I
My great-grandmother was by no means an accomplished French scholar. Was yours? And even in English, my great-grandmother’s spelling was far from faultless. In those well-thumbed receipt-books of hers, written by her own hand, and still beautifully legible, you will note that she sometimes doubles the t in butter, and sometimes not; she generally gives an h to sugar, and seldom allows an egg more than one g to stand on. But the far-flung fame of her cooking did not suffer in consequence. And had her prowess in languages and in orthography been equal to her skill in the household arts of her day (spinning, weaving, brewing, and the like), my cousin Felix might never have known the joyous adventures of a collector of Lafayette silver. For frankly, it was my great-grandmother, who, owing to a slip in her French, first sent the marquis on his donkey-riding. Lafayette in Egypt! Cousin Felix never rested until he got to the bottom of the matter.
Felix Bradford, you must know, is one of the great color manufacturers of the age. Tube colors, of course. There’s more in the business, and perhaps less in the tubes, than one would expect. But Felix is a thoroughly good sport; and twenty years ago, finding that he was making a comfortable income from the art of painting (other men’s painting), he decided to become a collector of something besides money. Colonial silver, for example; and he hoped to include among his treasures the lost Lafayette porringer, from which as a child he had often been spiritually fed.
He had never seen that porringer, though our grandmother Bradford had frequently described its glories, and had told us just how, at the age of eight, she had lost the better part of it forever. It had been bought in Paris, by her seafaring father, a petty officer under Paul Jones. Very likely the museums would not call it a porringer, for it was larger and finer than most vessels in that class; besides, it had a cover. Grandmother Bradford, sinful little child though she once was, had not lost the cover. Felix as a boy had often seen it and even handled it, delightedly running his fingers over its fluted silver dome, topped by a flaming torch wrought in silver, with touches of gold inlaid among the flames. He had an exquisite joy in caressing that silver-gilt finial. Sometimes, to vary his beautiful imaginary pain in being burned by it, he would wet a thumb and forefinger before touching it, though he knew Grandmother Bradford did not approve the gesture. Evidently Cousin Felix was early marked for some important contact with the fine arts.
Felix was a little boy of six when that great American awakening, the Philadelphia Centennial, showed the world as by a lightning-flash just how backward we were in matters of art. It was annoying, but it had to be admitted, that all those peoples across the water (who, we strongly suspected, did not keep the Ten Commandments nearly so well as we did) were our superiors in the creation of beauty. From that time onward, Felix felt the influence of our shamed national gropings in art, and groped with the best. I say nothing for his early pencil copy of a work called Pharaoh’s Horses, a copy finally completed after prodigious efforts on the part of an anæmic Saturday morning drawing-teacher to keep him at the job for many weeks. Nor can I endorse the lady’s method, the first important step of which was completely to cover a steel engraving of Pharaoh’s Horses with tissue paper, a small square portion of this being torn off at the beginning of each session, to disclose the exact amount of horseflesh that must be completed within the two hours. Somehow the square inch that Felix happened to be producing at any given moment never seemed in itself to be far wrong; yet the more inches he completed, the less right his copy looked. This vaguely troubled both teacher and pupil, but neither of them knew what to do about it, except to press on. Houdon’s celebrated maxim, “Copiez, copiez, copiez toujours,” has never I hope, had a more literal and ruthless application. For years thereafter, Felix could not look upon a 4-H pencil without active loathing.
But even Pharaoh’s Horses, for all their fiery eyes and swelling neck veins, could not quite trample the life out of Felix’s love of the beautiful. On rainy holidays, with a plate of ginger cookies at hand, he still liked to peer inside grandmother’s corner cabinet, where she kept the “bug china,” the Mandarin teacups, the thin silver teaspoons, the curiously elaborate sugar-tongs, and the sugar-bowl with a castle on it. If there were no other boys about, he would gladly listen to the old lady’s story of the Lafayette porringer, with its engraving of the marquis on donkey-back. Lafayette in Egypt! It was a tale to invite dreams.
Grandma Bradford had two quite different ways of talking. When she spoke of modern things, or read a paper at the Ladies’ Circle, she used her modern manner; but when she talked of old-time things, she generally dropped into a style to correspond.
“There I set on the front porch,” she would say, “eatin’ my cold porridge out of the porringer. I was the only girl, and they allus called it I was some indulged. But I guess folks wouldn’t call it that, nowadays! ’Twas a hot evenin’, and Aunt Car’line hed company, and they wanted to talk by theirselves, so she let me set out on the porch with my supper. And when I got it et, I put the porringer up onto the porch jest as car’ful as I could, and begun playin’ with Rover. He was a real young dog, Rover was; a puppy, you might say, but a big dog, too. I dunno how ’tis, but dogs don’t seem to come as big now as they did then! And fust thing I knew, he lep’ up onto the porch, and got that porringer into his maouth, and rushed off downhill, me racin’ after him. And that was the last our family ever saw of it. And Rover never stopped till he got to the brook; it was roarin’ turrible, the brook was, ’cos it had be’n a rainy summer; and the more I called, the more he didn’t hear, but kep’ a-runnin’. And he run and he run, all along the brookside, till he got to the path that led square up to the Ellicksenders’ house, and then he turned up sharp—”
Grandma paused for breath, and let Felix take up the familiar tale.
“And the Ellicksenders’ house,” recited Felix, with gusto, “was no better than a den of thieves.”
“Yes, and jest then I heard Aunt Car’line callin’, and back I flew to the haouse. And when she said, ‘Why, Lydia Fairlee, where is the rest of the porringer?’—oh, my, wa’n’t I scairt? I hope it will be a lesson to you, Felix, the way I was too scairt to tell the hull truth. I was scairt o’ bein’ punished, so I told a part-truth, which is a near-lie, same as some boys I know of.”
Felix reddened, and deemed it wise to advance the story as hurriedly as possible. “You told her you put it up onto the porch, careful as anything—”
“Yes, but I didn’t dass tell her Rover hed snatched the porringer, and was carryin’ it straight as a streak o’ lightnin’ to the Ellicksender boys. No, sir, as long as I was in my right mind, I never owned up a syllable of it to anybody!” A note of sinful triumph rang in the old lady’s voice. “’Twa’n’t till two years later it all came out. I hed scarlet fever, and was dretful deleerious, and raved a lot about Rover and the porringer and the Ellicksender haouse; so Aunt Car’line knew at last jest what happened. That sickness spared me the rod, I guess!” Grandma chuckled at the thought of this immunity, but at once recollected herself. “No, Felix, ’tain’t any use. Be sure your sin will find you out.”
Again Felix squirmed away from any impending moral, mentally making a note to the effect that he must study ways to avoid scarlet fever, if not actual sin.
“But of course ’twas too late then to accuse the Ellicksenders. And one o’ them, the wust one, hed died in jail, anyhow; so you see, Felix, if he did take that porringer, his sin found him out, too. The youngest boy turned out real good, it seems. Grew up to be a minister, real celebrated, too. Some younger’n me, he was.”
But the career of the boy who “turned out real good” had no vital interest for Felix. His thoughts wandered toward the “wust one,” the one who died in jail. Not that he himself wanted to die in jail; far from it. But he certainly did not want to grow up to be a minister, either; and he hoped in his secret heart that there might be some middle course. A most determined little fellow was Felix. That day, while listening to one half of the porringer story, and repeating the other, he made up his mind that when he should reach man’s estate, he would get to the bottom of this Lafayette business.
Very delicately, he twirled the silver cover over his palm, as if it were a kind of sacred top too fine for human nature’s daily play. He flicked it lightly, connoisseur-fashion, with his handkerchief. For a second, he was almost sorry that the handkerchief, from its nature and uses, had to be so grimy. Then he heaved a sigh for beauty vanished. I have often thought that if Cousin Felix had gone into poetry instead of paint, he would have made good in that, too.
“Too bad there’s no bottom when there’s such a beautiful top! Say, Grammer, show us the drawing you made when you were little.”
Nothing loath, Grammer unlocked one of the small drawers of her cabinet, and took from it a packet of ancient letters. In the heart of the packet was a square of brownish paper, on which was traced a circle about six inches in diameter, with two projecting lacelike ears. One might call it a plan view of the bowl of the porringer. Little Lydia Fairlee had drawn it by the simple expedient of laying the object upside down on the paper, and pencilling around the outline. Evidently the pierced handles had attracted the child, for these had been drawn with great care. In the space beneath, she had done her own hand, by the same process. Many a time Felix had fitted his own five fingers over that symbol. Once his hand had been a rather good fit, but of late, it had been growing steadily beyond bounds.
“Yes, sir,” Madam Bradford was saying, “that’s the drawin’, and I can assure you I was well cuffed by Aunt Car’line for usin’ up her paper. Those days, folks didn’t throw paper araound, the way they do to-day. I suppose, ef I’d be’n a child these times, I’d ’a’ had Sattidy drawin’ lessons, and I hope I could ’a’ profited by ’em. But nobody ever gave me a chance at Pharaoh’s hosses.”
Felix grinned, guiltily.
“Anyways, your great-grandfather saved up that drawin’, pretty car’ful! We found it among his papers. And when I’m through, I shall leave it to you, along with the silver cover. You’re the one that loves lovely things.”
Felix was too well used to that reference, “when I’m through,” to feel it very deeply other than as a part of the porringer story. But he was an affectionate child, and there being no spectators, he gave his grandmother the kiss she wanted. Then he fitted the cover over the drawing, as he had often done before.
“And there was a picture of Lafayette on the side of the bottom part?”
Madam Bradford suddenly switched to her most modern style of speech. She often took a sly pleasure in disconcerting her hearers by making these lightning changes.
“An engraving is the correct term, I believe.” There was a world of prunes and prisms in her tone. “An engraving upon silver, executed in Paris. And underneath it was engraved, all in the French language, ‘Lafayette in Egypt.’ Your great-grandmother, who was quite a French scholar for those days, used to translate it for me. Very Frenchy writing it was, too; very Frenchy and flourishy. And in the picture, I mean the engraving, there was Lafayette on donkey-back, plain as anything, all wrapped up in a big cloak, and right alongside was a man, his body-servant, I expect, urging the donkey on. I can see it in my mind to this day. If I was a drawer, I could draw it for you.”
Felix sighed again, a sigh of yearning and disillusion. Somehow donkey-riding, even in Egypt, and with a body-servant, seemed to him rather tame work for Lafayette. He himself would have preferred for his hero something in more heroic vein. He knew from a picture in his geography that donkeys went with the Pyramids and the mouths of the Nile. Of course donkey-riding is well enough, in an everyday sort of way; but was Lafayette an everyday sort of man? In his heart Felix felt it a pity that the marquis hadn’t had a go at Pharaoh’s horses, or their descendants. Once in church the minister had read out in a great voice something about a Bible horse, whose neck was “clothed in thunder.” That Bible horse, Felix reasoned, would have been just the mount for Lafayette! For a moment, the little boy’s mind even harbored a doubt as to his great-grandmother’s French scholarship.
“Grammer, are you sure it was a donkey? Do you remember the ears?”
Madam Bradford replied with a majesty that withered all doubt, “I do. If I was a drawer, I could draw those ears for you. Lafayette in Egypt.”