IF one of the ancient proprietors of the regions about Manhattan—say Wanacapeen or Taquamarke or Awarazawis or Longe Classe or Kneed—could rise from under his particular heap of clam- and oyster-shells and walk again, it would do his savage heart good to come upon the estate of John Dunbar, Esq.; for if he confined his regards to its edges and shores, and did not foolishly penetrate—foolishly, from his point of view—to the house and gardens, he would recognize his own dear woodlands, left to forest themselves since the year one, the shaggy hickory from which he cut the bow, the sassafras from which he stole the succulent root, and the weedy, rocky beach where the fiddler-crabs scuttle and the clams spurt, from which he launched the jolly canoe upon the happy fishing-waters of Pelham Bay. The rich saloon-keeper, who drives his fast horse out of town to City Island of a Sunday; the man who scorches thither with his best girl upon the same blessed occasion, and the father of the family—eleven, to one horse, with lunch in paper bags—who similarly spends his day of rest, all know that the enchanting forest, held in bounds by a low stone wall, on the right, just after you cross Pelham bridge—Pelham bridge is falling down!—is the mile-thick screen to the private life of that great financier.
The house itself rose two hundred years ago, in the time of the first Dunbar, on the hill within the forest, and was paid for in the skins of the beaver. Anon, as it became loved of the family, it grew and put out wings and ball-rooms and halls, and became great. Around it are gardens of flowers and strawberries, lawns, and huge, single trees. The house is overrun with pipe-vines and roses. There is one wing to accommodate twenty bachelors, and as many shower-baths. There are three pianos, so far apart that pieces thundered upon each at the same time will not collide. There are forty horses in the stable, and in the bay a yacht whose business it is to take Mr. Dunbar to his Wall-street office every morning and home every night.
One Sunday in June, the impressively rich Mr. Dunbar, in perfect clothes, sat on his high horse Lotus, and talked over the top of a box hedge to a beautiful lady in a white dress, who was up to her knees in cut roses and was working further havoc with a pair of bright scissors. The lady was tall and slender. She looked about twenty-eight. As a matter of fact, she had been for twenty years the wife of the tall, careworn man on the horse, and had borne him two sons and two daughters, one of the daughters being herself married. Dunbar's face had finance and success written upon it in deep, grim lines. His hair was thin, but not yet gray; his mustache, half white; his expression, set and tired. Only his eyes—for they twinkled when he spoke to people he liked—showed that life was still worth living.
"Is this Mr. Beauling coming?" said the lady.
"He will be in for lunch," said Dunbar. "He's visiting at New Rochelle, and telephones that he will ride down."
"Who is he?" said Mrs. Dunbar. "Wareing's letter was so absurd and biblical"—she cut through the waxy green stem of a yellow rose—"that I really couldn't get the drift."
"Wareing—steady, boy!—was going to make him something in China, I believe," said Dunbar; "president of some rich coal-mines that he was going to build a line to. The scheme, it seems, was rather visionary even for Wareing, and fell through. That's all I know. I suppose he felt sorry to have to disappoint Beauling, and is trying to give him a good time."
"But why pick on us particularly?" said Mrs. Dunbar.
"Well, Wareing is a very old friend; and, after all, it is not much trouble. We can afford to be polite," he added whimsically.
The rose-garden, with its lofty box hedge, lay close to the spot where the driveway came out of the woods.
"Listen," said Mrs. Dunbar.
A sound came faintly through the trees of the dactylic measure of a horse cantering, and a beautiful, deep voice raised in song. The sounds grew louder, and occasionally a word was distinguishable out of the notes of the song.
"What a voice!" said Mrs. Dunbar, and she listened raptly.
Of—and proud degree,
Said, 'Gracious king,⏑—⏑—,
Our gracious queen to be.'"
Then all the words came out clearly and pridefully.
'And I will choose,' said he,
'The loveliest in all the world
To be my queen to me.'"
"I beg your pardon," said the man, "but those woods were so beautiful that I thought they would last forever, and I didn't know I was anywhere near anybody. I hope that you didn't think that I was a whole carriageful of loafers with a beer-keg. You see," he said, "I love to sing, and sometimes I can't help doing it." Then the man blushed very becomingly.
"I just talk along," he said, "and leave out the whole point of everything. My name is Beauling, and I think—I mean I hope—you are expecting me to lunch."
Mr. Dunbar put his heels into Lotus, rode up to Beauling, and shook hands with him, liking him at once.
"Of course we're expecting you, Mr. Beauling," he said; "and the manner in which you came was really a great privilege to us. It sounded beautiful."
Mrs. Dunbar smiled over the top of the hedge.
"I can't shake hands." she said, "but I'm very glad to meet you, Mr. Beauling; and if you men wish to be very useful you can each take an armful of roses for me."
Sheaves of roses were passed over the hedge, and the gentlemen took them in their arms.
"You can take them up to the house," said Mrs. Dunbar, "and make yourselves clean and beautiful for lunch."
They rode up to the house, gave the horses to one man, the roses to another, and went in. They made ready for lunch.
It was served on a thick, dark, straight-grained, dully shining mahogany, in a huge room that had French windows to the floor along one side, and smelled of roses. There was one mighty sideboard rich with plate, and another that was a foam of chiseled glass. Three men-servants waited. The table was laid for four.
"My sons," explained Mrs. Dunbar, "are having examinations up at New Haven, and my daughter Phylis"—with a deprecating look at the vacant place—"is always late."
"Phylis is not the youngest," said Dunbar, affectionately, "but she is the most spoiled."
A white apparition that sparkled sailed into the room.
A clear, low voice said something about not getting up. The gentlemen rose. And the heart of Beauling began to thump as if he had been smoking too much.
"Who was singing in the woods?" said the voice. "Was it you, papa, gifted suddenly from above, or was it the great god Pan?"
"It was I," said Beauling, timidly.
"I liked it so," said the apparition, and she turned full upon the dauntless Beauling,—who, skulking in the shadow which the fates had suddenly cast over him, was fixedly regarding his plate,—and hummed mockingly: 'And I will choose,' said he,
'The loveliest in all the world
To be my queen to me.'"
"My dear Phylis," said Mrs. Dunbar, "I won't allow you to hum at table."
Tom Beauling looked up from his plate, and saw that the white apparition which sparkled was, as he had half supposed, a maiden.
My dear Phylis: Picture to yourself the positively firework succession of events and regrets in the last few days. I received sailing orders—I like to pretend that I am in the navy—packed my things, met you, saw you three times in three days, desired greatly that my ship go without me, said "Good-by" to you, answered your absurd note, by so doing missed my ship, caught her in a tug-boat—at a vast outlay of capital, which you must repay me by a real letter—and here I am in a lifting corner of the smoking-room, listening to the bone being ground in the teeth of the ship, the slap of the water alongside, smelling salt—do you know the smell of apples in autumn and the smell of salt at sea move my heart like bugle-calls?—and picturing to myself your great, cool house, the wide verandas, the shady trees, the bowl of roses on the dining-table, the alarums and excursions of servants, the discipline of order which passes all understanding. Truly, your lady mother is the genius of housekeeping, and how easily she does it! And your father, that wise swayer of finance, how easily he pays the bills! I liked you all; the actualities of those present and the shadows—no, that is a somber word—the presences of those absent. Did you like me? I should love you to. Did you? No—not did you, but do you? And is it because I am a tramp—a do much and accomplish nothing—on the face of everything? I came to you from a black coal-mine; I left you—because I had to—for a bright beach of palms. To me, when I was little, that sort of thing used to shed halos of luminous romance around the heads of the people that did it—no matter how big the heads, or how little was in them—but it doesn't now. How black the coal-mine! How weary the beach of palms! But I believe in the bottom of my heart that you liked me. I am going to go through life pretending that you did, anyhow; and if you are a perfect lady, you must never tell me the contrary.
How shall I thank you for being so good to me in your great, cool house on the hill? And those strawberries in the full, fair garden! Verily, they were good to me, and cruelly did I eat of them. Will you give my love to the Greuze in the library, to the chiseled glass on the sideboard, and to the stranger that is without your gate? Is there one at present? And how I envy him! I was the last. Did he come as I came, bearing letters to your father from the Great Mogul of Pennsylvania? Or did he come shining from fairyland, with the accoutrements of a prince? You must tell me when such an one comes, that I may felicite you.
We are going through fog now, and every minute we bellow hoarsely, as the ocean animals of one of those ages that end in "oic" must have bellowed. It is rank cold, and there are no strawberries. But long live the gods! And longest live Oceanus, son of Gaea. But of goddesses, may Phylis live the longest!
Dear Phylis: Much have I walked silent by the shores of the loud-resounding sea, revolving your father, the prodigious payer of bills, in my stout heart. A draft has not come, and my divers are clamoring for their pay. We are back from the fishing-grounds, with the smell of the rotting shell still in our nostrils, and many pearls under lock and key. The flower out of decay, out of the oyster the pearl! And if a draft doesn't come I cannot pay my bills, and my pearls will be stolen from me. Some of them are beauties. It is great sport, pearl-fishing—more exciting than whales, because there is a bigger element of greed, and twice as dangerous, for the boats are more fragile and the storms more severe. I went down once, because I dreamed that if I did I should find the most desirable pearl in the ocean. I didn't. They put me in the suit and helmet and lowered me—not kicking, for my soles were too heavy with lead, but dreadfully afraid—over the side. Down I went, and down, till I became blind; for it is only the skilled—the blase divers—that can see at real depths; my feet touched bottom—I swear they did, though the men say I was only half way down. My head split right down the middle—it's grown together again, somehow. I yelled with fright, and begged to be taken out. Then I remembered how to signal—or else did it by accident—and up I went, very slowly. Then they got the things off, and I lay about the rest of the day and bled at the nose, and everybody laughed at me.
Man delighteth to speak of himself, and I, delighting therein more than other men, have forgot my troubles. But a steamer toots in the offing and recalls them, for mayhap my draft is on board and my pearls are to remain mine, and perhaps there is a letter from you. Do you know if there were to be only one of the two, and I could choose which—I would not choose the draft. Pearls are merely—pearls. I am, dear lady.
Dear Phylis: Avicula Meleagrina margaritifera, a lamellibranchiate mollusk of the family Aviculidae. There is a plunge into science for you! And you can look it up in a book to see if it is spelled right, if you like. It stands for pearl-oyster, and the book will go on to say that it is not really an oyster, after all, and the book will tell you many other things besides. But it will not tell you just how rough and ugly is the outside of the shell, just how smooth and beautiful the inside, or just how iridescent and many-colored, from the serenest pink to the flamingest red, or how the oyster, lowest and most exquisitely creative of artisans, fashions the pearl in self-defense, and fashions his house beautiful, because he cannot bear to live in a house ugly. It will not tell you these things, nor even hint at them, for they are facts—and what book of science was ever known to even hint at a fact! Truly, your pearl-oyster is like a strong man with a clean soul—rough without, full fair within. All his days he passeth content in the deep seas, fashioning the beautiful to the glory of nature. And what is his most beautiful work we shall never know, for the most desirable pearl remaineth forever in the sea, and is the missing link that proveth the immortality of the soul.
A junk of Chinamen came out of the east to the beaches while I was there, and these are great enslavers of Sir Oyster, for they do catch him and put him in a tank and within his house a thin metal image of Buddha. This Sir Oyster, in his anguish, fasteneth to his shell and spreadeth over with a soft iridescence of pearl, so that he maketh within himself, as it were, a shrine, and great is the promulgation of the faith. These Chinamen are a mysterious and gallant lot—you should see their compass, horrific. with dragons and unsportsmanlike devices—speaking no man's language and 'going masterfully about their business. The yellow brown of them where the sun has struck is great color, and their voices—blok-tok-chok—sound like little hammers beating on metal that does not resound. They are up the earliest, and to bed when work is done. Not so my Tamils—alas! they, with other wild crews, made night hideous and wailed in their cups. The beach where we were was six feet deep with shells for miles and miles. Do you wonder? Alexander of Macedon had pearls of these seas. Cleopatra's pearl came from a shell that was rotted on this beach. Hither for thousands of years the fishers have come, hence they have gone, and no fisher abideth long in one stay. And this fisher, Phylis, will have that beach in his nostrils till he does die.
And how am I to thank you for your letter, bringing a peace as of home into this wild life. And you say that I shall always be welcome in the great, cool house on the hill?
For the present my face is neither east nor west—the duplicate direction of home—but north to Bombay, for Tomas Beauling is going on a pleasure trip with his well-gotten gains; but then the face will be for home. Sixteen thousand miles! I deride the whole circumference of the globe, let alone a mere segment.
I must carry this to the home mail.
Dear Phylis: You will perhaps think in your charitable mind that a letter from me to you has been written and has miscarried, and that that is the reason you have not heard for so long a time from your faithful servant. No. I have not written to you for two months, nor have I written to anybody nor known that there was anybody to write to. I have had one of these Eastern fevers—whether jungle or pearl I do not know—which baffle the wise, and must cure itself or not be cured. Well, I seem to be over it, but you wouldn't bow to me if you met me in the street—and I dare not describe myself to you. Samson shorn of his locks was not so futile; Laocoön in the folds of the serpents was not so helpless; and Thersites, who was the ugliest man that ever came to Troy, was not so ugly. Alas! what has become of stalwart Beauling? Dear lady, I had to forego Bombay, and come by slow stages up to this hill station of Nuwara Elyia—you say it New-rail-ya—to be in the cool. This is the place where they grow the best tea in the world and make the worst It is a wonderful long valley, thousands of feet above the sea, covered with deep, shiny green tea and bright turf—for there are Englishmen here, and your English civilize with wateringcan and roller—and surrounded by tall hills, bristling with bamboo jungle and dark with keena trees. It was so wonderful coming up! You do it in a rattledy-da train, and at first you go through swamp lands and rice lands and wet green jungles of palm and villages of plantain and other jungles of palm and creepers and flowers. And the train climbs and climbs, and little painted posts tell you how high you are, and natives see the train and run after it, and when they have caught up sell you cocoanuts through the window, or ancient Shinhalese coins, and you rock as at sea, and are very hot and give thanks for that there is no dust. You rest at Kandy, rickshaw around the lake under the stars, and listen to the life of the village with one ear and to the life of the jungle with the other. You visit Buddha's tooth in its jeweled caskets—the outer one is of rubies!—and you drive to Peridynia, and for the first time in your life see orchids as are orchids. Again the train, and up you go. And now the thing takes on a bold air of majesty, for you crawl out on precipices and overlook great depths—so green and wet and luxuriant I—vast prospects, green mountains, blue sky, white clouds. There is preached to you many a gospel of space and immortality. Bordering the track are century-plants as big as huts, and sometimes bigger. You pass through the giant fern belt. Trees they are of the most delicate shapes, the most springy green. Now there is a waterfall, a pool at the bottom, and a tame elephant np to his eyes in the clean water. His goodwife is on the bank; she shivers and coquettes and daintily tries the temperature with her foot, and says, if he'll excuse her, she really thinks she will not bathe to-day. And of a sudden she gathers herself into an object-lesson of prehistoric dignity, elemental force,—what you will,—strides boldly in, and "What the devil have time, space, heat, and cold to do with me?" says she. And now the elephants are left behind, and away down the hill I behold, with mixed feelings, an ancestor of mine—but not of yours, Phylis! He is in the top of a high tree, hugging himself.
I am writing too longly. But, dear Phylis, I have been through the Valley of the Shadow, and it is so good to be alive again, and cool, and writing to you.
Will you give my regards to your people?
I am writing to you from a deep chair, on a wide veranda which overlooks the whole valley. But the view is halved by a famous keena tree, which, though not very tall, is thirty-six feet around the base and discouraging to one in search of wide prospects. So I content me with what is near at hand, a hedge of heliotrope as high as my shoulder, a hedge of calla-lilies—a bright-green lizard is shining in the cup of one—and an amiable yellow chow-dog, who has been stalking lizards for fifteen years and is still waggishly afraid.
The pearls are on view at a banker's in Colombo, and I have had an offer for them—a good one, that I am going to accept—and whom do you think it is from! Well, it's from a man who represents a celebrated house that stands on Union Square, Noo York. And what do you think of that! Sure, Phylis, this orb is but pinched and small. To think of doing business with Union Square in the heart of a jungle! "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."
Yours was a grand letter to get, and it must have been fun to write. No, I never shot tiger, but when I reach Calcutta I shall see one in a cage. It's Calcutta I'm going to, not Bombay. Why I felt called upon to say Bombay, I don't know. Things were changing places and whirling round the last time I wrote. But now behold me very steady again—a proficient speler, a good geografer, and your faithfullest servant,
Dear Phylis: I feel so personal this morning! I want to live differently, and have done with the picturesque. I don't want to be a Wandering Jew of a Christian any more. It's all on account of the Holy Man of Benares. I saw him this morning in his garden. He sits there year in and year out, teaching gently and wisely. Millions visit him, and go away better. They come in sackcloth and ashes and shaven heads, with the faith of little children, and are blessed; they come in the clothes of the West, armed with the cynicism of modernity, men whom the setting sun and great companies have robbed of belief, and they go away speaking reverently of Christ and Buddha. I want to write about the Holy Man of Benares with a big H. He is white with abstemation, and does not look like a Hindu, but more like one of the great senators from Virginia in the early days—shaven every morning to the last hair, frail and bloodless, with black, piercing, kindly eyes, and comforting words for the weak and weary. I could not stand more reverently in the presence of Christ. There he sits the long years of the latter end of his long, pure life, and millions are better and more faithful because he is sitting there. Just as stones continually dropped in the center of a placid pond send gentle waves to the shores, so the Holy Man of Benares, dropping golden words in the center of India, sends out waves of gentleness to the confines of gentle religion. And his people, who love animals—even the serpent—because God made them, take to themselves wings and fly into heaven or ever they come to die.
I went into the Monkey Temple this morning, and played with the absurd little people for two hours. They are of all sizes of monkeys, and live in the fear of three mangy dogs, but of no man. They sit upon the edge of the temple top and catch thrown cakes with all the adept movements and flourishes of professional base-ball players. They take you trustingly by the hand and lead you about; little green babies, with fringy faces, tell you hard-luck stories, and big gentlemen monkeys, with impressive teeth, intimidate you dreadfully, threaten you with thrashings, and laugh till their sides ache because you are excusably afraid. Mother monkeys whisper the woes of the menage. And disgraceful old grandfathers swing furiously by their tails, or gather in gesticulating clumps, and tell each other smoking-room stories which one is too young to hear.
Here also is a Cow Temple—an archway out of the crowded street, a courtyard with a well in the center—marigolds have been thrown into that well every day for a thousand years—and the smell of rotting shell is as nothing to the smell of rotted marigolds. Crowded—crowded? Jammed, during the hours of worship, with cows. They go there unprompted. Singly, if very devout; in threes and fours, if more gossiply inclined. I cannot make out if the most of them go hoping to become better cows, or merely to see and criticize each other's new marigold wreaths.
In the streets of Benares the manytempled, the much-worshiped, the devout, are people stepped out of the Bible. Pilgrims in sackcloth and ashes, looking like lepers, with feet swollen and lame from the long pilgrimage, strolling prophets, fanatics—all the shades of brown and all the shapes of Eastern faces are there, shaven of head, ecstatic of sonl. Along the muddy Ganges are stairways of stone, stairways that have slidden into the river, stairways that are falling to pieces, stairways worn hollow, stairways that are building; above is a jagged line of many-colored temples and green trees. In the early morning you go a-boating in a fat boat with a roof; upon the roof you sit in a wicker chair, and rollop along the devout shore. The people bathe in all their clothes in the early morning, for the waters of this river are known to make a soul holy, and confidently supposed to make a body clean. Thousands of people bathing to their chins; thousands on the steps in many-colored dripping clothes; a white, hazy sun, hung low, and the stillness of a wilderness.
One man is standing on his head and hands facing some holy point across the river. This is the third morning of his incomprehensible inspiration; this afternoon he will turn right side up and take nourishment. Three days with the head on a hard stone! O Phylis, you and I belong to a race of feeble will and small faith!
Here also in the early morning the dead are burned. Shrouded, they lie with their feet in the Ganges until the faggoty pyre is ready. The relatives and friends sit on the edge of a sort of wharf, dangle their legs, gossip, and watch the disappearance of the deceased with a kind of "Well-there-goes-Bill" expression and empty pockets, for it is cruel costly to burn the dead. What is left over—a blackened stump, looking like a great folded bat—they chuck into the river, and whoever it once was—mother, father, brother, sister, daughter, son, lover, sweetheart—goes bobbing down with the current, growing less in bulk as the black crows tear at it—wetting their precious feet and protesting, but too hungry not to eat—until finally the last fragment goes down the gullets of the sharp-toothed sharks of the ocean.
Good heavens, lady, I've written you the longest letter in the world! And I that would spare you!
Do you know what I am saying to myself! Of course you don't. How should you!
Dear Phylis: Here I had a letter from you, and at the same time one from your father. If they came out by the same mail, they must have been delightful company for each other, as they most surely are for me. Are you and your father plotting against me, or did you happen on the same idea without mutual cognizance't Your father says that he wants me to work for him, and he says that he can make me useful—I hope he is not given to boasting. You tell me that I have done the picturesque to death, and that it is time I settled down. So be it, Phylis. I took your letters in my hand and went and sat out the night before the Taj under the huge Indian moon, and so decided. The Taj is a love-song in stone. A great and gentle king sang it over the girl he loved, and since then no one has sung or builded anjrthing so beautiful. It gave me a great yearning for a place to call home, and a roof to be over my head. I have had enough of standing in the wind. I am going to take your father's offer, and fold up the magic rug. I am coming home.