EPILOGUE.
"What a mournful glory falls upon the October woods! It seems as if a broken rain-bow were strained through a sieve of gray clouds, and sprinkled over the crisp leaves. Ochre, vermillion, dappled russet, and all rare tintings! And then the wind that rushes so gloriously through the woodlands, bearing with it a rich, earthy smell, and scattering the purple wealth, the h.o.a.rded gold of the autumnal days! Pleasant Forest, with your oaken harps! Pleasant little Town, lying quietly in sunshine and moonlight--how sad I was to leave ye! Pleasant River, that stealest up from the sea, past the fort and into the old weather-beaten seaport town--crawling lazily among the rotting piers of deserted wharves, then gliding off through the shaky bridge, squirming and curveting into a world of greenery, like a great serpent with an emerald back! And the girls!
Village belles, rustic flirts--eyes, lips, shady curls, white hands, little feet, enchanting pouts--ah, me!
"Pleasant it was when woods were green, And winds were soft and low--"
This rhapsodical soliloquy was interrupted one fine October morning, two days after my return from the sea-side, by a voice there was no mistaking.
It was Barescythe, who startled Mrs. Muggins with the following pertinent inquiry:
"Prolific producer of sea-prodigies, is Ralph at home?"
I could not see Mrs. Muggins" face, for that good soul was standing at the foot of the stairs; but I knew her feelings were injured, and I hastened out of my room to prevent any verbal combat that might ensue.
MRS. MUGGINS, (_after a long silence, and with some asperity_)--"What, sir?"
BARESCYTHE, (_petulantly_)--"Is Ralph in, Sycorax?"
What reply the "relick" of Joshua Muggins might have made to this interrogation, is only to be imagined; for I immediately "discovered"
myself, to use a theatrical phrase, and led my solemn friend from hostile ground.
"My dear Barry," said I, after greeting him cordially, "you shouldn"t--"
"Shouldn"t what?"
"Call Mrs. Muggins names."
"Sycorax? She deserved it. Women are Cleopatras until they are thirty, then they are old witches with broomstick propensities! Don"t interrupt me.
Don"t speak to me."
I choked down a panegyric on Woman, for I knew that Barry was thinking of a cold, heartless piece of femininity that, years and years ago, forgot her troth to an honest man, and ran away with a moustache and twenty-four gilt b.u.t.tons. I could never see why he regretted it, for Mrs. Captain Mary O"Donehugh never stopped growing till she could turn down a two hundred weight; and she looks anything but interesting, with her long file of little O"Donehughs--nascent captains and middies in the bud!
I knew that Barescythe was not in a mood to be critically just, yet, for the sake of turning his thoughts into different channels, I glanced significantly at the MS. under his arm.
"My Novel," I ventured.
"Like the man in the play," said Barescythe, "the world should ask somebody to write it down an a.s.s!"
With which, he threw the ma.n.u.script on the table before me.
His remark was uttered with such an air of logic, that I nodded a.s.sent, for I never disagree with logicians.
"The world is wide-mouthed, long-eared, and stupid--it will probably like that affair of yours, though I doubt if the book sells."
And Barry pointed to the curled up novel on the table.
I bowed with, "I hope it will."
"The world," he continued, "that gave Milton 10 for _Paradise Lost_, ought surely to be in ecstacies over DAISY"S NECKLACE."
"Barry," said I, somewhat nettled, "is it my good nature, or your lack of it, that seduces you into saying such disagreeable things?"
"Neither, Ralph, for I no more lack good nature than you possess it. But we won"t quarrel. I am sore because the day of great books has gone by! Once we could boast of giant minds: we have only pigmies now."
"But let them speak, Barry. There may be some among us that are not for a day. Who foresaw in the strolling player, in the wild, thoughtless Will Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Dramatist of all time? Your pet Homer was a mendicant. Legions of our best poets were not acknowledged, until the brain that thought, was worn out, the hand that toiled, cold, and the lips that murmured, patient forever!
"So angels walked unknown on earth, But when they flew were recognized!"
What if my poor story is stale and flat beside the _chef-d"oeuvre_ of Sir Walter Scott"s genius? Barry, there is a little bird in our New-England woods known only by its pleasant chirp; yet who would break its amber bill because the nightingales in eastern lands warble so deliciously?"
Barry laughed.
"There you come, Ralph, with your bird-conceits! You flap the wings of some thread-bare metaphor in my face, and I cannot see for the feathers! You are not a man to argue with. Poetical men never are: they make up in sentiment what they lack in sense; and very often it happens that a bit of poetry is more than a match for a piece of logic. "No more of that, Hal, an" thou lovest me." Your book is a miserable one. All your voluble ingenuity cannot controvert _that_."
Barry"s better nature had slipped out of him for a moment into the sunshine, like a turtle"s head; but it slipped back again, and the speech that commenced with a laugh ended with a snarl.
"It shows," he said, rumpling the ma.n.u.script with a careless hand, "a want of Art. The construction of the tale is crude: the characters are all old friends with new names--broken down stage-horses with new harnesses--and the prose throughout is uneven. How can it be otherwise, since it is only an intolerable echo of Hood, d.i.c.kens, and Charles Reade? Your want of artistic genius is shown in taking three chapters to elaborate "little Bell," who has no kind of influence in working out the plot, and who dies conveniently at Chapter III. Your imitative proclivities are prominent in the chapter headed "A Few Specimens of Humanity." Was ever anything more like the author of "The Old Curiosity Shop?" Your short, jerky sentences are modeled after Reade"s "Peg Woffington," and "Christie Johnstone," or any of Dumas" thefts. As to the plot, _that_ is altogether too improbable and silly for serious criticism. And then the t.i.tle, "Daisy"s Necklace"--"Betsy"s Garter!""
"Ah, Barry, this is only Fadladeen and Feramorz over again! Do you remember that after all the strictures of the eastern _savant_, Feramorz turned out to be not only a Poet but a Prince? I could take you to be "Blackwood" slashing an American book, rather than a Yankee editor looking over a friend"s virgin novel. You are like all critics, Barry. They ignore what might please them greatly if they had not their critical behavior on, and grow savage over that part of an author which they should speedily forget--like a dog on a country highway, that turns up his cold nose at the delicate hedge-blossoms, and growls over a decayed bone! So you find nothing to admire in my sixteen chapters?"
"Not much."
"Then say a good word for that little."
"There are some lines, Ralph, some whole paragraphs, may be, that would be very fine in a poem; but in an every-day novel they are strikingly out of place. Your jewels, (heart-jewels I suppose you call "em,) seem to me like diamonds on the bosom of a calicoed and untidy chambermaid. That sentimental chapter with "The Dead Hope" caption, is quite as good as your blank verse, and I would wager a copy of Griswold"s "Poets of America,"
against a doubtful three-cent piece, that you wrote it in rhyme--it"s not very difficult, you know, to turn your poetry into prose. You needn"t stare. In a word, your book is as tame as a sick kitten--I hate kittens: there"s something diabolical in a yellow cat!"
I nipped a smile in the bud, and said, quietly:
"I intended to write a tame, simple domestic story. The facts are garnered from my own experience, and--"
"Garnered from your maternal grandparent, Ralph! Very much I believe it.
Very much anybody will. It"s a wonder to me that you didn"t call the book "Heart-life by an Anatomy"!"
"I will acknowledge, Barescythe, that I have not done my best in this affair. "Yet consider," as Fabricio says in the play, ""twas done at a sitting: a single sitting, by all the saints! I will do better when I have those pistoles, and may use time." Local tales of this school have been popular. I wrote mine to sell."
"But it won"t."
"Why?"
"Let"s see. How many "sunsets" have you in the book?"
"Not many, I think."
"That was an oversight. There should be one at the end of each chapter--twenty "sunsets" at least. Then you have no seduction."
"A seduction?" horrified.