Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

One Sunday somebody asked this fair devotee to give us a certain popular but profane piano-arrangement. She was shocked beyond measure. A few moments' temptation, however, brought her to a compromise.

"I think there will be no harm if I play it slowly and make it as solemn as possible."

We smiled at the aesthetic piety of our Saint Catherine. But she did more than smile at our national practicality when, one evening, from the gay drawing-room we heard the clamor of a feminine arrival below:

"I won't see any rooms till I know your price. I won't stir a peg till I know what's to pay. I've come from Chicago, where folks know what's what, and I'm going to do Yoorup on the cheap!"

Saint Catherine worshipped her country's aristocracy. One day Jonathan happened to be putting on his coat in the hall, when somebody knocked at the front door. Forgetting that the act, so natural to an American, is ungentlemanly and menial in England, he opened the door himself. A couple of young swells inquired for Saint Catherine.

"I just saw her go out," answered Jonathan.

"Tell her that the brothers of Lord Verisopht called," said the spokesman.

"I'll tell her," spoke Jonathan; "but, good heavens, young man, don't lords' brothers have any names of their own in this country?"

Another day came a gorgeous individual with a bouquet to the door.

"What skion of the British nobility is that?" asked Jonathan.

"That is Lord Blank's footman," replied Saint Catherine.

"My! Well, whose footman is _that_?" continued her interlocutor, pointing to a less gorgeous person holding the reins.

"That is Lord Blank," answered Saint Catherine loftily.

"Sakes alive! Does that goose of a lord think he will stand any chance with the girls when he takes such a howling swell as _that_ around with him?" asked simple Jonathan.

To this question Saint Catherine deigned no reply, having, perhaps, remarked the wicked twinkle of Jonathan's eye.

One of our _pensionnaires_ objected very much to the American language. "It is principally slang," she said. This lady, no longer young, had been three times upon the eve of marriage, had had three bridal dresses, had countermanded three wedding-feasts. She was heiress at that time to the fifty thousand pounds she has since inherited, and the persistent failure of her matrimonial endeavors surprised us all.

"It is because Monsieur mon Pere is perfectly addled on the matter of settlements, and rowed with every one of my _fiances_," she explained.

She said one day, "The gov'nor has done me out of a guinea of my allowance this week. He's a first-class _Do_!"

Another time, "The mater and I prefer to live in our own house, but the gov'nor won't hear to it. He prefers 'diggin's' where he can always have his whist."

Some time after our sojourn in Bloomsbury "diggin's" we found ourselves in a Continental _pension_, the very reverse of this in every respect. It was a Parisian _pension bourgeoise_, but one entirely away from every haunt of foreigners as well as from foreign influences,--a _pension_ as French as French could be, where we were not merely the only foreigners present, but the only ones who had ever penetrated there.

It was a large white house, standing in its own grounds, not far from the Bois de Vincennes, pre-eminently a _pension bourgeoise_, and without pretensions higher than the widows of shopkeepers and the relicts of small government employees that formed its support. Not counting ourselves, there were twenty Relicts and one Maiden, all with handsome incomes and diamonds, but with the habit of running far and wide upon the open boulevard in caps, loose sacques, and list slippers, and of boasting of the cheap bargains they made in stockings and gowns. Their toilets were always _tout ce qu'il y a de plus bourgeois_, their conversation ran upon public scandals, private gossip, and fluctuations of trade (almost all of them had kept shop with their departed consorts), their reading was Paul de Kock's novels and the _feuilletons_ of "Le Petit Journal." The youngest widow was fifty, the Maiden ninety-and-nine. The latter was daughter of a man who had been _concierge_ of the Tuileries during the reign of Charles X. She was dusky and shrivelled as any daughter of the Pharaohs, but her faculties were marvellously preserved and her memory rich with interesting personal gossip of a former period. We Americans should have delighted to draw upon that memory, but one thing hindered us: that was the insatiable, indomitable, unparalleled coquetry of our ancient Maiden. She would never talk with any woman when any man was in the room. She descended to the stuffy little _salon_ only in the evening, when the Relicts were gathered to their gambling for sous and the atmosphere was an imitation of the Black Hole of Calcutta. She descended _en grande tenue_, the grandest ever seen there, frizzled, jewelled, and muffled to the throat in fleecy clouds of white wool. She came all quirks and quivers, all flutters and smiles, for there she met our only Monsieur,--Monsieur Boulanger, our landlord. She invariably took her seat beside him, and devoted quirks and quivers exclusively to him, tapping him with her fan, calling him "_Mechant! mechant!_" "_farceur_," or "_quel diable d'homme!_" twittering and carolling in her old broken voice, like a senile canary dreaming of its far-off youth. M. Boulanger was of peasant origin and appearance, gray-bearded and gray-haired, and clumping always in _sabots_ over the stone floors, except in the _salon_ in the evening. But her eyes were only for him; and the only occasion on which any of her own uninteresting sex had her attention was when Madame Boulanger pouted and pretended to be jealous, or some Relict showed pique that our only Monsieur was monopolized by our only Maiden. Then she smiled archly, cooed sweetly, and arched her ancient neck with visible triumph.

Before we left the _pension bourgeoise_ our front door was hung with heavy black curtains, and our Maiden passed forth into the broad day for the first time in ten years. She went out unsmiling, uncooing, without flutter or quirk, and no date upon her pine coffin, for with her last breath she had forbidden it.

"Nobody need know that I have lived more than fifty years," she murmured; "and don't let Monsieur Boulanger look at me when I am dead."

One of our widows--Madame Notte--was almost stone-deaf. She was a dwarfish creature, passionately fond of cards, waxing into terrible tempers over them, and with only one interest in life,--worshipful love of her only son, a not too beautiful _citoyen_ of fifty. This son fell ill and died. Poor Madame Notte knew of his illness, but not of its danger and final end. It was thought best to keep from her the knowledge that she was childless, lest the shock should be too great for her frail strength. She was told he had gone to Italy for his health; and when his widow and daughters came twice each week to visit her, they left their weeds at home, came in a close carriage in their gayest attire, and laughed and talked to her blithely with heavy hearts. All about the poor old mother we talked openly and freely of her loss and our pity, and she sat as unwitting as stone of it all. But when we put our mouths to her ear and asked for her son, a beautiful change always dawned upon the leaden countenance. "He has gone away," she invariably smiled,--"gone to a better country, where it is always summer. When I see him again he will be well, quite well." She, too, passed under the heavy black curtains that winter; and from our hearts we prayed that all was well with them in that better country where it is always summer.

One of our Relicts prided herself upon her English, and criticised ours. "They speak English fairly well: I can _understand_ them," I once heard her say of us to a group of Relicts in the garden; "but of course they speak only a _patois_: they are Americans."

"Why say you always to your infant, 'Hurry, my darling'?" she asked one day. "The pure Englishes says always, ''Urry, me darlink.'" Madame had acquired her English from her defunct lord, a commercial traveller from Lancashire.

One day, glancing at an envelope I had just addressed, she remarked, "_Eh bien!_ you Americans are very like English, after all. In England the last name of almost every monsieur is 'Esq.'!"

Another day she sweetly remarked, "This knife has very bad bladders."

As knives in our country are not generally endowed with that physical possession, I could only stare my astonishment.

"Eh, I see! It is an _English_ word, and you do not understand it. It means _lame_."

By which I discovered that had she spoken our transatlantic _patois_ she would have said "_blades_."

Every one of our Relicts had her private sitting-room attached to her bed-room, the house having been built expressly to suit the demands of _bourgeois_ widows with fortunes. Thus our _salon_ was of very little account until after dinner, when our widows, instead of returning to their own rooms, the garden, or the boulevard, where they spent the day, herded together around card-tables almost as closely as sheep in a pen. The _salon_ was not intended for daytime use; in the bitterest weather it had no fire until evening, and it had but a single window, which looked out upon the pavement of a well-like court arched over, three stories above, by a handkerchief bit of sky. Very little light or air ever entered the box-like place; during the day its atmosphere was stale and heavy, at night almost fetid. Whenever we ventured to pass an hour there our struggle was always against fate. Slyly we would leave the one door an inch ajar, or surreptitiously unclose the window a fraction as much. Scarcely, however, had we begun to congratulate ourselves upon success when half a score of antique roses flaunted and flared, and the death-knell of sly hopes sounded with echoed and re-echoed cry: "_Mon Dieu!_ I smell air!" "_Mon Dieu!_ Smell you not air?" "_Mon Dieu!_ Smell we not air?" "_Mon Dieu!_ Smells she not air?" "_Mon Dieu!_ Smell they not air?"

Almost all our _veuves_ had children and grandchildren in Paris, and we were continually surprised to see the mundane elegance of these younger branches of our withered old trees. It showed the usual history, however, of _bourgeois_ parents who had worked steadily, lived humbly and economically, to gather _dots_ for their daughters and open careers for their sons, to see them thus rise to positions in life far above their parents. Every day some of these younger branches came to our house in handsome carriages and toilets; and indeed on some days the number of elegant visitors who rang at our door gave the impression of a gay reception _a la mode_ rather than of the ordinary visitors of a _pension bourgeoise_ at Saint-Maude.

One of our Relicts was decidedly less _bourgeoise_ and more _paysanne_ than any of the rest. She was round as a ball, seventy years of age, and dressed always in short gray petticoats, black short-gown, and close white cap. Madame Boulanger kept close watch upon her, and tried to confine her to the sunny, high-walled garden set with a number of round little iron tables, where our Relicts took their after-_dejeuner cafe_ on sunny days. But Madame Boulanger was not Argus-eyed, and thus we often saw Madame Leroy escape through the front door and roll like a huge balloon along the boulevard, bent on what she called "collecting her rents." The way she did it was to enter every open door and accost every grown person she saw with the stern reproach that he was behind-hand with his rent, and if he did not pay up by to-morrow she would send the _huissier_ to sell him out. The poor creature was so well known in the neighborhood that she never received rough treatment, and was generally so thoroughly tired out by her rent-collecting as to be quite ready to return without resistance whenever one of our servants sought her. When she did not escape, and mingled with the conglomerate widowhood of the garden (she was never permitted in the _salon_, and went to bed with the chickens), her time was spent, hour after hour, day after day, month after month, going from Relict to Relict, telling always the same story,--always the same, and always a true one:

"Are you in trade? I am. My husband and I came to Paris from Normandy fifty years ago, on foot, with one hundred francs. We kept a green-grocery on Rue des Saints-Peres. When my husband died he left me one hundred thousand francs. I go to collect my rents: will you go? Are you in trade? I am. My husband and I came to Paris on foot," etc., etc., etc.

One of the most elegant of all our visitors was to this poor old Madame Leroy. She always came in an elegant landau, with liveried coachman and footman. Her toilets were of incomparable luxury, but likewise of restrained and cultured taste, being usually of black velvet, duchess-like laces, and queenly furs. She always went directly to this old peasant-woman's handsomely-furnished rooms, and we never saw her except as she descended from her carriage before the windows at which we sat. She was a tall, finely-formed, aristocratic-looking brunette of thirty-five or forty, artistically gotten up as to complexion and hair, and always smiling affectionately at the tea-kettle old figure waiting at the door to greet her. This aristocratic lady was known in the house as Madame la Princesse, and was the daughter of our ancient _paysanne_ and green-grocer, whom a Slav noble had taken from a _cafe chantant_ in Constantinople to endow with his name and fortune.

Another of our _veuves_ filled her private _salon_ with cats. There were seven of them, and the odor of her premises was ancient and cat-like. Three of these cats were sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything, and had lived with their mistress in these very rooms years before, when booming shells sped hot over the house, and fell sometimes close beside it, during the siege of Paris.

"How did you manage to feed them?" we asked.

"I bought slices of cat in the market and stewed them in wine," answered Madame Pognon. "Wine and rice were the only things we were not stinted in. Thus I could always make a ragout for Pierre, Jean, and Jacques, and they throve on it. But I had to keep them shut up, or they would have made ragouts instead of eaten them."

A characteristic of our Relicthood _en bloc_ was its idleness. I never saw one of them with a piece of knitting or any other work in her hands during all the weeks we were there. In fine weather they loitered and basked in the garden, gossiping or amusing themselves with novelettes cut from the penny papers and passed from one to the other in turn. The front door stood almost always open, and the suburban neighborhood about it was during pleasant days largely flecked by the grave gowns and white caps belonging to our _pension_. Nearly all were Bonapartists (for was not trade good during the Empire?) and found the present times sadly out of joint. Nearly all had stood behind counters or at cashiers' desks, and had thus never learned more strictly feminine employments, and now, retired upon their _rentes_, they found time heavy upon their hands. None were conspicuously _devote_: they had never been so in their younger days, and they were not of natures to be spiritualized by long familiarity with life. Death could not be far off from most of them, but they never spoke of it, never seemed to think of it; and, although life was dull, they clung to it as by monotonous habit that _is_ but knows not why.

* * * * *

Still another of our well-remembered _pensions_ was on the bright Vesuvian Bay. The flaming mountain overlooked us, Naples floated beyond us like a dream-city, before us the Mediterranean shimmered and shone like a sultana's satin tunic. We could drop a stone from our windows into the sea; we ran dripping from our sea-baths up long stairs, across tiled balconies, into our vast rooms; all day and all night the swish and lisp of the soft tides mingled with our voices and dreams.

As somebody said of us that summer, we were a "cosmopolitan mess," a hotch-potch of nationalities, such as is always found in so general a rendezvous as Italy. We were rather less of a hotch-potch, however, than in London, but somehow it seemed to us that our peculiarities were more salient than they could ever appear in proper and conventional Bloomsbury. We were largely German, as the travelling population of Italy is. In Bloomsbury our medium of expression was the English language, and English was the language at table, no matter how foreign our company. But in this Italian _pensione_, where the faces were continually changing, the languages changed as often. One day only English was the rule, and those who could not unite with the majority remained mute. Another day, with a tremendous incursion of Teutons, who always seem to travel in hordes, only German gutturals held the table, and we who had no facility with them muttered meek French or sullen English to our neighbors. The next day French would be the rule, and Teuton must mumble in it and Anglo-Saxon stammer or hold its peace. Curiously enough, although we were in Italy, Italian was rarely, almost never, spoken among us, our only use of it being in orders to the servants. Our landlady was English, with an Italian husband, but they both held only upper menial places in the establishment, and never dreamed of sitting at table with us or of meeting us upon any terms of equality. This want of familiarity with Italian proves how little mere travellers and haunters of _pensioni_ ever know of the middle-class inhabitants of the country. The Italians themselves stir from home very seldom; they almost never admit foreigners into their own houses, and when forced abroad seek cheap Italian inns rather than the innumerable boarding-houses infested by the outer barbarian. Italian peasant life is open to all foreigners, but not that of the middle classes.

Our landlord had a daughter whose cheek was pale and whose garments hung loosely upon her. When first we remarked this and her heavy eye, everybody laughed.

"The usual story,--loves and rides away," was remarked in various languages.

It was heartless to laugh, but we could not help it. For wan and drooping landlords' daughters had become so familiar to us in Italian _pensioni_ that we needed only to glance at the set of each one's gown and the tint of her cheek to know if HE were still present and wooing or had faithlessly ridden away. The race, however, was not always to the rider.

One evening under our window, when the air swooned with languid scent of lemon- and orange-blossoms, we heard a sobbing and a sighing that reminded us of the Mock Turtle in "Alice in Wonderland." Glancing out, by the soft light of the summer moon, enhanced by the shimmering water, we saw two persons who seemed to be weeping in each other's arms under a shuddering ilex. The stouter one--he was not the taller--we recognized as a young Teuton for whose sake we had seen a gown very loose and a cheek very wan afar off among the Alban Hills only a month before.

"I love you, Tita, I love you. I have thought I loved a dozen times before, but I was mistaken. I never loved any girl before," he boohooed.

"_Dio mio!_" laughed the girl. "All the _Tedeschi_ say that who come here. I wonder they are not tired of the old tune. I--I am _fiance_ to a _bel Espagnol_ who rode away a month ago, and who ought to have been back before now."

We found our Teuton fellow-_pensionnaires_ to have tastes more unnatural than for landlords' daughters. One of them we had remarked for his extreme beauty, not entirely of feature and rich olive hue, but of pathetic, dreamy expression,--as we said, like an ideal St. John. At first we never spoke of him except as "St. John." We gradually ceased to call him so, however, when we had seen him several times at table, and we grew finally so coarsely irreverent as to call him "_Mange-tout_."

Our meat was brought from distant Naples, making the journey without ice, under a broiling Italian sun. Often it came to table so shorn of its pristine freshness that not the hungriest of us could condone its odor. One sultry night everybody's plate went away untouched, save two or three. Flesh and fowl were "high,"--yea, "twice high," as the British gourmet prefers his game. St. John's plate was _not_ sent away. That ideal being was served three times, after which he rose and helped himself from the side-table, remarking half apologetically as he did so, "The cook has really surpassed himself to-day!"

"Ja! ja!" echoed our Teutons.

We saw our St. John next morning sucking raw eggs before his coffee.

"Because the _nourriture_ is poor. I do it to strengthen me," he explained.

"When I am well I eat all I can hold," he confidentially imparted to the _table-d'hote_. "When I am ill I eat more than I do when I am well."

One of our _pensionnaires_ was a swarthy Brazilian, living upon a colossal and mysteriously-begotten fortune and spending what remained to him of life upon the Mediterranean shores. He knew every _pensione_ of the whole wide region, and in strident, barbaric tones--continually reminding us of the savage aboriginal blood betrayed by narrow eyes and high cheek-bones--flooded our _table-d'hote_ with the gossip of _pensioni_ at Capri, Castellamare, Pompeii, Sorrento, and Salerno,--the giddiness of all the widows, the cunning of the young girls, the wickedness of the wives, and the barefaced or clever intriguing of husband-hunting mammas. All that year, as we quietly slipped from one Mediterranean _pensione_ to another, we met and recognized the heroes and heroines of our Brazilian's _chroniques scandaleuses_, and we breathed many a thanksgiving that we were slipping east while he slipped west and thus were not known of name and evil fame in advance of our coming.

Our Brazilian was a devout Catholic, which led to his giving great offence at our table. Nobody could endure to pass him anything or to take anything from him, and the hideous bird-of-prey-like rattling of his right hand at any service turned many a delicate appetite away and made our Brazilian of almost Gorgon-like effect upon all new-comers. The finger-nails of his right hand were vowed to the Virgin: for two years they had been uncut, and now, like fiendish claws, extended two inches beyond the withered and dusky fingers.

"Why am I not liked by _ces belles dames_?" he asked one day. "They never ask me to their excursions; they seem to shrink from taking my hand."

"Because of your talons," somebody ventured to explain.

"Oh, no! the Blessed Virgin would never allow _that_," he asserted confidently.

Before the end of the summer, however, he seemed to lose confidence in the Virgin's tampering with natural law for his sake. One day we saw that the talons were sacrificed, and were told that the Mother of God had announced to our Brazilian in a dream that she would accept a vow never to cut his hair in place of the devoted nails.

A few days later our _divoto_ came upon the loggia, where sat a bevy of ladies of many nations, in a screeching aboriginal rage.

"I sacrificed my vow to you _belles dames_, although I refused it to Madame la Duchesse de B----," he screamed, "and yet you avoid me. Am I not an _homme fait_" (certainly our sixty-year-old Brazilian had never read "Pendennis"), "and better than any of these boys you admire? Do you imagine the Blessed Virgin will not pay you off for this? Do you think she will go back on a man like me,--of whom Victor Emanuel himself was jealous when I rode on the Pincian with Madame la Princesse della Gr----?"

* * * * *

We thus found many peculiar people in the varied experiences of _nos pensions_. We found often learning and often culture, but more vulgarity than we did refinement, more splendor than delicacy of habit, more blatant ignorance than culture, more _sans gene_ than dignity of manners and character. It is always thus in any mere "cosmopolitan mess," any "hotch-potch of nationalities." For the eccentric and obnoxious types are always and everywhere those most largely _en evidence_, while the gentle and refined nestles closest to the cool, still, mossy ground, leaving sunny flaunting to wider blooms and stronger perfumes.

A RANDOM SHOT.

An existence, if even a dull one, in a large and busy city full of life, when contrasted in the mind of a romantic young lady of eighteen summers with an enforced captivity in an isolated cottage by the sea-shore, grows to possess charms and an excitement which, until so considered, may have remained totally unappreciated.

Could anything be more depressing than the knowledge that this latter condition must be endured with no other companion than a hypochondriacal papa, whose ailings so monopolized his time and attention that a daughter's happiness sunk into insignificance? Little wonder that she should melt into tears at so undesirable a prospect, that she should pity herself and her luckless fate, and that, when fully realizing the depths of loneliness into which she was to be precipitated for five long, weary months, she should jump at the dismal conclusion that her doll was stuffed with the most inferior variety of saw-dust and wish with lachrymose sincerity that she were dead and buried and out of this world of sorrow. Papa might then wish that he had been more considerate. Perhaps; but at that particular moment he was contemplatively assimilating his fish, and that process admitted of no consideration whatever beyond that of the fish itself. So when his daughter raised her tearful eyes to his saffron countenance across the board she found no signs in it of the sympathy she felt so much need of. What could she expect, anyway? Dr. Nevercure had been consulted, and this time felt that something desperate must be done. His patient had persistently refused to pronounce himself in any degree benefited by the long course of physic which he had prescribed, and in fact had become an elephant upon his professional hands; and thus, as a last resort, he had recommended an entire change of air and perfect quiet, with a periodical harmless dose for the sake of appearances. Nevercure must be obeyed; the patient himself, since it seemed to be his delight to fancy himself an invalid, must naturally be supposed to find a pleasure in the remedies for his sufferings, and therefore evinced no regret whatever at the leaden prospects, but, on the contrary, made a most exasperating exhibition of saintly resignation, very galling to the young lady, who considered herself the only one really injured.

"And when must we go?" she asked, continuing a series of questions which her sudden burst of tears had interrupted.

"Friday morning," replied Mr. Moreley curtly.

"Friday morning! And this is Tuesday night! Why, papa, I--"

"Mabel, I said Friday morning. My arrangements are made, and I will not hear another word about it."

And he didn't. Mabel left the table as soon as decorum would permit, and betook herself up-stairs to her own sanctum to nurse her grief in solitude.

She sat long by the open window, pondering over her hapless lot, her chin upon her hand, her dark eyes far away in thought,--sad thought, judging from their expression,--the wind playing in her light, wavy hair, her full red lips parted slightly, showing the interest which her theme awakened, and the fresh bloom upon her cheeks now going, now coming, following in some subtile way the quick movements of her mind. An hour slid by, and then she started from her revery with a sudden thought. The sadness in her eyes gave way to mirth and a twinkle of fun; the color came faster, the lips broke into a most roguish smile.

"I'll do it!" she whispered. "I _will_!" she added, with convincing emphasis and a countenance brimming over with mischief.

It was a foolish project,--a most insane and inexcusable one. It had, however, the spice of romance, and it might afford her some amusement and a little excitement during the coming months of misery. It was suggested by some demon of mischief, and was all the more attractive coming from such a source. It came about naturally enough, too. On the morning of that same day her particular intimate, Anna Desbrough, and she had fallen upon the college catalogue which Anna's brother Tom had sent for to guide him in his preparatory studies. The names of the students had proved interesting reading-matter, and the two girls had speculated as to the probable appearance of this one and that, and had even gone so far as to select the one whom they thought they would prefer among those mentioned. They had indulged in a vast deal of imaginative nonsense, and had finally thrown the book aside and returned to more rational topics; but the recollection of the morning's pastime had not quite faded from Mabel's mind. The name was still fresh in her memory,--Mortimer Granville Dudley: how grand! how musical!

"I will!" she had exclaimed, with determination; and, being a young lady of her word, she hastily collected pen, ink, and paper to carry out her threat.

"MY DEAR MR. DUDLEY," she wrote (she had hesitated long between
"Mr. Dudley" and plain "Mort," with the result shown), "how long
ago it seems since those days when we were playmates together! I
hardly think it probable, though, that you can have forgotten me.
My position would certainly be a very awkward one if you had. But,
remembering as I do so well those happy times, and particularly
your juvenile vows of constancy at the moment of our parting, I
cannot believe that I am mistaken in trusting in their sincerity
and truth.

"By a mere accident I heard the other day of your whereabouts, and,
as I for one still feel the same interest in my playmate that I
used to, I resolved, I think I may say courageously, to discover
whether he still gave promise of fulfilling all the hopes I then
entertained for him.

"I wonder if some of our early experiences are still as fresh in
your mind as they are in mine! Do you remember that day you made me
stand guard while you 'blew' old Jones's eggs in retaliation for
his having turned informer against you? I think it was the time he
told about your having promoted a fight between two dogs. And do
you remember the day on the skating-pond when you broke through the
ice and frightened me into fits by disappearing three times below
the surface, while all the time you were standing, as you afterward
confessed, on solid bottom? I thought then I should never forgive
you for causing me in that unguarded moment to betray my feelings.
And then the telegraph scheme by which we communicated that time I
had the measles. It all seems to have occurred in some other world,
looking back at it now; and yet what happy times those were! I
believe I could go on forever with these reminiscences; but perhaps
they are not as sweet to you as they are to me; perhaps I am only
boring you with them. It would be a great disappointment to me,
though, to know that you never looked back with a sigh to those
days and never gave a thought to your once so devoted playmate.

"I am going to a place called Stillton this summer. I dare say you
never heard of it: it is in Maine; and I must confess I anticipate
a very stupid time there. Perhaps I shall have nothing else to do
but reflect upon the days of my early youth. Am I _quite_
forgotten?

"Your playmate of old,

"JANE JENNINGS.

"BOSTON, June 10, 188-."

The _nom de plume_ was borrowed from Mabel's faithful servant,--nurse in earlier days, a description of maid now,--and was a safe one, as old Jane proper was never known to receive letters, and, moreover, could not have deciphered her own name on the envelope had one arrived for her.

The conflict on the following morning as to whether it should be sent or destroyed, the tremble of the little hand that finally dropped it irrevocably into the iron post-box, the vain reproaches and unanswered longings for its return, the subsequent prayers that it might by some providential interference be intercepted or miscarry, all followed in due course, as well as later a revulsion of feeling and an anxious watching for the mails, hope deferred, and sickness of heart.

Friday came. The journey, miserable as was its object, was accomplished, and Stillton, in all its tomb-like silence and drowsy do-nothingness, with its few glaring white houses and its one dusty road, offering no apology or explanation whatever for its purposeless existence, at last was reached, and Farmer Galusha Krinklebottom, in accordance with Dr. Nevercure's arrangements, met the jaded travellers at the station in his rickety shay, prepared to take them over to the cottage.

"'Tain't more'n three mile," he said consolingly. "The roads ain't none too good this season, an' Kittie--that's _her_" (pointing to his mare)--"don't feel over-skittish; she's nigh onter fourteen year, an' right smart, too, fur her age, but sorter broken-winded latterly; but I guess we'll make it afore dark.--Go 'long, Kittie!"

The ancient mare started off. Her fore-legs were stiff and jointless, her hip-bones painfully prominent, her ribs sadly bare, and her nose hung dejectedly toward the ground; but she still possessed some mechanical power of locomotion, and the "shay" began to squeak and rattle in her wake. Galusha was proud of his native hamlet. "That there's our meetin'-house," he said, but its whitewash and green blinds did not seem to excite the travellers' admiration. "An' that longish house yonder's Pincus's."

"Pincus's?" asked Mabel, with a yawn.

"Pincus Sass's, mum. 'Tis the hotel, mum. That's him in the door. Hulloa, Pincus!" he shouted, shooting a line of tobacco-juice over the dash-board.

"Haow, Galusha!" came in nasal accents from the door-way. "Who ye got in the phayton?"

"The folks as has took the cottage yonder!" called back Galusha.

"Humph! I'll be dummed!" was Pincus's audible comment as the shay rattled on.

"Yonder's the store," presently added Galusha, pointing with his two feet of whip-stock to a place placarded with patent-medicine advertisements, and apparently the rendezvous for all the tobacco-chewers of the neighborhood.

"And the post-office?" asked Mabel timidly.

"In the store, mum. Barton Bump's our pos'master. Some'at of a man, Barton is. He was 'p'inted by the Pres'dent 'imself. Barton fit in the war, yer see, an' I 'spect Gen'ral Grant took a powerful shine to him. He made him pos'master fust thing."

The greatness of Barton Bump did not seem to impress the party as much as Galusha anticipated. "Git 'long, Kittie!" he said, retiring into himself and seeking solace in a fresh mouthful of tobacco. He couldn't contain himself long, though. He soon exclaimed, "So you's the folks as has took the cottage yonder. Well, I want t' know!" He paused again to chew awhile, and then continued, "Yer ain't bin much hereabouts, I reckon?" Another reflective cud. "Well, 'tain't so durned 'citin' here, maybe, as 't might be up to Bosting, but we 'casion'lly gets up reels an' sich for the young folks an' 'joys erselves.--Go 'long, Kittie!--You heard tell, I reckon, on Farmer Manton, lives down 'longside this here cottage of yourn. No? Well, I want t' know. He's 'sider'ble of a man in these parts, Manton is. His gals is great on's on flare-ups, an' powerful smart gals they be, too.--Go 'long, Kittie Krinklebottom!--But durn me if he ain't got the cussedest boy as ever stepped! He don't do nothin' but mope about an' ac' silly. He didn't never do no chores about the yard nor nothin', an' one fine day he come to Manton an' says, 'Dad,' says he, 'I want to go to college,' says he. Well, the old man was that cumflusticated an' took aback that says he, 'John,' says he, 'yer ain't no durned use on the farm,' says he, 'an', if yer got the notion, go, an' God bless yer!' An' John went,--that's nigh onter four year ago,--an' he ain't got ter be perfessor nor nothin' yet. I guess as he's cracked; an' one day says I, kinder kind-like, 'Farmer Manton,' says I, 'John's not right,' says I. 'Galusha,' says he, kinder hot, 'you mind yer own business,' says he. 'I ain't father to no idjots.' An' I ain't said no more sence."

Galusha laughed long and heartily over this reminiscence, while Kittie jogged on along the road to the sea. Presently they turned a sharp bend in the road; a pretty little Queen-Anne cottage came in sight, backing upon a thick wood and overlooking the ocean, and Galusha, reining in the mare, just as though she would not have come to a halt unassisted, exclaimed, "Here yer be!"

It required, of course, three or four days for Mabel to become accustomed to her new surroundings. There was the prettily-furnished house to make acquaintance with, while she wondered all the time what ever induced its owner to plant it so utterly out of the world; there was the little forest of pines to explore, and its most romantic nooks to be discovered; and there was the sea, a thing of never-failing beauty, to gaze upon from the rocky cliffs, as it dashed itself in fine spray against their base, or from the broad crescent beach beyond, as it rolled its crested billows up the sandy slope. Yes, all these things were very pleasant,--far more delightful than she had anticipated. She thought during those first few days that she would like to live on there forever, until the novelty wore off and her father's ailings crushed out the new life which the change had given birth to and kept him locked in his own den with his miseries; and even then nature began to pall as a constant and sole companion, and her mind turned with ever-increasing anxiety to the one event which could possibly break this spell of monotony. Had her letter _in fact_ miscarried? or could it be that the favored recipient had treated it with cold contempt, ruthlessly destroyed it or cast it into the wastepaper-basket? Many were the painful, blush-provoking thoughts that each terrible possibility suggested. She had long since decided that she had been a little fool, and that of course Seniors in college had better things to do than to answer silly girls' more silly letters, when one day on her regular visit to Barton Bump's store she overheard the following:

"It's bin a-kickin' round this here store three days, an' I ain't goin' ter be bothered no longer. Hiram, jes' you stick the dratted thing in one o' them 'ficial en-_vell_ups, an' 'dress it to Wash'ton, D.C."

"Ain't ye goin' to advertise it, dad?"

"'Tain't no good advertisin' it, Hiram. There ain't nobody as calls herself Jennings in the hull county, an' I know it."

But Mabel interrupted him. "Miss Jane Jennings, is it? Why, that letter is for me!" she exclaimed eagerly.

"Fur you, miss?" asked Barton, glancing at her suspiciously over his spectacles. "Ain't your name Moreley?"

"Yes," she answered, in some embarrassment, "but--but Jane Jennings is our servant, you know. Give me the letter. I will take it to her."

Barton hesitated. He hadn't had any communication with the government for some time, and liked to remind them in the capital now and then of his existence. "Well," he said finally, and with reluctance, "ef you're sartin', why, here ye be." And Mabel took it, and bore it away with a palpitating heart, quite forgetting to purchase the supplies which the cook had commissioned her to bring home for dinner.

In the most secluded spot in the dark pine wood she broke the seal and read as follows:

"MY LONG-LOST JENNIE,--Remember my charming little playmate?
Remember the one object that makes my childhood a bright picture
to look back upon? Of course I do, with all the pleasure in the
recollection that her presence used to inspire in those happy days.
Remember the diabolical exploit with Jones's eggs? Distinctly. And
the telegraph system? I believe I could go through the alphabet
now. And I remember, too, that day on the skating-pond, with
contrition, however, and a prayer that my heartlessness may be
forgiven. How can I ever have been unkind to my faithful Jennie?
Nor have I forgotten--how could I?--our tender parting. You said
that you could never forget me, and now your letter proves that you
were sincere; and I hope my answer may convince you that when I
told you of my never-failing constancy I spoke the truth.

"It is a delightful surprise to me to have heard from you at last.
The years that I have been thinking and dreaming of you and wishing
for news of you are over, and now I have at last found the idol of
my boyish admiration.

"But you must have changed as well as I in all this time. I should
like very much to have a likeness of you as you are now, to compare
with that which is indelibly stamped on my memory. Won't you send
me one?

"It surprises me that in recalling those experiences of ours you
should have omitted the one that is most vivid and most delightful
to me. Can it be that you have forgotten the little house we built
under the old chestnut-tree, where you prepared the supper on your
best doll's china for the weary hunter who used to return laden
with green apples, currants, strawberries, and other wild beasts,
the spoils of his chase? How generous and self-sacrificing you used
to be with the slender provisions, and anxious lest the foot-sore
huntsman should not get enough to sustain his toilsome existence!
What an example you were of domesticity! and I cannot believe that
you are anything else to-day but the same good pattern for
womanhood.

"Do let me hear from you soon again. Although I have existed so
long in ignorance even as to whether you were still alive, the
knowledge now that you are so, and that you have still a corner in
your memory, if not in your heart, for me, has revived all my old
feelings and keeps me in constant hope of further news of you.

"As ever, your affectionate playmate,

"MORT."

Notwithstanding all the hopes and fears of the past few days, there was the reply, after all, and Mabel, after reading it through three times, concluded that "Mort" must be "splendid," and that this sort of sport was far ahead of anything she had yet attempted. It combined, so she argued, all the spice of a heavy flirtation with the advantage of a strict incognito, and, with judicious management, she thought that it might be carried on in perfect safety for some time to come.

Mr. Moreley was worse than usual that evening; dinner, without the articles which Mabel should have brought from the village, was not a success, and such a catastrophe always aggravated his disease. Having learned who was to blame for it, it was many days before he could forgive or forget his daughter's inhuman treatment of her much-suffering papa, so that she was left even more than usual to her own devices, and spent a deal of her time either with novels or her writing-case in the romantic corners of the pine wood or on the rocks and along the beach by the sea.

Dudley's letter had been answered one afternoon, when the late sun was throwing long shadows and touching the distant sails upon the ocean with a shade of delicate pink, when a gentle breeze was only rippling the surface of the water and the waves were only murmuring soft music upon the sand; and if but half of the tender emotion which these surroundings gave birth to were transferred to her paper, Dudley, if his heart were at all as he had represented it, must have found in her reply an ample reward for his strange constancy. Circumstances, at any rate, went to show that it had been very welcome and pleasing to its recipient, for it was scarcely three days later that a second missive for Miss Jane Jennings reached the Stillton office and was duly claimed by Mabel before any possible accident could throw it into other hands. She had perused it with marked pleasure; it had contained many fresh allusions to "childhood's happy hour," many additional and very original accounts of doings in their fancied youth, several frank compliments, and a reiterated and very urgent request for a photograph. She had allowed several days to pass in considering what notice to take of this somewhat impudent demand. At one time she almost concluded to let Mr. Dudley drop altogether. What right had he to call upon her for her likeness? At another she was quite as firmly resolved to send him one. The whispered vanity which told her that he would not be disappointed in it was not easily resisted. At last, however, a simple middle course--an easy way out of the difficulty--suggested itself, and, as it promised, too, to throw another puzzling veil of mystery over her identity, she seized it eagerly, and that very afternoon put it into execution. Seated on the rocks that overlooked the sea, gathering thoughts in long gazes toward the distant horizon, and allowing imagination to roam as freely as could her eyes over the unbounded ocean, she wrote her answer. After touching upon the episodes of their earlier days which his last letter had brought to light, and adding the details of a few more experiences which her fertile mind suggested, she turned to the subject of the photograph. "I wish it were better," she wrote. "It is a shockingly poor likeness, I know, but may serve as a reminder of your little playmate, if not as a perfect representation of her." She sealed the envelope, enclosing the picture, and, seeing Galusha Krinklebottom drive by just at the moment, hailed him, and sent photograph, letter, and all in his care to the mails.

It is strange how, even after bitter experience, many of us persist in putting the cart before the horse,--doing the deed before taking the proper consideration of its consequences. When the letter had gone, and not before, Mabel fully realized that she had done something positively wicked and unpardonable. Her terrible sin kept her awake all that night and preyed upon her mind for days afterward. "I hardly know the girl," she pleaded in self-excuse to her injured conscience. "What of that?" exclaimed the voice sternly. "I don't like her, anyhow," she added, almost in tears. "What of that?" persisted the voice angrily. Oh, well, it was done and could not be undone now. It was mean, perhaps, to send him another girl's picture, but, considering that the whole world acknowledged that Mabel Moreley was far the better-looking of the two, did not this sacrifice of vanity palliate the offence? It seemed, after all, a very remote possibility that any harm could come to the other girl through this freak of hers. She could not, of course, have sent her own picture, and this was the only one in her collection that had seemed at all passable: so, eventually, the iniquity of the proceeding faded before these convincing arguments, and she soon found herself much more interested in looking forward to the receipt of the likeness which he could not fail to send in return than with reproaches over a hasty piece of folly.

The reply arrived in due course, and with it the photograph of a handsome face, with fine, bold eyes, a prominent nose, an expressive mouth, and a moustache in the springtime of its existence. It was captivating, but, after her own deception, she was naturally in doubt as to who the true owner of that very attractive physiognomy might be. If indeed it were Dudley, her random shot had hit the mark. To her imagination he had always been handsome; whether he were so in reality had never before seemed at all a matter of importance; but now, with a picture before her from which a lasting impression might be derived, it became necessary either to accept it or reject it. Should this face, then, be hereafter regarded as that of her playmate in his maturer years? After careful scrutiny she decided that it should, and from that time, when it was not in her hands undergoing admiration, it lay in secure repose among the treasured notes, faded flowers, and sweet-smelling rose-leaves in her writing-case. Not many days later she felt impelled to acknowledge its receipt, and, taking her materials in this precious box to a shaded corner of the pine wood, spread them out before her and was soon deep in her pleasant task. She was necessarily obliged to draw heavily upon imagination in tracing the points in the photograph which she asserted recalled vividly his youthful countenance, and, when at last she had finished, lay back exhausted by the effort, and soon fell into a condition of dreaminess bordering closely on sleep. Suddenly, however, the sound of approaching footsteps aroused her, and before she had time to gather together all her sacred belongings, the figure of a tall man, in a slouch hat and with an unprepossessingly cadaverous cast of features, appeared from behind the rocks, which until then had hidden them from each other's view. He stopped short on discovering her, raised his hat in some confusion, muttered something in apology for his intrusion, and was just planning a hasty retreat, when she asked, with some nervousness, "Do you wish to see my father?"

"No," he answered, with equal embarrassment. "I--I was going down to the beach. I forgot for the moment that--that this place was occupied: this is a short cut for me. I hope you will excuse my trespassing. I live just back of here," he went on, in an explanatory way, as she made no reply. "My name is Manton."

"Oh!" Mabel exclaimed, remembering Galusha Krinklebottom's story of the young man who was "not right," and concluding that this must be he. "I am sure there can be no objection to your taking this way to the beach, Mr. Manton," she answered, smiling sweetly, in the hope of averting a possible outbreak of lunacy.

He thanked her with a grave, formal bow, and started to pass on, when his eye fell upon the recently-arrived photograph as it lay on a rock by her side. He stopped, and looked quickly from it to her face and then back at the picture.

Mabel's face grew scarlet. Could it be that he recognized it? Was her secret discovered? Or was this merely a madman's strange idiosyncrasy?

"We have a mutual friend, I think," he said, rather bluntly, though in a gentle tone.

"Indeed?" asked Mabel nervously.

"That must be Mort Dudley," he went on, half to himself, and still gazing at the photograph.

("Then it _must_ be his own likeness!" inwardly exclaimed Mabel.)

"I beg your pardon if I am mistaken," Manton added apologetically; "the picture caught my eye and reminded me very strongly of a college classmate of mine."

"Then you know Mr. Dudley?" she asked, deeply interested, and forgetful now of the stranger's reputed mental unsoundness.

"Yes, indeed," he replied, looking at the photograph more closely. "This is his class-picture. I have one like it. It is an excellent likeness of him; don't you think so?"

Mabel said that she thought it was, and blushed again as she said it.

Manton concluded from this that there must be something thicker than mere friendship between Dudley and his new acquaintance, and an awkward silence ensued.

"Yes," continued Manton presently, "Dudley was the warmest friend I had at college. I hadn't many," he added, in a tone that struck Mabel as being somewhat sad. "I hadn't time to make many friends, or even acquaintances. The work was rather harder for me than for most of the men, I think; but Dudley, from the very first, helped me when he could, and I think was the only cheering influence I met with during the entire course. He was always so full of life and so jolly, and at the same time sympathetic, and never depressed and in the blues, as I frequently was. I never could understand why he was so good a friend to me, unless perhaps because there may be a force of attraction between two extremes."

"Yes; I should not fancy you at all like him," Mabel said, trying to impress him with her intimate knowledge of Dudley's nature.