Part 5

I here interrupted the flow of his conversation to say: “Your experience is not unlike that of the reviewer who criticized ‘Silas Lapham,’ and who had a sort of hazy notion from the similarity of titles that it was by the author of ‘Silas Marner.’ You may remember, it created a good deal of amusement at the time. He said that it was a mistake for George Eliot to try to write a novel of American life; that the vital essence--American humor--was lacking; that Silas Lapham was a dull Englishman transplanted bodily into a very British Boston; that his daughters were mere puppets, and the attempts at Americanisms doleful in the extreme. He concluded by saying that her ‘Romola’ had shown that she was best on British soil, and that she would better keep to the snug little isle in the future.”

“Yes,” said he, with a grin; “I remember that. It was my first criticism. Most people supposed it was a humorous skit, even the editors who accepted it, but I never was more in earnest. I was young then.”

_Q._ If you received a book to review with the name of Hardy on the title-page, would you give it a good send-off?

_A._ I certainly should, for I am a great admirer of Hardy; but I should prefer to wait until some one else had done so, for fear it might be another put-up job and turn out to be the work of some fifth-rate English author.

I then brought him out of his trance. He sat silent for a moment. I picked up the “Saturday Review” from the table and said, “Criticism is a very noble calling.”

“It is indeed,” he responded earnestly. “It is one that requires great insight into human nature, absolute independence, and not a little charity.”

With which beautiful sentiments he rose and, bowing, left the room.

XXVI

HOW ’RASMUS PAID THE MORTGAGE

A DIALECT STORY

I

Oh, de wolf an’ de har’ dey had a great fight. (Down on de ribber de wil’ geese is callin’.) De har’ pulled de wolf’s teeth so’s he couldn’ bite. (A-callin’ me to my long home!) Said de wolf to de har’, “Don’ hit so hard.” (De dew on de hollyhock’s all a-dryin’!) An’ he killed de har’ w’en he co’t him oaf his guard. (Ah’ll dry up an’ go home!)

Up the vista formed by a narrow, tortuous Virginia lane, came Uncle ’Rasmus, an aged darky, singing one of the songs of his race that never grow old--because they die young, it may be.

As he hobbled along the path, he talked to himself, as was his wont:

“Golly! Ah mus’ hurry up, o’ de fo’kses won’ hab no dinnah; for, be jabers, ’tis mesilf that has got to git riddy dthat same. Och, worra! worra! but ’tis no synekewer Oi’m havin’, an’ dthat’s dther trut’.”

Just then his watch struck five minutes to six, and he ran off toward the homestead of Squire Lamar, saying, as he did so, in his quaint way: “Veepin’ Rachel! der boss will kick der live out mit me.”

Before the war Squire Lamar had been the richest man in Oconee County; but the conflict had ruined him, and he now had little except his plantation, horses, and stables. He lived in his ancestral house, which was heavily mortgaged, with his wife and children.

’Rasmus, his only servant, an ex-slave, supported the family by collecting dollars--at night.

As he ran toward the house, he saw Squire Lamar on the veranda. Just then a horseman dashed up. He was the sheriff of Oconee County. ’Rasmus took advantage of the commotion, and ran into the kitchen to cook the dinner. On seeing the squire, the sheriff called out to him: “The mortgage on this place will be foreclosed if the $3600 due is not forthcoming by to-morrow noon.”

“Alas!” said the squire; “you see how we are situated. I haven’t a dollar, and wouldn’t know how to earn one if I had.”

At this juncture, ’Rasmus, who had cooked the dinner during the conversation, came up and said: “Massa, Ah’s a free man, Ah know Ah is; but avick, ’t is a mighty shmall wan Oi’d be if I wouldn’t help out a poor omadhaun like yerself. ‘Caed mille fail the Bryn Mawr dolce far niente.’ Zat ees mon motto, an’ so, deah massah, I will guarantee to git de money by to-morrow noon.” Then turning to the sheriff, he said in a manly tone that contrasted ill with his ragged garments: “Ye maun fash awee, laddie, doon the skim.”

After a few more words, the sheriff, who was really a kind man at heart, rode off, saying he would be on hand the next day, and if the money were not forthcoming, he would march them all off to the county jail, ten miles distant. After blowing the dinner-horn, ’Rasmus hobbled off to his humble cottage.

II

On arriving at his cabin, ’Rasmus took a bolster-case full of dollars from under the bed, and proceeded to count them. There were just $3000. “Now, Ah mus’ git $600 more before to-morrow, or else me poor masther’ll be wor-r-rkin’ in the chain-gang. Ach, Himmel!” said the good old darky, his eyes suffused with tears, “if dot took blace, it zeems as if mein herz would break.”

He calmly decided on a plan of action, however. Waiting until night had flung over the earth a pall, through which the silvery moon cast shimmering beams aslant the quivering aspens of the forest, and the snoring of the birds told him that nature slept, he left his house and walked briskly off to the highway.

About that time a lawyer was riding along the road on horseback, with a wallet containing a share of an estate worth $600, which he had secured for an old woman.

’Rasmus saw the traveler, saw the horse, saw the wallet.

The traveler saw no one. He was blind--drunk.

’Rasmus cut a stout bludgeon.

The traveler ambled on.

’Rasmus clasped the bludgeon.

The traveler continued to amble.

’Rasmus stole up beside him....

The traveler lay in the ditch.

’Rasmus jumped on the horse, the wallet in his hand, and galloped home, stabling the beautiful animal in his cabin to avoid being suspected of the murder.

Placing his shoe in front of the one window of the cabin, that none might see him, he counted the money, and found it amounted to just $600, which, together with the $3000, formed the sum required by the sheriff. This made him so happy that he picked up a banjo and played Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” through once or twice, accompanying himself on his throat in a rich tenor. He then turned out the gas and retired, to sleep as only a good, unselfish soul can.

III

It is 11:45 A. M. The squire and his family, who have heard nothing from ’Rasmus, are on the veranda, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the sheriff.

11:50 A. M.! Is ’Rasmus dead? Has the sheriff relented?

11:55. Good lack! The sheriff is seen galloping toward the house, and yet there is no sign of ’Rasmus.

That individual, who is nothing if not dramatic, is sitting behind the house on horseback, awaiting the stroke of twelve.

The door of the ormolu cuckoo-clock in the kitchen opens, the cuckoo advances. At her first note the sheriff jumps from his horse; at the second he walks sternly upon the veranda; at the third he asks for the money; at the fourth and fifth they tell him that ’Rasmus has disappeared; at the sixth, seventh, and eighth he handcuffs them all together; at the ninth, tenth, and eleventh he jumps on his horse and rides off, dragging them behind him; and at the twelfth ’Rasmus trots leisurely out from behind the house, and, opening a carpet-bag, counts out $3600 in silver!

The astonished sheriff puts the money into his pocket, gives Squire Lamar a receipt in full for it, unlocks the handcuffs, and the family resume their wonted places on the veranda.

But all was not yet done. ’Rasmus still had his bludgeon with him, and a few deft strokes on the sheriff’s head were all-sufficient. ’Rasmus then took back the money and gave it to Squire Lamar. Then he told them all to remain perfectly still, and whistling three times, an amateur photographer made his appearance, adjusted his apparatus, and took their pictures.

Sarony could have wished for no better subjects. On the broad veranda lay the old lady prone on the floor, reading the “Tallahassee Inland Mariner”; at her side sat her daughter, Turk-fashion, shelling a pea; while the son and heir reclined near by, reading an account by a Prussian officer of the third battle of Bull Run. The father, weighted down with dollars, snored in the background.

And beaming on them all with the consciousness of having done his best and done it well, old ’Rasmus stood, singing ventriloquially, so as not to injure the picture, this negro plantation song:

De ribber Jordan I can see, Toujour jamais, toujour jamais; Mein liebe frau, ach, she lofes me, Fair Jeannie het awa! Then I wen’ daown the caows to milk, Toujour jamais, toujour jamais; Me lika banan’ as softa as silk, Helas, cordon, by gar!

XXVII

’MIDST ARMED FOES

BY THE AUTHOR OF “DUNN TO DEATH; OR, THE WEATHER PROPHET’S FATE,” “SARAH THE SALES-WOM-LADY; OR, FROM COUNTER TO COUNTESS,” ETC.

Raoul Chevreuilly stood within a rude hut in the dark recesses of the forest of Fontainebleau. By his side stood his lady-love, the beautiful Perichole Perihelion. Without, the night was black and the wind roared as it is wont to do in stories of this type.

“Dost fear aught, my precious?” asked Raoul, gazing at the French face of the lovely Parisian.

“Why should I fear when I am protected by my Raoul--how do you pronounce Raoul, anyway?” replied she.

“I long ago gave up trying. But, Perichole, while I would not have you fear, yet it is no light task that I have undertaken--your defense against as fierce a pack of roistering thieves as ever beset the forest and who now surround this hut. Let but the wind die down so that they may be heard, and they will hurl execrations at me and beat down the door. Réné Charpentier seeks my life because I have promised to be yours, or rather because you have promised to be mine. But he shall kill me only at the expense of my life. Yea, though he had twice a hundred myrmidons at his back and beck.”

For answer the entrancing girl took a mother-of-pearl jews’ harp off the wall and played “Mlle. Rosie O’Grady,” “There’ll be a chaud temps in the vieux ville ce soir,” and other simple French ditties.

Instead of admiring her pluck, Raoul was moved to fury, and he cried in French,--this whole business is supposed to be in French, except the descriptions,--“Is it impossible to move you to a realization of my bravery? Know, then, that, save for ourselves, there is not a human being within three miles of this hut. I had thought that you would be moved to added love by such an exhibition of bravery on my part as your defense against a hundred bravos; but, _viol di gamba!_ you have no imagination.”

“And Réné Charpentier?”

“There is no such fellow. He is but a pigment--I mean figment of my brain.”

Flinging a pair of arms around his French neck, the adorable Perichole kissed Raoul again and once more. Then she said, “My adored one, that you were brave I suspected--are you not the hero of a French novel? But I never knew that you were such a lovely liar. Raoul, my own forevermore!”

And her beautiful face beamed with a love-light whose wick had been newly trimmed.

XXVIII

AT THE SIGN OF THE CYGNET

A COSMOPOLITAN ROMANCE

I

It was late spring in New England. Buttercups bespangled the grass and nodded and smiled at the apple-blossoms in the trees. And the apple-blossoms nodded in return, and in a few days fluttered down to the buttercups.

On the front stoop of an old baronial castle in the south of France stood Armand Maria Sylvestre de Faience Pomade Pommedeterre. He had been standing there all the morning, he knew not why. True, he looked well, but he would have looked as well anywhere else, and he might have been doing something. Still, there is time. It is but the first chapter.

Godiva Churchill Churchill, of Churchill Wolde, Biddecumb on Baddecumb, the only daughter of her widowed mother and widowered father, cantered slowly down the roadway that led to Churchill Hall, the home of the Churchills for seven centuries. Her right cheek was overflushed, and ever and anon she bit her chin. England could boast of no prettier girl than Godiva, nor did England boast of it as much as Godiva did.

II

It is summer in New England. The as yet colorless spears of goldenrod give warning that the year is speeding speedily. The buttercups fled long ago with the apple-blossoms, and from the verdant limbs of the apple-trees hang bullet-like apples.

Armand Maria Sylvestre de Faience Pomade Pommedeterre is still in the south of France. My French map is mislaid, and I cannot spell the name of the place he is at, but it is on bottles, I think. He has left the front stoop, and passes his time gazing at the goldfish in the fountain and waiting to be drawn into the plot of my story. Patient man!

Godiva Churchill Churchill, of Churchill Wolde, Biddecumb on Baddecumb, is still in the saddle, filled with vague longings.

III

Purple asters fringe the highways of New England, and rosy apples depend from the boughs in countless orchards. (I think that scenery is my strong point.)

Armand Maria Sylvestre de Faience Pomade Pommedeterre is chafing at my delay, but continues to reside in the south of France from sheer inertia.

Godiva Churchill Churchill, of Churchill Wolde, Biddecumb on Baddecumb, has worn out the left fore foot of her horse by her incessant cantering upon the graveled paths of Churchill Hall. She is beginning to feel resentment at me for the enforced monotony of her existence, but heavens! how can I help it? I’m trying my level best to evolve a plot.

IV

The flowers that gladdened the meads and highways and shady lanes of New England are gone. Winter’s robes of office are thrown carelessly over the landscape, and apples in innumerable barrels stand in the cellars, waiting for better prices.

The reason why I have so faithfully described New England scenery is because that’s the only kind of scenery I know anything about.

I am ashamed to confess it, but this is the last chapter, and blamed if I can think of any good reason for the departure of Armand Maria Sylvestre de Faience Pomade Pommedeterre from the south of France. He can’t speak a word of English, and if you’re thinking of Godiva, she can’t speak a syllable of French.

Poor Godiva Churchill Churchill, of Churchill Wolde, Biddecumb on Baddecumb! She is quite lame from her long-continued exercise in the saddle, but still canters aimlessly about. She has become the laughing-stock of all the tenants of Churchill Wolde, and it’s all my fault.

If she saw Armand she’d fall in love with him, but I can’t think of a way to bring about their meeting. That’s what it is to lack invention.

Just imagine me trying to write a novel!

Anyhow, I’ve got a good title for the story.

THE END

XXIX

A SCOTCH SKETCH

The shadows lengthened on old Ben Nevis. Surely none of my readers imagines that Ben Nevis is the hero of my simple Scotch sketch. If so, he is awa off. Ben Nevis is a mountain, and I have flung it in as a suitable background for the following conversation:

“Mither, mither, ye’ll mek nae doot o’ haein’ roast beef fer supper,” said Hillocks Kilspindie, as he sat on the old bench in front of their cottage door.

With a troubled look, his mother, old Margaret Kilspindie, replied: “Man, Hillocks, div ye no see me buyin’ the haggis?”

“Yes, mither; but I’m sair sick o’ haggis. Syne Scotch literatoor kem in it’s hard put we are to live at all. I say may the plague take Maclaren and Barrie and Crockett. Before they began to write”--and in his excitement Hillocks was using as good English as any other Scotchman in real life--“roast beef and wheat bread and chops and tomato-sauce and other Christian dishes were good enough for us all. Then came the influx of Americans who wanted to see the scenes made immortal by the ‘Bonnie Brier Bush’ (I wish Ian might have scratched his writing-hand upon it) and the ‘Window in Thrums’ (which I wish some one had broken before Barrie saw it), and now it is haggis in the morning, and haggis at noon, and haggis at night, and Scotch dialect that tears my tongue to pieces all the time.”

“Hech, my bairnie; but thae are wrang words, an’ fu’ o’ unchristian bitterness.”

“Oh, mother! drop your ‘hechs’ and your ‘fu’s.’ There are no Americans about this evening. It’s hard enough to talk the abominable gibberish when we have to, without keeping it up all the time. But, tell me, mother, couldn’t you smuggle in a little roast beef to-night, and let me eat in the cellar?” And a pleading look came into the young man’s eyes that was hard to resist.

“My bairn--I mean my boy, I’d like to, but I dare not. Maclaren’s inspectors are due here any minute, and I could ill afford to pay the heavy fine that would be levied if we were found with as English a thing as roast beef in the house. No, lad, we maun stick to parritch and haggis--I mean we must stick to oatmeal and haggis.”

Just then the sentry that was stationed at the outskirts of the village to warn the villagers of the approach of Americans gave the laugh of warning: “H-O! H-O! H-O!” And, with a bitter look on his face, and a shake of his fist in the direction of Loch Lomond, Ben Nevis, Ben Bolt, and various other bits of Scotch scenery that were scattered about, Hillocks Kilspindie said to his mother: “Weel, as surees deith a’ c’u’dna help it; tae be sittin’ on peens for mair than twa oors, tryin’ tae get a grup o’ a man’s heads. (I learned that this morning, mother. Isn’t it a looloo?)”

“(Indeed it is, my son. Look out! The Americans are almost within ear-shot.) Noo we’ve tae begin an’ keep it up till they gang awa, for there mauna be a cheep aboot the hoose, for Annie’s sake! Here they are.”

“Mither! Mither! if ye lo’e me bring me mair haggis.”

CHORUS OF AMERICANS. Oh, how adorably Scotch!

“Losh keep us a’, but the childie’ll eat his mither oot o’ hoose an’ hame wi’ his haggis. Ye’ll find some o’ it i’ the cupboard.”

AMERICAN (_politely to_ HILLOCKS). Have some haggis on me.

HILLOCKS (_with a canny Scotch leer_). Thanks; but I prefer a plate.

UNRELATED STORIES--RELATED

XXX

EPHRATA SYMONDS’S DOUBLE LIFE

I

Ephrata Symonds was a knave. Of that there was no doubt. It stuck out all over him. His face was a chart of wickedness, and it was his open boast that he had never done any good in his life, and, please the devil, he never intended doing any. He had married early in life (in a fit of absent-mindedness), but he had long since forsaken his wife and children.

“Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do”; but, to speak in a paradox, Satan never gave him any employment, for he was ever busy--at evil. It was when he was just turned fifty that he was elected a member of the Evil-doers’ Club. He soon became popular, and upon the incarceration of the president of the club, the trusted cashier of the Tyninth National Bank, Symonds was unanimously elected president in his place.

That he was the right man for the position he immediately proved by presenting the club with a fine new club-house, which he assured them was not his to give, or he would not have presented it. In the first six months of his presidency he eloped with two married women at once, and so managed the trip that neither suspected that she was not quite alone in his company. He deserted them both in the West, and returned to pose before his fellow club-members. He diverted to his use the little property of a friendless woman, and in many characteristic ways showed himself to be thoroughly bad.

It was at this period of his life that his death came, and his last words were: “I am thankful that no man is the better for my having lived.”

His fellow Evil-doers mourned his departure with sincerity. They felt that in losing such a thoroughly bad man they had suffered a loss which it would be impossible to repair. As the secretary feelingly put it, “Hell is the worse for having him.” “Yes,” said another; “he was admirably bad. And it is the more to his credit that he was bad in spite of adverse influences. His parents were pious people, and Ephrata had every temptation to lead a life of virtue; but in the face of all the obstacles that his father put in the way of his becoming vicious, he persevered, and yesterday I had the honor of telling his old mother that her son was undoubtedly the most wicked man in New York. It made quite an impression on her. We shall ne’er see his like again.”

The parlors of the Evil-doers’ Club were draped in black, and mock resolutions of sympathy were sent to his deserted wife.

II

Great was the chagrin of the members of the club when it began to be bruited among them that Symonds had been leading a double life; that his wickedness was but a cloak to hide his goodness. The rumors were at first pooh-poohed, but when it was remembered that every third week he had always absented himself from town, the story that he was really a good man began to wear an air of truth. Detectives were set to work, and the damning proofs of his deceitful goodness multiplied rapidly, and at last the facts came out, but only to the club-members. They felt that it would not be creditable to allow such scandalous stories to be repeated to the world at large, which would only too willingly point the finger of scorn at them on learning that their chief officer had, in spite of every lure, gone right. Some might even go so far as to insinuate that maybe other members were better than they seemed to be. No; Symonds’s disreputable goodness should continue to be as well cloaked as he had cloaked it while alive.

The story of his goodness is as follows: It seems that every third week of his life had been spent in Boston, and while there he had earned a large income as a life-insurance agent. It was his wont to spend this money in doing good. Nothing was known in the Hub of his private life. He lived at the Adams House, and cultivated an austerity of manner that repelled people; but by underhand means he contrived to ameliorate a deal of misery.

Having become convinced in his early youth that unostentatious benevolence was preferable to a life of good works blazoned forth to an admiring world, he had habituated himself to every form of vice, in order, under cover of it, to pursue unobserved the efforts he was to put forth for the good of his fellow-men. And he had well succeeded. When Elias Hapgood, who had for thirty years subsisted on the bounty of an unknown benefactor, read in the Boston “Herald” an account of the death of Ephrata Symonds, “the wickedest man in New York,” he breathed a prayer of thankfulness that the world was rid of such a man, little knowing that he was misjudging his best friend. And Elias was but one of scores that had been similarly benefited. Symonds’s charities had been literally endless and invariably anonymous. And now, after having, as it were, lived down his good works, it was a little hard that death should have torn from him the lifelong mask of deceit, and set him before his fellow-members for what he was--a thoroughly good man.

III

It was a special business meeting of the Evil-doers’ Club. The chairman rapped for order, and the secretary read the following resolutions:

“WHEREAS, It has pleased Nature to take from among us Ephrata Symonds, for some time our honored president;

“WHEREAS, We had always supposed him to be a man of the most exemplary wickedness, a man before whom all Evil-doers might well hide their diminished heads in despair of ever approaching his level of degradation;

“WHEREAS, His life had always seemed to us a perfectly unbroken and singularly consistent chain of crimes and enormities to be emulated by us all; and

“WHEREAS, It has lately come to be known that his wickedness was but a mask to hide a life of well-doing, occupied in its every third week with deeds of kindness and generosity;