Kitobni o'qish: «Daisy's Necklace, and What Came of It»
TO THE UNFORTUNATE READER
In this little Extravaganza, I have done just what I intended.
I have attempted to describe, in an auto-biographical sort of way, a well-meaning, but somewhat vain young gentleman, who, having flirted desperately with the Magazines, takes it into his silly head to write a novel, all the chapters of which are laid before the reader, with some running criticism by T. James Barescythe, Esquire, the book-noticer of "The Morning Glory," ("a journal devoted to the Fine Arts and the Amelioration of all Mankind,") and the type of a certain class which need not be distinctly specified for recognition. I have endeavored to make the novel of my literary hero such a one as a young man with fine taste and crude talent might produce; and I think I have succeeded. It is certainly sufficiently unfinished.
In drawing the character of Barescythe, the point of my quill may have pierced a friend; and if you ask, like Ludovico,
"What shall be said of thee?"
I shall answer, like Othello,
"Why, anything:
An honorable murderer, if you will;
For nought I did in hate, but all in honor."
The only audacious thing I have done is the writing of this preface. If there is anything more stupid than a "preface," it is a book-critic. If anything could be more stupid than a book-critic, it would be a preface. But, thank heaven, there is not. In saying this, I refer to a particular critic; for I would not, for the sake of a tenth edition, malign in such a wholesale manner those capital good fellows of the press – those verbal accoucheurs who are so pleasantly officious at the birth of each new genius. Not I. I have and a love for them, which would seem like a bid for their good nature, if expressed here.
"A fellow-feeling"
I have put my name on the title-page of this trifle from principle. My pen-children are all mine, and I cannot think of disowning one, though it may happen to be born hump-backed. But I beg of you, gentlest of unfortunate readers, not to take Daisy's Necklace as a serious exponent of my skill at story-telling. It is not printed at the "urgent request of numerous friends" – I am so fortunate as not to have many – but a seductive little argument in the shape of a cheque is the sole cause of its present form; otherwise, I should be content to let it die an easy death in the columns of the journal which first had the temerity to publish it. If the world could always know, as it may in this case, why a book is printed, it would look with kindlier eyes on dullness bound in muslin. It would say, with honest Sancho Panza: "Let us not look the gift-horse in the mouth."
When the sunshine of this dear old world has reddened the wine in my heart – melted down its sparkles to a creamy flavor, I will give you a richer draught – mayhap a beaker of Hippocrene.
Till then, may God's blessing be on us both, though neither of us deserve it.
Clinton Place, 1856.
PROLOGUE
It hath beene sayed, and it seemeth soe untoe me, that ye man who writes a booke maist have much vanitie and vexation of spirite.
Ye Two Poore Authors.
PROLOGUE
"Mrs. Muggins!"
"Yes, sir."
"Say that I am sick. Say I am dead – buried – out of town. In short, say anything you will; but deny my existence to every one who calls, with the exception of Mr. Barescythe."
"Yes, sir."
"I am going to write a novel, Mrs. Muggins!"
That lady did not exhibit much emotion.
"Yes, sir."
And Mrs. Muggins ambled out of the room-door, to which she had been summoned by some peremptory appeals of my bell. I was somewhat shocked at the cool manner with which Mrs. Muggins received the literary intelligence; but she, poor, simple soul, did not know that my greatness was a-ripening.
"Some of these days," said I to myself, turning toward the window, "some of these days, mayhap a hundred years hence, as the stranger passes through Washington Parade Ground, this house – wrinkled and old then – will be pointed out to his wonder-loving eyes as the one in which my novel was written; and the curious stranger will cut his name on the walls of the room which I never occupied, and carry away a slice of the door-step!"
I immediately fell in love with this fascinating thought, and followed it up.
The slender trees which now inhabit the Parade Ground had grown immensely – the trunks of some were three feet in diameter, and around them all was a massive iron railing. The brick and brownstone houses on Waverly Place and Fourth-street had long been removed, and huge edifices with cast-iron fronts supplanted them. I looked in vain for the little drug-store on the corner with its red and green bottles, and the fruit-man's below with its show of yellow bananas and sour oranges. The University, dimly seen through the interlacing branches, was a classic ruin.
Everything was changed and new.
All the old land-marks were gone, save the Parade Ground, and one quaint old house facing Mac Dougal-street: the which house was propped up with beams, for, long and long ago, before "the memory of the oldest inhabitant" even, an author, a sweet quiet man, once wrote a famous book there, and the world of 1956 would preserve the very floors he trod on!
And so I sat there by my window in the autumnal sunshine, and watched the golden clouds as the wind blew them against the square white turrets of the University, which peered above the trees.
Ah, Mrs. Muggins, thought I, though you only said "yes, sir," when I spoke of my novel – though your name is carved in solid brass on the hall-door, yet you will be forgotten like a rain that fell a thousand years ago, when my name, only stamped with printer's ink, on ephemeral slips of paper, is a household word.
So I came to pity Mrs. Muggins, and harbored no ill feelings toward the simple creature who was so speedily to be gathered under the dusty wings of oblivion. I wondered how she could be cheerful. I wondered if she ever thought of being "dead and forgotten," and if it troubled her.
Lost in the aromatic fumes of a regalia, I sat waiting the advent of my friend Barescythe – Barry for short – to whom I had addressed a laconic note, begging him to visit me at my rooms without delay.
I like Barescythe.
He is conceited, but that's a small fault with genius. His idea of literature does not exactly chime with mine, for he believes that there have been no novels, to speak of, since Scott's, and little poetry since Pope's. But, aside from this, he is a noble fellow; he carries his heart, like a falcon, on his hand, where everybody can see it. Barry is fond of wine – but that's a failing not peculiar to genius, and not confined to book-critics. He is a trifle rough in speech, not always the thing in manners; but "the elements so mix in him" – that I have a great mind to finish that excellent quotation.
I heard his familiar step on the stairs, and a second afterwards he kicked open my room-door with his characteristic disregard of ceremony.
"Ralph," said he, with some anxiety, "what's up?"
"Sit down!"
"Are you sick?"
"No."
"Are you going to be?"
"No."
"Then why, in the name of the many-headed Hydra, did you send me such an article as this? Read it."
The note ran as follows:
"Mac Dougal-street,"June 30, 18 – .
"Dear Barry, —
"Come and see me without delay. I have got a —
"Eternally,"Ralph."
"O, yes!" said I, laughing; "I left out a word. I meant to have said, 'I have got an idea.'"
"Humph! I thought it was a colic."
Mr. Barescythe had left a host of editorial duties in the middle and busiest time of the day, expecting to find me lying at the point of death, and was quite out of humor because I was not.
There is something extremely human in Barescythe.
"Criticus," I spoke as deliberately as the subject would allow, "I am going to write a novel."
This unfortunate avowal was the rose-leaf which caused the cup of his indignation to overflow.
"If it had been a case of cholera," commenced Barescythe, with visible emotion, "or the measles, or the croup, or the chicken-pox – if you had broken your thigh, spine, or neck, I wouldn't have complained. But a novel– "
And Barry began whistling wildly,
as he invariably does when annoyed. After using up a variety of popular airs, the shadow of his good-humor returned to him.
"Ralph," he said, taking my hand, "I have a great respect for you. I don't know why, to be frank, but I have. I like your little song of – what do you call it? – in Putnam's Monthly, and your prose sketches in the Knickerbocker; but don't be a fool, Ralph!"
With which piece of friendly advice, he put on his brown felt hat, drew it over his brows, and stalked out of the room, with
"A countenance more
In sorrow than in anger,"
like Mr. Hamlet's father.
I saw no more of Barescythe for two weeks.
The summer months flew away.
The nights were growing longer. The air had a vein of sparkling cold in it; at every gust the trees in the Parade Ground shook down golden ingots; and the grass-plots, and the graveled walks, and the marble bowl of the fountain, were paved with emerald and amethyst – a mosaic flooring of tinted leaves. The clouds were haggard faces, and the wind wailed like a broken heart. Indeed,
"The melancholy days had come,
The saddest of the year,"
and Mrs. Muggins had made a fire in my grate!
Blessings on him who invented fire-places! A poor day-dreamer's benediction go with him! The world in the grate! I have watched its fantastic palaces and crimson inhabitants – dipped my pen, as it were, into its stained rivers, and written their grotesqueness! Dizzy bridges, feudal castles, great yawning caves, and red-hot gnomes, are to be found in the grate; mimic volcanos, and ships that sail into sparry grottos, and delicate fire-shells with pink and blue lips!
Crash!
The coals sink down, and new figures are born, like the transient pictures in a kaleidescope. So it came to pass that I dozed over the metempsychosis of my fire-world, and commenced the novel.
Give me crisp winter days for writing, and the long snowy nights for dreamy slumber.
O antique humorist, quaint-mouthed Sancho Panza! with you, I say, "Blessings on the man who invented sleep!" Sleep, pleasant sleep! – that little airy nothing on the eyelids! – that little spell of thought which comes from no place and goes nowhere! – which comes upon us silently and splendidly, like a falling star, and trails its golden fancies on our waking hours. Sleep for the young – fresh, dewy sleep! Sleep for the sick! Sleep for the weary and disconsolate – sweet dreams and sweet forgetfulness for them! Smooth the white hairs of the old; place thy invisible fingers on their lips; close their eyes gently, gently. Sleep, and let them pass into nothingness!
In a dreamy mood, half awake and half asleep, I filled sheet after sheet with my curious back-handed chirography. The white feathery snow came down cygnet-soft, and I wrote. I heard the wind ditties in the chimney, the merry wrangling of sleigh-bells, the sonorous clash of fire-bells, and the manuscript grew under my pen, as if by magic. I came to love the nurslings of my fancy as no one else will. I liked the cold, cynical features of Mr. Flint, with his undertaker's aspect; the child-spirit, Bell; Daisy Snarle's eyes; the heart-broken old sailor; the pale book-keeper; Tim, the office boy; Mr. Hardwill, the great publisher; Joe Wilkes, and all of them!
Mrs. Muggins occasionally looked in on me.
Mrs. Muggins' regard for me was increasing. She never left the coal-scuttle on the stairs for my benefit, as she used to; she was eternally hearing my bell ring when it didn't, and answering it so promptly when it did, that I began to think that she lived night and day just outside my door.
Pleasant Mrs. Muggins!
I tried not to feel elated at these little widowy attentions; but los hombres son mortales.
She handed me my coffee with a motherly tenderness that was perfectly touching. She looked at me with the eyes of Solicitude, and spoke with the lips of culminating Respect; and once, in a burst of confidence, she told me that she had six orphan sons, who were "sealurs."
My respect increased for Mrs. Muggins. My novel might run through only one edition, but she, – she had six editions of herself afloat! And I thought that, after all, a woman like her who had produced a half a dozen Neptunes, founded perhaps a half a dozen races, was rendering more service to this apple-like globe, than one poor devil of an author prolifically pregnant with indifferent books.
I spoke to Barescythe about it, and it was pleasant to have him coincide with me once.
It is an agreeable fact, that
"The world goes up and the world goes down,
And the sunshine follows the rain."
The new year was four months old. The flowers were teething: the tiny robins were able to go alone, and above the breezy hum of many thousand voices, above the monotonous and ocean-like jar of omnibus wheels, I could hear the babbling of hyaline rills in pleasant woodland places! I could not see the silver threads of water winding in and out among the cool young grass; I could not guess where they were; but through the city smoke, over the dingy chimney-tops, they spake to me with kindly voices!
I knew that daisies were fulling in sunny meadows, and that the dandelion trailed its gold by the dusty road-sides: for
"The delicate-footed Spring was come."
I knew it by the geranium at my window. It had put forth two sickly leaves. Two sickly leaves for me, and the world alive with vernal things! Spring, thou Queen of the Twelve! Dainty, dewy Spring —
"Give me a golden pen, and let me lean
On heaped-up flowers,"
when I write of thee! Thy breath is the amber sunshine, and thy foot-prints are violets! Hide Winter in thy mantle: crown his cold brow with mignionette: hang morning-glories on his icicles: keep him from me forever!
"For winter maketh the light heart sad,
And thou – thou makest the sad heart gay!"
"Barry," said I, "the sunshine has taken me by the hand, to lead me into a sweet New-England village. There is my manuscript. Read it, if you can, condemn it, if you will, and tell me what you think of it when I return."
That awful critic put Daisy's Necklace under his arm, and walked away – a victim to friendship, a literary Damon of the Nineteenth Century.
I
As children gathering pebbles on the shore.
Milton.
No daintie flower or herbe that growes on grownd,
No arborett with painted blossomes drest
And smelling sweete, but there it might be found
To bud out faire, and throwe her sweete smels al around.
Edmund Spencer.
I.
THE LITTLE CASTLE-BUILDERS
The House by the Sea – the Round Window – God's Eyes in Flowers – the Day-Dreamers – A Picture – An Angel – Old Nanny – On the Sea-Shore – Shell-Hunting – Bell's Freak and Mortimer's Dream – Asleep.
Imagine, if you will, one of the quaintest old country mansions that was ever built – a big-chimneyed, antique-gabled, time-browned old pile, and you have a picture of the Ivyton House as it was in summers gone by.
The pillars of the porch were not to be seen for the fragrant vines which clambered over them; lip-tempting grapes purpled1 on the southern gable of the house, and the full, bright cherries clustered thicker than stars among the leaves. The walks of the garden were white with pebbles brought from the sea-shore; the dewy clover-beds, on each side, lay red with luscious strawberries, as if some one had sprinkled drops of fire over them; and among the larches and the cherry trees there was a salt sea-smell pleasantly mingled with the breathing of wild roses.
A large, round window in one of the gables looked toward the ocean – a fine place for a summer view, or to watch, of a gusty afternoon, the billows as they swell and break in long waving battalions on the beach.
One evening near the end of summer, two children were sitting at this circular window. Ten Aprils had half ripened them. The boy had dark hair, and a touch of sunlight in his darker eyes. The girl was light and delicate – with a face of spiritual beauty, dream-like, heavenly, like the pictures of the Madonna which genius has hung on the chapel walls of the Old World.
"Bell," said the boy, "we never grow weary of looking at the sea."
"No; because while we are watching, we think that father may be coming home to us across its bosom; and we count the waves as if they were moments. We like to see them roll away, and feel that time grows shorter between father and us."
"Yes, that is so," he replied; "but then, we love night almost as much as the sea."
"That is because we have a Father in heaven as well as one at sea," and the girl shaded her angel face with a dainty little hand.
"And we love the sunbeams and the flowers, Bell!"
"We do, indeed!" cried Bell, and the sunshine nestled among her curls. "We do, indeed! because God, like the good fairy in our story-book, comes in sunlight, or hides in flowers; and he reveals himself in ever so many ways, to all who love him."
"Hides in flowers," repeated the boy, musingly; "I never thought of that. Then, perhaps – only perhaps – the dew-drops which I showed you last night in the white japonica were God's eyes!"
"May be so," returned Bell, simply.
They were two strange children – nature, and, perhaps, circumstances had made them so. They were born and had always lived in the old house. Their mother was in heaven, and their father was one of those who go down to the sea in ships. With no one to teach them, save the old house-keeper Nanny, their minds had taken odd turns and conceits; they had grown up old people in a hundred ways.
The roar of the winds and the sea had been in their ears from infancy. In the summer months they wandered late on the sandy beaches, or slept with the silent sunshine under the cherry trees. They had grown up with nature, and nature beat in them like another heart. She had imbued them with her richer and tenderer moods.
Bell was the wildest and strangest of the two. She was one of those ærial little creatures who, somehow or other, get into this world sometimes – it must be by slipping through the fingers of the angels, for they seem strangely out of place, and I am sure that they are missed somewhere! They never stay long! They come to earth and sometimes ripen for heaven in a twelve month! The sweetest flowers are those that die in the spring-time: they touch the world with beauty, and are gone, before a ruder breath than that of God scatters their perfume. Bell was a Gipsy angel– one of those who wander, for awhile, outside the walls of heaven, in the shady pastures and by-ways of the world.
"Mortimer," said Bell, after a long silence, "how nice it is to sit here and watch the bits of sails coming and going – coming and going, never weary! I wonder how long we have sat at this window and watched the white specks? I wonder if it will always be so; if you and I will still be here, loving the sea and stars, when our heads are as white as Nanny's?"
"No!" cried the boy, impetuously. "I am going out into the broad, deep world, and write books full of wonderful thought, like the Arabian Nights!"
And he repeated it, the broad, deep world! Ah, child! what have such dreamers as you to do in the broad, deep world – the wonderful, restless sea, where men cast the net of thought and bring up pebbles?
"I would like that, Mort!" cried Bell, clapping her hands. "But then, what a grand place this would be to write them in! You can have your desk by the open window here; and when your eyes are tired, you can rest them on the sea. And I will be so quiet – as gentle as pussy, even, and do nothing but make pens for you all the time. Wouldn't that be fine?"
"Yes! and father should go no more away in ships. He might have a yacht to leap over the surge in, to sail around all those little islands and in the green bays; but never go off to sea. The books I am going to write will bring us money enough."
So the little castle-builders talked until the sun had melted into the waves, and twilight, like a pilgrim that had been resting by the roadside, rose up from the beach, and came slowly toward the old house.
Mortimer, who had been gazing dreamily at the beach – which grew fainter and fainter, till it seemed like a white thread running through the selvage of blue drapery – turned his eyes on Bell.
"Bell," said he, quietly, "as you sit there in the shadows, with your beautiful hair folded over your forehead, you look like an angel!"
"Do I?"
"I can put my hand on your neck, yet you seem far away from me."
"Come, rest your head in my lap, Mort," said the girl, tenderly, "and I will tell you of a real true angel who once came into this world."
The chestnut locks of the boy looked darker against her white dress, as Bell bent over him, and commenced, in a low, silvery voice, an old angel legend. She was in the midst of a strange description of Paradise, when a tremulous voice came up the stairway —
"Come to tea, children!"
Then the two looked at each other curiously. It was so odd to be called to tea, and they in Heaven! It was a long step from Paradise to the supper-table; but the dream was shattered. Bell laughed. Then they closed the window, and descended to the room below, where Nanny had prepared the evening meal of snowy bread and milk, and ripe purple whortleberries. It was very queer to see the three sitting at table – to see homely-looking, but kind-hearted Nanny, between the two children, like a twilight between two pleasant mornings.
When supper was over, and while Nanny was washing the tea-things, the children went down to the beach, shell hunting. The white moon stood directly over the sea, and the waves were full of silvery arrows, as if Diana had scattered them from her quiver. Mortimer's eyes drank in the sight, as they had a thousand times before, for Nature is ever new to her lovers. In the measured roll of the sea, he heard the diapason of a grand poem, and the far-off thunder, heard now and then, was the chorus of the gods.
But Heaven rapt the heart of little Bell! The waves fell on her finer ear like subtlest music; to her they were harps, and the fingers of angels were touching them, while the thunder was "God walking overhead!"
They wandered along the sands, picking up curious shells and cream-white pebbles, dashed with red or clouded with mazarine. Bell would hold them up to her ear, and listen to the "little whispers," as she called them; but the boy would skim them along the wave-tips, and shout when some great billow caught one, and hurled it back scornfully at his feet.
Bell saw a ridge of rocks which looked like the back of a whale, running out some distance into the sea, where the water was whiter and leaped higher than anywhere else; and soon her dainty feet picked a way over the jagged rocks. The boy was about to send a light shell skipping through the surf, when his glance caught Bell standing on the highest jut of the ledge, the wind lifting her long hair and the folds of her dress.
"Bell! Bell!"
"The stars are in the sea, brother," she replied, "and the winds are wild here."
"Bell! Bell!"
"I cannot come to you. I fear to walk over the rocks again! But it is beautiful here, and I am not afraid!"
"Ah, Bell!" he spoke sadly, "that's what I dreamt. I thought that there was a gulf between us, and when I called, 'Bell! Bell!' you answered, 'I cannot come to you, brother; but you can come to me!' O, Bell – sister Bell! as you love me, come back. I tremble when you look so like an angel. Come to me, sister."
Mortimer ran out on the slender bridge of stone and led Bell back by the hand. After a little while they heard Nanny calling them to come home.
The children occupied a small chamber over the front door. A scented vine clomb all about the window, and taught the ruddy sun at morning to throw a subdued light into the room; and it broke the orange stream of sunset. At night the dreamers from their bed could see the stars hanging like fruit among its cloudy leaves.
When Bell and Mortimer came up from the sea-beach, the moonlight, breaking through this leafy lattice, made the chamber as that of Abon Ben Adhem – "like a lily in bloom." Nanny brought a lamp, and kissed them good-night.
"O, we don't want a lamp all this moon!" cried Bell.
The boy sat half undressed at the window. "Bell loves moonlight like a fairy," he said.
Bell's robe fell to her knees in snowy folds, and she stood like a petite Venus rising from the froth. Then brother and sister braided their voices in a simple prayer to Our Father in Heaven. They prayed for kind old Nanny, and for one on the wide sea.
"When will father come home?" asked Bell, for the hundredth time that day.
"It will not be long now. When the boughs of the cherry trees are an inch deep with ice, and the logs crackle in the fire-place – then he will come. Let us go to sleep, and dream of him."
And thus, hand in hand, the two went in to Dream-land —
The world of Sleep,
The beautiful old World!
The dreamy Palestine of pilgrim Thought!
The Lotus Garden, where the soul may lie
Lost in elysium, while the music moan
Of some unearthly river, faintly caught,
Seems like the whispering of Angels, blown
Upon æolian harp-strings! And we change
Into a seeming something that is not!
