"Oh!" he exclaimed. "How did you happen to come?"
"To follow after those gone before."
"I see," he said. "Relatives, I suppose? Hope you found them well?"
"No," I replied, carrying on the humor, "dying."
He jingled his coins, and asked, "Anything to be done for them?"
"Nothing."
"What"s the complaint?"
"Civilization in the abstract, repeating rifles and rapid-firing guns in the concrete."
"Eh!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.
Then the lowest and sweetest of voices said, "Won"t you tell us what you mean?"
Was it my irritation that the man before me, rather than the subtler-pa.s.sioned people I knew so well, was the dominant type of the moment, or was it the sympathy your voice stirred within me, which made me speak? In a moment I was sketching broadly the inhumanity of this thing we call Christian civilization, which, more grasping than the Inquisition, has overrun the world, tearing the lands from their owners, and, not content with this spoliation, demands of its victims that they shall give up the customs of many centuries" evolution, and conform to habits, governments, and religions which their very instincts make impossible; and because they cannot change, but break out, these believers in the golden rule shoot them down. I protested at the mockery of calling civilized a world held at peace by constant slaughter, or of styling the national Jack Ketches of humanity Christian nations! I protested against the right of one man to hold another barbaric because he will not welcome his master, greet with joy the bands of steel we call railroads, and crush his nature within the walls of vast factories, to make himself the threefold slave of society, government, and employer. And finally, I gloried in the fact that though the white races had found a weapon against the black and yellow ones which enabled them to overrun and subjugate, yet nature had provided nature"s people with the defense of climate,--a death-line to the whites; and behind that line the colored races are unconquerable in the sense of conquest being extinction. I knew the other side, that altruistic tenet of political economy defined in brief as "the greatest good of the greatest number," and in my mind held the even balance of the historian between the two; but to this utilitarian, modern, self-satisfied American I had to urge the rights of races thousands of years our senior, and far in advance of us in the knowledge and amenities that make life worth the most.
You both were silent till I ended; but I had best left unspoken what your companion could not understand, for when I finished he inquired, "What mountains did you say you came from?" And when I told him, he added laughingly, "You must have some pretty good stump speaking in your elections."
"We are very grateful for your explanation," you thanked me gently.
"Never been in America?" he surmised; and except for you I should have told him that I was his countryman, it would have been so adequate a retort to his inference. But your voice and manner had made me so ashamed of my earlier mood that I merely answered, "Yes."
"Humph!" he grunted in surprise; and as if to prove his incorrigibility he continued, "Thought your ideas were too back-number for that."
I could not help laughing, and the moment my laugh became articulate yours too overflowed your lips, as a spring breaks past its edges and falls rippling over pebbles.
That laugh, so well remembered, revealed your presence to me. My heart beat quickly and my head whirled dizzily, and in my bewilderment I took a step backward, quite forgetting the embrasure, till a stone gave way and I felt that I was falling. Then my consciousness went from me, and when thought came surging backward I lay a moment quiet, thinking it must have been a dream.
"He"s coming round all right," I heard, and at the sound I opened my eyes. You were leaning over me with the moonlight shining on your face, and I caught my breath, you were so beautiful.
"You"ve given us a scare," continued the man, on whose knee my head was resting. "You want to keep your wits about you better. Pretty poor business tumbling off walls, but that"s what comes of having ruins. You won"t be quite so c.o.c.ky in the future about your run-out races."
I felt his laughter justified, but hardly heeded it, my thoughts were so engaged. You were wetting my forehead with brandy, and I lay there too happy to speak.
"Now let me raise you a bit higher," the man offered kindly, "so you can get your addled senses back." He lifted me, and I groaned at the sudden terrible pain that shot up my leg.
"h.e.l.lo!" he cried, laying me gently down. "Something wrong, after all?
What is it?"
"My leg," I moaned.
"Here, Maizie, hold his head, while I appoint an investigating committee," he ordered, and in another moment I felt your arms about me, and in my joy at your touch I almost forgot my torture.
"Well, you"ve broken one of your walking-sticks," the man informed me, after a gentler touching of it than I thought possible to his nature.
"Now, Maizie, if you"ll sit and hold his head, I"ll get a litter. You won"t mind staying here alone, will you?"
"It is my wish," you acceded calmly.
"O. K.," he said, rising, and even in his kindness he could not help but seize the opportunity to glorify his country. "If this had happened in New York, Mr. Altai, we"d have had an ambulance here five minutes ago!
Civilization isn"t all bad, I tell you, as you"d find out if you"d give it a chance."
The moment he was gone I tried to speak, and murmured "Maizie;" but you let me get no further, saying "Hush," and putting your hand softly over my lips. I suppose you thought me merely repeating the name he had called you, while I loved your touch too deeply to resist the hand I longed to kiss. Now I am glad I did not speak, for if I had it would have robbed me of my last sweet moment with you.
Long before I thought it possible, and far too soon, indeed, despite my suffering, we heard men approaching. When the torch-bearers came climbing over the rocks, my first desire was to see how much of your beauty was owing to the moonlight, and my heart leaped with exultation to find that you were beautiful even in the livid glare of the torches.
"Now, Mr. Altai," your companion remarked, "where shall we take you?"
and I gave him the name of the hotel. A moment later, as they lifted me, I again fainted, but not till I had kissed your hand. You s.n.a.t.c.hed it away, and did not hear my weakly whispered "Good-night, Maizie."
VII
_February 26._ The setting of my leg, that night, was so long and exhausting an operation that after it was done I was given an opiate.
Instead of bringing oblivion the drug produced a dreamy condition, in which I was cognizant of nothing that happened about me, and saw only your face. I knew I ought to sleep, and did my best to think of other things; but try as I might, my thought would return and dwell upon your beauty.
I have often wished I had been born an artist, that I might try to paint your portrait, for words can no more picture you than they can transmit the fragrance of a violet. Indeed, to me the only word which even expresses your charm is "radiant," and that to others, who have never seen you, would suggest little. No real beauty can be described, for it rests in nothing that is tangible. In truth, to speak of your glorious hair, the whiteness of your brow and throat, the brilliant softness of your eyes, or the sweetness yet strength of your tender though unsmiling lips is to make but a travesty of description. I have heard painters talk of your hair and try to convey an idea of its beauty, but I know it too well even to make the attempt. When we were gazing at the rainbow, last autumn, and you said that if its tints could be transferred to a palette you believed it would be possible to paint anything, I could not help correcting, "Except your hair." You laughed, and declared, "I did not know you ever made that kind of a speech!"
whereupon Agnes cried, "Didn"t I ever tell you, Maizie, the compliment the doctor paid you last winter?" I thought she was alluding to my retort when my mother a.s.serted that your eyes were so large and l.u.s.trous that, to her, they were "positively loud." Indignant at such a remark, Agnes had appealed to me to deny it. Not caring to treat the malicious speech seriously, I had answered that I could not agree, though I had sometimes thought your eyes "too dressy for the daytime,"--a joke I have heard so often quoted that it is apparently in a measure descriptive, yet one which I should have felt mortified at hearing repeated to you.
Fortunately Agnes"s reference was to another remark of mine, in which, speaking of your mouth, I had crudely translated a couple of lines from a Persian poem:--
"In vain you strive to speak a bitter word-- It meets the sweetness of your lips ere it is heard."
You were too used to compliments to be embarra.s.sed when the lines were repeated, and only looked at me in a puzzled way. I do not wonder you were surprised at the implied admiration of the two speeches, after my apparent coldness and indifference. My behavior must seem to you as full of contradictions as your beauty is to me. To say your great attraction is the radiance--the verve, spirit, and capacity for enthusiasm--of which one cannot fail to be conscious is to deny the calm dignity with which you bear yourself, yet both these qualities belong to you. The world insists that you are proud and distant, and your face has the clean-cut features which we a.s.sociate with patrician blood, while your height and figure, and the set and carriage of your head upon that slender throat, suggest a G.o.ddess. But I, who understand you so much better than the world, know that your proud face overlies the tenderest of natures, and is not an index, but a mask of feelings you do not care to show. As for the people who criticise you most, they would be the last to do so if they were not conscious of the very superiority they try to lessen.--Ah, how foolish it is to write all this, as if I needed to convince myself of what I know so well! And even if this were for the eye of others, to those who know you not it would be but the extravagant idealism for which a lover is proverbial.
When I awoke from the sleep my dreaming had drifted into, my first request of my father was to find your whereabouts. He told me that a dragoman had come that morning to inquire for me,--and had left what now he showed me,--a great bunch of roses and a basket of fruit, with the card of "Mr. Foster G. Blodgett, 547 Fifth Avenue," on the back of which was written:--
"With sincere regrets that a previously formed plan of leaving Tangier this morning prevents our seeing our courteous instructor of last night, and with hopes that he may have a quick and easy recovery from his accident."
The card was a man"s, but the handwriting was feminine, and the moment my father turned his back I kissed it. I was further told that the servant had asked my name and taken it down, giving me the instant hope that when you knew to whom you had been so merciful, you would even disarrange your plans to let me have a moment"s glimpse of you. But though I listened all the afternoon hopefully and expectantly, you never came. I felt such shyness about you, I did not speak to my father of your beauty, and he did not question me at all.
Our native hotel, built in Eastern fashion about a court, with only blank outside walls, was no place in which to pa.s.s a long invalidism, and three days later my father had me carried to the steamer, and, crossing to Gibraltar, we traveled by easy railroad trips to Leipzig. We had left our belongings with Jastrow, and he begged us, on our arrival, to become members of his household, which we were only too glad to do for a time. His joy over my return was most touching, and he and Humzel both seemed to regard me very much as if I were the creation of their own brains, who was to bring them immortal fame in time. My father had long before counseled me to be a pursuer of knowledge, and not of money; telling me the winning of the latter narrowed the intellect and stunted the finer qualities of one"s nature, making all men natural enemies, while the acquisition of the former broadened one"s mind, developed the n.o.bility within, and engendered love of one"s a.s.sociates. These two men ill.u.s.trated his theory, and had my tendency been avaricious I think their unselfish love and example would have made me otherwise. And yet, how dare I claim to be free from sordidness, when all my thoughts and hopes and daily life are now bent on winning money?
My leg was far too troublesome to permit me to sit at a desk, but my father insisted on being my scribe; and thus, lying on a lounge, I began part of the work I had so long planned, taking up for my first book the Turkish irruption, the crusades against the Saracens, and their subsequent history. Thinking so much of you, both as the child who had won my boyish heart and as the beautiful woman whose face had fascinated and moved me so deeply, I do not know how, except for my work, I should have lived through those long and weary months of enforced inaction while my leg so slowly knit.
More as recreation from this serious endeavor than as supplementary labor, I gathered the articles I had written for the Deutsche Rundshau and the Revue des Deux Mondes from time to time in our travels, and with new material from my journal I worked the whole into a popular account of what we had seen and done. While I still used a walking-stick I was reading proof of the German edition, and my English replica, rather than translation, was under negotiation through my publisher for London and New York editions. My father, who busied himself with a French version, insisted that the book would be a great success, and the articles under my a.s.sumed name had been so well noticed that I was myself hopeful of what better work in book form might do for my reputation; for against his advice, I had determined to abandon my pseudonym.
But all these schemes and hopes were forgotten in the illness of my father. Contrary to my wishes, he had overworked himself in the French translation, while his life, for months of my enforced inactivity, had been one long service, impossible for me to avoid or refuse without giving him pain. This double exertion proved too great a strain. The day after he sent the ma.n.u.script to Paris, as he sat conning the sheets of the concluding chapter of my history, he laid them down without a word, and, leaning forward, quietly rested his head upon the table. I was by his side and had him on the sofa in an instant, where he lay unconscious till the doctor came. We were told that it was a slight stroke, and by the next day he seemed quite well. But slowly he lost the use of one side, and within a week was helpless. I like to remember that I was well enough to tend him as he had tended me. He lingered for a month, sweet and gentle as always; then, one evening, as I sat beside him, he opened his eyes and said, "Good-night, Don. Good-night, Maizie."
And with those words his loving soul went back to its Creator.
I found about his neck a ribbon to which was attached a locket containing the long tress you cut off for him that day in the Bois, one of my mother"s curls, and a little tow-colored lock which I suppose was my own hair before it darkened,--a locket I have since worn unchanged, because, sadly discordant though such a.s.sociation has become, I cannot bring myself to separate what he tied together. It seems to symbolize his love for all of us.
The kindness of my friends I can never forget. I was so broken down as really to be unfit for thought, and their generous foresight did everything possible to spare me trouble or pain. Especially to Professor and Frau Jastrow do I owe an unpayable debt, for they made me feel that there was still some one in whose love I stood first; and had I been the child who had never come to them, I question if they could have done more for me than they did.