MADAME’S BOUDOIR.
MADAME’S BOUDOIR.
Remembering this, I asked Madame Patti if she had taken extraordinary care of her voice. “I have never tired it,” said she; “I never sing when I am tired, and that means that I am never tired when I sing. And I have never strained for high notes. I have heard that the first question asked of new vocalists nowadays is ‘How high can you sing?’ But I have always thoughtthatthe least important matter in singing. One should sing only what one can sing with perfect ease.”
“But in eating and drinking? According to all accounts you are most abstemious in these things.”
“No, indeed. I avoid very hot and very cold dishes, otherwise I eat and drink whatever I like. My care is chiefly to avoid taking cold, and to avoid indigestion. But these are the ordinary precautions of one who knows that health is the key to happiness.”
THE SITTING-ROOM.
THE SITTING-ROOM.
“And in practising? Have you rigid rules for that? One hears of astounding exercise and self-denial.”
“Brilliant achievements in fiction. For practising I run a few scales twenty minutes a day. After a long professional tour I let my voice rest for a month and do not practise at all during that time.”
During my visit to Craig-y-Nos we usually spent our evenings in the billiard-rooms. There are two at the castle, an English room and a French one. In the French room there is the great orchestrion which Madame Patti had built in Geneva at a cost of twenty thousand dollars. It is operated by electricity, and is said to be the finest instrument of the kind in the world. Monsieur Nicolini would start it of an evening, and the wonderful contrivance would “discourse most eloquent music” from a repertoire of one hundred and sixteen pieces, including arias from grand operas, military marches, and simple ballads. Music is the one charm that Madame Patti cannot resist. The simplest melody stirs her to song. In the far corner from the orchestrion she will sit, in an enticing easy-chair, and hum the air that is rolling from the organ-pipes, keeping time with her dainty feet, or moving her head as the air grows livelier. Now and again she sends forth some lark-like troll, and then she will urge the young people to a dance, or a chorus, and when every one is tuned to the full pitch of melody and merriment she will join in the fun as heartily as the rest. I used to sit and watch her play the castanets, or hear her snatch an air or two from “Martha,” “Lucia,” or “Traviata.”
One night the younger fry of us were chanting negro melodies, and Patti came into the room, warbling as if possessed by an ecstasy. “I love those darky songs,” said she, and straightway she sang to us, with that inimitable purity and tenderness which are hers alone, “Way Down Upon the Swanee River,” and “Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground,” and after that “Home, Sweet Home,” while all of us listeners felt the tears rising, or the lumps swelling in our throats.
THE FRENCH BILLIARD-ROOM.
THE FRENCH BILLIARD-ROOM.
Guests at Craig-y-Nos are the mostfortunate of mortals. If the guest be a gentleman, a valet is told off to attend upon him; if the guest be a lady, a handmaid is placed at her service. Breakfast is served in one’s room at any hour one may choose. Patti never comes down before high noon. She rises at half-past eight, but remains until twelve in her apartments, going through her correspondence with her secretary, and practising a little music. At half-past twelve an elaboratedéjeuneris served in the glass pavilion. Until that hour a guest is free to follow his own devices. He may go shooting, fishing, riding, walking, or he may stroll about the lovely demesne, and see what manner of heavenly nook nature and Patti have made for themselves among the hills of Wales. Patti’s castle is in every sense a palatial dwelling. She saw it fifteen years ago, fell in love with it, purchased it, and has subsequently expended at least half a million dollars in enlarging and equipping it. The castellated mansion, with the theatre at one end and the pavilion and winter garden at the other, shows a frontage of fully a thousand feet along the terraced banks of the Tawe. But the place has been so often described that it is unnecessary for me to repeat the oft-told story, or to give details of the gasworks, the electric-lighting station, the ice-plant and cold-storage rooms, the steam-laundry, the French and English kitchens, the stables, the carriage-houses, the fifty servants, the watchfulness of Caroline Baumeister, the superintending zeal of William Heck. These matters are a part of the folk-lore of England and America. But I would like to say something of Patti’s little theatre. It is her special and particular delight. She gets more pleasure from it than from any other of the many possessions of Craig-y-Nos. It is a gem of a place, well-proportioned and exquisitely decorated. Not only can the sloping floor be quickly raised, so that the auditorium may be transformed into a ballroom, but the appurtenances of the stage are the most elaborate and perfect extant. For this statement I have the authority ofan assistant stage-manager of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. This expert was supervising some alterations at the Patti theatre while I was at Craig-y-Nos, and he told me that the pretty house contained every accessory for the production of forty operas.
Occasionally Patti sings at concerts in her theatre. All her life she has treasured her voice for the public; she has never exhausted it by devising an excess of entertainment for her personal friends. So most of the performances in the little theatre are pantomimic. Although Patti seemed to me always to be humming and singing while I was at the castle, yet there was nothing of the “performing” order in what she did. She merely went singing softly about the house, or joining in our choruses, like a happy girl.
I remember that one morning, while a dozen of us were sitting in the shade of the terrace, the ladies with their fancy work, the gentlemen with their books and cigars, we heard from the open windows above us a burst of song, full-throated like a bird’s. It was for all the world like the notes of an English lark, which always sings in a kind of glorious ecstasy, as it mounts and mounts in the air, the merrier as it climbs the higher, until it pours from its invisible height a shower of joyous song. No one among us stirred. La Diva thought us far away up the valley, where we had planned an excursion, but we had postponed the project to a cooler day. We were afraid of disturbing Madame, so we kept silent and listened. Our unseen entertainer seemed to be bustling about her boudoir, singing as she flitted, snatching a bar or two from this opera and that, revelling in the fragment of a ballad, and trilling a few scales like my friend the lark. Presently she ceased, and we were about to stir, when she began to sing “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye.” She was alone in her room, but she was singing as gloriously as if to an audience of ten thousand persons in the Albert Hall. The unsuspected group of listeners on the terrace slipped from their own control and took to vigorous hand-smiting and cries of delight.
THE ENGLISH BILLIARD-ROOM.
THE ENGLISH BILLIARD-ROOM.
“Oh, oh, oh!” said the bird-like voice above.
We looked up, and saw Patti leaning out at the casement.
“Oh,” said she, “I couldn’t help it, really I could not. I am so happy!”
At luncheon Madame proposed an entertainment in the theatre for the evening. We were to have “Camille” in pantomime.
She persuaded Monsieur Nicolini to be the Armand Duval. Nicolini had never cared to act in the little theatre, but now he consented to make his début as a pantomimist, and he proved to be a master of the art. He had learned it, in fact, at the Conservatoire, when, as a young man, he had studied for the stage. “In those days,” says he, “the study of pantomime was part of an actor’s training. Pity it is not so now.”
The preparations for the pantomime went on apace. Among the guests were several capable amateurs. The performance began a little after ten on the evening of the following day. Some musicians were brought from Swansea. A dozen gentlefolk hastilysummoned from the valley, those of us among the guests who were not enrolled for the pantomime, and a gallery full of peasantry and servants, made up the audience. We had “Camille” in five acts of pantomime, and altogether it was a capital performance, and a memorable one. Of course, Madame Patti and her husband carried off the honors. There was a supper after the play, and the sunlight crept into the Swansea Valley within two hours after we had retired.
SIGNOR NICOLINI.
SIGNOR NICOLINI.
I said to Patti after the pantomime, “You do not seem to believe that change of occupation is the best possible rest. You appear to me to work as hard at rehearsing and acting in your little theatre as if you were ‘on tour.’”
“Not quite. Besides, it isn’t work, it is play,” replied the miraculous little woman. “I love the theatre. And, then, there is always something to learn about acting. I find these pantomime performances very useful as well as very pleasant.”
Every afternoon about three o’clock Patti and her guests go for a drive, a small procession of landaus and brakes rattling along the smooth country roads. You can see at once that this is Patti-land. The cottagers come to their doors and salute her Melodious Majesty, and all the children of the country-side run out and throw kisses. “Oh! the dears,” exclaimed the kind-hearted cantatrice as we were driving toward the village of Ystradgynlais (they call it “Ist-rag-dun-las”), one afternoon,“I should like to build another castle and put all those mites into it, and let them live there amid music and flowers!” And I believe that she would have given orders for such a castle straightway, had there been a builder within sight.
A BIT IN THE PARK. THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE.
A BIT IN THE PARK. THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE.
On the way home Patti promised me “a surprise” for the evening. I wondered what it might be, and when the non-appearance of the ladies kept the gentlemen waiting in the drawing-room at dinner-time I was the more puzzled. Nicolini, to pass the time, showed us some of Madame’s trophies. It would be impossible to enumerate them, because Craig-y-Nos Castle is like another South Kensington Museum in the treasures it holds. Every shelf, table, and cabinet is packed with gifts which Madame Patti has received from all parts of the earth, from monarchs and millionaires, princes and peasants, old friends and strangers. There is Marie Antoinette’s watch, to begin with, and there are the new portraits of the Prince and Princess of Wales, to end with. There is a remarkable collection of portraits of royal personages, presented to Madame Patti by the distinguished originals on the occasion of her marriage to M. Nicolini. Photographs of the Grand Old Man of Politics and the Grand Old Man of Music rest side by side, on a little table presented by some potentate. Gladstone’s likeness bears his autograph, and the inscription: “Con tanti e tanti complimenti;” Verdi’s, his autograph, and a fervid tribute written in Milan a year ago. There are crowns and wreaths and rare china; there are paintings and plate and I know not what, wherever one looks. If one were to make Patti a gift, and he had a king’s ransom to purchase it withal, he would find it difficult to give her anything that would be a novelty, or that would be unique, in her eyes. She has everything now. For my part, I would pluck a rose from her garden, or gather a nosegay from a hedgerow, and it would please her as truly as if it were a priceless diadem. She values the thought that prompts the giving, rather than the gift itself. She never forgets even the smallest act of kindness that is done for her sake. And she is always doing kindnesses for others. I have heard from the Welsh folk many tales of her generous charities. And to her friends she is the most open-handed of women. There was one dank, drizzly day while I was at Craig-y-Nos. To the men this did not matter. The wet did not interfere with their projected amusements. But every lady wore some precious jewel which Patti had given her that morning—a ring, a brooch, a bracelet, as the case might be. For the generous creature thought her fair friends would be disappointed because they could not get out of doors that day. How could she know that every one in the castle welcomed the rain becauseit meant a few hours more with Patti?
The “surprise” she had spoken of was soon apparent. The ladies came trooping into the drawing-room attired in the gowns and jewels of Patti’s operatic rôles. Patti herself came last, in “Leonora’s” white and jewels. What a dinner party we had that night—we men, in the prim black and white of “evening dress,” sitting there with “Leonora,” and “Desdemona,” and “Marguerite,” and “Rachel,” and “Lucia,” and “Carmen,” and “Dinorah,” and I know not how many more! Nobody but Patti would have thought of such merry masquerading, or, having thought of it, would have gone to the trouble of providing it.
Of course, we talked of her favorite characters in opera, and then of singers she has known. She said it would give her real pleasure to hear Mario and Grisi again, or, coming to later days, Scalchi and Annie Louise Cary. The latter being an American and a friend, I was glad to hear this appreciation of her from the Queen of Song. “Cary and Scalchi were the two greatest contraltos I have ever known; and I have sung with both of them. I remember Annie Louise Cary as a superb artist, and a sweet and noble woman.” I said “Hear, hear,” in the parliamentary manner, and then Patti added: “Now we will go into the theatre again. There is to be another entertainment.” It was, of all unexpected things, a magic-lantern show. Patti’s magic-lantern is like everything else at Craig-y-Nos, from her piano to her pet parrot, the only one of its kind. It is capable of giving, with all sorts of “mechanical effects,” a two-hours’ entertainment every night for two months without repeating a scene. Patti invited me to sit beside her and watch the dissolving views. It seemed to me that it would be like this to sit by the queen during a “state performance” at Windsor. Here was Patti Imperatrice, dressed like a queen, wearing a crown of diamonds, and attended by her retinue of brilliantly attired women and attentive gentlemen of the court. And it was so like her to cause the entertainment to begin with a series of American views, and to hum softly a verse of “Home, Sweet Home,” as we looked out upon New York harbor from an imaginary steamship inward bound.
THE PROSCENIUM OF CRAIG-Y-NOS THEATER.
THE PROSCENIUM OF CRAIG-Y-NOS THEATER.
The next morning I started from Craig-y-Nos for America. As the dog-cart was tugged slowly up the mountain-side the Stars and Stripes saluted me from the castle tower, waving farewell as I withdrew from my peep at paradise.
By“Q.”
Early last fall there died in Troy an old man and his wife. The woman went first, and the husband took a chill at her grave’s edge, when he stood bareheaded in a lashing shower. The loose earth crumbled under his feet, trickling over, and dropped on her coffin-lid. Through two long nights he lay on his bed without sleeping, and listened to this sound. At first it ran in his ears perpetually, but afterwards he heard it at intervals only, in the pauses of acute suffering. On the seventh day he died, of pleuro-pneumonia; and on the tenth (a Sunday) they buried him. For just fifty years the dead man had been minister of the Independent chapel on the hill, and had laid down his pastorate two years before, on his golden wedding day. Consequently there was a funeral sermon, and the young man, his successor, chose II. Samuel, i. 23, for his text: “Lovely and pleasant in their lives, and in their death they were not divided.” Himself a newly married man, he waxed dithyrambic on the sustained affection and accord of the departed couple. “Truly,” he wound up, “such marriages as theirs were made in heaven.” And could they have heard, the two bodies in the cemetery had not denied it; but the woman, after the fashion of women, would have qualified the young minister’s assertion in her secret heart.
When, at the close of the year 1839, Reverend Samuel Bax visited Troy for the first time, to preach his trial sermon at Salem chapel, he arrived by Bontigo’s van, late on a Saturday night, and departed again for Plymouth at seven o’clock on Monday morning. He had just turned twenty-one, and looked younger, and the zeal of his calling was strong upon him. Moreover, he was shaken with nervous anxiety for the success of his sermon; so that it is no marvel if he carried away but blurred and misty impressions of the little port, and the congregation that sat beneath him that morning, ostensibly reverent, but actually on the lookout for heresy or any sign of weakness. Their impressions, at any rate, were sharp enough. They counted his thumps upon the desk, noted his one reference to “the original Greek,” saw and remembered the flush of his young face and the glow in his eye as he hammered the doctrine of the redemption out of original sin. The deacons fixed the subject of these trial sermons, and had chosen original sin, on the ground that a good beginning was half the battle. The maids in the congregation knew beforehand that he was unmarried, and came out of the chapel knowing also that his eyes were brown, that his hair had a reddish tinge in certain lights, that one of his cuffs was frayed slightly, but his black coat hadscarcely been worn a dozen times, with other trifles. They loitered by the chapel door until he came out, in company with Deacon Snowden, who was conveying him off to dinner. The deacon, on week days, was harbor-master of the port, and on Sundays afforded himself roasted duck for dinner. Lizzie Snowden walked at her father’s right hand. She was a slightly bloodless blonde, tall, with a pretty complexion, and hair upon which it was rumored she could sit if she were so minded. The girls watched the young preacher and his entertainers as they moved down the hill, the deacon talking, and his daughter turning her head aside as if it were merely in the section of the world situated on her right hand that she took the least interest.
“That’s to show ’en the big plait,” commented one of the group behind. “He can’t turn his head hes way, but it stares ’en in the face.”
“An’ her features look best from the left side, as everybody knows.”
“I reckon, if he’s chosen minister, that Lizzie’ll have ’en,” said a tall, lanky girl. She was apprenticed to a dressmaker and engaged to a young tinsmith. Having laid aside ambition on her own account, she flung in this remark as an apple of discord.
“Tenifer Hosken has a chance. He’s fair-skinned hissel’, and Lizzie’s too near his own color. Black’s mate is white, as they say.”
“There’s Sue Tregraine. She’ll have more money than either, when her father dies.”
“What, marry one o’ Ruan!” the speaker tittered, despitefully.
“Why not?”
The only answer was a shrug. Ruan is a small town that faces Troy across the diminutive harbor, or, perhaps, I should say that Troy looks down upon it at this slight distance. When a Trojan speaks of it he says, “Across the water,” with as much implied contempt as though he meant Botany Bay. There is no cogent reason for this, except that the poorer class at Ruan earns its livelihood by fishing. In the eyes of its neighbors the shadow of this lonely calling is cast upwards upon its wealthier inhabitants. Troy depends on commerce, and employs these wealthier men of Ruan to build ships for it. Further it will hardly condescend. In the days of which I write intermarriage between the towns was almost unheard-of, and even now it is rare. Yet they are connected by a penny ferry.
“Her father’s a shipbuilder,” urged Sue Tregraine’s supporter.
“He might so well keep crab-pots, for all the chance she’ll have.”
Now there was a Ruan girl standing just outside this group, and she heard what was said. Her name was Nance Trewartha, and her father was a fisherman, who did, in fact, keep crab-pots. Moreover, she was his only child, and helped him at his trade. She could handle a boat as well as a man, she knew every sea-mark up and down the coast for forty miles, she could cut up bait, and her hands were horny with handling ropes from her childhood. But on Sundays she wore gloves, and came across the ferry to chapel, and was as wise as any of her sex. She had known before coming out of her pew that the young minister had a well-shaped backto his head, and a gold ring on his little finger with somebody’s hair in the collet, under a crystal. She was dark, straight, and lissome of figure, with ripe lips and eyes as black as sloes, and she hoped that the hair in the minister’s ring was his mother’s. She was well aware of her social inferiority; but—the truth may be told—she chose to forget it that morning, and to wonder what this young man would be like as a husband. She had looked up into his face during sermon time, devouring his boyish features, noticing his refined accent, marking every gesture. Certainly, he was comely and desirable. As he walked down the hill by Deacon Snowden’s side, she was perfectly conscious of the longing in her heart, but prepared to put a stop to it, and go home to dinner as soon as he had turned the corner and passed out of sight. Then came that unhappy remark about the crab-pots. She bit her lip for a moment, turned, and walked slowly off towards the ferry, full of thought.
Three weeks later Reverend Samuel Bax received his call.
He arrived, to assume his duties, in the waning light of a soft January day. Bontigo’s van set him down, with a carpet-bag, bandbox, and chest of books, at the door of the lodgings which Deacon Snowden had taken for him. The house stood in the North Street, as it is called. It was a small, yellow-washed building, containing just half a dozen rooms, and of these the two set apart for the minister looked straight upon the harbor. Under his sitting-room window was a little garden, and at the end of the garden a low wall, with a stretch of water beyond it and a bark that lay at anchor but a stone’s throw away, as it seemed, its masts overtopping the misty hillside that closed the view. A green painted door was let into the garden wall—a door with two flaps, the upper of which stood open; and through this opening he caught another glimpse of gray water.
The landlady, who showed him into this room and at once began to explain that the furniture was better than it looked, was hardly prepared for the rapture with which he stared out of the window. His boyhood had been spent in a sooty Lancashire town, and to him the green garden, the quay door, the bark, and the stilly water seemed to fall little short of Paradise.
“I reckoned you’d like it,” she said. “An’, to be sure, ’tis a blessing you do.”
He turned his stare upon her for a moment. She was a benign-looking woman of about fifty, in a short-skirted gray gown and widow’s cap.
“Why do you say that?”
“Because, leavin’ out the kitchen, there’s but four rooms, two for you an’ two for me; two facin’ the harbor, an’two facin’ the street. Now, if you’d took a dislike to this look-out I must ha’ put you over the street an’ moved in here mysel’. I do like the street, too, there’s so much more doin’.”
“I think this arrangement will be better in every way,” said the young minister.
“I’m main glad. Iss, there’s no denyin’ that I’m main glad. From upstairs you can see right down the harbor, which is prettier again. Would’ee like to see it now? O’ course you would—an’ it’ll be so much handier for answerin’ the door, too. There’s a back door at the end o’ the passage. You’ve only to slip a bolt an’ you’m out in the garden—out to your boat, if you choose to keep one. But the garden’s a tidy little spot to walk up an’ down in an’ make up your sermons, wi’ nobody to overlook you but the folk next door, an’ they’m churchgoers.”
After supper that evening the young minister unpacked his books and was about to arrange them, but drifted to the window instead. He paused for a minute or two, with his face close to the pane, and then flung up the sash. A faint north wind breathed down the harbor, scarcely ruffling the water. Around and above him the frosty sky flashed with innumerable stars, and behind the bark’s masts, behind the long chine of the eastern hill, a soft radiance heralded the rising moon. It was the new moon, and while he waited, her thin horn pushed up, as it were, through the furze brake on the hill’s summit, and she mounted into the free heaven. With upturned eyes the young minister followed her course for twenty minutes, not consciously observant, for he was thinking over his ambitions, and at his time of life these are apt to soar with the moon.Though possessed with zeal for good work in this small seaside town, he intended that Troy should be but a stepping-stone in his journey. He meant to go far. And while he meditated his future, forgetting the chill in the night air, it was being decided for him by a stronger will than his own. More than this, that will had already passed into action. His destiny was actually launched on the full spring tide that sucked the crevices of the gray wall at the garden’s end.
A slight sound drew the minister’s gaze down from the moon to the quay-door. Its upper flap still stood open, allowing a square of moonlight to pierce the straight black shadow of the garden wall.
In this square of moonlight were now framed the head and shoulders of a human being.
The young man felt a slight chill run down his spine. He leaned forward out of the window and challenged the apparition, bating his tone, as all people bate it at that hour.
“Who are you?” he demanded, “and what is your business here?”
There was no reply for a moment, though he felt sure his voice must have carried to the quay-door. The figure paused for a second or two, then unbarred the lower flap of the door and advanced across the wall’s shadow to the centre of the bright grassplot under the window. It was the figure of a young woman. Her head was bare and her sleeves turned up to the elbows. She wore no cloak or wrap, to cover her from the night air, and her short-skirted, coarse frock was open at the neck. As she turned up her face to the window, the minister could see by the moon’s rays that it was well-favored.
“Be you the new preacher?” she asked, resting a hand on her hip and speaking softly up to him.
“I am the new Independent minister.”
“Then I’ve come for you.”
“Come for me?”
“Iss; my name’s Nance Trewartha, an’ you ’en wanted across the water, quick as possible. Old Mrs. Slade’s a-dyin’ to-night, over yonder.”
“She wants me?”
“She’s one o’ your congregation, an’ can’t die easy till you’ve seen her. I reckon she’s got something ’pon her mind; an’ I was to fetch you over, quick as I could.”
As she spoke the church clock down in the town chimed out the hour, and immediately after, ten strokes sounded on the clear air.
The minister consulted his own watch, and seemed to be considering.
“Very well,” said he, after a pause. “I’ll come. I suppose I must cross by the ferry.”
“Ferry’s closed this two hours, an’ you needn’t wake up any in the house. I’ve brought father’s boat to the ladder below, an’ I’ll bring you back again. You’ve only to step out here by the back door. An’ wrap yourself up, for ’tis a brave distance.”
“Very well. I suppose it’s really serious.”
“Mortal. I’m glad you’ll come,” she added, simply.
The young man nodded down in a friendly manner, and going back into the room, slipped on his overcoat, picked up his hat, and turned the lamp down carefully. Then he struck a match, found his way to the back door, and unbarred it. The girl was waiting for him, still in the centre of the grassplot.
“I’m glad you’ve come,” she repeated, but this time there was something like constraint in her voice. As he pulled to the door softly, she moved and led the way down to the water side.
From the quay-door a long ladder ran down to the water. At low water one had to descend twenty feet and more; but now the high tide left but three of its rungs uncovered. At the young minister’s feet a small fishing-boat lay ready, moored by a short painter to the ladder. The girl stepped lightly down and held up her hand.
“Thank you,” said the young man, with dignity, “but I do not want help.”
She made no answer to this; but, as he stepped down, went forward and unmoored the painter. Then she pushed gently away from the ladder, hoisted the small foresail, and, returning toher companion, stood beside him for a moment with her hand on the tiller.
“Better make fast the foresheet,” she said, suddenly.
The young man looked helplessly at her. He had not the slightest idea of her meaning, did not, in fact, know the difference between a foresheet and a mainsail. And it was just to find out the depth of his ignorance that she had spoken.
“Never mind,” she said, “I’ll do it myself.”
She made the rope fast and took hold of the tiller again. The sails shook, and filled softly as they glided out from under the wall. The soft breeze blew straight behind them, the tide was just beginning to ebb. She slackened the mainsheet a little, and the water hissed as they spun down under the gray town towards the harbor’s mouth.
A dozen vessels lay at anchor below the town quay, their lamps showing a strange orange-yellow in the moonlight; between them the minister saw the cottages of Ruan glimmering on the eastern shore, and above them the coastguard station, with its flagstaff, a clear white upon the black hillside. It seemed to him that they were not shaping their course for the little town.
“I thought you told me,” he said at length, “that Mrs.—the dying woman—lived across there.”
The girl shook her head. “Not in Ruan itsel’—Ruan parish. We’ll have to go round the point.”
She was leaning back and gazing straight before her, towards the harbor’s mouth. The boat was one of the class that serves along that coast for hook and line as well as drift-net fishing, clinker built, about twenty-seven feet in the keel and nine in the beam. It had no deck beyond a small cuddy forward, on top of which a light hoarfrost was gathering as they moved. The minister stood beside the girl, and withdrew his eyes from this cuddy roof to contemplate her.
“Do you mean to say,” he asked, “that you don’t take cold wearing no wrap or bonnet on frosty nights like this?”
She let the tiller go for a moment, took his hand by the wrist and laid it on her own bare arm. He felt the flesh, but it was firm and warm. Then he withdrew his hand hastily, without finding anything to say. His eyes avoided hers. When, after half a minute, he looked at her again, her gaze was fixed straight ahead upon the misty stretch of sea beyond the harbor’s mouth.
In a minute or two they were sweeping between the tall cliff and the reef of rocks that guard this entrance on either side. On the reef stood a wooden cross, painted white, warning vessels to give it a wide berth; on the cliff a gray castle, with a battery before it, under the guns of which they spun seaward, still with the wind astern.
Outside the sea lay as smooth as within the harbor. The wind blew steadily off the shore, so that, close-hauled, one might fetch up or down channel with equal ease. The girl began to flatten the sails, and asked her companion to bear a hand. Their hands met over a rope, and the man noted with surprise that the girl’s was feverishly hot. Then she brought the boat’s nose round to the eastward, and, heeling gently over the dark water,they began to skirt the misty coast, with the breeze on their left cheeks.
“How much farther?” asked the minister.
She nodded towards the first point in the direction of Plymouth. He turned his coat-collar up about his ears, and wondered if his duty would often take him on such journeys as this. Also he felt thankful that the sea was smooth. He might, or might not, be given to seasickness; but somehow he was sincerely glad that he had not to be put to the test for the first time in this girl’s presence.
They passed the small headland, and still the boat held on its way.
“I had no idea you were going to take me this distance. Didn’t you tell me the house lay beyond the point we’ve just passed?”
To his amazement the girl drew herself up, looked him straight in the face, and said:
“There’s no such place.”
“What?”
“There’s no such place. There’s nobody ill at all. I told you a lie.”
“You told me a lie—then why in the name of common sense am I here?”
“Because, young minister—because, sir, I’m sick o’ love for you, an’ I want ’ee to marry me.”
“Great heaven!” the young minister muttered, recoiling, “is the girl mad?”
“Ah, but look at me, sir.” She seemed to grow still taller as she stood there, resting one hand on the tiller and looking at him with perfectly serious eyes. “Look at me well before your fancy lights ’pon some other o’ the girls. To-morrow they’ll be all after ’ee, an’ this’ll be my only chance; for my father’s no better’n a plain fisherman, an’ they’re all above me in money an’ rank. I be but a common Ruan girl, an’ my family is counted for naught. But look at me well; there’s none stronger nor comelier, nor that’ll love thee so dear!”
The young man positively gasped. “Set me ashore at once!” he commanded, stamping his foot.
“Nay, that I will not till thou promise, an’ that’s flat. Dear lad, listen—an’ consent, consent—an’ I swear to thee thou’ll never be sorry for’t.”
“I never heard such awful impropriety in my life. Turn back; I order you to steer back to the harbor at once!”
She shook her head. “No, lad, I won’t. An’ what’s more, you don’t know how to handle a boat, an’ couldn’t get back by yoursel’, not in a month.”
“This is stark madness. You—you abandoned woman, how long do you mean to keep me here?”
“Till thou give in to me. We’m goin’ straight t’wards Plymouth now, an’ if th’ wind holds—as ’twill—we’ll be off the Rame in two hours. If you haven’t said me yes by that, maybe we’ll go on; or perhaps we’ll run across to the coast o’ France——”
“Girl, do you know that if I’m not back by daybreak I’m ruined?”
“And oh, man, man! can’t ’ee see that I’m ruined, too, if I turn back without your word? How shall I show my face in Troy streets again, tell me?”
At this sudden transference of responsibility the minister staggered.
“You should have thought of that before,” he said, employing the one obvious answer.
“O’ course I thought of it. But for love o’ you I made up my mind to risk it. An’ now there’s no goin’ back.” She paused a moment and then added, as a thought struck her, “Why, lad, doesn’t that prove I love ’ee uncommon?”
“I prefer not to consider the question. Once more—will you go back?”
“I can’t.”
He bit his lips and moved forward to the cuddy, on the roof of which he seated himself sulkily. The girl tossed him an end of rope.
“Dear, better coil that up an’ sit upon it. The frost’ll strike a chill into thee.”
With this she resumed her old attitude by the tiller. Her eyes were fixed ahead, her gaze passing just over the minister’s hat. When he glanced up he saw the rime twinkling on her shoulders and the starshine in her dark eyes. Around them the firmament blazed with constellations, up to its coping. Never had the minister seen them so multitudinous or so resplendent. Never before had heaven seemed so alive to him. He could almost hear it breathe. And beneath it the little boat raced eastward, with the reef-points pattering on its tan sails.
Neither spoke. For the most part the minister avoided the girl’s eyes, and sat nursing his wrath. The whole affair was ludicrous; but it meant the sudden ruin of his good name, at the very start of his career. This was the word he kept grinding between his teeth: “ruin,” “ruin.” Whenever it pleased this madwoman to set him ashore he must write to Deacon Snowden for his boxes and resign all connection with Troy. But would he ever get rid of the scandal? Could he ever be sure that, to whatever distance he might flee, it would not follow him? Had he not better abandon his calling once and for all? It was hard!
A star shot down from the Milky Way and disappeared in darkness behind the girl’s shoulder. His eyes, following it, encountered hers. She left the tiller and came slowly forward.
“In three minutes we’ll open Plymouth Sound,” she said, quietly; and then, with a sharp gesture, flung both arms out towards him. “Oh, lad, think better o’t, an’ turn back wi’ me. Say you’ll marry me, for I’m perishin’ o’ love.”
The moonshine fell on her throat and extended arms. Her lips were parted, her head was thrown back a little, and for the first time the young minister saw that she was a beautiful woman.
“Ay, look, look at me,” she pleaded. “That’s what I’ve wanted ’ee to do all along. Take my hands; they’m shapely to look at and strong to work for ’ee.”
Hardly knowing what he did, the young man took them; then in a moment he let them go—but too late; they were about his neck.
With that he sealed his fate for good or ill. He bent forward a little, and their lips met.
So steady was the wind that the boat still held on her course; but no sooner had the girl received the kiss that she knew to be a binding promise than she dropped her arms, walked off, and shifted the helm.
“Unfasten the sheet here,” she commanded, “and duck your head clear o’ the boom.”
As soon as their faces were set for home, the minister walked back to the cuddy roof and sat down to reflect. Not a word was spoken till they reached the harbor’s mouth again, and then he pulled out his watch. It was half-past four in the morning.
Outside the battery point the girl hauled down the sails and got out the sweeps; and together they pulled up under the still sleeping town to the minister’s quay-door. He was clumsy at this work, but she instructed him in whispers, and they managed to reach the ladder as the clocks were strikingfive. The tide was far down by this time, and she held the boat close to the ladder while he prepared to climb. With his foot on the first round he turned. She was white as a ghost, and trembling from top to toe.
“Nance—did you say your name was Nance?”
She nodded.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ll—I’ll let you off if you want to be let off.”
“I’m not sure that I do,” he said, and stealing softly up the ladder stood at the top and watched her boat as she steered it back to Ruan.
Three months after they were married, to the indignant amazement of the minister’s congregation. It almost cost him his pulpit, but he held on and triumphed. There is no reason to believe that he ever repented of his choice, or, rather, of Nance’s. To be sure, she had kidnapped him by a lie; but perhaps she had wiped it out by fifty years of honest affection. On that point, however, I, who tell the tale, will not dogmatize.
By Thomas Lovell Beddoes.
From “Torrismond,” Sc. iii.How many times do I love thee, dear?Tell me how many thoughts there beIn the atmosphereOf a new fall’n year,Whose white and sable hours appearThe latest flake of eternity—So many times do I love thee, dear.How many times do I love, again?Tell me how many beads there areIn a silver chainOf evening rainUnravelled from the tumbling mainAnd threading the eye of a yellow star—So many times do I love again.
From “Torrismond,” Sc. iii.How many times do I love thee, dear?Tell me how many thoughts there beIn the atmosphereOf a new fall’n year,Whose white and sable hours appearThe latest flake of eternity—So many times do I love thee, dear.How many times do I love, again?Tell me how many beads there areIn a silver chainOf evening rainUnravelled from the tumbling mainAnd threading the eye of a yellow star—So many times do I love again.
From “Torrismond,” Sc. iii.
How many times do I love thee, dear?Tell me how many thoughts there beIn the atmosphereOf a new fall’n year,Whose white and sable hours appearThe latest flake of eternity—So many times do I love thee, dear.
How many times do I love thee, dear?
Tell me how many thoughts there be
In the atmosphere
Of a new fall’n year,
Whose white and sable hours appear
The latest flake of eternity—
So many times do I love thee, dear.
How many times do I love, again?Tell me how many beads there areIn a silver chainOf evening rainUnravelled from the tumbling mainAnd threading the eye of a yellow star—So many times do I love again.
How many times do I love, again?
Tell me how many beads there are
In a silver chain
Of evening rain
Unravelled from the tumbling main
And threading the eye of a yellow star—
So many times do I love again.
By Henry J. W. Dam.
The science of chemistry, like that of geography, has its undiscovered North Pole. Four hundred and sixty-one degrees below the freezing point of the Fahrenheit thermometer (−274° C.) lies a mysterious, specially indicated degree of cold which science has long been gazing toward and striving to attain, wondering meanwhile what may be the conditions of matter at this unexplored point. Its existence has long been indicated and its position established in two different ways, viz., the regularly diminishing volumes of gases, and the steady falling off in the resistance made by pure metals to the passage through them of electricity under increasing degrees of cold. This point, to which both these processes tend as an ultimate, is called the zero of absolute temperature. By more than one eminent observer it is supposed to be the temperature of inter-stellar space, the normal temperature of the universe. Whether or not this supposition be correct, the efforts which have been made and are still in progress to reach this degree of cold have been many, diverse, and ingenious; the equipment of the explorer being not boats, condensed foods, and the general machinery of ice exploration, but all the varied resources of mechanics and of chemistry which can be combined to compass the extremest degrees of cold.
All the world has heard of Professor James Dewar, and of his late great triumphs in the liquefaction of oxygen gas and the solidification of nitrogen and air. The sensation caused by his extraordinary results won him at once the congratulations of many scientific men, the profuse encomiums of the press, and the flattering recognition of appreciative royal personages. This was largely due to the fact that in the search for this unknown and mysterious point he had plunged much deeper than any chemist before him into the regions of low temperature, and had arrived within sixty degrees Centigrade of the point itself. This exciting and not uneventful journey downward did not take him beyond the confines of his own laboratory, but his description of it, as well as of the properties of matter under extreme cold, has something of the fascination, to the mind possessed of ordinary chemical curiosity, of the story of a Stanley, a Nansen, or a Peary, describing the peculiarities of countries in which they, of all men, have been the first to set their feet.
Professor Dewar, who was born in Kincardine-on-Forth in 1842, was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where his natural and special gifts as a chemist were developed by Sir Lyon Playfair, at that time Professor of Chemistry in the university. The perspicacity and tenacity of purpose which are characteristic of so many Scotchmen were eminently the inheritance of Sir Lyon’s young assistant, and between that period and the present a long series of original investigations in all departments of chemistry have won for Professor Dewar at his prime the Jacksonian Professorship of Natural Experimental Philosophy at Cambridge University, the Fullerian Professorship of Chemistry at the Royal Institution, the Fellowship of the Royal Society, the degree of Doctor of Laws, and other dignities, which make great alphabetical richness after his name upon scientific occasions of state. Personally, he is of middle height and strong build, with a clearly cut face, full of character. His speech, faintlyflavored with the accent of Scotia, is exact and emphatic; and his manner, whether he is concentrated upon a scientific demonstration in his laboratory or traversing the speculative questions of the hour in ordinary conversation in his drawing-room, has the earnestness of the profound scientist, very agreeably tempered by the polish of the traveller and cosmopolitan man of the world. His absorption in scientific pursuits has not denied him a very marked esthetic development, and his residential suite of apartments at the Royal Institution is filled with treasures, rare tapestries, bronzes, and carvings, picked up at continental dépôts or purchased at the sales of great collections, which would make a highly interesting article in themselves. To her husband’s scientific sense of the value of age in wines, Mrs. Dewar adds her original researches in the matter of choice teas, and it is averred by the eminent membership of the Royal Institution that the degree of domestic civilization which prevails on the third floor of the building is quite as high and more potentially attractive than the stage of scientific civilization which rules in the theatre, the libraries, and the laboratories of the floors below. Like most Scotchmen, however, Professor Dewar is simple in his tastes, and is more deeply stirred by a frozen gas or an antique bronze than anything in the way of bisques orsuprêmes. His heart, which shows no signs of low temperature, is mainly in his laboratory, and he leads the way there, down a flight of stone steps to the basement, with a readiness that very clearly exhibits his latent enthusiasm.