Chapter VI: Part 6

“Who would not sell a farm and go to sea?” the sailor says, and turns his quid remarking, “Go to sea for pleasure, yes, and to hell for fun.” The smell of steam, confinement, the motion of the ship, monotony of days, time marked but by the dinner-bell, a hell to passengers who in their cabins curse the hours, and kill the time with cards, books, drink and flirtation, and yet find every day a week. But to the exiles of the Ibicuy, stricken with terror, too ill to eat, parching, and yet afraid to drink, hopeless and fevered, sick at heart, slipping and falling, bruised with each motion of the ship, beaten when restless, and perhaps in some dim way conscious of having left their birthplace, and foreseeing nothing but misery, who shall say what they endured during the passage, in the hot days, the stifling nights, and in the final change to the dark skies and chilling breezes of the north? Happiest those who died without the knowledge of the London streets, and whose bruised carcasses were flung into the sea, their coats matted with sweat and filth, legs swelled, and heads hanging down limply as they trailed the bodies on the decks.

The docks, the dealer’s yard, the breaking in to harness, and the sale at Aldridge’s, and one by one they were led out to meet no more; as theologians who have blessed man with hell, allow no paradise to beasts. Perhaps because their lives being innocent, they would have filled it up so that no man could enter, for what saint in any calendar could for an instant claim to be admitted if his life were compared to that of the most humble of his four-footed brethren in the Lord? Docked duly, to show that nature does not know how to make a horse, bitted and broken, the chestnut colt, once Cruz Cabrera’s pride, started on cab work, and for a time gave satisfaction to his owner, for, though not fast, he was untiring, and, as his driver said, “yer couldn’t kill ’im, ’e was a perfect glutton for ’ard work.”

Streets, streets, and yet more streets, endless and sewer-like, stony and wood-paved, suburbs interminable, and joyless squares, gaunt stuccoed crescents, “vales,” “groves,” “places,” a perfect wilderness of bricks, he trotted through them all. Derbies and boat-races, football matches, Hurlingham and the Welsh Harp, Plaistow and Finchley, Harrow-on-the-Hill, the wait at theatres, the nightly crawl up Piccadilly watching for fares, where men and women stop to talk; rain, snow, ice, frost, and the fury of the spring east wind, he knew them all, struggled and shivered, baked, shook with fatigue, and still resisted. But time, that comes upon us and our horses, stealthily creeping like Indians creep upon the war trail without a sign, loosening the sinews of our knees, thickening their wind, and making both of us useless except for worms, began to tell. The chronic cough, the groggy feet, the eye covered with a cloud, caused by a flick inside the blinkers, and the staring coat, soon turned the chestnut, from a cab with indiarubber tyres, celluloid fittings, and a looking-glass upon each side (for fools to see how impossible it is that they can ever have been made after God’s image), to a night hack, and then the fall to a fish-hawker’s cart was not too long delayed.

Blows and short commons, sores from the collar, and continued overwork, slipping upon the greasy streets, struggling with loads impossible to move, finished the tragedy; and of the joyous colt who but a year or two ago bounded through thickets scarcely brushing off the dew, nothing was left but a gaunt, miserable, lame, wretched beast, a very bag of bones, too thin for dog’s meat, and too valueless even to afford the mercy of the knacker’s fee. So, struggling on upon his Via Crucis, Providence at last remembered, and let him fall, and the shaft entering his side, his blood coloured the pavement; his owner, after beating him till he was tired, gave him a farewell kick or two; then he lay still, his eyes open and staring, and white foam exuding from his mouth.

The scent of horse dung filled the fetid air, cabs rattled, and vans jolted on the stones, and the dead horse, bloody and mud-stained, formed, as it were, a sort of island, parting the traffic into separate streams, as it surged onward roaring in the current of the streets.

A PAKEHA

RAIN, rain, and more rain, dripping off the sodden trees, soaking the fields, and blotting out the landscape as with a neutral-tinted gauze. The sort of day that we in the land “dove il doce Dorico risuona” designate as “saft.” Enter along the road to me a neighbour of some fifty to sixty years of age, one Mr. Campbell, a little bent, hair faded rather than grey, frosty-faced as we Scotsmen are apt to turn after some half a century of weather, but still a glint of red showing in the cheeks; moustache and whiskers trimmed in the fashion of the later sixties; “tacketed” boots, and clothes, if not impervious to the rain, as little affected by it as is the bark of trees. His hat, once black and of the pattern affected at one time by all Free Church clergymen, now greenish and coal-scuttled fore and aft and at the sides. In his red, chapped, dirty, but grey-mittened hands a shepherd’s stick—long, crooked, and made of hazel-wood.

“It’ll maybe tak’ up, laird.”

“Perhaps.”

“An awfu’ spell o’ it.”

“Yes, disgusting.”

“Aye, laird, the climate’s sort o’ seekenin’. I mind when I was in New Zealand in the sixties, aye, wi’ a surveyor, just at the triangulation, ye ken. Man, a grand life, same as the tinklers, here to-day and gane to-morrow, like old Heather Jock. Hoot, never mind your dog, laird, there’s just McClimant’s sheep, puir silly body, I ken his keel-mark. Losh me, a bonny country, just a pairfect pairadise, New Zealand. When I first mind Dunedin it wasna bigger than the clachan there, out by. A braw place noo, I understan’, and a’ the folk fearfu’ took up wi’ horse, driving their four-in-hands, blood cattle, every one of them. There’s men to-day like Jacky Price—he was a Welshmen, I’m thinking—who I mind doing their day’s darg just like mysel’ aboot Dunedin, and noo they send their sons hame to be educated up aboot England.

“When? ’Oo aye, I went oot in the old _London_ wi’ Captin Macpherson. He’d bin the round trip a matter o’ fifteen times, forbye a wee bit jaunt whiles after the ‘blackbirds’ (slaves, ye ken, what we called free endentured labourers) to the New Hebrides. The _London_, aye, ’oo aye, she foundered in the Bay (Biscay, ye ken) on her return. It’s just a special providence I wasna a passenger myself.

“Why did I leave the country? Eh, laird, ye may say. I would hae made my hame out there, but it was just the old folks threap, threaping on me to come back, I’m telling ye. A bonny toon, Dunedin, biggit on a wee hill just for a’ the wurrld like Gartfarran there, and round the point a wee bit plain just like the Carse o’ Stirling. Four year I wrocht at the surveyin’, maistly triangulation, syne twa at shepherdin’, nane o’ your Australlian fashion tailing them a’ day, but on the hame system gaen’ aboot; man, I mind whiles I didna see anither man in sax weeks’ time.”

“Then you burned bricks, you say?”

“Aye, I didna’ think ye had been so gleg at the Old Book. Aye, aye, laird, plenty of stra’, or maybe it was yon New Zealand flax stalk. The awfiest plant ye ever clapt your eyes on, is yon flax. I mind when I first landed aff the old _London_—she foundered in the Bay. It was just a speecial interposition . . . but I mind I telt ye. Well, I just was dandering aboot outside the toon, and hettled to pu’ some of yon flax; man, I wasna fit; each leaf is calculated to bear a pressure of aboot a ton. The natives, the Maories, use it to thack their cottages. A bonny place, New Zealand, a pairfect pairadise—six-and-thirty years ago—aye, aye, ’oo aye, just the finest country in God’s airth.

“Het? Na, na, nane so het as here in simmer, a fine, dry air, and a bonny bright blue sky. Dam’t, I mind the diggings opening tae. There were a wheen captins. Na, na, not sea captins, airmy captins, though there were plenty of the sea yins doon in the sooth; just airmy captins who had gone out and ta’en up land; blocked it, ye ken, far as frae here to Stirlin’. Pay for it, aye, aboot a croon the acre, and a wee bit conseederation to the Government surveyor just kept things square. Weel, when the diggins opened, some of them sold out and made a fortune. Awfu’ place thae diggins, I hae paid four shillin’ a pound for salt mysel’, and as for speerits, they were just fair contraband.

“And the weemen. Aye, I mind the time, but ye’ll hae seen the Circassian weemen aboot Africa. Weel, weel, I’m no saying it’s not the case, but folk allow that yon Circassians are the finest weemen upon earth. Whiles I hae seen some tae, at fairs, ye ken, in the bit boothies, but to my mind there’s naething like the Maories, especially the half-casted yins, clean-limbed, nigh on six feet high the maist o’ them. Ye’ll no ken Geordie Telfer, him that was a sojer, he’s got a bit place o’ his ain out by Milngavie. Geordie’s aye bragging, bostin’ aboot weemen that he’s seen in foreign pairts. He just is of opeenion that in Cashmere or thereaboots there is the finest weemen in the warld. Black, na, na, laird, just a wee toned and awfu’ tall, ye ken. Geordie he says that Alexander the Great was up aboot Cashmere and that his sojers, Spartans I think they ca’ed them, just intromitted wi’ the native weemen, took them, perhaps, for concubines, as the Scriptures say; but ye’ll ken sojers, laird; Solomon, tae, an awfu’ chiel yon Solomon. The Maori men were na blate either, a’ ower sax fut high, some nigh on seven fut, sure as death, I’m tellin’ ye. Bonny wrestlers, tae; man, Donald Dinnie got an unco tirl wi’ ane o’ them aboot Dunedin, leastwise if it wasna Dinnie, it was Donald Grant or Donald McKenzie, or ane of they champions frae Easter Ross. Sweir to sell their land tae they chaps, I mind the Government sent out old Sir George Grey, a wise-like man, Sir George, ane o’ they filantrofists. Weel, he just talkit to them, ca’ed them his children, and said that they shouldna resist legeetimate authority. Man, a wee wiry fella’, he was the licht-weight champion wrestler at Tiki-Tiki, just up and said, ‘Aye, aye, Sir George,’ though he wasna gi’en him Sir George, but just some native name they had for him, ‘we’re a’ your children, but no sic children as to gie our land for naething.’ Sir George turnit the colour of a neep, ane o’ yon swedes, ye ken, and said nae mair.”

“How did they manage it?”

“The Government just arranged matters wi’ the chiefs. Bribery, weel a’ weel, I’ll no gae sae far as to impute ony corruption on them, but a Government, a Government, ye ken, is very apt to hae its way.

“Dam’t, ’twas a fine country, a pairfect pairadise. I mind aince going oot with Captin Brigstock, Hell-fire Jock they ca’ed him, after they bushrangers. There was ane Morgan frae Australlia bail’t up a wheen folks, and dam’t, says Captin Brigstock, ye’ll hae to come, Campbell. Shot him, yes, authority must be respected, and the majesty o’ law properly vendeecated, or else things dinna thrive. It was in a wood of gora-gora we came on him about the mouth of day. Morgan, ye ken, was boiling a billy in a sort o’ wee clearin’, his horse tied to a tree close by, when Brigstock and the others came upon him. Brigstock just shouted in the name o’ the law and then let fly. Morgan, he fell across the fire, and when we all came up says he, ‘Hell-fire, ye didna gie me ony chance,’ and the blood spouted from his mouth into the boiling pan.

“Deid, ’oo aye, deid as Rob Roy. I dinna care to mind it. But a fine life, laird, nae slavin’ at the plough, but every ane goin’ aboot on horseback; and the bonny wee bit wooden huts, the folk no fashed wi’ furniture, but sittin’ doon to tak’ their tea upon the floor wi’ their backs against the wall. That’s why they ca’ed them squatters. They talk aboot Australlia and America, but if it hadna been for the old folks I would hae made my hame aboot a place ca’ed Paratanga, and hae taken up with ane o’ they Maori girls, or maybe a half-caste. Married, weel, I widna say I hae gane to such a length. Dam’t, a braw country, laird, a pairfect pairadise, I’m telling ye;” and then the rain grew thicker, and seemed to come between us as he plodded on towards the “toon.”

VICTORY

RANKS upon ranks of rastaquoères, Brazilians, Roumanians, Russians, Bulgarians, with battalions of Americans, all seated round the “piazza” of the Grand Hotel. Ladies from Boston, Chicago, and New York, their heels too high, their petticoats too much belaced, their Empire combs bediamonded so as to look almost like cut-glass chandeliers, as in their chairs they sat and read the latest news from Tampa, Santiago, and how Cervera’s Squadron met the fate which they (the ladies) reckoned God prepares for those who dare to fight against superior odds.

Outside upon the boulevards, cocottes, guides, cabmen, and androgynous young men, touts, and all those who hang about that caravansary where the dulcet Suffolk whine, made sharper by the air of Massachusetts, sounds, passed and repassed.

Smug-faced, black-coated citizens from Buffalo and Albany, and from places like Detroit and Council Bluffs, to which the breath of fashion has not penetrated, scanned the _New York Herald_, read the glorious news, and, taking off their hats, deigned publicly to recognize the existence of a God, and after standing reverently silent, masticating their green cigars in contemplation of His wondrous ways, to take a drink.

Aquatic plants and ferns known only to hotels, and constituting a sub-family of plants, which by the survival of the ugliest have come at last to stand gas, dust, saliva, and an air befogged with Chypre, grew in the fountain where, in the tepid water, gold fish with swollen eyes, and blotched with patches of unhealthy white, swam to and fro, picking up crumbs and rising to the surface when some one threw a smoked-out cigarette into the basin, in the midst of which a fig-leaved Naiad held a stucco shell.

The corridors were blocked with Saratoga trunks; perspiring porters staggered to and fro, bending beneath the weight of burdens compared to which a sailor’s chest is as a pill-box.

All went well; the tapes clicked off their international lies, detailing all the last quotations of the deep mines upon the Rand, the fall in Spanish Fours; in fact, brought home to those with eyes to see, the way in which the Stock Exchange had put a rascals’ ring around the globe.

Waiters ran to and fro, their ears attuned to every outrage upon French, seeking to find the meaning of the jargons in which they were addressed.

Majestic butlers in black knee-breeches, and girt about the neck with great brass chains, moved slowly up and down, so grave and so respectable that had you laid your hands upon any one of them and made a bishop of him he would have graced the post.

Mysterious, well-dressed men sat down beside you, and after a few words proposed to take you in the evening to show you something new.

Women walked to and fro, glaring at one another as they had all been tigresses, or again, catching each other’s eyes, reddened, and looked ashamed, as if aware, though strangers, that they understood the workings of the other’s heart.

Burano chandeliers and modern tapestry, with red brocade on the two well-upholstered chairs, imparted beauty and a look of wealth, making one feel as if by striking an electric bell a door would open and a troop of half-dressed women file into the court, after the fashion of another kind of inn.

Outside the courtyard Paris roared, chattered, and yelped, cycles and automobiles made the poor _piéton’s_ life a misery, and set one thinking how inferior after all the Mind which thought out Eden was to our own.

Upon the asphalt the horizontales lounged along, pushing against the likely-looking passer-by like cats against a chair.

Cabs rattled, and the whole _clinquant_ town wore its best air of unreality, which it puts off alone upon the morning of a revolution.

Through boulevards, parvis, cités, along the quays, in the vast open spaces which, like Saharas of grey stone, make the town desolate, in cafés, brothels, theatres, in church and studio, and wherever men most congregate, groups stood about reading the news, gesticulating, weeping, perspiring, and agog with a half-impotent enthusiastic orgasm of wildest admiration for Spain, Cervera, and the men who without bunkum or illusion steamed to certain death. And, curiously enough, the execration fell not so much upon Chicago as on “ces cochons d’Anglais,” who by their base connivance had wrought the ruin of the Spanish cause.

Yankees themselves read and remarked with sneers that England’s turn was coming next, and after “Kewby,” that they reckoned to drag the British flag through every dunghill in New York; then one winked furtively and said, “We need them now, but afterwards we’ll show Victoria in a cage for a picayune a peep, and teach the Britishers what to do with their old Union Jack,” thinking no doubt of the ten-cent paper which is sold in every city of the States, stamped with the Spanish flag.

And as I sat, musing on things and others—thinking, for instance, that when you scratch a man and see his blood you know his nature by the way he bears his wound, and that the Spaniards, wounded to the death, were dying game (after the fashion of the English in times gone by, before Imperialism, before the Nonconformist snuffle, the sweating system, and the rest had changed our nature), and that the Yankees at the first touch cried out like curs, though they had money, numbers, and everything upon their side—I fell a-thinking on the Spain of old. Inigo Lopez de Mendoza, el Gran Capitan, Cortes (not at the siege of Mexico, but in the rout before Algiers) came up before me, and I thought on the long warfare, extending over seven hundred years, by which Spain saved the southern half of Europe from the Moors; upon Gerona, Zaragoza, and, most of all, upon Cervera, last of the Quixotes, Vara de Rey, Linares, and the poor peasants from Galician hills, thyme-scented wastes in Lower Aragon, Asturian mountains, and Estremenian oak-woods, who, battling against superior numbers, short of food, of ammunition, and bereft of hope, were proving their descent from the grim soldiers of the Spanish “Tercios” of the Middle Ages, and making the invaders of their country pay for their piracy in blood.

Blood is the conqueror’s coin the whole world over, and if the island which Columbus found for Spain pass into other hands, let those who take it pour out their blood like water to inaugurate their reign of peace.

Where the connection between the senses and the brain comes in, which influences first, and how, or whether a wise Providence, always upon His guard (after the fashion of an operator in a Punch and Judy show), influences each man directly, as by celestial thought suggestion, I cannot tell.

All that I know is, that once walking on the rampart gardens which in Cadiz overhang the sea and form the outside rim of the “Taza de Plata,” as the Spaniards call the town, I on a sudden saw the River Plate. The Gauchos, plains, wild horses, the stony wastes, the ostriches (the “Alegria del Desierto”), came up before me, and in especial a certain pass over a little river called the Gualiyan; the sandy dip, the metallic-looking trees, the greenish river with the flamingoes and white herons and the black-headed swans; the vultures sitting motionless on the dead trees, and most of all the penetrating scent of the mimosa, known to the natives as the “espinillo de olor.”

Turning and wondering why, I saw a stunted tree with yellow blossoms duly ticketed with its description “Mimosa” this or that, and with its “habitat” the warmer district of the River Plate.

I leave these things to wise philosophers and to those men of science who seem to think mankind is worth the martyrdom of living dogs and cats; or who, maybe, drag out the entrails of their quivering fellow-mortals merely to stimulate their senses or erotic powers.

But the “dwawm” over, looking about, fenced in by swarms of overjoyed Americans, all talking shrilly, reading out the news, exultant at the triumph of their fleet, puffed up and arrogant as only the descendants of the Puritans can be, I saw a Spaniard sitting with his daughter, a girl about nineteen.

Himself a Castellano rancio, silent and grave, dressed all in black, moustache waxed to a point, square little feet like boxes, brown little hands, face like mahogany, hair cropped close, and with the unillusional fatalistic air of worldly wisdom mixed with simplicity which characterizes Spaniards of the older school.

Being a Christian, he spoke no tongue but that which Christians use, was proud of it, proud of his ignorance, proud (I have no doubt) of his descent.

No doubt he saw everything through the clear dazzling atmosphere of old Castille, which Spaniards of his kind seem to condense and carry off with them for use in other climes.

Seeing so clearly, he saw nothing clear, for the intelligence of man is so contrived as to be ineffective if a mist of some sort is not interposed.

The daughter fair, fair with the fairness of a Southern, blue-eyed, and skin like biscuit china, hands and feet fine, head well set on, and yet with the decided gestures and incisive speech, the “aire recio,” and the “meneo” of the hips in walking, of the women of her race.

They sat some time before a pile of newspapers, the father smoking gravely, taking down the smoke as he were drinking it, and then in a few minutes breathing it out to serve as an embellishment to what he said, holding his cigarette meanwhile fixed in a little silver instrument contrived like two clasped hands.

The Spanish newspapers were, of course, all without news, or said they had none, and as the daughter read, the old man punctuated with “Valiente,” “Pobrecitas,” and the like, when he heard how before El Caney, Vara de Rey had died, or how the Americans had shot the three Sisters of the Poor whose bodies were found lying with lint and medicine in their hands.

“Read me the papers of the Americans, hija de mi corazon,” and she began, translating as she read.

Reading of the whole agony, choking but self-possessed, she read: the _Vizcaya_, _Almirante Oquendo_, and the rest; the death of Villamil, he who at least redeemed the promise made to the Mother of his God in Cadiz before he put to sea.

And as she read the old man gave no sign, sitting impassive as a fakir, or like an Indian warrior at the stake.

She went on reading; the fleet steamed through the hell of shot and shell, took fire, was beached, blew up, and still he gave no sign.

Cervera steps on board the conqueror’s ship, weeping, gives up his sword, and the old man sat still.

When all was finished, and the last vessel burning on the rocks, slowly the tears fell down his old brown cheeks, and he broke silence. “Virgen de Guadalupe, has not one escaped?” and the girl, looking at him through her now misty eyes, “No, papa, God has so willed it. . . . What is wrong with your moustache?”

Then, with an effort, he took down his grief, said quietly, “I must change my hairdresser,” got up, and offering his daughter his arm, walked out impassible, through the thick ranks of the defeated foe.

ROTHENBERGER’S WEDDING

SHORT and broad-shouldered, with the flaxen hair and porcelain-coloured eyes of the true man of Kiel or Koenigsberg, Dr. Karl Rothenberger prided himself on being a townsman of the Great Kant, “who make the critique of pure sense.” For him in vain the modern mystic spread his nets; his mass, his psychological research, his ethics based on the saving of his own gelatinous soul, said nothing to the man of Koenigsberg. His work to minister by electricity to the rheumatic, the gouty; to those who had loved perhaps well, but certainly in a vicarious and post-prandial fashion; his passion fishing with a float; a “goode felawe,” not too refined, but yet well educated; his literary taste bounded by idealistic novels about materialistic folk, and the drum-taps of the bards of Anglo-Saxon militarism; the doctor looked on the world as a vast operating theatre, sparing not even his own foibles in his diagnosis of mankind. All sentiment he held if not accursed, yet as superfluous, and though he did not pride himself exactly on his opinions, knowing them well to be but the result of education, and of a few molecules of iron, more or less, in the composition of his blood, yet would deliver them to all and sundry, as he were lecturing to students in a university. Women he held inferior to men, as really do almost all men, although they fear to say so; but again, he said, “de womens they have occupy my mind since I was eighteen years.”

So after many wanderings in divers lands, he came, as wise men will, to London, and set up his household gods in a vast plane-tree-planted square (with cat ground in the middle called a garden), and of which the residents each had a key, but never walked in, sat in, or used in any way, though all of them would have gone to the stake rather than see a member of the public enter into its sacred precincts, or a stray child play in it, unless attended by a nurse.

Honours and fees fell thick on Rothenberger, and he became greatly belettered, member of many a learned, dull society. He duly purchased a degree; and squares and crescents quite a mile away sent out their patients, and were filled with the sonorous glory of his name. One thing was wanting, and that one thing troubled him not a little; but he yet saw it was inevitable if he would rise to Harley Street or Saville Row, and the sleek pair of horses which (without bearing-reins) testify to a doctor’s status in the scientific world. A wife, or as he said, a “real legitimate,” to prove to all his patients that he was a moral man. Strange that the domestic arrangements of a public man should militate for or against him; but so it is, at least in England, where even if a man cheat and spread ruin to thousands, yet he may find apologists, chiefly, of course, amongst that portion of the public who have not suffered by his delinquencies, so that his life be what is known as pure. Morals and purity in our group of islands seem to condone drunkenness, lies, and even theft (so that the sum stolen be large enough), and to have crystallized themselves into a censorship of precisely the very thing as to which no man or woman has the right to call another to account.

So Rothenberger, looking about for a vessel by means of which to purify himself (and push his business), lit on a girl with money, living, as he said, “oot by Hampstead way;” went through the process known as courting, in a mixture of German and of English, eked out with Plaat-Deutsch, and finally induced the lady to fix the day on which to make him pure. Science and business jointly having so taken up his time that he had learnt but little English, he was at some loss, and left arrangements to the family of his intended wife.

Not knowing English customs, he had written asking in what costume he should appear on the great day, and received a letter telling him to make his appearance at the church duly dressed in a tall hat, light trousers, and a new frock coat. Frock coat he read as “frac,” and ordered wedding garments such as he thought suitable, with the addition of a brand-new evening coat. The wedding breakfast having been ordered at the Hotel Metropole, he there transferred himself, proposing to pass the night before his final entry into moral life quietly and decently, as befits one about to change his state. But as he said, “God or some other thing was of another mind,” for when I was arriving at the place, mein head feel heavy, and I was out of sorts, and when I ring the bell, a housemaid answer it wit a hot-water jug, and came into the room. Himmel, what for a girl, black hair like horse’s tail, great glear plue eyes, and tall and fat, it was a miracle. I fall in love wit her almost at once, but I say nothings, only wink little at her with my eye. All the night long I could not schleep, thinking part of the housemaid, part of mein wife, and part if perhaps I was not going to do a very silly ding. When it was morning I have quite forgot the church, but still remember what the clergyman was like. So I go to the porter (he was a landsman of my own), and ask him to get me a cab, and then explain, I was to be married oot by Hampstead way, that morning at eleven and half o’clock. The porter say what church shall I tell the schelm to drive to, but mein Got I have forgot. So I say, go to Hampstead, and I will go to all the churches and ask if a German is to be married, till I find the right one out. The cabman think that I was mad, and I get into the cab dressed in clear trousers, white waistcoat, and plue necktie, mit little spot; shiny new boots that hurt me very much; with yellow gloves three-quarter-eight in size, and with my new “frac” coat, so that I think myself, eh, Rothenberger, was that really you? The cabman wink mit de porter, and we start away. We drive and drive, first to one church and then another, and I always ask, is it in this church that a German is to be marry at half twelve o’clock? Dey grin at me, and every one say no. De dime approach, and I was sweating in the cab, not knowing what they say if at half twelve o’clock I not turn up to time. At last looking out from the window I see the clergyman walking along the street mit a big hymnbook in his hand. I cry to him, Ach Himmel, it is I, Karl Rothenberger, that you must marry at half twelve o’clock. He stop, and shomp into the cab, and then we drive to church.

All was so glad to see me, for I hear one say, I thought the German must have change his mind. I ran into the church, and my wife say, What for a costume is it that you have? Frock coat and clear grey pants, dat is not wedding dress; so I say I know dat, but why you write to me, mind and buy a new “frac coat”?

They mumble out their stuff, and when the clergyman ask me if I want this woman for mein wife, I say, all right, and all the people laugh like everythings. Then when he say, I, Karl, do promise and etcetera, I say, dat is so, and de people laugh again. At last it all was done, and we drive off to the hotel to have the breakfast, and mein wife look beautiful in her new travelling dress. At the hotel the company was met, and I go up to mein apartment to change the dam frac coat, to wash mein hands, and put a little brillantine on my moustache, whilst mein wife mit the bridesmaids go to another room, and all the company was waiting down below.

I want hot water, so I rang the bell, and the stout pretta chambermaid she bring it in a jug. How the thing pass I never knew till now, but I wink at her, and she laugh, and then—she put down the jug, just for a moment,—for the company, mein wife, her father, and the bridesmaids, all was waiting down below. So I come down and make mein speech, talk to the bridesmaids, and we eat like anythings, and then we drive away to pass our honeymoon, and somehow I feel mein head much lighter than before. Marriage is good for man, it sober him, it bring him business, and it bring him children, and . . . I am happy mit my wife . . . The housemaid, oh yes, ach Got, I hear that some one take from the place to live mit him, and it is not a wonder, for she was so tall, so stout, have such black hair, and such great eyes, it was a pity that she spend her life answering the bell, and bringing up hot water in a jug.

LA CLEMENZA DE TITO

THE hotel paper had a somewhat misguiding “Comfort” as its telegraphic address. Upon the walls were reproductions of sporting prints by Leech, depicting scions of the British aristocracy taking their pleasures not so very sadly after all, and easily demonstrating their superiority to several smock-frocked rustics by galloping close past them, and shouting “Tally-ho,” holding their left ear between their thumb and finger to emphasize the note. Apollinaris and whisky splits, Fritz Rupprecht’s “Special,” with other advertisements of a like nature, filled up the blanks between the oleographs. _Iron and Commerce_, with the _Cook’s Excursionist and Engineering_, lay untouched upon the tables, serving to show that if some books be not real books at all, there are newspapers which are, as it were, but dummies, holding no police news, football specials, murders, assaults on women, divorce cases, and other items which the educated public naturally expects within their sheets. Slipshod and futile, but attentive German waiters, went about bringing hot whisky, whisky and soda, whisky and lemonade, and whisky neat to the belated customers. Upon the tables glasses had made great rings, commercial travellers had left their pigskin satchels in a heap, and, by the fire, a group of travellers sat silently drinking after the Scottish fashion, and spitting in the grate. Twelve o’clock, half-past twelve, then one by one they dropped away murmuring good-night, and setting down their glasses with an air of having worked manfully for a good night’s repose.

Still I sat on gazing into the fire, and almost unaware that on the other side sat a companion of my vigil, till at last he said, “Do you know Yambo, sir?” and to my vague assent rejoined, “Yambo on the Arabian coast, just opposite Hodeida, where vessels in the pilgrim trade discharge their ‘niggers.’ It’s the port for Mecca, that is, the ‘Sambaks’ used to put in there, but now we do the traffic right from Mogador.” I looked with interest at the man, liking his Demosthenic style of opening remarks. Tall and broad-shouldered, dressed in navy blue, boots like small packing-cases, and a green necktie in which was stuck a cairngorm pin; he wore a silver watch-chain with a small steering-wheel attached to it; not quite a sailor, yet a look of the sea about his clothes; he had a face open and innocent, yet wrinkled round the eyes like a young elephant, and struck me as being, perhaps not foolish, certainly not wise, but with a tinge of worldly wisdom gathered in seaport towns, at music-halls, and other places where those who go down to the sea in ships gain their experience of life. “Yambo,” I said; “I thought that Jeddah was the port the pilgrims landed at.” “Well, so it is,” he said, “but I was thinking about Yambo, been there a many times, used to run arms for the tribes to fight the Turks, when I was fourth engineer in the old _Pyramus_. Yes, yes, I’ve been at sea most all my life, though my old dad keeps a slap-up hotel at Weston-super-Mare. No need to go to sea, no, but you know some folks would go to hell for pleasure, and I suppose I’m one. Dad, you know—now were you ever at Weston-super-Mare?—is fond of literature, does a bit himself, Chambers you know; mostly upon the conchology and the fossils of the South Devon coast; awfully fond of it, and so am I, nothing I like better than, after getting out of the engine-room, to lie on deck and read one of Bulwer’s books or Dickens’s, both of them stunning. No, I never write myself. Can’t make out what set me thinking about Yambo. What! you won’t? Well, waiter, waiter, Garçong, as we used to say at Suez, another whisky, slippy, you know. I’ve always been a temperate man, but like a nightcap before turning in. Perim ain’t so far off from Yambo; ah yes, now I remember what it was I had to say. You know them Galla girls? prime, ain’t they? But Perim, I remember being Shanghaied there, nothing to do, a beastly hole; sand, beastly, gets in your socks, gets in your hair, makes you feel dirty, no matter how you wash. Well, you know, there were about two hundred of us there, some kind of Government work was going on, and I was left there out of my ship, kind of loaned off, you see, to help the Johnnies at the condensing works. I’ve been at Suez, Yambo as I told you, Rangoon, down at Talcahuano on the Chilean coast, wrecked in Smythe’s Channel, and been about a bit, but Perim fairly takes the cake, not even a sheet of blotting-paper between it and hell. As I was saying, then, we were cooped up, and not a woman in the place; even the Government saw it at last, thought maybe worse would happen if they did nothing, and sent and got six of them Galla girls. Leastwise, if they didn’t send for them, they let a Levantine, Mirandy was his name, introduce them on the strict Q.T. Well, you know, the thing was like this, sir—you know them Galla girls, black as a boot and skins always as cool as ice, even in a khamsin; some people says they are better than white girls; but not in mine; but anyhow they’ve got no ‘Bookay d’Afreek’ about them, it always turns me sick. As I was saying, I thought I’d have a ‘pasear’ one evening, so I lemonaded up to the ‘Mansion,’ and began talking to one of them girls, sort of to pass the time. Serpent upon the rocks, eh? well, that old Solomon knew something about girls. Now here comes in the curious thing, it always strikes me just as if I’d read it in a book; Dickens now or Thackeray could have ’andled it, Bulwer would ’ave made it a little loosious. Just as the gal was taking off her things—oh, no offence, captain, I’m telling you the thing just as it happened—I saw she had a crucifix a-hanging round her neck. Papist? Oh no, not much; father, he sat under Rev. Hiles Hitchens, light of the Congregationalists. No, no, nothing to do with Rome, never could bear the influence of the confessor in a family. A little free myself, especially below latitude forty, but at ’ome and in the family I like things ship-shape. Well, as I said, round her black neck she had a silver crucifix, contrast of colour made the thing stand out double the size. Ses I, ‘What’s that?’ and she says, ‘Klistian girl, Johnny, me Klistian all the same you.’ That was a stopper over all, and I just reached for my hat, says, ‘Klistian are yer,’ and I gave her two of them Spanish dollars and a kiss, and quit the place. What did she say? Why, nothing, looked at me and laughed, and says, ‘You Klistian, Johnny, plenty much damn fool.’ No, I don’t know what she meant, I done my duty, and that’s all I am concerned about.

“Another half, just a split whisky and Apollinaris. Well, if you won’t, good-night;” and the door slammed, leaving me gazing at the fast-blackening fire.

SOHAIL

SOHAIL is the Arabic name of the star Canopus, to which a curious belief belongs. It appears that in some fashion, known alone to Allah, the fate of the Arab race is bound up with the star. Where it sheds its light their empire flourishes, and there alone. Wherefore or why the thing is so, no true believer seems to know, but that it is so he is well aware, and that suffices him.

Questionings and doubts, changes of costume and religion, striving for ideals, improvements, telegraphs and telephones, are well enough for Christians, whose lives are passed in hurry and in hunting after gold. For those who have changed but little for the last two thousand years, in dress, in faith and customs, it is enough to know it is a talismanic star. Let star-gazers and those who deal in books, dub the star Alpha (or Beta) Argo, it is all one to Arabs. If you question knowledge, say the Easterns, it falls from its estate. If this is so the empiric method has much to answer for. Knowledge and virtue and a horse’s mouth should not pass through too many hands. Knowledge is absolute, and even argument but dulls it, and strips it of its authenticity, as the bloom of a ripe peach is lost, almost by looking on it.

Of one thing there can be no doubt. When in the Yemen, ages before the first historian penned the fable known as history, the Arabs, watching their flocks, observed Sohail, it seems to have struck them as a star differing from all the rest.

Al-Makkari writes of it on several occasions. The Dervish Abderahman Sufi of Rai, in his _Introduction to the Starry Heavens_, remarks that, at the feet of Sohail is seen, in the neighbourhood of Bagdad, a “curious white spot.” The “curious white spot” astronomers have thought to be the greater of the two Magellan clouds. Perhaps it is so, but I doubt if the Arabs, as a race, were concerned about the matter, so that they saw the star.

From wandering warring tribes Mohammed made a nation of them. Mohammed died and joined the wife in paradise, of whom he said, “By Allah, she shall sit at my right hand, because when all men laughed she clave to me.” Then came Othman, Ali, and the rest, and led them into other lands, to Irak, Damascus, El Hind, to Ifrikia, lastly to Spain, and still their empire waxed, even across the “black waters” of the seas, and still Sohail was there to shine upon them. In the great adventure, one of the few in which a people has engaged; when first Tarik landed his Berbers on the rock which bears his name; at the battle on the Guadalete where the king, Don Roderick, disappeared from the eyes of men, leaving his golden sandals by a stream; to Seville, Cordoba, and Murcia, the land of Teodmir ben Gobdos, to which the Arabs gave the name of Masr, right up to Zaragoza, Sohail accompanied the host. A curious host it must have been with Muza riding on a mule, and with but two-and-twenty camels to carry all its baggage. From Jativa to Huesca of the Bell, where King Ramiro, at the instigation of Abbot Frotardo (a learned man), cut off his nobles’ heads as they were poppies in a field, they followed it across the Pyrenees, halting at the spot where from his “Camp in Aquitaine” Muza dispatched a messenger to Rome to tell the Pope that he was coming to take him by the beard if he refused Islam. Then the wise men (who always march with armies), looking aloft at night, declared the star was lost. Although they smote the Christian dogs, taking their lands, their daughters, horses, and their gold, on several occasions as Allah willed it, yet victory was not so stable as in Spain. Perhaps beyond the mountains their spirits fell from lack of sun, or their horses sickened in the fat plains of France.

Then the conquering tide had spent itself and flowed back into Spain; at Zaragoza the first Moorish kingdom rose. Al-Makkari writes that at that time Sohail was visible in Upper Aragon, but low on the horizon. Again the Christians conquered, and the royal race of Aben Hud fled from the city. Ibn Jaldun relates that, shortly afterwards, Sohail became invisible from Aragon. The Cid, Rodrigo Diaz, he of Vivar (may God remember him), prevailed against Valencia, and from thence the star, indignant, took its departure. And so of Jativa, Beni Carlo, and Alpuixech.

Little by little Elche, with its palm-woods, and even Murcia bade it good-bye, as one by one, in the centuries of strife, the Christians in succession conquered each one of them. At last the belief gained ground that, only at one place in Spain, called from the circumstance Sohail, could the star be seen. At Fuengirola, between Malaga and Marbella, still stands the little town the Arabs called Sohail, lost amongst sand-hills, looking across at Africa, of which it seems to form a part; cactus and olive, cane-brake and date palms, its chiefest vegetation; in summer, hot as Bagdad, in winter, sheltered from the winds which come from Christendom by the Sierras of the Alpujarra and Segura. Surely there the star would stop, and let the Arab power flourish under its influence, and there for centuries it did stand stationary. The City of the Pomegranate was founded, the Alhambra, with its brilliant court, the Generalife; and poets, travellers, and men of science gathered at Granada, Cordoba, and at Isbilieh. Ab-Motacim, the poet king of Cordoba, planted the hills with almond trees, to give the effect of snow, which Romaiquia longed for. He wrote his _Kasidas_, and filled the courtyard full of spices and sugar for his queen to trample on, when she saw the women of the brick-makers kneading the clay with naked feet, and found her riches but a burden to her. Averroes and Avicenna, the doctors of medicine and of law, laid down their foolish rules of practice and of conduct, and all went well. Medina-el-Azahra, now a pile of stones where shepherds sleep or make believe to watch their sheep, where once the Caliph entertained the ambassador from Constantinople, showing him the golden basin full of quicksilver, “like a great ocean,” rose from the arid hills, and seemed eternal. Allah appeared to smile upon his people, and in proof of it let his star shine. Jehovah though was jealous. A jealous God, evolved by Jews and taken upon trust by Christians, could not endure the empire of Islam. Again town after town was conquered, Baeza, Loja, Antequera, Guadix and Velez-Malaga, even Alhama (Woe is me, Alhama), lastly Granada. Then came the kingdom of the Alpujarra, with the persecutions and the rebellions, Arabs and Christians fighting like wolves and torturing one another for the love of their respective Gods. Yet the star lingered on at Fuengirola, and whilst it still was seen hope was not lost. A century elapsed, and from Gibraltar—from the spot where first they landed—the last Moors embarked. In Spain, where once they ruled from Jaca to Tarifa, no Moor was left. Perhaps about the mountain villages of Ronda a few remained, but christianized by force, the sword and faggot ever the best spurs to the true faith. But they were not the folk to think of stars or legends, so that no one (of the true faith) could say whether Sohail still lingered over Spain.

Trains, telegraphs, and phonographs, elections and debates in parliament, with clothes unsuited to the people they deform, give a false air of Europe to the land. The palm-trees, cactus, canes, and olives, the tapia walls, the women’s walk and eyes, the horses’ paces, and the fatalistic air which hangs on everything, give them the lie direct. The empire of the Arabs, though departed, yet retains its hold. The hands that built the mosque at Cordoba, the Giralda, the Alhambra, and almost every parish church in Southern Spain, from ruined aqueduct and mosque, sign to the Christian half derisively. So all the land from the gaunt northern mountains to the hot swamps along the Guad-el-Kebir (stretching from Seville to San Lucar) is part of Africa. The reasons are set forth lengthily by the ethnographers, economists, and the grave foolish rout of those who write for people who know nothing, of what they do not understand themselves.

But the star’s lingering is the real cause, and whilst it lingers things can never really go on in Spain as they go on in England, where gloom obscures all stars. The Arabs, issuing from the desert like the khamsin, came, conquered, and possessed, their star shone on them, and its rays sank deep into the land. Their empire waned, and they, retreating, disappeared into the sands from whence they sprang. Spain knows them not, but yet their influence remains. Only at Cadiz can the talisman be seen, shining low down on the horizon, and still waiting till the precession of the equinoxes takes it across the Straits. Let it recross, and shine upon the old wild life of the vast plains, upon the horsemen flying on the sands, whirling and circling like gulls, whilst the veiled women raise the joyous cry which pierces ears and soul; upon the solemn stately men who sit and look at nothing all a summer’s day, and above all upon the waveless inland sea men call the Sahara.

There may it shine for ever on the life unchanged since the Moalakat, when first the rude astronomers observed the talisman and framed the legend on some starry night, all seated on the ground.

* * * * *

THE END

* * * * *

RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON & BUNGAY.

* * * * *

NOTES.

{20} A redomon is a half-tamed horse.

{26} Hydrochoerus capybara.

{32} The Gauchos often lay a deer-skin on their saddles, and wear boots made of deer-skin, alleging that serpents are afraid to touch them.

{46} Accustomed pasture.

{51} The Brazilians call the tapir “O gran besta.” The Guarani word is Mborebi.

{52} Potrero is a fenced pasture, from “potro,” a colt.

{54a} “Matto” is a wood in Portuguese, and at these two Mattos, tradition says, the rival armies had encamped.

{54b} Except for the Gaelic “larach,” I know no word in any language which exactly corresponds to “tapera,” as indicating the foundations of a house grassed over.

{56a} Called _Superior de las misiones_.

{56b} Feliz de Azara, _Description y Historia del Paraguay_.

{56c} Es menester convenir, en que aunque los padres manda ban alli en todo, usaron de su autoridad con una suavidad y moderacion que no puede menos de admirarse.—Azara, _Historia del Paraguay_, Tom. 1, p. 282: Madrid 1847.

{60a} Piptadenia communis.

{60b} Acacia maleolens.

{60c} Vitex Taruma.

{60d} Genipa Americana.

{62} “Estero” is the word used in Paraguay for a marsh. These marshes are generally hard at the bottom, so that you splash through them for leagues without danger, though the water is often up to the horse’s girths.

{63a} Alazan tostado antes muerto que cansado. The Arabs think highly of the dark chestnut. See the Emir Abdul Kader on Horsemanship.

{63b} The Yatai is a dwarf palm. It is the Cocos Yatais of botanists.

{63c} Cattle-farm.

{69} Cocos Australis.

{78} Guazu is big, in Guarani.

{131} It had a chorus reflecting upon convent discipline:

“For though the convent rule was strict and tight,
She had her exits and her entrances by night.”

{170a} “Medias hasta la berija Con cada ojo como un charco, Y cada ceja era un arco Para correr la sortija.”

{170b} “En un overo rosao, fletel lindo y parejito, Cayo al bajo al trotecito, y lindamente sentao. Un paisano del Bragao, de apelativo Laguna, Mozo ginetazo ahijuna, como creo que no hay otro Capaz a llevar un potro a sofrenarlo en la luna.”