The Ancient City

“Is there any place about here where there were no massacres?” asked Sara. “Wherever I go, they arise from the past and glare at me. Between Spanish, Huguenot, and Indian slaughter, I am becoming quite gory.”

The Professor, who was holding on his tall hat with much difficulty in the fresh breeze, here wished to know generally if we had read the remarkable narrative of Cabeça de Vaca, the true discoverer of the Mississippi, who landed in Florida in 1527.

“Alas! the G. W. again,” murmured Sara in my ear. Miss Sharp, however, wanted “so much to hear about it” that the Professor began. But the hat kept interfering. Once Mokes rescued it, once John Hoffman, and the renowned De Vaca suffered in consequence. The governess wore a white scarf around her neck, one of those voluminous things called “clouds.” She took it off, and leaned forward with a smile. “Perhaps if you were to tie this over your hat,” she said, sweetly offering it.

But the Professor was glad to get it, and saw no occasion for sweetness at all. He wanted to go on with De Vaca; and so, setting the hat firmly on the back of his head, he threw the scarf over the top, and tied the long ends firmly under his chin. The effect was striking, especially in profile, and we were glad when the landing at Fish Island gave us an opportunity to let out our laughter over hastily improvised and idiotic jokes, while, all unconscious, the Professor went on behind us, and carried De Vaca into the thirteenth chapter.

The island began with a morass, and the boatmen went back for planks.

“ ‘Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,’ ” said Iris, balancing herself on an oyster shell, Mokes by her side (the Captain was absent – trust Aunt Diana for that!). “Those verses always haunt one so, don’t they?”

Mokes, as usual in the rear, mentally speaking, wanted to know “what verses?”

“Moore’s Dismal Swamp, of course. Sometimes I find myself saying it over fifty times a day:

‘They have made her a grave too cold and dampFor a soul so warm and true;She has gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,Where all night long, by a fire-fly lamp,She paddles her white canoe.’

Be sure and pronounce ‘swamp’ to rhyme exactly with ‘damp’ and ‘lamp,’ ” continued Iris; “the effect is more tragic.”

“Certainly,” said Mokes, “far more.”

Passing the morass on planks, we walked down a path bordered with Spanish-bayonets, crossed the creek on a small boat lying there, and entered the enchanted domain. It seemed to be a large plantation run to waste; symmetrical fields surrounded by high hedges of the sour orange, loaded with its fruit; old furrows still visible in the never-freezing ground; every where traces of careful labor and cultivation, which had made the sandy island blossom as the rose. In the centre of a broad lawn were the ruins of a mansion, the white chimney alone standing, like a monument to the past. Beyond, a path led down to a circle of trees with even, dense foliage; there, in the centre, shut out from the glare of the sunshine, alone in the greenery, stood a solitary tomb, massive and dark, without date or inscription save what the little fingers of the lichen had written. We stood around in silence, and presently another pleasure party came down the path and joined us – gay young girls with sprays of orange blossoms in their hats, young men carrying trailing wreaths of the yellow jasmine. Together we filled the green tree circle; and one of the strangers, a fair young girl, moved by a sudden impulse, stepped forward and laid a spray of jasmine on the lonely tomb.

“ ‘Et in Arcadia ego,’ ” said John, who stood behind me. “Do you remember that picture of the gay flower-decked Arcadians coming through a forest with song and laughter, and finding there a solitary tomb with that inscription? This is Arcadia, and we too have found the tomb.”

Strolling on down the island, we came to a long arched walk of orange-trees trained into a continuous arbor.

“What a lovely wild old place!” said Iris. “What is its history? Does any body know?”

“It has not been occupied for nearly a century, I am told,” said Aunt Diana.

“Who would have expected traces of such careful cultivation down on this remote island?” I said, as a new vista of symmetrical fields opened out on one side.

“There you make the common mistake of all Northerners, Miss Martha,” said John Hoffman. “Because the country is desolate and thinly settled, you suppose it to be also wild and new, like the Western States and Territories. You forget how long this far peninsula has been known to the white man. These shores were settled more than a century before Plymouth or Jamestown, and you can scarcely go out in any direction around St. Augustine without coming upon old groves of orange and fig trees, a ruined stone wall, or fallen chimney. Poor Florida! she is full of deserted plantations.”

“But does any one know the story of the place?” repeated Iris, who preferred any diversion to Mokes’s solo.

“Why insist upon digging it up?” said Sara. “Let it rest in the purple haze of the past. The place has not been occupied for a hundred years. We see this beautiful orange walk; yonder is a solitary tomb. Can we not fill out these shadowy borders without the aid of prosaic detail?”

The Professor, who had been digging up vicious-looking roots, now joined us. “When I was here some years ago,” he began, in his loud, distinct tones, “I made a point of investigating – ”

“Let us make a point of leaving,” murmured Sara, taking me off down the walk. John Hoffman followed, so did Iris, and consequently Mokes, likewise Aunt Di. Miss Sharp longed to stay, but did not quite dare; so she compromised by walking on, as far as her feet were concerned, all the rest of her, however, looking back with rapt attention. “Yes? How interesting! Pray go on.”

The Professor went on; we heard his voice in the rear. “It was called El Verjel (the garden), and its orange grove was the glory of St. Augustine – ”

“Hurry!” whispered Sara, “or we shall hear the whole.”

We hastened out into the sunny meadows, catching “killed by lightning” – “1790” – “he sent his oranges to London;” then the voice died away in the distance. John Hoffman kept with us, and we wandered on, looking off over the Matanzas, sweeping on to the south, dotted with sails, and the black dug-outs of the Minorcan fishermen anchored along shore. The tide was out, and the coast-line bare and desolate.

“Nothing that H. H. ever wrote excels her ‘When the tide comes in,’ ” I said. “Do you remember it?

‘When the tide goes out,The shore looks dark and sad with doubt’ —

and that final question,

‘Ah, darling, shall we ever learnLove’s tidal hours and days?’ ”

“You believe, then, that love has its high and low tides?” said John, lighting a fresh cigar.

“Low tide,” said Sara, half to herself – “low tide always.” She was looking at the bare shore with a sadness that had real roots down somewhere.

“Very low, I suppose,” commented John; “every thing is always very high or very low with you ladies. You are like the man who had a steamer to sell. ‘But is it a low-pressure engine?’ asked a purchaser. ‘Oh yes, very low,’ replied the owner, earnestly.”

Sara flushed, and turned away.

“Do you do it on purpose, I wonder?” I thought, with some indignation, as I glanced at John’s imperturbable face. I was very tender always with Sara’s sudden little sadnesses. I think there is no one who comprehends a girl passing through the shadow-land of doubt and vague questioning that lies beyond youth so well as the old maid who has made the journey herself, and knows of a surety that there is sunshine beyond. Obeying a sudden impulse, I asked the question aloud. Sara was in front of us, out of hearing.

“Do I do what on purpose, Miss Martha? Tell anecdotes?”

“You know what I mean very well, Mr. Hoffman. Her sadness was real for the moment; why wound her?”

“Wound her! Is a woman wounded by a trifling joke?”

“But her nature is peculiarly sensitive.”

“You mistake her, I think, Miss Martha. Sara St. John is coated over with pride like an armor; she is invulnerable.”

I could not quite deny this, so I veered a little. “She is so lonely, Mr. Hoffman!” I said, coming round on another tack.

“Because she so chooses.”

“It may not be ‘choose.’ Mr. Hoffman, why should you not try to – ” Here I looked up and caught the satirical smile on my companion’s face, and, vexed with myself, I stopped abruptly.

“You are a good friend, Miss Martha.”

“She has need of friends, poor girl!”

“Why poor?”

“In the first place she is poor, literally.”

“Poverty is comparative. Who so poor as Mokes with his millions?”

“Then she is poor in the loss of her youth; she is no longer young, like Iris.”

“ ‘Oh, saw ye not fair Iris going down into the west’ – a minute ago,” said John, glancing after a vanishing blue ribbon. A suspicion, and not for the first time either, crossed my mind. “So it is little Iris, after all,” I thought. “Oh, man, man, how can you be so foolish!” Then aloud, “I must go forward and join the others,” I said, with a tinge of annoyance I could not conceal. John looked at me a moment, and then strode forward. I watched him; he joined Sara. I followed slowly. “There is a second tomb farther down the island,” he was saying as I came up; “it is even more venerable than the first; a square inclosure of coquina, out of which grows an ancient cedar-tree which was probably planted, a mere slip, after the grave was closed. Will you walk that way with me, Miss St. John?” And with bared head he stood waiting for her answer.

“Thank you,” said Sara, “I do not care to walk farther.”

He bowed and left her.

Half an hour later, as Sara and I were strolling near the far point of the island, we caught through the trees a glimpse of Iris seated in the low, crooked bough of a live-oak, and at her feet John Hoffman, reclining on the white tufted moss that covered the ground. “Absurd!” I said, angrily.

“Why absurd? Is she not good and fair? To me there is something very bewitching about Iris Carew. She is the most graceful little creature; look at her attitude now, swinging in that bough! and when she walks there is a willowy suppleness about her that makes the rest of us look like grenadiers. Then what arch dark eyes she has, what a lovely brunette skin, the real brune! Pretty, graceful little Iris, she is always picturesque, whatever she does.”

“But she is a child, Sara, while he – ”

“Is John Hoffman,” replied Sara, with a little curl of her lip. “Come, Martha, I want to show you some Arcadians.”

“Arcadians?”

“Yes. Not the people who found the tomb in the forest, but some real practical Arcadians, who enjoy life as Nature intended.”

“Who knows what she intended? I am sure I don’t,” I said, crossly.

Near the ruins of the mansion we found the Arcadians, a young man with his wife and child, living in a small out-building which might have been a cow-house. It was not more than ten feet square, the roof had fallen in, and was replaced by a rude thatch of palmetto leaves; there was no window of any kind, no floor save the sand, and for a door only an old coverlet hung up and tied back like a curtain. Within we could see a low settle-bed with some ragged coverings, a stool, powder, shot, and fishing tackle hung up on one side, and an old calico dress on the other; without was a table under a tree, a cupboard hung on the outside of the house, containing a few dishes, and the ashes of the family fire near at hand. Two thin dogs and a forlorn calf (oh, the cadaverous cattle of Florida!) completed the stock of this model farm.

“They eat and cook out-of-doors all the year round, I suppose. What a home! Did any one ever see such poverty,” I said, “and such indolence? They do not even take the trouble to make a door.”

“What do they want of a door? There is nothing to keep out but Nature. And as for poverty, they seem happy enough,” replied Sara.

They did. The woman came to meet us with her brown baby, and the young husband took his gun and went out to find his supper – partridge from the wood, probably, and oysters from the beach. They had lived there three years, the woman said. Her name was Anita, her husband’s Gaspar, the baby was Rafaello. No, they did not work much. They had a few sweet-potatoes yonder, and sometimes she braided palmetto and took it down to the city to sell. Gaspar had a dug-out, and sometimes he sold fish, but not often. They had every thing they wanted. Did she know any thing about this old place? No, she did not. Couldn’t she find out? Yes, she supposed she could; her people had lived along the Matanzas for years; but she never took the trouble to ask. Should she send that brown baby to school when it grew larger?

“To school?” And the young mother laughed merrily, showing even, white teeth, and tossing up the little Rafaello until he crowed with glee. “None of us-uns goes to school, my lady.”

“But what will he do, then?”

“Do? Why, live here or somewhars, jes as we’re doing,” replied Anita. “That’s all he wants.”

“A great many people come over here in the season, do they not?” I asked, abandoning my educational efforts.

“Yes, pleasant days folks come.”

“Do you think the ladies are pretty?”

“Sometimes,” replied Anita, with a critical air.

“Wouldn’t you like to look as they do?”

“Oh no,” replied our “nut-brown mayde,” with a broad, contented smile.

“And the gentlemen. What do you think of them?”

“Eh? the mens, did you say? Oh, they’re so wimpsy!” And bursting into a peal of laughter, the mother tossed up the baby again until he too joined in the merriment over the “wimpsyness,” whatever that was, of the tourists from the North.

“Do you know, I feel as though Calhoun himself was laughing at me from his grave,” I said, as we walked away. “Your Arcadians, Sara, have made me more conscious of my bodily defects than a whole regiment of fine city people. What a shape that woman had! what eyes! what teeth! But what did she mean by wimpsy?”

“Very likely she meant Mokes. He is certainly limpsy; then why not wimpsy? There he is, by-the-way.”

So he was, sitting with (of all persons in the world!) the governess. “In 1648 there were three hundred householders resident in St. Augustine, Mr. Mokes,” we heard her say as we drew near.

“Must have wanted to – beast of a place,” commented Mokes. He looked up doubtfully as we went by, but not having decided exactly how strong-minded Sara might be, he concluded not to venture; the governess at least never posed a fellow with startling questions.

“Poor Mokes!” I said.

“Oh yes, very poor!”

“I was thinking of his forlorn love affair, Sara.”

“Iris may still be Mrs. Mokes.”

“Oh no!”

“Do not be too sure, Martha. In my opinion – nay, experience – a young girl is far more apt to be dazzled by wealth than an older woman. The older woman knows how little it has to do with happiness, after all; the young girl has not yet learned that.”

The Osceola carried us northward again, and then around into a creek where was the landing-place of Anastasia Island.

“This Anastasia was a saint,” I said, as we strolled up the path leading to the new light-house. “She belonged to the times of Diocletian, and we know where to find her, which is more than I can say of Maria Sanchez over in the village.”

“And who is this Maria Sanchez?” inquired Aunt Diana, in her affable, conversational tone. Aunt Di always asked little questions of this kind, not because she cared to know, but because she esteemed it a duty to keep the conversation flowing.

“Ah! that is the question, aunt – who was she? There are persons of that name in the town now, but this creek bore the name centuries ago; wherefore, nobody knows. Maria is a watery mystery.”

The new light-house, curiously striped in black and white like a barber’s pole, rose from the chaparral some distance back from the beach, one hundred and sixty feet into the clear air; there was nothing to compare it with, not a hill or rise of land, not even a tall tree, and therefore it looked gigantic, a tower built by Titans rather than men.

“Let us go up to the top,” said Iris, peeping within the open door. We hesitated: one hundred and sixty feet of winding stairway may be regarded as a crucial test between youth and age.

“Oh, Aunt Di, not you, of course! nor you either, Miss Sharp, nor the Professor, nor Cousin Martha,” said Iris, heedlessly. “You can all sit here comfortably in the shade while the rest of us run up; we shall not stay long.”

Upon this instantly we all arose and began to climb up those stairs. Sit there comfortably in the shade, indeed! Not one of us!

The view from the summit seemed wonderfully extensive – inland over the level pine-barrens to the west; the level blue sea to the east; north, the silver sands of the Florida main-land; and south, the stretch of Anastasia Island, its backbone distinctly visible in the slope of the low green foliage.

“How soft and blue the ocean looks!” said Iris. “I should like to sail away to the far East and never come back.”

“If I only had my yacht here now, Miss Iris!” said Mokes, gallantly. “But we should want to come back some time, you know. Egypt and the Nile – well, they are dirty places; although I – er – I always carry every thing with me, it is almost impossible to live properly there.”

We all knew what Mokes meant; he meant his portable bath. He aped English fashions, and was always bringing into conversation that blessed article of furniture, which accompanied him every where in charge of his valet. So often indeed did he allude to it that we all felt, like the happy-thought man, inclined to chant out in chorus, to the tune of the Mistletoe Bough,

“Oh, his portable ba-ath!Oh, his por-ta-ble ba-ath!”

“You have, I am told, Mr. Mokes, the finest yacht in this country,” said John Hoffman.

Well, it wasn’t a bad one, Mokes allowed.

“I don’t know which I would rather own,” pursued John, “your yacht or your horses. Why, Sir, your horses are the pride of New York.”

I glanced at John; he was as grave as a judge. Mokes glowed with satisfaction. Iris listened with downcast eyes, and Aunt Diana, who had at last reached the top stair, gathered her remaining strength to smile upon the scene. Mokes came out of his shell entirely, and graciously offered his arm to Aunt Diana for the long descent.

But Aunt Di could – “excuse me, Mr. Mokes” – really hold on “better by the railing;” but “perhaps Iris – ”

Yes, Iris could, and did.

John looked after the three as they wound down the long spiral with a smile of quiet amusement.

“All alike,” he said to me, with the “old-comrade” freedom that had grown up between us. “La richesse est toujours des femmes le grand amour, Miss Martha.”

“Don’t quote your pagan French at me,” I answered, retreating outside, where on the little platform I had left Sara gazing out to sea. She was looking down now, leaning over the railing as if measuring the dizzy height.

“If I should throw myself over,” she said, as I came up, “my body would go down; but where would my soul go, I wonder?”

“Don’t be morbid, Sara.”

“Morbid? Nonsense! That is a duty word, a red flag which timid people always hang out the moment you near the dangerous ground of the great hereafter. We must all die some time, mustn’t we? And if I should die now, what difference would it make? The madam-aunt would think me highly inconsiderate to break up the party in any such way; Iris would shed a pretty tear or two; Mokes would really feel relieved; the Professor would write an account of the accident for the Pith-and-Ponder Journal, with a description of the coquina quarry thrown in; Miss Sharp would read it and be ‘so interested;’ and even you, Martha, would scarcely have the heart to wish me back again.” Tears stood in her eyes as she spoke, her face had softened with the sad fancies she had woven, and for the moment the child-look came back into her eyes, as it often comes with tears.

“And John Hoffman,” I said, involuntarily. I knew he was still within hearing.

“Oh, he would decorously take his prayer-book and act as chief mourner, if there was no one else,” replied Sara, with a mocking little laugh.

“Come down!” called Aunt Di’s voice from below; “we are going to the coquina quarry.”

I lingered a moment that John might have full time to make his escape, but when at length we went inside, there he was, leaning on the railing; he looked full at Sara as she passed, and bowed with cold hauteur.

“It is useless to try and make any body like her,” I thought as I went down the long stairway. “Why is it that women who write generally manage to make themselves disagreeable to all mankind?”

We found Miss Sharp seated on a stair, half-way down, loaded with specimens, shells, and the vicious-looking roots of Fish Island.

“I am waiting for Professor Macquoid,” she explained, graciously. “He came as far as this, and then remembering a rare plant he had forgotten to take up, he went back for it, leaving the other specimens with me. I have no doubt he will soon return; but pray do not wait.”

We did not; but left her on the stair.

Sara and I strolled over to the old light-house – a weather-beaten tower standing almost in the water, regularly fortified with walls, angles, and loop-holes – a lonely little stronghold down by the sea. It was a picturesque old beacon, built by the Spaniards a long time ago as a look-out; when the English came into possession of Florida, in 1763, they raised the look-out sixty feet higher, and planted a cannon on the top, to be fired as a signal when a vessel came in sight. The light that we had so often watched flashing and fading in the twilight as we walked on the sea-wall was put in still later by the United States government; in old times a bonfire was lighted on top every night.

“I like this gray old beacon better than yonder tall, spying, brand-new tower,” I said. “This is a drowsy old fellow, who sleeps all day and only wakes at night, as a light-house should, whereas that wide-awake striped Yankee over there is evidently keeping watch of all that goes on in the little city. Iris must take care.”

“Do you think he can spy into the demi-lune?” said Sara, smiling.

At the coquina quarry we found the Professor, scintillating all over with enthusiasm. “A most singular conglomerate of shells cemented by carbonate of lime,” he said, putting on a stronger pair of glasses – “a recent formation, evidently, of the post-tertiary period. You are aware, I suppose, that it is found nowhere else in the world? It is soft, as you see, when first taken out, but becomes hard by exposure to the air.” Knee-deep in coquina, radiating information at every pore, he stood – a happy man!

“And Miss Sharp?” I whispered.

“On the stair,” replied Sara.

Not until we were on our way back to the sail-boat was the governess relieved from her vigil; then she heard us passing, and came out of her own accord, loaded with the relics.

“Why, Miss Sharp, have you been in the light-house all this time?” asked Aunt Diana.

The governess murmured something about a “cool and shady place for meditation,” but bravely she held on to her relics, and was ready to hear every thing about coquina and the post-tertiary, as well as a little raid into the glacial theory, with which the Professor entertained us on the way to the landing.

“Do you hear the drum-fish drumming down below?” said John, as the Osceola sailed merrily homeward. We listened, and caught distinctly the muffled tattoo – the marine band, as Iris said.

“I came across an old dilapidated book, written, I suppose, fifty years ago,” said John. “Here is an extract about the old light-house and the drum-fish, which I copied from the coverless pages: ‘We landed on Anastasia Island, and walked to the old light-house. Here a Spaniard lives with his family, the eldest, a beautiful dark-eyed little muchacha (young girl), just budding into her fourteenth year. Here, in this little fortified castle, Señor Andro defies alike the tempests and the Indians. Having spent an hour or two in the hospitable tower, and made a delicious repast on the dried fish which garnishes his hall from end to end, eked out with cheese and crackers and a bottle or two of Frontignac, besides fruit and brandy, we bade farewell to the pretty Catalina and the old tower, for it was time to go drumming. Fair Anastasia, how delightful thy sunny beach and the blue sea that kisses buxomly thy lonely shore! Before me rolls the eternal ocean, mighty architect of the curious masonry on which I stand, the animal rock which supports the vegetable soil. How many millions upon millions of these shell-fish must have been destroyed to form a substratum for one rood of land! But it was time for drumming, the magic hour (between the fall of the ebb and the rise of the flood) for this delightful sport, whose superior enchantment over all others in the Walton line I had so often heard described with rapture – the noble nature of the fish, his size and strength, the slow approach which he makes at first to the hook, like a crab; then the sudden overwhelming transport that comes over you when you feel him dashing boldly off with the line is comparable to nothing save pulling along a buxom lass through a Virginia reel.’ What do you say to that, Mokes? That part about the Virginia reel, now, is not to be despised.”