Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

was happy then — and, I am told, made others and they talk of nightingales heart happy.'

[ocr errors]

"But of course she must have wanted all these things, by instinct, before she ever knew what they were."

"Are you afraid you have n't the instincts of a lady? Pity you are such a little savage! My mother wanted, always has wanted, the thing beyond. So do I. Would you like a room like this, Dolly?"

"I certainly should like a few of those acres of wardrobes. I spend my life trying to find places to put things. And I confess there is a fascination in a long mirror."

"I should think there might be-for some persons."

"It is n't altogether vanity. You can't think how awkward it is never to have seen how one's skirts hang. Not that there would be much pleasure in it, for mine hang very badly."

"When you are not in them."

66

Why do you say those things? It is n't like you, and I don't enjoy it."

"You must get used to it if you are going to be a society girl."

"There you are unjust. Why should I not wish to know all the ways? You may think I shall never have need of any but my own; but I was not born in a cañon."

"Dolly, my—well, it is useless. Words are useless. You could never understand - I mean, there is but one way to make you. Will you take my arm?”

[ocr errors]

'Why should I?”

"Because it is supposed to be the thing to

do."

their dells!"

[blocks in formation]

"Would I? well, I think I we persuasion-'con mil amores," under his breath, pressing the his against his side.

Dolly pushed herself away fr "I should like to know wha to answer me like that."

"You asked if I would te
"And you might have sa
gentleman would."
"Well ?"

"But you answer offens
could n't say in English."

"Could n't I! Wouldy they sound in English? truth. Would I teach yo me, and I said I would

and I will, with a tho
dance or to anything e'
you to know."

"Befits! I have no v
not tell you how I ha
Your insufferable pat
ing always so superi
pid school-boy freedo
make fun of me; if I
I wish you would
the other."

"Yes," breathec
which."

"Either leave m treat me like a Dolly sat dow landing-step, and kerchief; her sh crying.

"Oh," said Dolly, meekly, and took it. She was visibly wrought upon by her surroundings in a way that might have amused Philip more, but that the world of things had had such serious meanings for his mother, who was a priestess of bric-a-brac, and studied her surroundings as if the art of life, like that of the stage, largely consisted in how one is costumed and in what chair one shall sit—and he grudged this cult its possible importance in the girl's fresh fate. "There is another thing," she agitated dreamily, as they passed down the wide, thick-carpeted stairs. They had halted on the landing to get the effect of the hall below, and the light of a colored window threw flaming gules and amber and tints of serpent-green on her pale golden hair and dark-clad shoulders. "What is this other thing? Something wickedam to treat and worldly, of course."

"No; only just human. Dancing is t

of every girl that lives and moves, and
never dance because there is no way ·
And what shall I do if ever I vo
cing is? My heart would breake
Surely it's as bad to be

"I will, Doll step beside her. son of sense?" "You spoil fun of me no same impulse Philip wait

poil

[ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

It had not occurred to Dolly that Margaret tion, business and social, with the sinister house could have anything to complain of. She had of Norrisson. She would stand her ground, was never asked, but she supposed that her father her determination, though all should feel her must have paid his debt; what could he be do- in the way. Both Dunsmuir and Dolly were ing else with his salary, which seemed wealth as children, misled and bedazed, in Margaret's to Dolly? She knew nothing of the cost of eyes. Western living, nor of the debts in town to people who were not so patient as Job and Margaret, or not so helpless. The wash was supposed, now, to go below to a Chinaman at the camp; but Margaret had heard of the heathen custom of mouth-sprinkling, and, week by week, she snatched from pollution what she called the pick of the wash, and did it herself, and got little credit for doing it. She saw with dismay that the bed- and table-linen was going fast, nor could Dunsmuir be induced to replace it, according to her ideas of economy, with cheaper stuff, fit to be tossed about in the common wash and whipped to rags on the line by winds that came laden with dust.

"Have we no more linen in the house?" Dunsmuir would demand, when Margaret mentioned buying. There was linen, to be sure, a sacred store laid by in trust for Dolly-Margaret would have been ashamed, indeed, of her stewardship had there not been fine old glossy Scotch damask, and sheeting wide and heavy, with beautiful embroidered markings, tied with ribbons, in piles of dozens and half-dozens, and fragrant with dried rose-leaves and with lavender. But long before she had got through this explanation, Dunsmuir would cut her short.

"Use what we have. What are you saving it for, woman? Do ye think I cannot buy my daughter her marriage linen, if ever she come to want it?"

66

Maybe, then, ye 'll ken how many pund sterling went t' the fillin' of thae kists ye 're sae blythe of emp'ying."

But though Margaret had in a measure her say, she had not her will. No more linen was bought, and she was forced to visit the "kists" more than once, reducing the sacred hoard, at what cost to her pride and her feelings no one in the house took the trouble to understand. Dolly had taken an irritating way of rousing herself, periodically, to an unwonted critical interest in the house, when she would do over portions of Margaret's work without advising her or stating her objections. This was as much as the older woman could bear; and at times she saw no good reason why she should stay where even her work failed to satisfy. Yet she felt that never had Dolly needed her as now, though the child knew it not. Margaret watched her, in her light but perilous intercourse with the first young stranger she had known, distrusting Philip, distrusting the powers of nature to protect Dolly from piteous delusions, distrusting the whole connec

Meanwhile a trouble of her own was creeping upon her, and she failed to read the warnings. Job had come, one Sunday, in a sad condition of bruises; she was ashamed to have him seen of the family. He had had a fall, he told her; but it seemed a simple thing, for a man of his age, to tumble off his own cabin steps in broad day. She upbraided him for clumsiness; she even suspected a more discreditable cause, and repented the suspicion afterward with tears. On another Sunday he complained of his head, and spoke heavily of the work as though it were too much for him. Margaret thought her man was getting babyish; it ill consorted with their circumstances that he should be discouraged with work at fifty-five. It fretted her that he seemed to grow forgetful of things she told him, of messages and errands; his slowness of speech seemed to have affected his comprehension. She was often impatient with him, often irritable, while he grew more stolid, it seemed, and often slept away the greater part of the one day they had together. More than once he spoke as if he expected her to keep house for him in the autumn at their homestead, quite as if she were a young, untrammeled girl. It irritated her, after all that had come and gone, to have to explain that she could not leave her child alone in a family of men-folk, with a Chinaman in the kitchen who would take advantage, and waste the food and fuel, and break the dishes and hide the pieces, and warp the brooms, and use the best towels to clean the paint. Job should know these things without words; and the words were forgotten by the next Sunday, and the delusion abided that she belonged to none but him, and was free to go when he asked her. She was the more round with him that she was conscious herself of a secret leaning toward the same folly. Both she and Job were too old to work at the pleasure of others. They needed their own times, and to work in their own way. This Margaret felt, but saw no way to indulge the weakness; and she had no more hesitation sacrificing Job to the family than herself, for was he not her "man"?

One Sunday he told her that she must make up her mind, for he had given notice of his intention to "quit" work for the company. Word had gone forth that the water would be down as far as his land by the following spring, and if they were to benefit by it, it was none too soon to get their land in shape. He had waited too many years now, he said, to lose the first season.

Margaret was astonished at Job's forthputtingness, venturing to make such a decision without consulting her. However, the thing was done; he could not be off and on with a job like that. It gave some shadow of excuse, she was weak enough to own, to her own desertion. The bitterest part of that business was the evidence of her senses, sharpened by feeling that no one felt it as she did. Dolly did not realize how should she, who had always had a Margaret?—what it would be not to have one. And she was as happy as a child in the prospect of visiting Margaret in her own house; she had never had a place to visit. She was busy, too, sorting over her closets and bureaus for little additions to Margaret's humble outfit; jellies and canned fruits and dishes that could be spared, and towels and napkins and pillows, from the hoard Margaret had

guarded. These things Margaret flatly refused with a flushed and tearful face,- would she rob the house, indeed?- but they were packed and smuggled into the wagon without her knowledge.

Nothing, since Alan's frank desertion to the commercial side of the scheme, had hurt Dunsmuir like the sight of that honest pair, with their boxes and humble effects piled around them, jolting out of sight down the cañon road with the knowledge they would never come back as they went. It would so have comforted Job and Margaret had they known; but Dunsmuir was too proud to dwell upon his sentiments to these people to whom he owed hard money. In a month or two he hoped to make all square; he would take that opportunity to speak of the greater debt- the one beyond return. Mary Hallock Foote.

(To be continued.)

A

CARRY

SONNET.

[W. J. WINCH.]

ARRY us captive, thou with the strong heart,
And the clear head, and nature sweet and sound!
Most willing captives we to thy great art

And thee together, held in chains and bound.

Never the angels sang at heaven's gate

In more divine, pure, noble, perfect tones.

Beside thy gift what then is royal state,

And what are pomps and powers, and kings and thrones?
Sing, and we ask no greater joy than this,

Only to listen, thrilling to the song,
Breathing a finer air, a loftier bliss,

Than to the dim and cloudy earth belong;

Borne skyward, where the wingéd hosts rejoice,
On the great tide of thy melodious voice!

MY SHELL.

SHELL upon the sounding sands
Flashed in the sunshine, where it lay:
Its green disguise I tore; my hands
Bore the rich treasure-trove away.

Within, the chamber of the pearl

Blushed like the rose, like opal glowed; And o'er its domes a cloudy swirl

Of mimic waves and rainbows flowed.

Celia Thaxter.

"Strangely," I said, "the artist-worm
Has made his palace-lair so bright!
This jeweler, this draftsman firm,
Was born and died in eyeless night.

"Deep down in many-monstered caves
His miracle of beauty throve;
Far from all light, against strong waves,
A Castle Beautiful he wove.

"Take courage, Soul! Thy labor blind
The lifting tides may onward bear
To some glad shore, where thou shalt find
Light, and a Friend to say, 'How fair!""

Theodore C. Williams.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELATIVE EXISTENCES.

BY FRANK R. STOCKTON.

[graphic]

Na certain summer, not long gone, my friend Bentley and I found ourselves in a little hamlet which overlooked a placid valley, through which a river gently moved, winding its way through green stretches until it turned the end of a line of low hills and was lost to view. Beyond this river, far away, but visible from the door of the cottage where we dwelt, there lay a city. Through the mists which floated over the valley we could see the outlines of steeples and tall roofs; and buildings of a character which indicated thrift and business stretched themselves down to the opposite edge of the river. The more distant parts of the city, evidently a small one, lost themselves in the hazy summer atmosphere.

Bentley was young, fair-haired, and a poet; I was a philosopher, or trying to be one. We were good friends, and had come down into this peaceful region to work together. Although we had fled from the bustle and distractions of the town, the appearance in this rural region of a city, which, so far as we could observe, exerted no influence on the quiet character of the valley in which it lay, aroused our interest. No craft plied up and down the river; there were no bridges from shore to shore; there were none of those scattered and half-squalid habitations which generally are found on the outskirts of a city; there came to us no distant sound of bells; and not the smallest wreath of smoke rose from any of the buildings.

In answer to our inquiries our landlord told us that the city over the river had been built by one man, who was a visionary, and who had a great deal more money than common sense. "It is not as big a town as you would think, sirs," he said, "because the general mistiness of things in this valley makes them look larger than they are. Those hills, for instance, when you get to them are not as high as they look to be from here. But the town is big enough, and a good deal too big; for it ruined its builder and owner, who when he came to die had not money enough left to put up a decent tombstone at the head of his grave. He had a queer idea that he would like to have his town all finished before anybody lived in it, and so he kept on working and spending money year after year and year after year until the city was done

and he had not a cent left. During all the time that the place was building hundreds of people came to him to buy houses or to hire them, but he would not listen to anything of the kind. No one must live in his town until it was all done. Even his workmen were obliged to go away at night to lodge. It is a town, sirs, I am told, in which nobody has slept for even a night. There are streets there, and places of business, and churches, and public halls, and everything that a town full of inhabitants could need; but it is all empty and deserted, and has been so as far back as I can remember, and I came to this region when I was a little boy."

"And is there no one to guard the place?" we asked; "no one to protect it from wandering vagrants who might choose to take possession of the buildings?"

"There are not many vagrants in this part of the country," he said; "and if there were, they would not go over to that city. It is haunted."

"By what?" we asked.

"Well, sirs, I scarcely can tell you; queer beings that are not flesh and blood, and that is all I know about it. A good many people living hereabouts have visited that place once in their lives, but I know of no one who has gone there a second time."

"And travelers," I said; "are they not excited by curiosity to explore that strange uninhabited city?"

"Oh, yes," our host replied; "almost all visitors to the valley go over to that queer citygenerally in small parties, for it is not a place in which one wishes to walk about alone. Sometimes they see things, and sometimes they don't. But I never knew any man or woman to show a fancy for living there, although it is a very good town."

This was said at supper-time, and, as it was the period of full moon, Bentley and I decided that we would visit the haunted city that evening. Our host endeavored to dissuade us, saying that no one ever went over there at night; but as we were not to be deterred, he told us where we would find his small boat tied to a stake on the river-bank. We soon crossed the river, and landed at a broad, but low, stone pier, at the land end of which a line of tall grasses waved in the gentle night wind as if they were sentinels warning us from entering the silent city. We pushed through these, and

« AnkstesnisTęsti »