“THE LEGEND OF MARIA SANCHEZ CREEK.
“Maria Sanchez
Her dug-out launches,
And down the stream to catch some crabs she takes her way,
A Spanish maiden,
With crabs well laden;
When evening falls she lifts her trawls to cross the bay.
“Grim terror blanches
Maria Sanchez,
Who, not to put too fine a point, is rather brown;
A norther coming,
Already humming,
Doth bear away that Spanish mai—den far from town.
“Maria Sanchez,
Caught in the branches
That sweetly droop across a creek far down the coast,
That calm spectator,
The alligator,
Doth spy, then wait to call his mate, who rules the roast.
“She comes and craunches
Maria Sanchez,
While boat and crabs the gentle husband meekly chews.
How could they eat her,
That señorita,
Whose story still doth make quite ill the Spanish Muse?”
We heaped praises upon John’s pure Castilian ode—all save the Professor, who undertook to criticise a little. “I have made something of a study of poetry,” he began, “and I have noticed that much depends upon the selection of choice terms. For instance, in the first verse you make use of the local word ‘dug-out.’ Now in my opinion, ‘craft’ or ‘canoe’ would be better. You begin, if I remember correctly, in this way:
“ ‘Maria Sanchez
Launches her dug-out—’ ”
“Oh no, Professor,” said Sara; “this is it:
“ ‘Maria Sanchez
Her dug-out launches.’ ”
“The same idea, I opine, Miss St. John,” said the Professor, loftily.
“But the rhymes, Sir?”
The Professor had not noticed the rhymes; poetry should be above rhymes altogether, in his opinion.
The pleasant days passed, we sailed up and down the Matanzas, walked on the sea-wall, and sat in the little overhanging balcony, which, like all others in St. Augustine, was hung up on the side of the house like a cupboard without any support from below. Letters from home meanwhile brought tidings of snow and ice and storm, disasters by land and by sea. A lady friend, a new arrival, had visited the Ancient City forty years before, in the days of the ancien régime. “It is much changed,” she said. “These modern houses springing up every where have altered the whole aspect of the town. I am glad I came back while there is still something left of the old time. Another five years and the last old wall will be torn down for a horrible paling fence. Forty years ago the town was largely Spanish or Moorish in its architecture. The houses were all built of coquina, with a blank wall toward the north, galleries running around a court-yard behind, where were flowers, vines, and a central fountain. The halls, with their stone arches, opened out into this greenery without doors of any kind, tropical fashion. Those were the proud days of St. Augustine; the old families reigned with undisputed sway; the slaves were well treated, hospitality was boundless, and the intermixture of Spanish and Italian blood showed itself in the dark eyes that glanced over the balconies as the stranger passed below. It has all vanished now. The war effaced the last fading hue of the traditional grandeur, and broke down the barriers between the haughty little city and the outside world. The old houses have been modernized, and many of them have given place to new and, to my ideas, thoroughly commonplace dwellings. There is one left, however, the very mansion where I was so charmingly entertained forty years ago; its open arches remain just as they were, and the old wall still surrounds the garden. Up stairs is the large parlor where we had our gay little parties, with wines, and those delicious curled-up cakes, all stamped with figures, thin as a wafer, crisp and brittle, which seemed to be peculiar to St. Augustine.”
“Did you know there was a native artist here?” said John, calling up one morning as he sat on the balcony, Sara and myself endeavoring to write duty letters.
“Painter or sculptor?” I inquired, pen in hand, pausing over an elaborate description of a sunset with which I was favoring a soul-to-soul correspondent. “Let me see: standing on the glacis with the look-out tower outlined against—”
“Sculptor,” answered John. “His studio is on Charlotte Street not far from here. Let us walk down and see him.”
“Look-out tower outlined against the golden after-glow. Is it worth going to see?”
“Indeed it is. There is a fine design—a lion carved in stone, and also a full-length figure of Henry Clay walking in the gardens of Ashland; and what is more, these statues are on top of the house outlined against—”
“The golden after-glow,” I suggested.
“Certainly,” said John. “And inside you will find rare antique vases, Egyptian crocodiles, Grecian caskets, and other remarkable works, all executed in stone.”
“I have long craved an alligator, but could not undertake the cigar-box discipline,” I answered, rising. “A crocodile carved in stone will be just the thing. Come, Sara.”
We walked down Charlotte Street, and presently came to a small house with a low wing, whose open shutter showed the studio within. On the roof were two figures in coquina, one a nondescript animal like the cattle of a Noah’s ark, the other a little stone man who seemed to have been so dwarfed by the weight of his hat that he never smiled again.
“The lion, and Henry Clay,” said John, introducing the figures.
“Passé for the lion; but how do you make out the other?”
“Oh, Henry seems to be the beau ideal of the South. You meet him every where on the way down in a plaster and marble dress-coat, extending his hand in a conversational manner, and so, of course, I supposed this to be another one. And as to the gardens of Ashland, as he has his hat on—indeed, he is principally hat—he must be taking a walk somewhere, and where so likely as his own bucolic garden?”
“I shall go back to my after-glow, Mr. Hoffman. Your Henry Clay is a fraud.”
“Wait and see the artist, Martha,” said Sara. “He is a colored man and a cripple.”
We tapped on the shutter, and the artist appeared, supporting himself on crutches; a young negro, with a cheerful shining countenance, and an evident pride in the specimens of his skill scattered about the floorless studio—alligators, boxes, roughly cut vases, all made of the native coquina; or, as the artist’s sign had it,
“It must require no small amount of skill to cut any thing out of this crumbling shell-rock,” I said, as, after purchasing a charming little alligator, and conversing some time with the dusky artist, we turned homeward.
“It does,” replied John. “Ignorant as he is, that man is not without his ideas of beauty and symmetry—another witness to the capability for education which I have every where noticed among the freedmen of the South.”
“I too have been impressed with this capability,” said Sara—“strongly impressed. Last Sunday I went to the Methodist colored Sunday-school on St. George Street. The teachers are Northerners; some resident here, some winter visitors; and the classes were filled up with full-grown men and women, some of them aged and gray-haired, old uncles and aunties, eager to learn, although they could scarcely see with their old eyes. They repeated Bible texts in chorus, and then they began to read. It was a pathetic sight to see the old men slowly following the simple words with intense eagerness, keeping the place under each one with careful finger. The younger men and girls read fluently, and showed quick understanding in the answers given to the teachers’ questions. Then the little children filed in from another room, and they all began to sing. Oh, how they sang! The tenor voice of a young jet-black negro who sat near me haunts me still with its sweet cadences. Singularly enough, the favorite hymn seemed to be one whose chorus, repeated again and again, ended in the words,
“ ‘Shall wash me white as snow—
White as snow.’ ”
“The negroes of St. Augustine were formerly almost all Romanists,” said John, “and many of them still attend the old cathedral on the Plaza, where there is a gallery especially for them. But of late the number of Methodists and Baptists has largely increased, while the old cathedral and its bishop, who once ruled supreme over the consciences of the whole population of la siempre fiel Ciudad de San Augustin, find themselves in danger of being left stranded high and dry as the tide of progress and education sweeps by without a glance. The Peabody Educational Fund supports almost entirely two excellent free schools here, one for white and one for colored children; and in spite of opposition, gradually, year by year, even Roman Catholic parents yield to the superior advantages offered to their children, and the church schools hold fewer and fewer scholars, especially among the boys. The Presbyterian church, with its pastor and earnest working congregation, has made a strong battle against the old-time influences, and it now looks as though the autocratic sway of the religion of Spain were forever broken in this ancient little Spanish city.”
“At least, however, the swarthy priests look picturesque and appropriate as they come and go between their convent and the old cathedral through that latticed gate in their odd dress,” said Sara. “Do you remember, in Baddeck, the pleasing historical Jesuit, slender too corpulent a word to describe his thinness, his stature primeval? Warner goes on to say that the traveler is grateful for such figures, and is not disposed to quarrel with the faith that preserves so much of the ugly picturesque.”
“The principal interest I have in the old cathedral is the lost under-ground passage which, according to tradition, once extended from its high altar to Fort San Marco,” I remarked. “I am perpetually haunted by the possibility of its being under my feet somewhere, and go about stamping on the ground to catch hollow echoes down below. We moderns have discovered at San Marco a subterranean dungeon and bones: then why not an under-ground passage?”
“And bones?” asked Sara.
“No; Spanish jewels, plate, and all kinds of mediæval treasures. I consider the possibility far more promising than Captain Kidd’s chest. I have half a mind to begin digging.”
“You would be obliged to take the shovel yourself, then, Miss Martha,” said John. “Do you suppose you could hire the St. Augustiners to dig, really dig, day after day, Northern fashion? Why, they would laugh in your face at the mere idea. I am inclined to think there would never be another house built here if regular foundations and cellars were required; as it is, they set up the timbers as the children set up their houses of blocks. How clearly that sail-boat is outlined against the gray water, like a sketch in India ink! Is not that Miss Carew on board?”
“Yes, with Mr. Mokes,” said Sara.
“And Aunt Diana,” I added. “I remember now; Mr. Mokes gives a chowder dinner to-day over on the North Beach.”
“I would not give much for chowder made by a Mokes,” said John, with the scorn of an old camper-out in his voice.
“Oh, Mokes does not make it, Mr. Hoffman. What are you thinking of? Mokes make chowder! By no means. He has his servant and the boatmen to do all the work, and sends over his wines and ice beforehand. It will be an elegant dinner, I assure you.”
“On the beach?”
“Yes, on the beach. Unfortunately, tables can not be transported, unless, indeed, Dundreary should arrive with his ‘waft.’ But the table-cloth will be damask, with a monogram worked in gold thread, and the conversation will be strictly Fifth Avenueish, I will answer for that.”
“Great is the power of youthful beauty,” I said, when we had reached our room again. “Here is Mokes with his money and wines, the Professor with his learning and bones, the Captain with his beauty and buttons, all three apparently revolving around that giddy little cousin of mine. And now comes John Hoffman!”
“With all his ancestors behind him! Has he taken her to the demi-lune yet?” said Sara, opening the Princess of Thule, which she read after a dose of Florida history, like sugar after a pill. “Do you know, Martha, I think poor Lavender is rather unfairly treated by the author of this book. He is ordered about by Ingram, and most unmercifully snubbed by Sheila, who, after all, manages to have her own way, ‘whatever.’ ”
Now I had thrown John Hoffman purposely into my list of Iris’s admirers in order to provoke something like a denial from Sara—these two seemed to feel such a singular kind of interested dislike toward each other; but my little bait caught nothing; Sara remained impassive.
Toward sunset the same evening we waited on the Plaza in company with the entire population of the town for the distribution of the one mail, accomplished with some difficulty by the efficient, active, Northern postmaster, in consequence of the windows being darkened with flattened noses, and the doorways blocked up, to say nothing of beatings on the walls, impatient calls through the key-hole, and raids round the back way by the waiting populace. Having wrestled manfully for our letters, we all strolled down Tolomato Street, reading as we went. Iris journeyed languidly through the sand; she had received no letters, and she had Mokes on her hands, Mokes radiant with the rejection of his private three-cornered chowder party, and the smiles she herself had bestowed upon him over on that wicked North Beach. “Oh, for a horse!” she sighed. “Nay, I would even ride in a Florida cart.”
A FLORIDA CART.
Aunt Diana was weary, but jubilant; she had the Professor and the Trojan war, and did her duty by them. Miss Sharp ambled along on the other side, and said “Indeed!” at intervals. Sara read her letters with a dreary sort of interest; her letters were always from “Ed.,” she used to say. John and I, strolling in advance, carried on a good, comfortable, political fight over our newspapers.
“Another cemetery,” said Sara, as the white crosses and head-stones shone out in the sunset on one side of the road.
Mokes, stimulated to unusual conversational efforts by the successes of the day, now brought forward the omnipresent item. “This is—er, I suppose, the old Huguenot burying-ground, a—er—a spot of much interest, I am told.”
“Yes,” replied Sara. “This is the very spot, Mr. Mokes.”
“Oh no, Miss St. John,” said Aunt Diana, coming to the rescue, “you mistake. This is Tolomato.”
“It makes no difference. I am now convinced that they are all Huguenot burying-grounds,” replied Sara, calmly.
The little cemetery was crowded with graves, mounds of sand over which the grass would not grow, and heavy coquina tombs whose inscriptions had crumbled away. The names on the low crosses, nearly all Spanish, Minorcan, Corsican, and Greek, bore witness to the foreign ancestry of the majority of the population. We found Alvarez, La Suarez, Leonardi, Capo, Carrarus, Ximanies, Baya, Pomar, Rogero, and Hernandez. Among the Christian names were Bartolo, Raimauld, Rafaelo, Geronimo, Celestino, Dolorez, Dominga, Paula, and Anaclata.
“It looks venerable, but it only dates back about one hundred years,” said John. “Where the old Dons of two or three centuries ago buried their dead, no one knows; perhaps they sent them all back home, Chinese fashion. An old bell which now hangs in the cathedral is said to have come from here; it bears the inscription, ‘Sancte Joseph, ora pro nobis; D. 1682,’ and is probably the oldest bell in the country.”
“And what was it doing here?” said Mokes, with the air of a historian.
“There was once an Indian village here, called Tolomato, and a mission chapel; the bell is supposed to have come from the chapel.”
“Is that the chapel?” asked Mokes, pointing to a small building on the far side of the cemetery. He was getting on famously, he thought, quite historical, and that sort of thing.
“No; that is a chapel erected in 1853 by Cubans to the memory of Father Varela. The old Tolomato chapel was—was destroyed.”
“How?” inquired Mokes.
John glanced toward Sara with a smile. “Oh, go on,” she said, “I am quite prepared! A massacre, of course!”
“Yes, a massacre. The Indians stole into the chapel by night, and finding Father Corpa engaged in his evening devotions, they slew him at the altar, and threw his body out into the forest, where it could never afterward be found. The present cemetery marks the site of the old mission, and bears its name.”
Mokes, having covered himself with glory, now led the way out, and the party turned homeward. Sara and I lingered to read the Latin inscription over the chapel door, “Beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur.” John beckoned us toward a shadowed corner where stood a lonely tomb, the horizontal slab across the top bearing no date, and only the initials of a name, “Here lies T—— F——.”
“Poor fellow!” said John, “he died by his own hand, alone, at night, on this very spot: a young Frenchman, I was told, but I know nothing more.”
“Is not that enough?” I said. “There is a whole history in those words.”
“There was once a railing separating this tomb from the other graves, as something to be avoided and feared,” said John; “but time, or perhaps the kind hand of charity, has removed the barrier: charity that can pity the despairing, suffering, human creature whose only hope came to this—to die!”
Happening to glance at Sara, I saw her eyes full of tears, and in spite of her effort to keep them back, two great drops rolled down and fell on the dark slab; John saw them, and turned away instantly.
“Why, Sara!” I said, moved almost to tears myself by sudden sympathy.
“Don’t say any thing, please,” answered Sara. “There, it is all over.”
We walked away, and found John standing before a little wooden cross that had once marked a grave; there was no trace of a grave left, only green grass growing over the level ground, while lichen and moss had crept over the rough unpainted wood and effaced the old inscription. A single rose-bush grew behind, planted probably a little slip when the memory of the lost one was green and fresh with tears; now, a wild neglected bush, it waved its green branches and shed its roses year by year over the little cross that stood, veiled in moss, alone, where now no grave remained, as though it said, “He is not here: he is risen.”
“Look,” said John. “Does it not tell its story? Why should we be saddened while we have what that cross typifies?”
THE SUICIDE’S GRAVE.
That evening, happening to take up Sara’s Bible, I found pinned in on the blank leaf these old verses:
“There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found;
They softly lie and sweetly sleep
Low in the ground.
“The storm that wracks the wintry sky
No more disturbs their deep repose
Than summer evening’s latest sigh
That shuts the rose.
“I long to lay this painful head
And aching heart beneath the soil,
To slumber in that dreamless bed
From all my toil.”
“Poor child!” I said to myself—“poor child!”
“Who do you think is here, Niece Martha?” said Aunt Diana one morning a week later. “Eugenio; he came last night.”
“What, the poet?”
“Yes; he will stay several days, and I can introduce him to all of you,” said Aunt Di, graciously.
“I shall be very glad, not only on my own account, but on Sara’s also, aunt.”
“Oh, Eugenio will not feel any interest in a person like Miss St. John, Niece Martha! He belongs to another literary world entirely.”
“I know that; but may not Sara attain to that other world in time? I hope much from her.”
“Then you will be disappointed, Niece Martha. I am not literary myself, but I have always noticed that those writers whose friends are always ‘hoping much’ never amount to much; it is the writer who takes his friends and the world by surprise who has the genius.”
There was a substratum of hard common-sense in Aunt Diana, where my romantic boat often got aground. It was aground now.
The next morning Eugenio presented himself without waiting for Aunt Di, and John proposed a walk to the Ponce de Leon Spring in his honor.
“It is almost the only spot you have not visited,” he said to us, “and Eugenio must see the sweep of a pine-barren.”
“By all means,” replied the poet, “the stretching glades and far savannas, gemmed with the Southern wild flowers.”
“You have missed the most beautiful flower of all,” said Iris, “ ‘the wild sweet princess of far Florida, the yellow jasmine.’ ”
The Captain was with us, likewise Mokes; but Aunt Diana had sliced in another young lady to keep the balance even; and away we went through the town, across the Maria Sanchez Creek, under the tree arches, and out on to the broad causeway beyond.
“What! walk to Ponce de Leon Spring!” exclaimed the languid St. Augustine ladies as we passed.
“They evidently look upon Northerners as a species of walking madmen,” I said, laughing.
“It is a singular fact,” commented Sara, “that country people never walk if they can help it; they go about their little town and that is all. City people, on the contrary, walk their miles daily as a matter of course. You can almost tell whether a young lady is city or country bred from the mere fact of her walking or not walking.”
“Climate here has something to do with it,” said John, “and also the old Spanish ideas that ladies should wear satin slippers and take as few steps as possible. The Minorcans keep up some of the old ideas still. Courtship is carried on through a window, the maiden within, a rose in her hair, and the favorite Spanish work in her hand, and the lover outside leaning on the casement. Not until a formal acceptance has been given is he allowed to enter the house and rest himself and his aspirations in a chair.”
“We have adopted English ideas of exercise in New York,” said Eugenio, “but they have not penetrated far into the interior as yet, and are utterly unknown south of Mason and Dixon’s line. St. Augustine, however, is still Spanish, and no one expects the traditional Spanish señorita, with her delicate slippers, fan, and mantilla, to start out for a six-mile constitutional—it would not be her style at all. By-the-way, I saw a beautiful Spanish face leaning from a window on St. George Street this morning.”
“Yes,” said Mokes, consequentially. “There are two on St. George Street, two on Charlotte, and one on St. Hypolita. I have taken pains to trace—er—to trace them out; they like it—er—and I have, I may say, some experience in outlines and that sort of thing—galleries abroad—old masters, etc. Paint a little myself.”
“Indeed!” said Eugenio. “Original designs, I suppose?”
Oh no; Mokes left that to the regular profession. They had to do it, poor fellows—wouldn’t interfere with them.
“Very generous,” said Eugenio.
Yes, Mokes thought it was. But gentlemen of—of fortune, you know, had their duties—as—as such.
“How much I should like to see your pictures, Mr. Mokes!” said the poet, assuming an air of deep interest.
The highly flattered Mokes thought that “perhaps—er,” he “might have one or two sent down by express;” he always liked “to oblige his friends.”
“Don’t chaff him any more,” whispered John, with a meaning glance toward Iris.
“What! not that lovely girl!” exclaimed Eugenio, under his breath.
“Two or three millions!” said John.
“Ah!” replied the poet.
On the red bridge Sara paused a moment and stood gazing down the river. “What a misty look there is away down there over the salt marshes!” she said, “the boats tipped up on shore, with their slender masts against the sky. The river is certainly going down to the sea, and yet the sea-breeze comes from behind me.”
“The Sebastian is nearer the ocean up here than it is down at its mouth,” said John. “Look across: there is only the North Beach between us here and the ocean.”
“Between us and Africa, you mean.”
“What is it that attracts you toward Africa, Miss St. John?” asked Eugenio.
“Antony,” replied Sara, promptly. “Don’t you remember those wonderful lines written by an Ohio soldier,
“ ‘I am dying, Egypt, dying;
Ebbs the crimson life-tide fast?’ ”
“Dear me, Miss St. John, I hope you are not taking up Antony and Cleopatra to the detriment of the time-honored Romeo and Juliet! Romeo is the orthodox lover, pray remember.”
“But I am heterodox,” replied Sara, smiling.
Beyond the river the road led through the deep white sand of Florida. Iris’s little boots sank ankle deep.
“Take my arm,” said the Captain.
Now taking the arm means more or less, according to the arm and the way it is offered. The Captain was tall, the Captain was strong, and he had a way with him. Iris was small, Iris was graceful, and she had a way with her. To say that from that moment they flirted boundlessly all the afternoon does not express it. I am sorry to say, also, that John and the poet openly, and Sara and I tacitly, egged them on. The bullion star of Mokes had been in the ascendant long enough, we thought. The Professor had a staff, a trowel, and a large basket for specimens. He made forays into the thicket, lost himself regularly, and Miss Sharp as regularly went to the rescue and guided him back.
“How many old tracks there are turning off to the right and the left!” I said. “Where do they go?”
“The most delightful roads are those that go nowhere,” said Eugenio, “roads that go out and haze around in the woods just for fun. Who wants to be always going somewhere?”
“These roads will answer your purpose, then,” said John. “Most of them go nowhere. They did go out to old military posts once upon a time, in the Seminole war, but the military posts have disappeared, and now they go nowhere. They are pretty tracks, some of them, especially the old Indian entrance to St. Augustine—a trail coming up from the south.”
Turning to the right, we passed through a little nook of verdure, leaving the sand behind us. “This,” said John, “is a hamak; and if I have a pet grievance, it is the general use of the word ‘hummock’ in its place. ‘Hummock’ is an arctic word, meaning to pile up ice; but ‘hamak’ is pure Carib or Appalachian, and signifies a resting or abiding place, a small Indian farm. There is another kind of soil in Florida which has the singular name of ‘sobbed land.’ This has a rocky substratum, impervious to water, four feet below the surface, which holds the rain-falls as though it—”
“Devoured its own tears,” suggested Eugenio. “But where are your flowers, good people? Is not this the land of flowers?”
A PINE-BARREN.
“No,” said John; “that is another mistake. The Spaniards happened to land here during the Easter season, which they call Pascua Florida, the flowery Passover, on account of the palms with which their churches are decorated at that time; and so they named the country from the festival, and not from the flowers at all. There is not one word said about flowers in all their voluminous old records—”
“Don’t be statistical, I beg,” interrupted Eugenio. “And are there no flowers, then?”
“Oh yes,” answered Sara, “little wee blossoms in delicate colors starring over the ground, besides violets and gold-cups; these are the yeomanry. The Cherokee roses, the yellow jasmine, and the Spanish-bayonets, with their sceptres of white blossoms, are the nobility.”
Presently we came out upon the barren, with its single feathery trees, its broad sky-sweep, its clear-water ponds, an endless stretch of desert which was yet no desert, but green and fair. The saw-palmetto grew in patches, and rustled its stiff leaves as we passed.
“I can’t think of any thing but Spanish ladies looking out between the sticks of their fans,” remarked Eugenio.
“That’s just like it,” said Iris, and plucking one of the fan-shaped leaves, she gave the idea a lovely coquettish reality. The Captain murmured something (he had a way of murmuring). What it was we could not hear, but then Iris heard, and blushed very prettily. Mokes took the “other young lady,” the sliced one, and walked on loftily. She went. The truth is, they generally go with three millions.
“There is something about the barrens that always gives me the feeling of being far away,” said Sara.
“The old attraction,” replied Eugenio. “ ‘Over the hills and far away’ is the dream of all imaginative souls. Do you remember
“ ‘Afar in the desert I love to ride,
With the silent Bush-boy alone by my side?’ ”
“ ‘There is a happy land,
Far, far away,’ ”
I sang.
LOU-EE-ZY AND LOW-II-ZY.
“Yes, that is it,” said John, “and even our old friend ‘Swannee Ribber’ owes his dominion to the fact that he is ‘far, far away.’ ”
A little trail turned off to a low cabin on the bank of a brook; we saw some flowers, and wandered that way for a moment. It was the lonely little home of a freedman, and two children stood in the doorway staring at us with solemn eyes. We bestowed some pennies, which produced a bob of a courtesy; then some jokes, which brought out the ivories.
“What are your names, children?” I asked.
“They’s jes Lou-ee-zy and Low-ii-zy,” replied a voice from within-doors. “They’s twins, and I’s took car’ ob dein allays.”
It was a crippled old auntie who spoke. She told us her story, with long digressions about “ole massa” and “ole miss.”
“After all, I suspect you were more comfortable in the old times, auntie,” I said.
“What’s dat to do wid de acquisition ob freedom?” replied the old woman, proudly. “De great ting is dis yer: Lou-ee-zy is free, and Low-ii-zy is free! Bot’ ob dem! Bot’ ob dem, ladies!”
“I have never been able to make them confess that they were more comfortable in the old days, no matter how poor and desolate they may be,” I said.
“The divine spark in every breast,” replied Eugenio. “But where is the spring, Hoffman? I like your barren; it smacks of the outlaw and bold buccaneer, after the trim wheat fields of the North, and there is a grand sweep of sky overhead. Nevertheless, I own to being thirsty.”
“It is not ordinary thirst,” replied John; “it is the old yearning which Ponce de Leon always felt when he had come as far as this.”
“He came this way, then, did he?”
“Invariably.”
“If I had been here at the time I should have said, ‘Ponce’ (of course we should have been intimate enough to call each other by our first names)—‘Ponce, my good friend, have your spring a little nearer while you are magically about it!’ ” And taking off his straw hat the poet wiped his white forehead, and looked at us with a quizzical expression in his brilliant eyes.
“It is warm,” confessed Aunt Diana, who, weary and worried, was toiling along almost in silence. Mokes was nearly out of sight with the “other young lady;” Iris and the Captain were absorbed in that murmured conversation so hopeless to outsiders; and Spartan matron though she was, she had not the courage to climb around after the Professor in cloth boots that drew like a magnet the vicious cacti of the thicket. Miss Sharp had leather boots, and climbed valiantly.
At last we came to the place, and filed in through a broken-down fence. We found a deserted house, an overgrown field, a gully, a pool, and an old curb of coquina surrounding the magic spring.
“I wonder if any one was ever massacred here?” observed Sara, looking around.
“The Fountain of Youth,” declaimed John, ladling out the water. “Who will drink? Centuries ago the Indians of Cuba came to these shores to seek the waters of immortality, and as they never returned, they are supposed to be still here somewhere enjoying a continued cherubic existence. Father Martyn himself affirms in his letter to the Pope that there is a spring here the water thereof being drunk straightway maketh the old young again. Ladies and gentlemen, the original and only Ponce de Leon Spring! Who will drink?”
We all drank; and then there was a great silence.
“Well,” said the poet, deliberately, looking around from his seat on the curb, “take it altogether, that shanty, those bushes, the pig-sty, the hopeless sandy field, the oozing pool, and this horrible tepid water, drawn from, to say the least, a dubious source—a very dubious source—it is, all in all, about the ugliest place I ever saw!”
There was a general shout.
“We have suspected it in our hearts all winter,” said the “other young lady;” “but not one of us dared put the thought into words, as it was our only walk.”
The poet staid with us a day or two longer, and charmed us all with his delightful, winsome humor.
“Do you know, I really love that man,” I announced.
“So do I,” said Iris.
“That is nothing,” said John; “he is ‘the poet whom poets love,’ you know.”
“But we are not poets, Mr. Hoffman.”
“We are only plebes, and plebes may very well love what poets love, I think.”
“But it does not always follow,” I said.
“By no means. In this case, however, it is true. All love Eugenio, both poets and plebes.”
“He is the Mendelssohn of poets,” I said; “and, besides that, he is the only person I ever met who reminded me of my idea of Mendelssohn personally—an idea gathered from those charming ‘letters’ and the Auchester book.”
The next evening Eugenio and Sara went off for a stroll on the sea-wall; two hours later Sara came back to our room, laid a blank book on the table, and threw herself into a chair.
“Tired?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“It is a lovely evening.”
“Yes.”
“Did you have a pleasant time?”
“Yes.”
I knew that blank book well; it contained all Sara’s printed stories and verses; my eyes glanced toward it.
“Yes,” said Sara; “there it is! I gave it to him yesterday. I knew he would read it through, and I knew also that I could read his real opinion in those honest eyes of his.”
“Well?”
“There isn’t a thing in it worth the paper it is written on.”
“Oh, Sara!”
“And what is more, I have known it myself all along.”
“Is it possible he said so?”
“He? Never. He said every thing that was generous and kind and cordial and appreciative; and he gave me solid assistance, too, in the way of advice, and suggestive hints worth their weight in gold to an isolated beginner like myself. But—”
“But?”
“Yes, ‘but.’ Through it all, Martha, I could see the truth written in the sky over that old look-out tower; we were on the glacis under that tower all the time, and I never took my eyes off from it. That tower is my fate, I feel sure.”
“What do you mean? Your fate?”
“I don’t know exactly myself. But, nevertheless, in some way or other that look-out tower is connected with my fate—the fate of poor Sara St. John.”
In John Hoffman’s room at the same time another conversation was going on.
John. “Has she genius, do you think?”
Eugenio. “Not an iota.”
John. “What do you mean, you iron-hearted despot? Has the girl no poetry in her?”
UNITED STATES BARRACKS—A DRESS PARADE.
Eugenio. “Plenty; but not of the kind that can express itself in writing. Sara St. John has poetry, but she ought not to try to write it; she is one of the kind to—”
John. “Well, what?”
Eugenio. “Live it.”
Eugenio went, leaving real regret behind. The crowd of tourists began to diminish, the season was approaching its end, and Aunt Diana gathered her strength for a final contest.
“We are not out of the wilderness yet, it seems,” said Sara to me, in her mocking voice. “Mokes, the Captain, the Professor, and the Knickerbocker, and nothing settled! How is this, my countrymen?”
Our last week came, and the Captain and Iris continued their murmured conversations. In vain Aunt Diana, with the vigilance of a Seminole, contested every inch of the ground; the Captain outgeneraled her, and Iris, with her innocent little ways, aided and abetted him. Aunt Di never made open warfare; she believed in strategy; through the whole she never once said, “Iris, you must not,” or wavered for one moment in her charming manner toward the Captain. But the pits she dug for that young man, the barriers she erected, the obstructions she cast in his way, would have astonished even Osceola himself. And all the time she had Mokes to amuse, Mokes the surly, Mokes the wearing, Mokes who was even beginning to talk: openly of going!—yes, absolutely going! One day it came to pass that we all went up to the barracks, to attend a dress parade. The sun was setting, the evening gun sounded across the inlet, the flash of the light-house came back as if in answer, the flag was slowly lowered, and the soldiers paraded in martial array—artillery, “the poetry of the army,” as the romantic young ladies say—“the red-legged branch of the service,” as the soldiers call it.
“What a splendid-looking set of officers!” exclaimed Iris, as the tall figures in full uniform stood motionless in the sunset glow. “But who is that other young officer?”
“The lieutenant,” said the “other young lady.”
“He is very handsome,” said Iris, slowly.
“Yes, very. But he is a provoking fellow. Nobody can do any thing with him.”
“Can’t they?” said Iris, warming to the encounter. (Iris rather liked a difficult subject.) Then, “Oh, I forgot we were going so soon,” she added, with a little sigh. “But I wonder why the Captain never brought him to call upon us?”
“Simply because he won’t be brought,” replied the “other young lady.”
“I will tell you what he is like, Iris,” I said, for I had noticed the young soldier often. “He is like the old Indian description of the St. Johns River: ‘It hath its own way, is alone, and contrary to every other.’ ”
Review over, we went on to the post cemetery, beyond the barracks, the Captain accompanying us, glittering in gold-lace.
“Were there any encounters in or near St. Augustine during the late war?” began Aunt Di, in a determined voice. Time was short now, and she had decided to cut the Gordian knot of Mokes; in the mean time the Captain should not get to Iris unless it was over her dead body.
“No,” replied Antinous. “The nearest approach to it was an alarm, the gunners under arms, and the woods shelled all night, the scouts in the morning bringing in the mangled remains of the enemy—two Florida cows.”
“A charmingly retired life you must lead here,” pursued Aunt Di; “the news from the outside world does not rush in to disturb your peaceful calm.”
No, the Captain said, it did not rush much. Four weeks after President Fillmore’s death they had received their orders to lower the flag and fire funeral guns all day, which they did, to the edification of the Minorcans, the Matanzas River, and the Florida beach generally.
The military cemetery was a shady, grassy place, well tended, peaceful, and even pleasant. A handsome monument to all the soldiers and officers who fell during the long, hard, harassing Seminole war stood on one side, and near it were three low massive pyramids covering the remains of Major Dade and one hundred and seven soldiers, massacred by Osceola’s band.
MILITARY CEMETERY.
“There is a dramatic occurrence connected with this story,” said Miss Sharp, sentimentally. “It seems that this gallant Major Dade and the other young officers attended a ball here in St. Augustine the evening before the battle, dancing nearly all night, and then riding away at dawn, with gay adieux and promises to return soon. That very morning, before the sun was high in heaven, they were all dead men! So like the ‘Battle of Waterloo,’ you remember:
‘There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry.’
I do not think this incident is generally known, however.”
“No, I don’t think it is,” replied John; “for as Major Dade and his command were coming up from Key West and Tampa Bay, on the west side of the State, and had just reached the Withlacoochee River when they met their fate, they must have traveled several hundred miles that night, besides swimming the St. Johns twice, to attend the ball and return in time for the battle. However,” he added, seeing the discomfiture of the governess, “I have no doubt they would have been very glad to have attended it had it been possible, and we will let it go as one of those things that ‘might have been,’ as I said the other day to a young lady who, having been quite romantic over the ‘Bravo’s Lane,’ was disgusted to find that it had nothing at all to do with handsome operatic scoundrels in slouch hats and feathers, but was so called after a worthy family here named Bravo.”
The Professor now began to rehearse the Dade story; indeed, he gave us an abstract of the whole Florida war. Aunt Diana professed herself much interested, and leaned on the Captain’s arm all the time. Miss Sharp took notes.
“Come,” whispered Sara, “let us go back and sit on the sea-wall.”
“Why?” I said, for I rather liked watching the Captain’s impalement.
“Martha Miles,” demanded Sara, “do you think—do you really think that I am going either to stand or stand through another massacre?”
The next morning I was summoned to Aunt Di by a hasty three-cornered note, and found her in a darkened room, with a handkerchief bound around her head.
“A headache, Aunt Di?”
“Yes, Niece Martha, and worse—a heartache also,” replied a muffled voice.
“What is the trouble?”
“Adrian Mokes has gone!”
“Gone?”
“Yes, this morning.”
“Off on that hunting expedition?”
“No,” replied Aunt Diana, sadly; “he has gone, never to return.”
I took a seat by the bedside, for I knew Aunt Di had a story to tell. Now and then she did let out her troubles to me, and then seemed to feel the better for it, and ready to go on for another six months. I was a sort of safety-valve for the high pressure of her many plans.
“You know all I have done for Iris,” she began, “the care I have bestowed upon her. Unhappy child! she has thrown aside a princely fortune with that frivolity which she inherits from her father’s family. My dear sister Clementina had no such traits.”
“Did she really refuse him, then?”
“No; even that comfort was denied to me,” said poor Aunt Di; “it would have been something, at any rate. But no; her conduct has been such that he simply announced to me that he had decided to take a leisurely trip around the world, and afterward he might spend a year or so in England, where the society was suited to his tastes—no shop-keepers, and that sort of thing.”
“Happy England!” I said; but Aunt Di went on with her lamentations. “He certainly admired Iris, and Iris has certainly encouraged him for months. It is all very well to talk about romance, but Iris is an extravagant little thing, and would be wretched as a poor man’s wife; even you can not deny that, Niece Martha” (I could not, and did not). “Mokes would have suited her very well in the long-run, and now, by her own foolishness, she has lost him forever. I must confess I felt sick at heart, to say nothing of being chilled to the bone sitting on that damp stone.”
“And where were you then?”
“Well, to tell the truth, I thought I would hint a little something to Mokes—delicately, of course—and, as we were walking to and fro on the sea-wall, I proposed strolling into the demi-lune.”
“That demi-lune!” I exclaimed.
“Yes; it is quite retired, you know, and I had never seen it.”
That demi-lune!
But that was not all I had to lay up against that venerable and mysterious outlying fortification. The next afternoon I myself strolled up there, and passing by the two dragons, their two houses, and the supply of mutton hanging up below, I climbed the old stairway, and turning the angle, sat down on the grass to rest a while. I had a new novel, and leaning back comfortably against the parapet, I began to read; but the warm sunshine lulled me before I knew it into one of those soothing after-dinner naps so dear to forty years. The sound of voices woke me. “No; Miss Miles is superficial, not to say flippant.”
(“Decidedly, listeners never hear any good of themselves,” I thought; “but I can’t show myself now, of course, without making matters worse. If they should come up farther, I can be sound asleep.” For the voice came from the little hidden stairway, and belonged unmistakably to our solemn Professor.)
“And Miss St. John is decidedly overbearing,” continued our learned friend.
“It is only too true,” sighed the voice of the governess. “But those are the faults of the feminine mind when undisciplined by regular mental training.”
“I have noticed, however, one mind” (and here the Professor’s voice took a tender tone)—“one mind, Miss Sharp, whose workings seem to follow my own, one mind in which I can see an interest, veiled, of course, as is seemly, but still plainly discernible to the penetrative eye—an interest in my Great Work, now in process of compilation. My emotional nature has, I fear, been somewhat neglected in the cultivation of my intellectual faculties, but there is still time for its development, I think.”
Miss Sharp, in a gentle, assenting murmur, thought there was.
(“So it has come about at last,” I said to myself; “and very well suited they are, too.”)
“This mind might be of assistance to me in many ways,” continued the Professor. “I could mould it to my own. And I can not let the present happy occasion pass without disclosing to you, my dear Miss Sharp, the state of my feelings. Although youthful, Miss Carew—”
“Iris!” I repeated, under my breath.
“Iris!” ejaculated the governess.
“Yes, Iris, if I may use the gentle name,” said the Professor.
But I would not let him proceed; I felt for that woman down stairs as though she had been a man and a brother, and I was determined to save her from the rest. I threw my book and a great piece of rock over the side of that perfidious old demi-lune, the startled Professor rushed up the stairs, and there I was, innocently waking up, and regretting that the wind had blown the new volume off the parapet. I took that man’s arm, and I walked him home, and I never stopped talking one instant until I had masked the retreat of the governess up stairs to her own room; and then I went back to Hospital Street and told Sara.
“No doubt she is sitting there now, surrounded by her relics, the vicious-looking roots, the shells, the lumps of coquina, the spiny things, and the bone,” said Sara, laughing.
“Don’t laugh, Sara; it is too real. She liked that man.”
“So much the worse for her, then,” replied my companion. “She had better tear out her heart and throw it to the dogs at once.”
When Sara answered me after that fashion, I generally let her alone.
“Aunt Diana is really going to-morrow,” I said, the next evening, as John Hoffman and I stood leaning on the Plaza railing, waiting for the mail.
“Yes; shall you go also?”
“No; we have decided to remain another week, Sara and I. But I am really surprised; I thought Iris would carry the day; she was determined to stay longer.”
“I think I can account for that,” said John, smiling. “We were walking together last evening in the moonlight on the sea-wall, and, happening to stroll into the demi-lune—”
“Oh, that demi-lune!”
“Yes, that demi-lune. There we found the Captain.”
“The Captain?”
“The Captain. But not alone. Miss Arabella—Miss Van Amsterdam was with him!”
Now Miss Van Amsterdam was a beauty and an heiress.
The next morning we bade farewell to the departing half of our party. “Do you think that impervious old Professor will try it again between here and New York?” I said, as we strolled back from the little dépôt.
“I doubt it,” answered Sara. “He is the kind that goes in ankle deep, and then hesitates over the final plunge. But probably all the rest of his life he will cherish the delusion that he had only to speak, and he will intimate as much to his cronies over a temperate and confidential glass of whisky on winter nights.”
“After all, Miss Sharp is worth twenty Professors. How silently and even smilingly she bore her fate! Iris, now, pouted openly over the Captain’s desertion.”
“She will forget all about it before she is half way to Tocoi, and there will be a new train of admirers behind her before the steamer enters the Savannah harbor,” said Sara, smiling.
“Do you know who has been the real heroine of the romance of these last weeks, Sara?”
“Who?”
“The demi-lune!”
Our one remaining week rolled its hours swiftly along. Every morning the Sabre-boy began the day by ringing his great bell, beginning on the ground-floor, then up the stairs, a salvo in our little entry-way, a flurry around the corner, and a long excursion down the gallery, with a salute to all outdoors on the rear balcony; then counter-march, ringing all the time, back to the second-story stairs, up the stairway, and a tremendous clanging at the three blue doors; then, face about, and over the whole route again down to the ground-floor, where a final flourish in jig time always brought the sleepy idea that he was dancing a double-shuffle of triumph in conclusion.
“I don’t know which is the worst,” said Sara, “the dogs that bark all night, the roosters that crow all day, the Sabre and his morning clanging, or the cathedral chimes, those venerable and much-written-about relics that ring in the hours like a fire-alarm of cow-bells gone mad.”
“Do you know that to-morrow will be Easter?” I said, when we had but two days left. “We must ask Mr. Hoffman to take us out this evening to hear the Minorcans sing; to-morrow we will go to the Episcopal church, and then, on Monday, ho! for the bonny North.”
“Very bonny!” said Sara.
“Do you agree to the programme, mademoiselle?”
“All save the church-going.”
“We are not Episcopalians, I know, but on Easter-Sunday—”
“Oh, it isn’t that, Martha. I don’t want to go to church at all. I am not in the mood.”
“But, Sara, my dear—”
“Yes, and Sara, my dear! Religion is for two classes—the happy and the resigned. I belong to neither. I am lost out of the first, and I haven’t yet found the second. I took this journey to please you, Martha. I don’t blame you; it was all chance; but—You think you know all my life. You know nothing about it. Martha, I was once engaged to John Hoffman.”
“What! engaged?”
“Yes, for six short months. But it was ten years ago, and I was only eighteen. He had forgotten both it and me, as I could see by his face when you first introduced him on that New York steamer. I am only one of a succession, I presume,” continued Sara, in a bitter tone. (I thought it very likely, but did not say so.) “I was at home up in the mountains then, and he came that way on a hunting expedition. It was the old, old story, and I was so happy! I knew little and cared less about his social position. I was educated, therefore I was his peer. But he was stern, and I was proud; he was unyielding, and I rebellious; he wished to rule, and I would obey no one, although I would have given him freely the absolute devotion of every breath had he not demanded it. We parted, still up in the mountains, where he had lingered for my sake, and I had never seen him since that day until, when fairly out at sea, he appeared on the deck of that steamer. He took the initiative immediately with his calm politeness, and I was not to be outdone. I flatter myself that not one of you suspected that we had ever met before. And now, Martha, not one word, please. There is nothing to say. We shall soon be parted again, very likely for another ten years, as he does not return North with us. Do not fancy that I am unhappy about it. I am like Esther in Bleak House, when, after that unwished-for and unpleasant offer of marriage, she nevertheless found herself weeping as she had not done since the days when she buried the dear old doll down in the garden. It is only that the old chords are stirred, Martha dear; nothing more.”
EASTER-EVEN SERENADE.
When, late in the evening, John sent up word that he was waiting for us, I hesitated; but Sara rose and said, “Come,” in her calm, every-day manner, and I went.
“What will it be like, Mr. Hoffman?” I said, as soon as we reached the street, in order to make talk.
“Principally singing,” he replied, “according to an old custom of the Minorcans. On Easter-even the young men assemble with musical instruments, and visit the houses of all their friends. Before they begin singing they tap on the shutter, and if they are welcome there is an answering tap within. Then follows the long hymn they call Fromajardis, always the same seven verses, with a chorus after each verse, all in the Minorcan dialect. Next comes a recitative soliciting the customary gifts, a bag is held under the window, and the people of the house open the shutter, and drop into it eggs, cheese, cakes, and other dainties, while the young men acknowledge their bounty with a song, and then depart.”
We followed the singers for an hour, listening to the ancient song, which sounded sweetly through the narrow streets in the midnight stillness. My two companions talked on as usual, but I could not. I was haunted by that picture of ten years ago.
Easter-Sunday morning I went to church alone; Sara would not go with me. John Hoffman sat near me. I mentioned it when I returned home.
“I hate such religion as his,” said Sara. She was lying on the couch, with her defiant eyes fixed on the blank wall opposite.
“Dear child,” I said, “do not speak in that tone. It is ten years since you knew him, and indeed I do think he is quite earnest and sincere. No doubt he has changed—”
“He has not changed,” interrupted Sara; “he is the same cold, hard, proud—”
Her voice ceased, and looking up, I saw that she had turned her face to the wall, and was silently weeping.
In the evening I begged her to come with me to the Sunday-school festival. “It will do you good to see the children, and hear them sing,” I said.
She went passively; she had regained her composure, and moved about, pale and calm.
The church stood on the Plaza; it was small, but beautiful and complete, with chancel and memorial windows of stained glass. Flowers adorned it, intertwined with the soft cloudy gray moss, a profusion of blossoms which could not be equaled in any Northern church, because of its very carelessness. Not the least impressive incident, at least to Northern eyes, was the fact that the ranks of the children singing, “Onward, Christian soldiers,” were headed by an officer in the United States uniform, the colonel commanding the post, who was also the superintendent of the Sunday-school. And when, in reading his report, the superintendent bowed his head in acknowledgment of the rector’s cordial aid and sympathy, those who knew that the rector had been himself a soldier all through those four long years, and fighting, too, on the other side, felt their hearts stirred within them to see the two now meeting as Christian soldiers, bound together in love for Christ’s kingdom, while around them, bearing flower-crowned banners, stood children both from the North and from the South, to whom the late war was as much a thing of the dead past as the Revolution of seventy-six.
As we came out of the church the rising moon was shining over Anastasia Island, lighting up the inlet with a golden path.
“Let us go up once more to the old fort,” whispered Sara, keeping me in the deep shadow of the trees as John Hoffman passed by, evidently seeking us.
“Alone?”
“Yes; there are two of us, and it will be quite safe, for the whole town is abroad in the moonlight. Do content me, Martha. I want to stand once more on that far point of the glacis under my look-out tower. That tower is my fate, you know. Come; it will be the last time.”
We walked up the sea-wall and out on to the glacis, with the light-house flashing and fading opposite; the look-out tower rose high and dark against the sky. Feeling wearied, I sat down and leaned my head against one of the old cannon; but Sara went out to the far point, and gazed up at the look-out.
“My fate!” she murmured; “my fate!”
A quick step sounded on the stone; from the other side, leaping over the wall, came John Hoffman; he did not see me as I sat in the shadow, but went out on to the point where the solitary figure stood looking up at the ruined tower.
“Sara,” he said, taking her hand, “shall we go back to ten years ago?”
THE LOOK-OUT TOWER.
And Fate, in the person of the old watch-tower, let a star shine out through her ruined windows as a token that all was well.
Vol. L.—No. 296—13