Page images
PDF
EPUB

153

A dreary spot with corpses strewn,
And bayonets glistening round;
A broken bridge, a stranded boat,
A bare and battered mound;
And one huge watchfire's kindled pile,
That sent its quivering glare
To tell the leaders of the host
The conquering Scots were there!

And did they twine the laurel-wreath
For those who fought so well?
And did they honour those who lived,
And weep for those who fell?

What meed of thanks was given to them

Let agèd annals tell.

Why should they bring the laurel-wreath-
Why crown the cup with wine?

It was not Frenchman's blood that flowed
So freely on the Rhine-

A stranger band of beggared men
Had done the venturous deed:
The glory was to France alone,
The danger was their meed.
And what cared they for idle thanks
From foreign prince and peer?
What virtue had such honeyed words
The exiled heart to cheer?

What mattered it that men should vaunt
And loud and fondly swear,

That higher feat of chivalry

Was never wrought elsewhere?
They bore within their breasts the grief
That fame can never heal-
The deep, unutterable woe

Which none save exiles feel.
Their hearts were yearning for the land
They ne'er might see again-
For Scotland's high and heathered hills,
For mountain, loch, and glen-
For those who haply lay at rest
Beyond the distant sea,
Beneath the green and daisied turf
Where they would gladly be!

[blocks in formation]

MARJORIE DAW.

[Thomas Bailey Aldrich, born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 11th November, 1836. cellaneous writer and poet. Daisy's Necklace; The BalAn American mislad of Baby Bell; The Course of True Love; Pampinea, and other poems; Out of His Head, a romance; The Story of a Bad Boy, and other prose works, have obtained much popularity. The following story has been translated into French, and published in the Revue de Deux Mondes, in which the translator says Mr. Aldrich's "style is lively, and even in his easiest sentences there is a certain acid and savage savour which is agreeable to blasé palates."]

I.

Dr. Dillon to Edward Delaney, Esq., at
The Pines, near Rye, N.H.

Angust 8, 187-.

My dear Sir, I am happy to assure you that your anxiety is without reason. Flemming will be confined to the sofa for three or four weeks, and will have to be careful at first how he uses his leg. A fracture of this kind is always a tedious affair. bone was very skilfully set by the surgeon who Fortunately the chanced to be in the drug-store where Flemming was brought after his fall, and I apprehend no permanent inconvenience from the accident. Flemming is doing perfectly well physically; but I must confess that the irritable and morbid state of mind into which he has fallen causes me a great deal of uneasiness. He is the last man in the world who ought to break his leg. You know how impetuous our friend is ordinarily, what a soul of restlessness and energy, never content unless he is rushing at some object, like a sportive bull at a red shawl; but amiable withal. He is no longer amiable. His temper has become something frightful. Miss Fanny Flemming came up from Newport, where the family are staying for the summer, to nurse him; but he packed her off the next morning in tears. He has a complete set of Balzac's works, twenty-seven volumes, piled up by his sofa, to throw at Watkins whenever that exemplary serving-man appears with his meals. Yesterday I very innocently brought Flemming a small basket of lemons. You know it was a strip of lemonpeel on the curbstone that caused our friend's mischance. Well, he no sooner set his eyes upon these lemons than he fell into such a rage as I cannot describe adequately. This is only one of his moods, and the least distressing. At other times he sits with bowed head regarding his splintered limb, silent, sullen, despairing. When this fit is on him—and it

sometimes lasts all day-nothing can distract his melancholy. He refuses to eat; does not even read the newspapers; books-except as projectiles for Watkins-have no charms for him. His state is truly pitiable. I

Now, if he were a poor man, with a family dependent on his daily labour, this irritability and despondency would be natural enough. But in a young fellow of twenty-four, with plenty of money, and seemingly not a care in the world, the thing is monstrous. If he continues to give way to his vagaries in this manner, he will end by bringing on an inflammation of the fibula. It was the fibula he broke. I am at my wits' end to know what to prescribe for him. I have anæsthetics and lotions, to make people sleep and to soothe pain; but I've no medicine that will make a man have a little common sense. That is beyond my skill, but maybe it is not beyond yours. You are Flemming's intimate friend, his fidus Achates. Write to him, write to him frequently, distract | his mind, cheer him up, and prevent him from becoming a confirmed case of melancholia. Perhaps he has some important plans disarranged by his present confinement. If he has you will know, and will know how to advise him judiciously. I trust your father finds the change beneficial? I am, my dear sir, with great respect, &c.

II.

Edward Delaney to John Flemming, West 38th Street, New York.

August 9,-.

My dear Jack,-I had a line from Dillon this morning, and was rejoiced to learn that your hurt is not so bad as reported. Like a certain personage you are not so black and blue as you are painted. Dillon will put you on your pins again in two or three weeks, if you will only have patience and follow his counsels. Did you get my note of last Wednesday? I was greatly troubled when I heard of the

accident.

write you a whole post-office full of letters if that will divert you. Heaven knows, I haven't anything to write about. It isn't as if we were living at one of the beach houses; then I could do you some character studies, and fill your imagination with hosts of sea-godesse, with their (or somebody else's) raven and blond manes hanging down their shoulders. You should have Aphrodite in morning wrapper, in evening costume, and in her prettiest bathing suit. But we are far from all that here. We have rooms in a farm-house, on a cross-road, two miles from the hotels, and lead the quietest of lives.

I wish I were a novelist. This old house, with its sanded floors and high wainscots, and its narrow windows looking out upon a cluster of pines that turn themselves into æolian-harps every time the wind blows, would be the place in which to write a summer romance. It should be a story with the odours of the forest and the breath of the sea in it. It should be a novel like one of that Russian fellow's-what's his name?—Tourguénieff, Turguenef, Toorguniff, Turgénjew; nobody knows how to spell him. (I think his own mother must be in some doubt about him.) Yet I wonder if even a Liza, or an Alexandra Paulovna could stir the heart of a man who has constant twinges in his leg. I wonder if one of our own Yankee girls of the best type, haughty and spirituelle, would be of any comfort to you in your present deplorable condition. If I thought so, I would rush down to the Surf House and catch one for you; or, better still, I would find you one over the way.

Picture to yourself a large white house just across the road, nearly opposite our cottage. It is not a house, but a mansion, built perhaps in the colonial period, with rambling extensions, and gambrel roof, and a wide piazza on three sides a self-possessed, high-bred piece of architecture, with its nose in the air. It stands back from the road, and has an obsequious retinue of fringed elms and oaks and weeping willows. Sometimes in the morning, and oftener in the afternoon, when the sun has withdrawn from that part of the mansion, a young woman appears on the piazza, with some mysterious Penelope web of embroidery in her hand, or a book. There is a hammock over there of pine-apple fibre, it looks from here. A hammock is very becoming when one is eighteen, and has gold hair, and dark eyes, and a blue illusion dress looped up after the fashion of a Dresden china shepherdess, and is chaussée like a belle of the time of Louis QuaAll this splendour goes into that ham

I can imagine how tranquil and saintly you are with your leg in a trough! It's deuced awkward, to be sure, just as we had promised ourselves a glorious month together at the seaside; but we must make the best of it. It is unfortunate, too, that my father's health renders it impossible for me to leave him. I think he has much improved; the sea air is his native element; but he still needs my arm to lean upon in his walks, and requires some one more careful than a servant to look after him. I cannot come to you, dear Jack, but I have hours of unemployed time on hand, and I will¦ torze.

mock, and sways there like a pond-lily in the | finement a thing I'm not used to. golden afternoon. The window of my bedroom looks down on that piazza, and so do I.

But enough of this nonsense, which ill becomes a sedate young attorney taking his vacation with an invalid father. Drop me a line, dear Jack, and tell me how you really are. State your case. Write me a long, quiet letter. If you are violent or abusive I'll take the law to you.

III.

John Flemming to Edward Delaney.

August 11, . Your letter, dear Ned, was a god-send. Fancy what a fix I am in; I, who never had a day's sickness since I was born. My left leg weighs three tons. It is embalmed in spices, and smothered in layers of fine linen like a mummy. I can't move. I haven't moved for five thousand years. I'm of the. time of Pharaoh.

night on a lounge Everybody is out The brown stone

I lie from morning till staring into the hot street. of town enjoying himself. front houses across the street resemble a row of particularly ugly coffins set up on end. A green mould is settling on the names of the deceased, carved on the silver door-plates. Sardonic spiders have sewed up the key-holes. All is silence and dust and desolation.-I interrupt this a moment, to take a shy at Watkins with the second volume of César Birotteau. Missed him! I think I could bring him down with a copy of Sainte-Beuve, or the Dictionnaire Universel, if I had it. These small Balzac books somehow don't quite fit my hand. But I shall fetch him yet. I've an idea Watkins is tapping the old gentleman's Château Yquem. Duplicate key of the wine cellar. Hibernian swarries in the front basement. Young Cheops up stairs, snug in his cerements. Watkins glides into my chamber with that colourless, hypocritical face of his drawn out long like an accordion; but I know he grins all the way down stairs, and is glad I have broken my leg. Was not my evil star in the very zenith when I ran up to town to attend that dinner at Delmonico's? I didn't come up altogether for that. It was partly to buy Frank Livingstone's roan mare Margot. And now I shall not be able to sit in the saddle these two months. I'll send the mare down to you at The Pines; is that the name of the place?

Old Dillon fancies that I have something on my mind. He drives me wild with lemons. Lemons for a mind diseased. Nonsense. am only as restless as the devil under this con

I

Take a

man who has never had so much as a headache or a toothache in his life, strap one of his legs in a section of water-spout, keep him in a room in the city for weeks, with the hot weather turned on, and then expect him to smile, and purr, and be happy! It is preposterous. I can't be cheerful or calm.

Your letter is the first consoling thing I have had since my disaster, a week ago. It really cheered me up for half an hour. Send me a screed, Ned, as often as you can, if you love me. Anything will do. Write me more about that little girl in the hammock. That was very pretty, all that about the Dresden china shepherdess and the pond-lily; the imagery a little mixed perhaps, but very pretty. I didn't suppose you had so much sentimental furniture in your upper story. It shows how one may be familiar for years with the reception-room of his neighbour, and never suspect what is directly under his mansard. I supposed your loft stuffed with dry legal parchments, mortgages, and affidavits; you take down a package of manuscript, and lo! there are lyrics, and sonnets, and canzonettas. You really have a graphic descriptive touch, Edward Delaney, and I suspect you of short love-tales in the magazines.

I shall be a bear until I hear from you again. Tell me all about your pretty inconnue across the road. What is her name? Who is she? Who's her father? Where's her mother? Who's her lover? You cannot imagine how this will occupy me. The more trifling the better. My imprisonment has weakened me intellectually to such a degree that I find your epistolary gifts quite considerable. I am passing into my second childhood. In a week or two I shall take to india-rubber rings and prongs of coral. A silver cup with an appropriate inscription would be a delicate attention on your part. In the meantime write!

[blocks in formation]

The sick pasha shall be amused. Bismillah! he wills it so! If the story-teller becomes prolix and tedious-the bow-string and the sack, and two Nubians to drop him into the Piscataqua! But truly, Jack, I have a hard task. There is literally nothing here, except the little girl over the way. She is swinging in the hammock at this moment. It is to me compensation for many of the ills of life to see her now and then put out a small kid boot, which fits like a glove, and set herself going.

Who is she, and what is her name? Her name is Daw. Only daughter of Mr. Richard W. Daw, ex-colonel and banker. Mother dead. One brother at Harvard; elder brother killed at the battle of Fair Oaks nine years ago. Old, rich family the Daws. This is the homestead, where father and daughter pass eight months of the twelve; the rest of the year in Baltimore and Washington. The New England winter too many for the old gentleman. The daughter is called Marjorie-Marjorie Daw. Sounds odd at first; doesn't it? But after you say it over to yourself half a dozen times you like it. There's a pleasing quaintness to it, something prim and violet-like. Must be a nice sort of girl to be called Marjorie Daw.

I had mine host of The Pines in the witnessbox last night, and drew the foregoing testimony from him. He has charge of Mr. Daw's vegetable-garden, and has known the family these thirty years. Of course I shall make the acquaintance of my neighbours before many days. It will be next to impossible for me not to meet Mr. Daw or Miss Daw in some of my walks. The young lady has a favourite path to the sea-beach. I shall intercept her some morning, and touch my hat to her. Then the princess will bend her fair head to me with courteous surprise, not unmixed with haughtiness. Will snub me, in fact. All this for thy sake, O Pasha of the Snapt Axle-tree! How oddly things fall out! Ten minutes ago I was called down to the parlour-you know the kind of parlours in farm-houses on the coast; a sort of amphibious parlour, with seashells on the mantel-piece and spruce branches in the chimney-place-where I found my father and Mr. Daw doing the antique polite to each other. He had come to pay his respects to his new neighbours. Mr. Daw is a tall, slim gentleman of about fifty-five, with a florid face, and snow-white mustache and side-whiskers. Looks like Mr. Dombey, or as Mr. Dombey would have looked if he had served a few years in the British army.

Mr. Daw was a colonel

in the late war, commanding the regiment in which his son was a lieutenant. Plucky old boy, backbone of New Hampshire granite. Before taking his leave the colonel delivered himself of an invitation, as if he were issuing a general order. Miss Daw has a few friends coming at 4 P. M., to play croquet on the lawn (parade-ground), and have tea (cold rations) on the piazza. Will we honour them with our company? (or be sent to the guard-house). My father declines, on the plea of ill-health. My father's son bows with as much suavity as he knows, and accepts.

In my next I shall have something to tell you. I shall have seen the little beauty face to face. I have a presentiment, Jack, that this Daw is a rara avis! Keep up your spirits, my boy, until I write you another letter; and send me along word how's your leg.

V.

Edward Delaney to John Flemming.
August 13,-.

The party, my dear Jack, was as dreary as possible. A lieutenant of the navy, the rector of the Episcopal church at Stillwater, and a society swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked as if he had swallowed a couple of his buttons, and found the bullion rather indigestible; the rector was a pensive youth, of the daffy downdilly sort; and the swell from Nahant was a very weak tidal wave indeed. The women were much better, as they always are; the two Miss Kingsburys of Philadelphia, staying at the Sea-shell House, two bright and engag ing girls. But Marjorie Daw!

The company broke up soon after tea, and I remained to smoke a cigar with the colonel on the piazza. It was like seeing a picture to see Miss Marjorie hovering around the old soldier, and doing a hundred gracious little things for him. She brought the cigars, and lighted the tapers with her own delicate fingers in the most enchanting fashion. As we sat there she came and went in the summer twilight, and seemed, with her white dress and pale gold hair, like some lovely phantom that had sprung into existence out of the smoke-wreaths. If she had melted into air, like the statue of the lady in the play, I should have been more sorry than surprised.

It was easy to perceive that the old colonel worshipped her, and she him. I think the relation between an elderly father and a daughter just blooming into womanhood the most beautiful possible. There is in it a subtle sentiment that cannot exist in the case of mother and daughter, or that of son and mother. But this is getting into deep water. I sat with the Daws until half-past ten, and saw the moon rise on the sea. The ocean, that had stretched motionless and black against the horizon, was changed by magic into a broken field of glittering ice. In the far distance the Isles of Shoals loomed up like a group of huge bergs drifting down on us. The polar regions in a June thaw! It was exceedingly fine. What did we talk about? We talked about the weather-and you! The weather has been disagreeable for several days past—and so have

you.

I glided from one topic to the other very naturally. I told my friends of your accident; how it had frustrated all our summer plans, and what our plans were. scribed you; or, rather, I didn't. Then I deyour amiability; of your patience under this I spoke of severe affliction; of your touching gratitude when Dillon brings you little presents of fruit; of your tenderness to your sister Fanny, whom you would not allow to stay in town to nurse you, and how you heroically sent her back to Newport, preferring to remain alone with Mary the cook, and your man Watkins, to whom, by the way, you were devotedly attached. If you had been there, Jack, you wouldn't have known yourself. I should have excelled as a criminal lawyer, if I had not turned my attention to a different branch of jurisprudence.

Miss Marjorie asked all manner of leading questions concerning you. to me then, but it struck me forcibly afterIt did not occur wards, that she evinced a singular interest in the conversation. When I got back to my room I recalled how eagerly she leaned forward, with her full, snowy throat in strong moonlight, listening to what I said. Positively, I think I made her like you!

Miss Daw is a girl whom you would like immensely, I can tell you that. out affectation; a high and tender nature, if A beauty withone can read the soul in the face. old colonel is a noble character too. And the I am glad the Daws are such pleasant people. The Pines is an isolated place, and my reSources are few. I fear I should have found life here rather monotonous before long, with no other society than that of my excellent sire. It is true I might have made a target of the defenceless invalid; but I haven't a taste for artillery, moi.

VI.

[blocks in formation]

157

He is

He is rapidly losing the habit he had acquired
of dodging whenever I rub my ear, or make
any slight motion with my right arm.
still suggestive of the wine-cellar, however.
you will, but the scent of the Roederer will
You may break, you may shatter Watkins if
hang round him still.

person.
Ned, that Miss Daw must be a charming
I should certainly like her.
letter of seeing a young girl swinging in a
her already. When you spoke in your first
I like
hammock under your chamber window, I was
somehow strangely drawn to her.
account for it in the least.
I cannot
subsequently written of Miss Daw has strength-
What you have
ened the impression. You seem to be describ-
ing a woman I have known in some previous
my word, if you were to send me her photo-
state of existence, or dreamed of in this. Upon
glance. Her manner, that listening attitude,
graph I believe I should recognize her at a
her traits of character, as you indicate them,
the light hair and the dark eyes, they are all
familiar things to me.
tions, did she? Curious about me? That is
Asked a lot of ques-
strange.

old cynic, if you knew how I lie awake nights, You would laugh in your sleeve, you wretched of The Pines and the house across the road. with my gas turned down to a star, thinking How cool it must be down there! I long for smoking his cheroot on the piazza. I send you the salt smell in the air. I picture the colonel and Miss Daw off on afternoon rambles along the beach. Sometimes I let you stroll with her under the elms in the moonlight, for you are great friends by this time, I take it, and and your manners! see each other every day. I know your ways Then I fall into a truculent mood, and would like to destroy somebody. Have you noticed anything in the shape of a lover hanging around the colonial Lares and Penates? Does that lieutenant of the visit the house much? Not that I am pining horse-marines, or that young Stillwater parson for news of them, but any gossip of the kind would be in order. fall in love with Miss Daw. I wonder, Ned, you don't it myself. Speaking of photographs, couldn't I am ripe to do from her album-she must have an album, you you manage to slip one of her cartes-de-visite know--and send it to me? I will return it low! Did the mare arrive safe and sound? It before it could be missed. That's a good felwill be a capital animal this autumn for Central Park.

Oh-my leg? I forgot about my leg. It's

better.

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »