warily to the door. I sat +engrossed in a book and wishing I could silently crawl under it snake +fashion; but I could feel her eyes all over me, and with them was a +glimmering smile that helped them to make me tingle as she softly spoke. + +"Ah!--See se book-vorm! He iss all eyes--and ee-ahs. Iss it _not_ so?" + +"Pardon," I murmured; "did you spe'--has any one been speaking and I have +failed to give attention?" + +"O no, sir! I sink not! Vell, you are velcome to all you haf heardt; but I +am ve'y much oblige' to you for yo' 'hmm.' It vas se right sing in se +right place. But do you not sink I shouldt haf been a pre-eacheh? I love +to preach." + +I said I knew of three men in one neighborhood with whom she might start a +church, and asked how was the Baron. + +Improving--would soon be able to sit up. She inquired after my children. + +It was quite in accord with a late phase of Mrs. Fontenette's demeanor +that on this occasion she did not appear until I mentioned her. She had +not come near me by choice since the night the Baron was found and sent to +my address, although I certainly was in every way as nice to her as I had +ever been, and I was not expecting now to be less so. + +When she appeared I asked her if a superb rose blooming late in August was +not worth crossing to our side of the way to see. She knew, of course, +that sooner or later, as the best of a bad choice, she must allow me an +interview; yet now she was about to decline on some small excuse, when her +eyes met mine, and she saw that in my opinion the time had come. So she +made her excuses to her guest and went with me. + +She gave the rose generous notice and praise, and as she led the way back +lingered admiringly over flower after flower. Yet she said little; more +than once she paused entirely to let me if I chose change the subject, and +when at the gate I did so, she stood like a captive, looking steadily into +my face with eyes as helpless as a half-fledged bird's and as lovely as +its mother's. When I drew something from my breastpocket, they did not +move. + +"This," I said, "is the letter that was found on the Baron the night he +was taken ill. Your husband handed it to me supposing, of course, I had +written it, as it was in one of my envelopes, and he happens not to know +my handwriting. But I did not write it. I had never seen it, yet it was +sent in one of my envelopes. I haven't mentioned it to anyone else, +because--you see?--I hope you do. I thought--well, frankly, I thought if I +should mention it first to you I might never need to mention it to anyone +else." I waited a moment and then asked, eyes and all: "Who could have +sent it?" + +"Isn't," she began, but her voice failed, and when it came again it was +hardly more than a whisper, "isn't it signed?" + +Now, that was just what I did not know. Whatever the thing was, I had +never taken it from the envelope. But the moment she asked I knew. I knew +it bore no signature. We gazed into each other's eyes for many seconds +until hers tried to withdraw. Then I said--and the words seemed to drop +from my lips unthought--"It didn't have to be signed, Mrs. Fontenette, +although the handwriting is disguised." + +Poor Flora! I can but think, even yet, I was kinder than if I had been +kind; but it was brutal, and I felt myself a brute, thus to be holding her +up to herself there on the open sidewalk where she dared not even weep or +wring her hands or hide her face, but only make idle marks on the brick +pavement with her tiny boots--and tremble. + + +"I--I had to write it," she began to reply, and her words, though they +quivered, were as mechanical as mine. "He was so--so--imprudent--my +husband's happiness required----" + +I stopped her. "Please don't say that, Mrs. Fontenette. Pardon me, but-- +not that, please." I felt for an instant quite cruel enough to have told +her what ebb tides she had given that husband's happiness; what he had +been so near doing and had been led back from only by the absolute +christliness of that other woman and wife, whose happiness scarcely seemed +ever to have occurred to her; but that was his secret, not mine. + +She broke a silence with a suppressed exclamation of pain, while for the +eyes of possible observers I imitated her in a nonchalant pose. "You +wouldn't despise me if you knew the half I've suffered or how I've striv-- +--" + +I interrupted again. "O Mrs. Fontenette, any true gentleman--at thirty- +five--knows it _all--himself_. And he had better go and cut his throat +than give himself airs, even of pity, over a lady who has made a misstep +she cannot retrace." + +Her foot played with a brick that was loose in the pavement, but she gave +me a melting glance of gratitude. After a considerable pause she murmured, +"I will retrace it." + +"I have kept you here a good while," I said. "After a moment or so drop +your handkerchief, and as I return it to you the letter will be with it. +Or, better, if you choose to trust me, we'll not do that, but as soon as I +get into the house I'll burn it." + +"I can trust you," she replied, "but----" + +"What; the Baron--when he misses it? O I'll settle that." + +She gave a start as though I had shouted. + +I thought it a bad sign for the future, and the words that followed seemed +to me worse. "Isn't it my duty," she asked--and her eyes betrayed +unconsciously the desperateness of her desire--"to explain to him myself?" + +I answered with a question. "Would that be in the line of retracement, +Mrs. Fontenette?" + +"It would!" she responded, with solemn eagerness. "O it would be! It shall +be! I promise you!" + +"Mrs. Fontenette," said I, "consider. If his wife"--she flinched; she +could do so now, for the sudden semi-tropical darkness had fallen--"if his +wife-or your husband"--she bit her lip--"knew all--would they think that +your duty? Would it take them an instant to refuse their consent? Would +they not firmly insist that it is your duty never again to see him alone?" + +Her only reply was an involuntary moan and a whitening of the face, and +for the first time I saw how deep into her soul the poison had gone. + +"My friend," I continued, "you must not think me meddlesome--officious. I +can no more wait for your permission to help you than if you were +drowning. Perhaps for good reasons within _me_, I know, better than you, +that you-and he--are on a slippery incline, and that whether you can stop +your descent and creep back to higher ground than either of you has +slipped from is not to be told by the fineness of your promises or +resolves. I cannot tell; you cannot tell; only God knows." ... + +"Please, sir," said a new maid--in place of one who had gone home fever +struck and had died--"yo' lady saunt me fo' to tell you yo' little boy a +sett'n on de back steps an' sayin' his head does ache him, an' she wish +you'd 'ten' to him, 'caze she cayn't leave his lill' sisteh, 'caze she +threaten with convulsion'." + + + +XV + + +Mrs. Fontenette and the maid silently ran in ahead of me; I went first to +the mother. When I found Mrs. Fontenette again she had the child undressed +and in his crib, and I remembered how often I had, in my heart, called her +a coward. + +She saw me pencil on a slip of paper at the mantelpiece, and went and read +-"You mustn't stay. He has the fever. You've never had it." + +She wrote beneath--"I should have got it weeks ago if God paid wages every +day. Don't turn me off." + +I dropped the paper into the small firegrate, added the other from my +breastpocket, and set them ablaze, and the new maid, entering, praised +burning paper as one of the best deodorizers known. + +So my dainty rose-neighbor stayed; stayed all night, and all the next day +and night, and on and on with only flying visits to her home over the way, +until we were amazed at her endurance. The little fellow was never at ease +with her out of his wild eyes. Her touch was balm to him, and her words +peace. Oh, that they might have been healing also! But that was beyond the +reach of all our striving. His days were as the flowers and winged things +of the garden-kingdom, wherein he had been--without ever guessing it-- +their citizen-king. + +It awakens all the tenderness at once that I ever had for Mrs. Fontenette, +to recall what she was to him in those hours, and to us when his agonies +were all past, and he lay so stately on his short bier, and she could not +be done going to it and looking--looking--with streaming eyes. + +As she stood close by the tomb, while we dumbly watched the masons seal +it, I began to believe that she blamed herself for the child's sickness +and death, and presently I knew it must be so. One of those quaint burial +societies of Negro women, in another quarter of the grounds, but within +plain hearing, chose for the ending of their burial service--with what +fitness to their burial service I cannot say, maybe none--a hymn borrowed, +I judge, from the rustic whites, as usual, but Africanized enough to +thrill the dullest nerves; and the moment it began my belief was +confirmed. + + + My sin is so dahk, Lawd, so dahk and so deep, + My grief is so po', Lawd, so po' and so mean, + I wisht I could weep, Lawd, I wisht I could weep, + Oh, I wisht I could weep like Mary Mahgaleen! + + Oh, Sorroh! sweet Sorroh! come, welcome, and stay! + I'd welcome thy swode howsomever so keen, + If I could jes' pray, Lawd, if I could jes' pray, + Oh! if I could jes' pray, like Mary Mahgaleen! + + +My belief was confirmed, I say; but I was glad to see also that no one +else read as I read the signs by which I was guided. At the cemetery gate +I heard some one call--"Yo' madam is sick, sih," and, turning, saw Mrs. +Fontenette, deathly white, lift her blue eyes to her husband and he get +his arm about her just in time to save her from falling. She swooned but a +moment, and, in the carriage, before it started off, tried to be quite +herself, though very pale. + +"It's nothing but the reaction," said to me the lady who fanned her, and +we agreed it was a wonder she had held up so long. + +"Hyeh, honey," put in the child's old black nurse, in a voice that never +failed to soothe, however grotesque its misinterpretations, "lay yo' head +on me; an' lay it heavy: dass what I'm use-en to. Blessed is de pyo in +haht; she shall res' in de fea' o' de Lawd, an' he shall lafe at heh +calamity." + +I was glad to send the old woman with them, for as we turned away to our +own carriage, I said in my mind, "All that little lady needs is enough +contrition, and she'll give away the total of any secret of which she owns +an undivided half." + +But a night and a day passed, and a second, and a third, and I perceived +she had told nothing. + +It was a terrible time, with many occasions of suspense more harrowing +than that. Our other children were getting on, yet still needed vigilant +care; the Baron was to be let out of his room in a day or two, but my fat +neighbor had come down with the disease, while his wife still lay between +life and death--how they finally got well, I have never quite made out, +they were so badly nursed--and all about us were new cases, and cases +beyond hope, and retarded recoveries, and relapses, and funerals, and +nurses too few, and ice scarce, and everybody worn out with watching-- +physicians compelled to limit themselves to just so many cases at a time, +to avoid utterly breaking down. + +As I was in my fat neighbor's sick chamber one evening, giving his nurse a +respite, word came that Fontenette was at my gate. I went to him with +misgivings that only increased as we greeted. He was dejected and +agitated. His grasp was damp and cold. + +"It cou'n' stay from me always," he said in an anguished voice, and I +cried in my soul, "She's told him!" + +But she had not. I asked him what his bad news was that had come at last, +but his only reply was, + +"Can you take _him_? Can you take him out of my house--to-night--this +evening--now?" + +"Who, the Baron? Why, certainly, if you desire it?" I responded; wondering +if the entomologist, by some slip, had betrayed _her_. There was an awe in +my visitor's eyes that was almost fright. + +"Fontenette," I exclaimed, "what have you heard--what have you done?" + +"My frien', 'tis not what I 'ave heard, neitheh what I 'ave done; 'tis +what I 'ave got." + +"Got? Why, you've got nothing, you Creole of the Creoles. Your skin's as +cool as mine." + +"Feel my pulse," he said. I felt it. It wasn't less than a hundred and +fifty. + +"Go, get into bed while I bring the Baron over here," I said, and by the +time I had done this and got back to him his skin was hot enough! An hour +or two after, I recrossed the street on the way to my night's rest, +leaving his wife to nurse him, and Senda to attend on her and keep house. +I paused in the garden and gazed up among the benignant stars. And then I +looked onward, through and beyond their ranks, seemingly so confused, yet +where such amazing hidden order is, and said, for our good Fontenette, and +for his watching wife, and for all of us--even for my wife and me in our +unutterable loss--"Sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow fevah!" + + + +XVI + + +Three days more. In the third evening I found the doctor saying to Mrs. +Fontenette: + + +"Nine o'clock. It's now seven-thirty. Well, you'd better begin pretty soon +to watch for the change. + +"O, you'll know it when you see it, it will be as plain as something +sinking in water right before your eyes. Then give him the beef-tea, just +a teaspoonful; then, by and by, another, and another, as I told you, +always keeping his head on the pillow--mind that." + +Out beside his carriage he continued to me: "O yes, a nurse or patient may +break that rule, or almost any rule, and the patient may live. I had a +patient, left alone for a moment on the climacteric day, who was found +standing at her mirror combing her hair, and to-day she's as well as you +or I. I had another who got out of bed, walked down a corridor, fell face +downward and lay insensible at the crack of a doorsill with the rain +blowing in on him under the door--and he got well. As to Fontenette, all +his symptoms so far are good. Well--I'll be back in the morning." + +So ran the time. There were no more new cases in our house; Mrs. Smith and +I had had the scourge years before, as also had Senda, who remained over +the way. Fontenette passed from one typical phase of the disorder to +another "charmingly" as the doctor said, yet he specially needed just such +exceptionally delicate care as his wife was giving him. In the city at +large the deaths per day were more and more, and one night when it +showered and there was a heavenly cooling of the air, the increase in the +mortality was horrible. But the weather, as a rule, was steady and +tropically splendid; the sun blazed; the moonlight was marvellous; the +dews were like rains; the gardens were gay with butterflies. Our +convalescent little ones hourly forgot how gravely far they were from +being well, and it became one of our heavy cares to keep the entomologist +from entomologizing--and from overeating. + +From time to time, when shorthanded we had used skilled nurses; but when +Mrs. Fontenette grew haggard and we mentioned them, she said +distressfully: "O! no hireling hands! I can't bear the thought of it!" and +indeed the thought of the average hired "fever-nurse" of those days was +not inspiring; so I served as her alternate when she would accept any and +throw herself on the couch Senda had spread in the little parlor. + + + +XVII + + +At length one day I was called up at dawn and went over to take her place +once more, and when after several hours had passed I was still with him, +Fontenette said, while I bent down, + +"I have the fear thad's going to go hahd with my wife, being of the +Nawth." + +"Why, what's going to go hard, old fellow?" + +"The feveh. My dear frien', don't I know tha'z the only thing would keep +heh f'om me thad long?" + +"Still, you don't know her case will be a hard one; it may be very light. +But don't talk now." + +"Well--I hope _so_. Me, I wou'n' take ten thousand dollahs faw thad feveh +myself--to see that devotion of my wife. You muz 'ave observe', eh?" + +"Yes, indeed, old man; nobody could help observing. I wouldn't talk any +more just now." + +"No," he insisted, "nobody could eveh doubt. 'Action speak loudeh than +word,' eh?" + +"Yes, but we don't want either from you just now." I put his restless arms +back under the cover; not to keep the outer temperature absolutely even +was counted a deadly risk. "Besides," I said, "you're talking out of +character, old boy." + +He looked at me mildly, steadily, for several moments, as if something +about me gave him infinite comfort. It was a man's declaration of love to +a man, and as he read the same in my eyes, he closed his own and drowsed. + +Though he dozed only at wide intervals and briefly, he asked no more +questions until night; then--"Who's with my wife?" + +"Mine." + +He closed his eyes again, peacefully. It was in keeping with his perfect +courtesy not to ask how the new patient was. If she was doing well,--well; +and if not, he would spare us the pain of informing or deceiving him. + +Senda became a kind of chief-of-staff for both sides of the street. She +would have begged to be Mrs. Fontenette's nurse, but for one other +responsibility, which we felt it would be unsafe, and she thought it would +be unfair, for her to put thus beyond her own reach: "se care of mine +hussbandt." + +She wore a plain path across the unpaved street to our house, and another +to our neighbor's. "Sat iss a too great risk," she compassionately +maintained, "to leaf even in se daytime sose shiltren--so late sick--alone +viss only mine hussbandt and se sairvants!" + +The doctor was concerned for Mrs. Fontenette from the beginning. "Terribly +nervous," he said, "and full from her feet to her eyes, of a terror of +death--merely a part of the disease, you know." But in this case I did not +know. + +"Pathetic," he called the fevered satisfaction she took in the hovering +attentions of our old black nurse, who gave us brief respites in the two +sick-rooms by turns, and who had according to Mrs. Fontenette, "such a +beautiful faith!" The doctor thought it mostly words, among which "de Lawd +willin'" so constantly recurred that out of the sick-room he always +alluded to her as D.V., though never without a certain sincere regard. +This kind old soul had nursed much yellow fever in her time, and it did +not occur to us that maybe her time was past. + +When Mrs. Fontenette had been ill something over a week, the doctor one +evening made us glad by saying as he came through the little dining-room +and jerked a thumb back toward Fontenette's door, "Just keep him as he is +for one more night and, I promise you, he'll get well; but!"--He sat down +on the couch--Senda's--in the parlor, and pointed at the door to Mrs. +Fontenette's room--"You've got to be careful _how_ you let even that be +known--in there! She can get well too--if--" And he went on to tell how in +this ailment all the tissues of the body sink into such frail +deterioration, that so slight a thing as the undue thrill of an emotion, +may rend some inner part of the soul's house and make it hopelessly +untenable. + +"Iss sat not se condition vhat make it so easy to relapse?" asked Senda. + +He said it was, I think, and went his way, little knowing to what a night +he was leaving us--except for its celestial beauty, upon which he +expatiated as I stepped with him to the gate. + + + +XVIII + + +He had not been gone long enough for me to get back into the house- +Fonteette's--when I espied coming to me, in piteous haste from her home +around the corner, the young daughter of another neighbor. Her hair was +about her eyes and as she saw the physician had gone, she wrung her hands +and burst into violent weeping. I ran to her outside the gate, pointing +backward at Mrs. Fontenette's room, with entreating signs for quiet as she +called--"Oh, _where_ is he gone? Which way did he go?" + +"I can't tell you, my dear girl!" I murmured. "I don't know! What is the +trouble?" + +"My father!" she hoarsely whispered. + +"My father's dying! dying in a raging delirium, and we can't hold him in +bed! O, come and help us!" She threw her hands above her head in wild +despair, and gnawed her fingers and lips and shook and writhed as she +gulped down her sobs, and laid hold of me and begged as though I had +refused. + +I found her words true. It took four men to keep him down. I did not have +to stay to the end, and when I reached Fontenette's side again, was glad +to find I had been away but little over an hour. + +I sent the old black woman home and to bed, and may have sat an hour more, +when she came back to tell us, that one of the children was very wakeful +and feverish. Senda went to see into the matter for us, and the old woman +took her place in the little parlor. Mrs. Smith was with Mrs. Fontenette. + +Fontenette slept. Loath to see him open his eyes, I kept very still, while +nearly another hour dragged by, listening hard for Senda's return, but +hearing only, once or twice, through the narrow stairway and closets +between the two bedrooms, a faint stir that showed Mrs. Fontenette was +awake and being waited on. + +I was grateful for the rarity of outdoor sounds; a few tree-frogs piped, +two or three solitary wayfarers passed in the street; twice or more the +sergeant of the night-watch trilled his whistle in a street or two behind +us, and twice or more in front; and once, and once again, came the distant +bellow of steamboats passing each other--not the famous boats whose +whistle you would know one from another, for they were laid up. I doubt if +I have forgotten any sound that I noticed that night. I remember the +drowsy rumble of the midnight horse-car and tinkle of its mule's bell, +first in Prytania street and then in Magazine. It was just after these +that at last a black hand beckoned me to the door, and under her breath +the old nurse told me she was just back from our house, where her mistress +had sent her, and that--"De-eh--de-eh"-- + +"The Baroness?" + +"Yass, sih, de--de outlayndish la-ady--" + +Senda had sent word that the child had only an indigestion--a thing +serious enough in such a case--and though still slightly feverish was now +asleep, but restless. + +"Sih? Yass, sir--awnressless--dass 'zac'ly what I say!" + +Wherefore Senda would either remain in the nursery or return to us, as we +should elect. + +"O no, sih, she no need to come back right now, anyhow; yass, sih, dass +what de Mis' say, too." + +"Then you'll stay here," I whispered. + +"Yass, sih, ef de Lawd wil'--I mean ef you wants me, sih--yass, sih, +thaynk you, sih. I loves to tend on Mis' Fontenette, she got sich a bu'ful +fa aith, same like she say I got. Yass, sih, I dess loves to set an' watch +her--wid dat sweet samtimonious fa-ace." + +Fontenette being still asleep I gave her my place for a moment, and went +to the door between the parlor and his wife's room. Mrs. Smith came to it, +barely breathing the triumphant word--"Just dropped asleep!" + +When I replied that I would take a little fresh air at the front door she +asked if at my leisure I would empty and bring in from the window-sill, +around on the garden side of her patient's room a saucer containing the +over-sweetened remains of some orange-leaf tea, that "D.V." had made "for +to wrench out de nerves." She wanted the saucer. + +I went outside a step or two and took in a long draught of good air--the +air of a yellow-fever room is dreadful. It was my first breath of mental +relief also; almost the first that night, and the last. + +I paced once or twice the short narrow walk between the front flower-beds, +surprised at their well-kept and blooming condition until I remembered +Senda. The moths were out in strong numbers, and it was delightful to +forget graver things for a moment and see the flowers bend coyly under +their passionate kisses and blushingly rise again when the sweet robbery +was finished. So it happened that I came where a glance across to my own +garden showed me, on the side farthest from the nursery, a favorite bush, +made pale by a light that could come only from the entomologist's window! +I went in promptly, told what I proposed to do, and hurried out again. + + + +XIX + + +I crossed into my garden and silently mounted the balcony stairs I have +mentioned once before. His balcony door was ajar. His room was empty. He +had occupied the bed. A happy thought struck me--to feel the spot where he +had lain; it was still warm. Good! But his clothes were all gone except +his shoes, and they, you remember, were no proof that he was indoors. + +I stole down into the garden once more, and looked hurriedly in several +directions, but saw no sign of him. I am not a ferocious man even when +alone, but as I came near the fence of our fat neighbor--once fat, poor +fellow, and destined to be so again in time--and still saw no one, I was +made conscious of waving my fist and muttering through my gritting teeth, +by hearing my name softly called. It was an unfamiliar female voice that +spoke, from a window beyond the fence, and it flashed on my remembrance +that two kinswomen of my neighbor were watching with his wife, whose case +was giving new cause for anxiety. It was Mrs. Soandso, the voice +explained, and could I possibly come in there a moment?--if only to the +window! + +"Is our friend the Baron over here?" I asked, as I came to it. He was not. +"Well, never mind," I said; "how is your patient?" + +"Oh that's just what we wish we knew. In some ways she seems better, but +she's more unquiet. She's had some slight nausea and it seems to increase. +Do you think that is important?" + +"Yes," I said, "very. I hear some one cracking ice; you are keeping ice on +her throat--no? Well, begin it at once, and persuade her to lie on her +back as quietly as she can, and get her to sleep if possible! Doctor--no; +he wouldn't come before morning, anyhow; but I'll send Mrs. Smith right +over to you, if she possibly can come." + +I turned hurriedly away and had taken only a few steps, when I lit upon +the entomologist. "Well, I'll just--what _are_ you doing here? Where were +you when I was in your room just now?" His shoes were on. + +"Vhat you vanted mit me? I vas by dot librair' going. For vhat you moof +dot putterfly-net fon t'e mandtelpiece? You make me _too_ much troubple to +find dot vhen I vas in a hurry!" He shook it at me. + +"Hurry!" In my anger and distress I laughed. "My friend"--laying a hand on +him--"you'll hurry across the street with me." + +He waved me off. "Yes; go on, you; I coom py undt py; I dtink t'ere iss +vun maud come into dot gardten, vhat I haf not pefore seen since more as +acht years, alreadty!" + +"Yes," I retorted, "and so you're here at the gate alone. Now come right +along with me! Aren't there enough lives in danger to-night, but you must" +-He stopped me in the middle of the street. + +"Mine Gott! vhat iss dot you say? Who--_who_--mine Gott! _who_ iss her +life in dtanger? Iss dot--mine Gott! is dot he-ere?" He pointed to Mrs. +Fontenette's front window. + +I could hardly keep my fist off him. "Hush! you--For one place it's +_here_." I pushed him with my finger. + +"Ach!" he exclaimed in infinite relief. "I dt'ought you mean--I--I +dt'ought--hmm!--hmm! I am dtired." He leaned on me like a sick child and +we went into the cottage parlor. The moment he saw the lounge he lay down +upon it, or I should have taken him back into the dining-room. + +"Sha'n't I put that net away for you?" I murmured, as I dropped a light +covering over him. + +But he only hugged the toy closer. "No; I geep it--hmm!--hmm!--I am +dtired--" + + + +XX + + +Both patients, I found, were drowsing; the husband peacefully, the wife +with troubled dreams. When the Baron spoke her eyes opened with a look, +first eager and then distressful, but closed again. We put the old black +woman temporarily into her room and Mrs. Smith hurried to our other +neighbors, whence she was to despatch one of their servants to bid Senda +come to us at once. But "No battle"--have I already used the proverb? She +gave the message to the servant, but it never reached Senda. Somebody +forgot. As I sat by Fontenette with ears alert for Senda's coming and was +wondering at the unbroken silence, he opened his eyes on me and smiled. + +"Ah!" he softly said, "thad was a pleasan' dream!" + +"A pleasant dream, was it?" + +"Yes; I was having the dream thad my wife she was showing me those rose- +_bushes_; an' every rose-_bush_ it had roses, an' every rose it was +perfect." + +I leaned close and said that he had been mighty good not to ask about her +all these many days, and that if he would engage to do as well for as long +a time again, and to try now to have another good dream I would tell him +that she was sleeping and was without any alarming symptoms. O lucky +speech! It was true when it was uttered; but how soon the hour belied it! + +As he obediently closed his eyes, his hand stole out from the side of the +covers and felt for mine. I gave it and as he kept it his thought seemed +to me to flow into my brain. I could feel him, as it were, thinking of his +wife, loving her through all the deeps of his still nature with seven-- +yes, seventy--times the passion that I fancied would ever be possible to +that young girl I had seen a few hours earlier showing her heart to the +world, with falling hair and rending sobs. As he lay thus trying to court +back his dream of perfect roses, I had my delight in knowing he would +never dream-what Senda saw so plainly, yet with such faultless modesty-- +that all true love draws its strength and fragrance from the riches not of +the loved one's, but of the lover's soul. + +His grasp had begun to loosen, when I thought I heard from the wife's room +a sudden sound that made my mind flash back to the saucer I had failed to +bring in. It was as though the old-fashioned, unweighted window-sash, +having been slightly lifted, had slipped from the fingers and fallen shut. +I hearkened, and the next instant there came softly searching through +doors, through walls, through my own flesh and blood, a long half-wailing +sigh. Fontenette tightened on my hand, then dropped it, and opening his +eyes sharply, asked, "What was that?" + +"What was what, old fellow?" I pretended to have been more than half +asleep myself. + +"Did I only dream I 'eard it, thad noise?" + +"That isn't a hard thing to do in your condition," I replied, with my +serenest smile, and again he closed his eyes. Yet for two or three minutes +it was plain he listened; but soon he forbore and began once more to +slumber. Then very soon I faintly detected a stir in the parlor, and +stealing to the door to listen through the dining-room, came abruptly upon +the old black woman. Disaster was written on her face and when she spoke +tears came into her eyes. + +"De madam want you," she said, and passed in to take my place. + +As I went on to the parlor, Mrs. Smith, just inside Mrs. Fontenette's +door, beckoned me. As I drew near I made an inquiring motion in the +direction of our neighbor across the way. + +"I'm hopeful," was her whispered reply; "but--in here"--she shook her +head. Just then the new maid came from our house, and Mrs. Smith whispered +again-- "Go over quickly to the Baron; he's in his room. 'Twas he came for +me. He'll tell you all. But he'll not tell his wife, and she mustn't +know." + +As I ran across the street I divined almost in full what had taken place. + +I had noticed the possibility of some of the facts when I had left the +Baron asleep on the parlor lounge, but they could have done no harm, even +when Senda did not come, had it not been for two other facts which I had +failed to foresee; one, that we had unwittingly overtasked our willing old +nurse, and in her chair in Mrs. Fontenette's room she was going to fall +asleep; and the other that the entomologist would waken. + + + +XXI + + +And now see what a cunning trap the most innocent intentions may sometimes +set. There was a mirror in the sick-room purposely so placed that, with +the parlor door ajar, the watcher, but not the patient, could see into the +parlor, and could be seen from the parlor when sitting anywhere between +the mirror and the window beyond it. This window was the one that looked +into the side garden. Purposely, too, the lounge had been placed so as to +give and receive these advantages. A candle stood on the window's inner +ledge and was screened from the unseen bed, but shone outward through the +window and inward upon the mirror. The front door of the parlor opened +readily to anyone within or without who knew enough to use its two latches +at once, but neither within nor without to--the Baron, say--who did not +know. + +Do you see it? As he lay awake on the lounge his eye was, of course, drawn +constantly to the mirror by the reflected light of the candle, and to its +images of the nodding watcher and of the window just beyond. So lying and +gazing, he had suddenly beheld that which brought him from the lounge in +an instant, net in hand, and tortured to find the front door--by which he +would have slipped out and around to the window--fastened! What he saw was +the moth--the moth so many years unseen. Now it sipped at the saucer of +sweet stuff, now hovered over it, now was lost in the dark, and now +fluttered up or slid down the pane, lured by the beam of the candle. + +If he was not to lose it, there was but one thing to do. With his eyes +fixed, moth-mad, on the window, he glided in, passed the two sleepers, and +stealthily lifted the sash with one hand, the other poising the net. The +moth dropped under, the net swept after it, and the sash slipped and fell. +Mrs. Fontenette rose wildly, and when she saw first the old woman, half +starting from her seat with frightened stare, and then the entomologist +speechless, motionless, and looming like an apparition, she gave that cry +her husband heard, and fell back upon the pillow in a convulsion. + +I found the Baron sitting on the side of his bed like a child trying to be +awake without waking. No, not _trying_ to do or be anything; but aimless, +dazed, silent, lost. + +He obeyed, automatically, my every request. I set about getting him to bed +at once, putting his clothes beyond his reach, and even locking his +balcony door, without a sign of objection from him. Then I left him for a +moment, and calling Senda from the nursery to the parlor told her the +state of the different patients, including her husband, but without the +hows and whys except that I had found him in our garden with his precious +net. "And now, as it will soon be day, Mrs. Smith and I--with the servants +and others--can take care of the four." + +"If I"--meekly interrupted the sweet woman--"vill go for se doctors? I +vill go." Soon she was off. + +Then I went back to her husband, and finding his mood so changed that he +was eager to explain everything, I let him talk; which I soon saw was a +blunder; for he got pitifully excited, and wanted to go over the same +ground again and again. One matter I was resolved to fix in his mind +without delay. "Mark you," I charged him, "your wife must never know a +word of this!" + +"Eh?--No"--and the next instant the sick woman across the way was filling +all his thought: "Mine Gott! she rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!" +and up he would start. Then as I pressed him down--"Mine Gott! I vould not +go in, if I dhink she would do dot. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry!--Undt I tidt not +t'e mawdt get. + +"Hmm! Even I titn't saw vhere it iss gone. Hmm! Hmm! I am sorry! + +"Undt dot door kit shtuck! Hmm! Undt dot vindow iss not right made. Hmm! + +"I tidn't vant to do dot--you know? Hmm! I am sorry!--Ach, mine Gott! she +rice oop scaredt in t'e bedt, choost so!" Thus round and round. What to do +for him I did not know! + +Yet he grew quiet, and was as good as silent, when Senda, long before I +began to look for her, stood unbonneted at my side in a soft glow of +physical animation, her anxiety all hidden and with a pink spot on each +cheek. I was startled. Had _I_ slept--or had she somehow ridden? + +"Are the street-cars running already?" I asked. + +"No," she murmured, producing a vial and looking for a glass. "'Tis I haf +been running alreadty. Sat iss not so tiresome as to valk. Also it is +safeh. I runned all se vay. Vill you sose drops drop faw me?" Her hand +trembled. + +I took the vial but did not meet her glance: for I was wondering if there +was anything in the world she could ask of me that I would not do, and at +such a time it is good for anyone as weak as I am to look at inanimate +things. + +"You got word to all three doctors?" + +"Yes;" she gave her chin the drollest little twist--"sey are all coming +--vhen sey get ready." + + + +XXII + + +That is what they did; but the first who came, and the second, brought +fresh courage; for the Baron--"would most likely be all right again, +before the day was over"; our child was "virtually well"; and from next +door-"better!" was the rapturous news. The third physician, too, was +pleased with Fontenette's case, and we began at once to send the night- +watchers to their rest by turns. + +But there the gladness ended. At Mrs. Fontenette's bedside he asked no +questions. In the parlor he said to us: + +"Well, ... you've done your best; ... I've done mine; ... and it's of no +use." + +"Oh, Doctor!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith. + +"Why, didn't you know it?" He jerked his thumb toward the sick-room. "She +knows it. She told me she knew it, with her first glance." + +He pondered. "I wish she were not so near _him_. If she were only in here +--you see?" + +Yes, we saw; the two patients would then be, on their either hand, one +whole room apart, as if in two squares of a checkerboard that touch only +at one corner. + +"Well," he said, "we must move her at once. I'll show you how; I'll stay +and help you." + +It seemed more as though we helped him--a very little--as we first moved +her and then took the light bedstead apart, set it up again in the parlor, +and laid her in it, all without a noticeable sound, and with only great +comfort of mind to her--for she knew why we did it. Then I made all haste +to my own house again and had the relief to see, as Senda came toward me +from her husband's room, that he had told her nothing. "Vell?" she eagerly +asked. + +"Well, Monsieur Fontenette is greatly improved!" + +"O sat iss goodt! And se Madame; she, too, is betteh?--a little?--eh-- +no-o?" + +I said that what the doctor had feared, a "lesion," had taken place, and +that there was no longer any hope of her life. At which she lighted up +with a lovely defiance. + +"Ho-o! no long-eh any hope! Yes, sare _iss_ long-er any hope! Vhere iss +sat doc-toh? Sare _shall_ be hope! Kif _me_ sat patient! I can keep se +vatch of mine huss-bandt at se _same_ time. He hass not a relapse! Kif me +se patient! Many ossehs befo'e I haf savedt vhen hadt sose doctohs no +long-eh any hope! Mine Gott! vas sare so much hope vhen she and her +hussbandt mine sick hussbandt and me out of se street took in? Vill you +let stay by mine hussbandt, anyhow a short vhile, one of yo' so goodt +sairvants?" The instant I assented she flew down the veranda steps, +through the garden, and out across the street. + +I lingered a few moments with the entomologist before leaving him with +others. He asked me only one question: "Hmm! Hmm! How she iss?" + +"Why," said I, brightly, "I think she feels rather more comfortable than +she did." + +"Hmm!--Hmm!--I am sorry--Hmm!--Ach! mine Gott, I am so hoongary!--Hmm! I +am so dtired mit dot sou-oup undt dose creckers!--Hmm! I vish I haf vonce +a whole pifshtea-ak undt a glahss beer--hmm!" + +"Hmm!" I echoed, "your subsequent marketing wouldn't cost much." I went +down town on some imperative office business, came back in a cab, gave +word to be called at such an hour, and lay down. But while I slept my +order was countermanded and when I awakened it was once more midnight. I +went to my open window and heard, through his balcony door--locked, now, +and its key in my pocket--the Baron, snoring. Then I sprang into my +clothes and sped across the street. + +I went first around to the outer door of the dining-room, and was briefly +told the best I could have hoped, of Fontenette. I returned to the front +and stepped softly into what had been Mrs. Fontenette's room. Finding no +one in it I waited, and when I presently heard voices in the other room, I +touched its door-knob. Mrs. Smith came out, closed the door carefully, and +sank into a seat. + +"It's been a noble fight!" she said, smiling up through her tears. "When +the doctor came back and saw how wonderfully the--the worst--had been held +off, he joined in the battle! He's been here three times since!" + +"And can it be that she is going to pull through?" + +My wife's face went down into her hands. "O, no--no. She's dying now-- +dying in Senda's arms!" + +Her ear, quicker than mine, heard some sign within and she left me. But +she was back almost at once, whispering: + +"She knows you're here, and says she has a message to her husband which +she can give only to you." + +We gazed into each other's eyes. "Go in," she said. + +As I entered, Senda tenderly disengaged herself, went out, and closed the +door. + +I drew near in silence and she began at once to speak, bidding me take the +chair Senda had left, and with a tender smile thanking me for coming. + +Then she said faintly and slowly, but with an unfaltering voice, "I want +you to know one or two things so that if it ever should be my husband's +affliction to find out how foolish and undutiful I have been, you can tell +them to him. Tell him my wrongdoing was, from first to last, almost +totally--almost totally----" + +"Do you mean--intangible?" + +"Yes, yes, intangible. Then if he should say that the intangible part is +the priceless part--the life, the beauty, the very essence of the whole +matter--isn't it strange that we women are slower than men to see that-- +tell him I saw it, saw it and confessed it when for his sake I was +slipping away from him by stealth out of life up to my merciful Judge. + +"I may not be saying these things in their right order, but--tell him I +wish he'd marry again; only let him first be sure the woman loves him as +truly and deeply as he is sure to love her. I find I've never truly loved +him till now. If he doesn't know it don't ever tell him; but tell him I +died loving him and blessing him--for the unearned glorious love he gave +me all my days. That's all. That's all to him. But I would like to send +one word to"--she lifted her hand-- + +"Across the street?" I murmured. + +Her eyes said yes. "Tell _him_--you may never see the right time for it, +but if you do--tell him I craved his forgiveness." + +I shook my head. + +"Yes--yes, tell him so; it was far the most my fault; he is such a child; +such a child of nature, I mean. Tell him I said it sounds very pretty to +call ourselves and each other children of nature, but we have no right to +be such. The word is 'Be thou clean,' and if we are not masters of nature +we can't do it. Tell him that, will you? And tell him he has nothing to +grieve for; I was only a dangerous toy, and I want him to love the dear +Father for taking it away from him before he had hurt himself. + +"Now I am ready to go--only--that hymn those black women--in the cemetery +--you remember? I've made another verse to it. You'll find it--afterward-- +on a scrap of paper between the leaves of my Bible. It isn't good poetry, +of course; it's the only verse I ever composed. May I say it to you just +for my--my testimony? It's this: + + Yet though I have sinned, Lord, all others above, + Though feeble my prayers, Lord; my tears all unseen; + I'll trust in thy love, Lord; I'll trust in thy love-- + O I'll trust in thy love like Mary Mahgaleen." + +An exalted smile lighted her face as she sunk deeper into the pillows. She +tried to speak again, but her voice failed. I bent my ear and she +whispered--"Senda." + +As I beckoned Senda in, Mrs. Smith motioned for me to come to her where +she stood at a window whose sash she had slightly lifted; the same to +which the moth had once been lured by the little puddle of sweet drink and +the candle. + +"Do you want to see a parable?" she whispered, and all but blinded with +tears, she pointed to the lost moth lying half in, half out of the window, +still beautiful but crushed; crushed with its wings full spread, not by +anyone's choice, but because there are so many things in this universe +that not even God can help from being as they are. + +At a whispered call we turned, and Senda, in the door, herself all tears, +made eager signs for us to come. The last summons had surprised even the +dying. We went in noiseless haste, and found her just relaxing on Senda's +arm. Yet she revived an instant; a quiver went through her frame like the +dying shudder of a butterfly, her eyes gazed appealingly into Senda's, +then fixed, and our poor little Titania was gone. + + + +XXIII + + +The story is nearly told. Before I close let me confess how heartlessly I +have told it. Pardon that; and pardon, too, the self-consciousness that +makes me beg not to be remembered as I seem to myself in the tale--a +tiptoeing, peeping figure prowling by night after undue revelations, and +using them--to the humiliation of souls cleaner than mine could ever +pretend to be. + +Next day, by stealth again, we buried the little rose-lady, unknown to her +husband. We could not keep the fact long from the entomologist, for he was +up and about the house again. Nor was there equal need. So when the last +rites were over I told him, but without giving any part of her message--I +couldn't do it! I just said she had left us. + +His eye did not moisten, but he paled, trembled, wiped his brow. Then I +handed him the crushed moth, and he was his convalescent self again. + +"Hmm!--Dot iss a pity she kit smashed; I titn't vant to do dot." + +I thought maybe he felt more than he showed, for he fretted to be allowed +to take a walk alone beyond the gate and the corner. With some misgivings +his wife let him go, and when she was almost anxious enough over his tardy +stay to start after him he came back looking very much better. But the +next morning, when we found him in the burning fever of an unmistakable +relapse, he confessed that the German keeper of an eating-stall in the +neighboring market, for his hunger's and the Fatherland's sake, had +treated him to his "whole pifshtea-ak undt glahss be-eh." + +He lived only a few days. Through all his deliriums he hunted butterflies +and beetles, and died insensible to his wife's endearments, repeating the +Latin conjugations of his inconceivable boyhood. + +So they both, caterpillar and rose, were gone; but the memory of them +stays, green--yes, and fragrant--not alone with Fontenette, and not only +with Senda besides, but with us also. How often I recall the talks on +theology I had used sometimes to let myself fall into with the little +unsuccessful mistress of "rose-es" who first brought the miser of +knowledge into our garden, and whenever I do so I wonder, and wonder, and +lose my bearings and find and lose them again, and wonder and wonder--what +God has done with the entomologist. + +We never had to tell Fontenette that he was widowed. We had only to be +long enough silent, and when he ceased, for a time, to get better, and +rather lost the strength he had been gaining, and on entering his room we +found him always with his face to the wall, we saw that he knew. So for +his sake I was glad when one day, without facing round to me, his hand +tightened on mine in a wild tremor and he groaned, "Tell it me--tell it." + +I told it. I thought it well to give him one of her messages and withhold +the rest, like the unscrupulous friend I always try to be; and when he had +heard quite through--"Tell him I died loving him and blessing him for the +unearned glorious love he gave me all our days"--he made as if to say the +word was beyond all his deserving, turned upon his face, and soaked the +pillow with his tears. But from that day he began slowly but steadily to +get well. + +We kept Senda with us as long as we could, and when at length she put her +foot down so that you might have heard it--say like the dropping of a nut +in the wood--and declared that go she must-must-must! we first laughed, +then scoffed, and then grew violent, and the battle forced her backward. +But when we tried to salary her to stay, _she_ laughed, scoffed, grew +violent, and retook her entrenchments. And then, when she offered the +ultimatum that we must take pay for keeping her, we took our turn again at +the three forms of demonstration, and a late moon rose upon a drawn +battle. Since then we have learned to count it one of our dearest rights +to get "put out" at Senda's outrageous reasonableness, but she doesn't +fret, for "sare is neveh any sundeh viss se lightening." + +The issue of this first contest was decided the next day by Fontenette, +still on his bed of convalescence. "Can I raise enough money in yo' office +to go at France?" + +"You can raise twice enough, Fontenette, if it's to try to bring back some +new business." + +"Well--yes, 'tis for that. Of co'se, besides--" + +"Yes, I know: of course." + +"But tha'z what puzzle' me. What I'm going do with that house heah, whilse +I'm yondeh! I wou'n' sell it--ah no! I wou'n' sell one of those roses! An' +no mo' I wou'n' rent it. Tha's a monument, that house heah, you know?" + +"Yes, I know." He never found out how well I knew. + +"Fontenette, I'll tell you what to do with it." + +"No, you don't need; I know whad thad is. An' thaz the same I want--me. +Only--you thing thad wou'n' be hasking her too much troub'?" + +"No, indeed. There's nothing else you could name that she'd be so glad to +do." + +When I told Senda I had said that, the tears stood in her eyes. "Ah, sat +vass ri-ight! O, sare shall neveh a veed be in sat karten two dayss oldt! +An' sose roses--sey shall be pairfect ever' vun!" + + + +XXIV + + +As perfect as roses every one were her words kept. And Fontenette got his +new business but could not come back that year, nor the second, nor the +third. The hither-side of his affairs he assigned for the time to a +relative, a very young fellow, but ever so capable--"a hustler," as our +fat friend would say in these days. We missed the absentee constantly, but +forgave his detention the easier because incidentally he was clearing up a +matter of Senda's over there, in which certain displeased kindred had +overreached her. Also because of his letters to her, which she so often +did us the honor to show us. + +The first few were brief, formal and colorless; but after some time they +began to take on grace after grace, until at length we had to confess that +to have known him only as we had known him hitherto would have been to +have been satisfied with the reverse of the tapestry, and never fully to +have seen the excellence of his mind or the modest nobility of his spirit. +Frequently we felt very sure we saw also that no small share of their +captivating glow was reflected from Senda's replies--of which she never +would tell us a word. The faults in his written English were surprisingly +few, and to our minds only the more endeared it and him. Maybe we were not +judicial critics. + +Yet we could pass strictures, and as the months lengthened out into years +these winged proxies stirred up, on our side of the street, a profound and +ever-growing impatience. O, yes, every letter was a garden of beautiful +thoughts, still; but think of it! _pansies_ where roses might have been; +and a garden wherein--to speak figuratively--the nightingale never sang. + +On a certain day of All Saints, the fourth after the scourge, Senda sat at +tea with us. Our mood was chastened, but peaceful. We had come from +visiting at the sunset hour the cemetery where in the morning the two +women and our old nurse had decked the tombs of our dead with flowers. I +had noticed that at no tomb front were these tokens piled more abundantly, +or more beautifully or fragrantly, than at those of Flora and the +entomologist; it was always so. I had remarked this on the spot, and +Senda, with her rearranging touch still caressing their splendid masses, +replied, + +"So?--vell--I hope siss shall mine vork and mine pleassure be until +mineself I shall fade like se floweh." + +I inwardly resented the speech, but said nothing. I suppose it was over my +head. + +Now, at the table, she explained as to certain costly blooms about which I +had inquired, that they were Fontenette's special offering, for which he +always sent the purchase money ahead of time and with detailed requests. +Whereat, remembering how she had formerly glozed and gilded the +entomologist's unthrift, I remarked, one-fourth in play, three-fourths in +earnest, + +"A good plain business man isn't the least noble work of God, after all." + +"No," said Senda, without looking up; and, after a long, meditative +breath, she added, very slowly, + +"Se koot Kott makes not all men for se same high calling. If Kott make a +man to do no betteh san make a living or a fawtune, it iss right for se +man to make it; se _man_ iss not to blame. And now I vant to tell you se +news of sat letteh from----" + +"The other side," we suggested, and invited her smile, but without +success. + +"Yes, from se osseh si-ide; sat letteh vhat you haf brought me since more +as a veek ago; and also vhy I haf not sat letteh given you to read. Sat +iss--if you like to know--yes? + +"Vell, sen I vill tell you. And sare are two sings to tell. Se fairst is a +ve'y small, but se secondt iss a ve'y lahge. And se fairst is sat that _I_ +am now se Countess. + +"So? you are glad? I sank you ve'y much. I sink sat iss not much trouble +--to be a countess--in Ame'ica? + +"Se secondt sing"--here a servant entered, and, it seemed to me, never +would go out, but Senda waited till we were again alone--"se secondt-- +pahdon me, I sink I shall betteh se secondt sing divide again into two aw +sree. And se fairst is sat Monsieur Fontenette vill like ve'y--ve'y much +to come home--now--right avay." + +We lifted hands to clap and opened mouths to hurrah, but she raised a +warning hand. + +"No, vait--if you pleass. + +"Se secondt of sose two or sree sings--it is sat--he--Monsieur Fontenette +--hass ask me--" Our hearts rose slowly into our throats--"Ze vun +qvestion to vich sare can be only--se--vun--answeh." + +At this we gulped our breath like schoolgirls and glowed. But the more +show we made of hopeful and pleading smiles, the more those dear eyes, so +seldom wet, filled up with tears. + +"_He_ sinks sare can two answehs be, and he like to heah which is se +answeh I shall gif him, so he shall know if he shall come--now--aw if he +shall come--neveh. + +"O my sweet friend,"--to Mrs. Smith, down whose, face the salt drops stole +unhindered--"sare iss nossing faw _you_ to cry." She smiled heroically. + +I could be silent no longer. "Senda, what have you answered?" + +"I haf answered"--her lips quivered till she gnawed them cruelly--"I am +sorry to take such a long time to tell you sat--but--I--I find sat--ve'y +hahd--to tell." She smiled and gnawed her lips again. "I haf answered-- + +"Do you sink, my deah, sat siss is ri-ight to tell the we'y vords sat I +haf toldt him?--yes?--vell--he tell me I shall se answeh make in vun vord +--is sat not like a man? + +"But I had to take six. And sey are sese: I cannot vhispeh across se +ocean." + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Strong Hearts, by George W. Cable + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STRONG HEARTS *** + +This file should be named sthrt10.txt or sthrt10.zip +Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, sthrt11.txt +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, sthrt10a.txt + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Lazar Liveanu +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance +of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing. +Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections, +even years after the official publication date. + +Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. + +Most people start at our Web sites at: +http://gutenberg.net or +http://promo.net/pg + +These Web sites include award-winning information about Project +Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new +eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!). + + +Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement +can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is +also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the +indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an +announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter. + +http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext03 or +ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext03 + +Or /etext02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90 + +Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want, +as it appears in our Newsletters. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours +to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text +files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+ +We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002 +If they reach just 1-2% of the world's population then the total +will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year's end. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks! +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users. + +Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated): + +eBooks Year Month + + 1 1971 July + 10 1991 January + 100 1994 January + 1000 1997 August + 1500 1998 October + 2000 1999 December + 2500 2000 December + 3000 2001 November + 4000 2001 October/November + 6000 2002 December* + 9000 2003 November* +10000 2004 January* + + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created +to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people +and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, +Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, +Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, +Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New +Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, +Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South +Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West +Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. + +We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones +that have responded. + +As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list +will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states. +Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state. + +In answer to various questions we have received on this: + +We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally +request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and +you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, +just ask. + +While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are +not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting +donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to +donate. + +International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about +how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made +deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are +ways. + +Donations by check or money order may be sent to: + +Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation +PMB 113 +1739 University Ave. +Oxford, MS 38655-4109 + +Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment +method other than by check or money order. + +The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by +the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN +[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are +tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising +requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be +made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states. + +We need your donations more than ever! + +You can get up to date donation information online at: + +http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html + + +*** + +If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, +you can always email directly to: + +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. + +We would prefer to send you information by email. + + +**The Legal Small Print** + + +(Three Pages) + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this eBook, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you may distribute copies of this eBook if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS EBOOK +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +eBook, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this eBook by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this eBook on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM EBOOKS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBooks, +is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart +through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright +on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and +distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this eBook +under the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +Please do not use the "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark to market +any commercial products without permission. + +To create these eBooks, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's eBooks and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other eBook medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] Michael Hart and the Foundation (and any other party you may +receive this eBook from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm eBook) disclaims +all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this eBook within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS EBOOK IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE EBOOK OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold Michael Hart, the Foundation, +and its trustees and agents, and any volunteers associated +with the production and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm +texts harmless, from all liability, cost and expense, including +legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the +following that you do or cause: [1] distribution of this eBook, +[2] alteration, modification, or addition to the eBook, +or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this eBook electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + eBook or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this eBook in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word + processing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The eBook, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The eBook may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the eBook (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + eBook in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the eBook refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Foundation of 20% of the + gross profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation" + the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were + legally required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent + periodic) tax return. Please contact us beforehand to + let us know your plans and to work out the details. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +Project Gutenberg is dedicated to increasing the number of +public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed +in machine readable form. + +The Project gratefully accepts contributions of money, time, +public domain materials, or royalty free copyright licenses. +Money should be paid to the: +"Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation." + +If you are interested in contributing scanning equipment or +software or other items, please contact Michael Hart at: +hart@pobox.com + +[Portions of this eBook's header and trailer may be reprinted only +when distributed free of all fees. Copyright (C) 2001, 2002 by +Michael S. Hart. Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be +used in any sales of Project Gutenberg eBooks or other materials be +they hardware or software or any other related product without +express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN EBOOKS*Ver.02/11/02*END* diff --git a/old/sthrt10.zip b/old/sthrt10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7330553 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/sthrt10.zip |