CHAPTER XII.
The next day they went to visit the girls’ school.
The Arcade was built around and above a promontory of rock, the stories following it in receding terraces, and the wings following backward at either side, so that the effect from a little distance was that of an irregular pyramid with a truncated top.
There was a narrow vale and a green slope behind one side, where the children played on that first evening of Tacita’s in San Salvador; and here they had their gardens cultivated by themselves, their out-door studies and recitation-rooms and play-ground. Thick walls, sewing-rooms, quiet study-rooms, and rooms where the little ones had their midday nap interposed to keep every sound of this army of girls from that part of the building used as a hotel, or home, for single ladies.
Going from her quiet apartment to that full and busy hive was to Tacita like going into another world. In its crowd and bustle and variety it was more like the outside world than anything that she had yet seen.
In one room two or three children were lying in hammocks asleep. Out on the green a group of them seated on a carpet were picking paintedletter-blocks out of a heap, and discussing their names. A girl a few years older, sitting near them with her sewing, corrected their mistakes. One lovely girl had a little one on her knee who was reading a pictured story-book aloud. A larger girl sat apart writing a composition, dragging out her thoughts with contortions, like a Pythoness on her tripod. In some rooms were young ladies engaged in study, writing, or recitation. There was a printing-room, with type-setters and proofreaders, where one of the girls gave Tacita a little book of their printing and binding.
Everywhere were texts and proverbs on the walls and doors, white letters on a blue ground; and there was a throne-room where the little gilded chair was filled with flowers for the children’s infant king. Underneath was a picture of the three Magi kneeling to the Child Jesus. This was in a little temple on the hillside with a laburnum-tree bending over it full of golden flower-tassels.
“When they have acquired the rudiments of learning,” Iona said, “we give them a touch all round, almost as if without meaning it, to find the keynote of their powers. It is done chiefly by lectures. Ladies and gentlemen who have read much, or traveled much, write short essays which they read in school. If no child shows a special interest in the subject, we let it go. Our object is to give talent an opportunity, and also to waste no time and effort where they will meet with no return.
“All the accounts of the town are kept in theschools, and well kept. It saves a great deal of work. The kitchen accounts, for instance, are immense and complicated; yet they are gleefully and painstakingly smoothed into order by those busy young brains and fingers. Promotion from one class of these accounts to another is taken great pride in. For instance, the girl who is ‘in the salt,’ as they say, looks with admiring envy on the girl who is in the wheat, the fruit, or the meat. They are also taught to cook a few simple dishes. For that they go to the kitchens. They all dress alike, as you see, and there is no difference made in any way. Even the genius, if we find one, is not taught to set her gift above that of the most homely usefulness.”
As the visitors went away, a golden-haired girl of ten or twelve years shyly offered Tacita a white rose half opened, touched the fringes of her sash with timid finger-tips and touched the fingers to her lips.
Her delicate homage was rewarded with a kiss on the forehead. And, “Please tell me your name, dear child!” said Tacita.
The little girl blushed all over her face with a modest delight, as she whispered “Leila!”
“My recollections of school are all pleasant, with the exception of a few sharp lessons given me there,” Elena said. “I well remember one I received from Dylar the Eighth, father of our Dylar. I was one day sent on an errand which obliged me to go through the large dining-roomwhere we eat now, and I saw a magnificent peach there on the sideboard. I could not know that it was the first and finest of a rare sort, and that Dylar himself, who was in another part of the house, had left it there in passing, and was coming again to take it out for exhibition. But I did know that we were never to help ourselves to anything to eat without permission, and that I had no right ever to take anything there. The peach tempted me, and I did eat. I was looking about for some place where I might hide the stone, when the Prince returned. He went at once to the sideboard, then turned and looked at me. No words were needed to show my guilt. I stood speechless in an agony of shame.
“The Prince looked at me one awful moment in silence. Then he took me by the hand quite gently, and led me to the room that has the commandments of God on the walls, and pointed to the words, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’
“He stood a moment beside me while I trembled, and began to sob, then laid his hand, so gently, on my head, and went away without a word. My dear, it was the most effective sermon I ever heard. You observe there was no sophistry used. It wasstealing.It was many a long day before I could eat a peach without feeling as if I had swallowed the stone.
“The next time the Prince came, I ran weeping to kiss the fringe of his sash, and he kissed my cheek, and whispered, ‘Don’t grieve so, little one!Forget all about it!’ From that day to this I loved Dylar above all earthly things. He was forty years old and I was ten; yet he was the one man in the world to me from that day.”
While talking they had gone out, and were walking northward in the outside road on their way to see the kitchens. It was a paved street of very irregular width. One side was bounded by the straight line of the river parapet. The other, narrowed to ten feet in width between the Arcade and the bridge, widened sometimes to a rod or two. And everywhere above were gardens, cottages, steep paths and stairs, down-falling streams and trees single, or grouped, or scattered.
In one of the amphitheatres thus formed was a semicircle of small shops, each with a wide awning covering an outside counter. The goods were kept inside, and brought out as called for. A man or woman sat under the awning before each shop. One was knitting, another was making pillow lace; the man was making netting, and having but his right hand, the peg had been fastened to his left wrist, and he threw the cord in position for the knot as rapidly as if the air were fingers to hold it.
The kitchens were set high above the plain on the eastern side of a deep ravine running northward. Long buildings of only one story with attics were surrounded by orchards, gardens, and poultry-yards. There was a laundry, and countless lines of clothes out in the sun. There was a bakery. Beneath these buildings were the wine-caves,and the rooms for pressing the grapes. Farther up, on a rapid stream that came down and disappeared under the pavement, was a little mill.
“It looks small,” Elena said; “but all the wool that makes our dresses is woven there. Our silk webs we bring from outside, though we have a small silk farm; but we raise all our own wool. The silk we use for sashes and for hosiery. We send out silk hose, lace, and carved olive-wood.
“And now, my dear, you are to see the folly of individual domestic cooking, and the wisdom of having public kitchens, if they are properly conducted. And at this moment you see coming to meet us one of the chief supports of our system. If we had not a lady of good taste and administrative capacity to matronize our kitchens, they might deteriorate, or fail. If even such a lady were always there, she might sometimes grow weary and careless; but with a short term for each, there is always the sense of novelty and emulation to keep them up to the mark.”
It was a very pleasant presentation of a lady who stood in the door to receive them, with a square of white net tied, turban-wise, around her head, and a snowy bib-apron over her cotton dress.
“You do not remember me,” she said, smiling at Tacita’s intent gaze. “No wonder. You saw so many strangers last night. Besides, my hair was not covered then, and I wore a silk dress.”
It was one of the most accomplished ladies whom she had met at the assembly.
They went through the buildings that constituted almost a village. It was the very paradise of a cooking colony, in plenty order, and cleanliness. There were no silver saucepans tied with rose-colored ribbons; but Marie Antoinette might have gone there and made a cup of chocolate or cooked an omelette, without soiling her fair fingers, or her dainty high-heeled shoes.
The economy, too, was perfect. There were central roasting fires on elevated hearths, with a tunnel-shaped sheet-iron chimney let down over them where a circle of tin kitchens and spits could surround them, losing no heat; and there were lines of charcoal furnaces set in tiles under great sheet-iron hoods.
“We do not waste a bit of coal as large as a walnut, nor a twig of wood that a bird could alight on,” the Directress said. “For the food, not the least important part of our establishment is the fragment kitchen.”
“Elena, when shall I come and learn to cook something?” Tacita asked as they went away.
Her friend laughed. “You find it fascinating, then! I shall have to make you begin at school. You did not see the preparatory department there. It is a sight, when they are busy for an hour every morning, chopping meat, picking raisins, husking corn, shelling peas, picking over coffee or rice, doing, in short, any preparatory work that the cooks might need. Sometimes they have half an hour of such work in the afternoon. It would,perhaps, interest you more than to see them at their books.”
“I have often thought,” Tacita said, “that if we could sometimes stop and watch the artisan at his work, we might find it interesting. They know so many things that the idle do not suspect. I especially like builders of houses and monuments. There is so much of poetry and religion in their work.”
“The artists who painted theaffrescosin the Basilica learned cooking first,” Elena said. “It is recorded of them that they were very promising cooks, and came near spending their lives in the kitchens. One day a gentleman observed them arranging some fruit and vegetables with a very artistic sense of color, and one of them showed him a butterfly he had painted with vegetable juices and bits of mica. One thing led to another. Paint-boxes and paper were given them, and they took fire. They were sent out to study. The landscape painter had a fame in the world, and died there. The one who painted the insects, flowers, and animals, returned to San Salvador after a few years, and never went away again. He taught here. The schools were then started. Did you see the ant-hill in those frescos? It is in the lower left corner, just above Solomon’s text: ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard!’ An acanthus leaf half covers it. But there are the little grains of sand perfect, and the ants running with their building materials. In one place two ants are carrying a stick, one ateach end of it. It is a little gem. They recorded of this man that it was his delight to search out microscopic beauties that no one else had seen. One said that he could intoxicate himself with a drop of dew. Ah, how many a Psyche of beautiful wings withers away in a dull imprisonment because no Love has sought her out! It does not even know why it suffers, nor what it wants. What an escape little Giotto had! What would have been his after-life if Cimabue had not paused to see what the shepherd boy had drawn with chalk on that rough piece of slate!”
“Only a little before coming here,” Tacita said, “I came upon a sentence in a book regarding Giotto and the little church of Santa Maria dell’ Arena, of which he was both architect and painter. The writer said: ‘Dante lodged with Giotto while the works were in progress.’ Dante lodged with Giotto! If I had been there, I would have put rose-petals inside their pillow-cases. I once saw an old picture with a portrait of Giotto in it. He was dark-haired and bright-eyed, and he was dressed all in white and gold, with a hooded mantle. The hood was up over his head, showing only a profile. He looked like a rose, and seemed full of spirit and gladness. I hope that the picture was authentic.”
“Yes,” said Elena with a sigh, “give them rose-petals, those whom the world showers with laurel. It is well. They also need sympathy. But my thought turns ever backward to the uncrowned,the unpraised! My dear, I have gone among the unknown of many lands, and I have found among them such vision-seeing pathetic eyes in persons whose lives were condemned to the commonplace and the material that I hold him who can express himself at his best to his fellow-man to be happy, even if he has to die for it. True, to the second sight, there is much of beauty in common things. But a person born with an ideal sense of beauty, and a vague longing to be, or to enjoy something excellent, naturally does not look for it in poverty and ignorance. Let us observe our contemporaries, my dear. Perhaps we may discover where we least expect it the motionless eyeballs of some imprisoned and disguised immortal. How happy we, if ours should be the first voice to hail such with an Ave!”
When Tacita was alone, she examined the little book given her at the school. It was only a behavior book for the pupils; but it contained some rules not found elsewhere.
“When you are in the street, do not stop to speak to any one you may meet without an errand which makes it necessary, if it should be before supper, and do not stop at all unless your first movement toward the person should be responded to with an appearance of welcome.
“Do not go to any person’s house unless an errand compel you to; go and then, your business done promptly, take leave at once, but without hurrying, even if invited to stay.
“If at the assembly you see two or more persons conversing apart, do not approach them unless called, nor look at them as if expecting a call. It is proper to pass them without saluting. Never approach an alcove which is occupied.
“When kissing the sash of one whom you wish to salute, be sure that your hands are quite clean, and then touch only the fringe, which is easily renewed. To touch the fringe and then carry your fingers to your lips would be better.”
A page called “The Five Classes” reminded the reader somewhat in its style of that high-minded and gentlemanly, if rather Turveydropish philosopher, Confucius:—
“1. We begin our studies by acknowledging that our teachers know more than we, and that we have much to learn; and then we have the wisdom of our age, and may be agreeable to the well-instructed.
“2. We acquire the rudiments of a few studies, and begin to think that we may soon know a great deal; and we are still tolerable to the well-instructed.
“3. We progress till we have a superficial knowledge of several subjects; and then we are liable to think ourselves so wise that we become disgusting to the well-instructed.
“4. We go a great deal farther, and if we have good sense, we perceive our own ignorance, and are ashamed of our past presumption; and then we begin to win the respect of the well-instructed.
“5. We progress farther and deeper, studying with modesty and assiduity; and after many years we learn that there is an ocean of wisdom to which all that we could acquire in a thousand years is as a drop of water; and then we are ourselves on the road to be one of the well-instructed.”
“It isn’t a useless lesson for any one to commit to memory,” she thought, closing the book.