The Ancient City

“Happy England!” I said; but Aunt Di went on with her lamentations. “He certainly admired Iris, and Iris has certainly encouraged him for months. It is all very well to talk about romance, but Iris is an extravagant little thing, and would be wretched as a poor man’s wife; even you can not deny that, Niece Martha” (I could not, and did not). “Mokes would have suited her very well in the long-run, and now, by her own foolishness, she has lost him forever. I must confess I felt sick at heart, to say nothing of being chilled to the bone sitting on that damp stone.”

“And where were you then?”

“Well, to tell the truth, I thought I would hint a little something to Mokes – delicately, of course – and, as we were walking to and fro on the sea-wall, I proposed strolling into the demi-lune.”

“That demi-lune!” I exclaimed.

“Yes; it is quite retired, you know, and I had never seen it.”

That demi-lune!

But that was not all I had to lay up against that venerable and mysterious outlying fortification. The next afternoon I myself strolled up there, and passing by the two dragons, their two houses, and the supply of mutton hanging up below, I climbed the old stairway, and turning the angle, sat down on the grass to rest a while. I had a new novel, and leaning back comfortably against the parapet, I began to read; but the warm sunshine lulled me before I knew it into one of those soothing after-dinner naps so dear to forty years. The sound of voices woke me. “No; Miss Miles is superficial, not to say flippant.”

(“Decidedly, listeners never hear any good of themselves,” I thought; “but I can’t show myself now, of course, without making matters worse. If they should come up farther, I can be sound asleep.” For the voice came from the little hidden stairway, and belonged unmistakably to our solemn Professor.)

“And Miss St. John is decidedly overbearing,” continued our learned friend.

“It is only too true,” sighed the voice of the governess. “But those are the faults of the feminine mind when undisciplined by regular mental training.”

“I have noticed, however, one mind” (and here the Professor’s voice took a tender tone) – “one mind, Miss Sharp, whose workings seem to follow my own, one mind in which I can see an interest, veiled, of course, as is seemly, but still plainly discernible to the penetrative eye – an interest in my Great Work, now in process of compilation. My emotional nature has, I fear, been somewhat neglected in the cultivation of my intellectual faculties, but there is still time for its development, I think.”

Miss Sharp, in a gentle, assenting murmur, thought there was.

(“So it has come about at last,” I said to myself; “and very well suited they are, too.”)

“This mind might be of assistance to me in many ways,” continued the Professor. “I could mould it to my own. And I can not let the present happy occasion pass without disclosing to you, my dear Miss Sharp, the state of my feelings. Although youthful, Miss Carew – ”

“Iris!” I repeated, under my breath.

“Iris!” ejaculated the governess.

“Yes, Iris, if I may use the gentle name,” said the Professor.

But I would not let him proceed; I felt for that woman down stairs as though she had been a man and a brother, and I was determined to save her from the rest. I threw my book and a great piece of rock over the side of that perfidious old demi-lune, the startled Professor rushed up the stairs, and there I was, innocently waking up, and regretting that the wind had blown the new volume off the parapet. I took that man’s arm, and I walked him home, and I never stopped talking one instant until I had masked the retreat of the governess up stairs to her own room; and then I went back to Hospital Street and told Sara.

“No doubt she is sitting there now, surrounded by her relics, the vicious-looking roots, the shells, the lumps of coquina, the spiny things, and the bone,” said Sara, laughing.

“Don’t laugh, Sara; it is too real. She liked that man.”

“So much the worse for her, then,” replied my companion. “She had better tear out her heart and throw it to the dogs at once.”

When Sara answered me after that fashion, I generally let her alone.

“Aunt Diana is really going to-morrow,” I said, the next evening, as John Hoffman and I stood leaning on the Plaza railing, waiting for the mail.

“Yes; shall you go also?”

“No; we have decided to remain another week, Sara and I. But I am really surprised; I thought Iris would carry the day; she was determined to stay longer.”

“I think I can account for that,” said John, smiling. “We were walking together last evening in the moonlight on the sea-wall, and, happening to stroll into the demi-lune – ”

“Oh, that demi-lune!”

“Yes, that demi-lune. There we found the Captain.”

“The Captain?”

“The Captain. But not alone. Miss Arabella – Miss Van Amsterdam was with him!”

Now Miss Van Amsterdam was a beauty and an heiress.

The next morning we bade farewell to the departing half of our party. “Do you think that impervious old Professor will try it again between here and New York?” I said, as we strolled back from the little dépôt.

“I doubt it,” answered Sara. “He is the kind that goes in ankle deep, and then hesitates over the final plunge. But probably all the rest of his life he will cherish the delusion that he had only to speak, and he will intimate as much to his cronies over a temperate and confidential glass of whisky on winter nights.”

“After all, Miss Sharp is worth twenty Professors. How silently and even smilingly she bore her fate! Iris, now, pouted openly over the Captain’s desertion.”

“She will forget all about it before she is half way to Tocoi, and there will be a new train of admirers behind her before the steamer enters the Savannah harbor,” said Sara, smiling.

“Do you know who has been the real heroine of the romance of these last weeks, Sara?”

“Who?”

“The demi-lune!”

Our one remaining week rolled its hours swiftly along. Every morning the Sabre-boy began the day by ringing his great bell, beginning on the ground-floor, then up the stairs, a salvo in our little entry-way, a flurry around the corner, and a long excursion down the gallery, with a salute to all outdoors on the rear balcony; then counter-march, ringing all the time, back to the second-story stairs, up the stairway, and a tremendous clanging at the three blue doors; then, face about, and over the whole route again down to the ground-floor, where a final flourish in jig time always brought the sleepy idea that he was dancing a double-shuffle of triumph in conclusion.

“I don’t know which is the worst,” said Sara, “the dogs that bark all night, the roosters that crow all day, the Sabre and his morning clanging, or the cathedral chimes, those venerable and much-written-about relics that ring in the hours like a fire-alarm of cow-bells gone mad.”

“Do you know that to-morrow will be Easter?” I said, when we had but two days left. “We must ask Mr. Hoffman to take us out this evening to hear the Minorcans sing; to-morrow we will go to the Episcopal church, and then, on Monday, ho! for the bonny North.”

“Very bonny!” said Sara.

“Do you agree to the programme, mademoiselle?”

“All save the church-going.”

“We are not Episcopalians, I know, but on Easter-Sunday – ”

“Oh, it isn’t that, Martha. I don’t want to go to church at all. I am not in the mood.”

“But, Sara, my dear – ”

“Yes, and Sara, my dear! Religion is for two classes – the happy and the resigned. I belong to neither. I am lost out of the first, and I haven’t yet found the second. I took this journey to please you, Martha. I don’t blame you; it was all chance; but – You think you know all my life. You know nothing about it. Martha, I was once engaged to John Hoffman.”

“What! engaged?”

“Yes, for six short months. But it was ten years ago, and I was only eighteen. He had forgotten both it and me, as I could see by his face when you first introduced him on that New York steamer. I am only one of a succession, I presume,” continued Sara, in a bitter tone. (I thought it very likely, but did not say so.) “I was at home up in the mountains then, and he came that way on a hunting expedition. It was the old, old story, and I was so happy! I knew little and cared less about his social position. I was educated, therefore I was his peer. But he was stern, and I was proud; he was unyielding, and I rebellious; he wished to rule, and I would obey no one, although I would have given him freely the absolute devotion of every breath had he not demanded it. We parted, still up in the mountains, where he had lingered for my sake, and I had never seen him since that day until, when fairly out at sea, he appeared on the deck of that steamer. He took the initiative immediately with his calm politeness, and I was not to be outdone. I flatter myself that not one of you suspected that we had ever met before. And now, Martha, not one word, please. There is nothing to say. We shall soon be parted again, very likely for another ten years, as he does not return North with us. Do not fancy that I am unhappy about it. I am like Esther in Bleak House, when, after that unwished-for and unpleasant offer of marriage, she nevertheless found herself weeping as she had not done since the days when she buried the dear old doll down in the garden. It is only that the old chords are stirred, Martha dear; nothing more.”

When, late in the evening, John sent up word that he was waiting for us, I hesitated; but Sara rose and said, “Come,” in her calm, every-day manner, and I went.

“What will it be like, Mr. Hoffman?” I said, as soon as we reached the street, in order to make talk.

“Principally singing,” he replied, “according to an old custom of the Minorcans. On Easter-even the young men assemble with musical instruments, and visit the houses of all their friends. Before they begin singing they tap on the shutter, and if they are welcome there is an answering tap within. Then follows the long hymn they call Fromajardis, always the same seven verses, with a chorus after each verse, all in the Minorcan dialect. Next comes a recitative soliciting the customary gifts, a bag is held under the window, and the people of the house open the shutter, and drop into it eggs, cheese, cakes, and other dainties, while the young men acknowledge their bounty with a song, and then depart.”

We followed the singers for an hour, listening to the ancient song, which sounded sweetly through the narrow streets in the midnight stillness. My two companions talked on as usual, but I could not. I was haunted by that picture of ten years ago.

Easter-Sunday morning I went to church alone; Sara would not go with me. John Hoffman sat near me. I mentioned it when I returned home.

“I hate such religion as his,” said Sara. She was lying on the couch, with her defiant eyes fixed on the blank wall opposite.

“Dear child,” I said, “do not speak in that tone. It is ten years since you knew him, and indeed I do think he is quite earnest and sincere. No doubt he has changed – ”

“He has not changed,” interrupted Sara; “he is the same cold, hard, proud – ”

Her voice ceased, and looking up, I saw that she had turned her face to the wall, and was silently weeping.

In the evening I begged her to come with me to the Sunday-school festival. “It will do you good to see the children, and hear them sing,” I said.

She went passively; she had regained her composure, and moved about, pale and calm.

The church stood on the Plaza; it was small, but beautiful and complete, with chancel and memorial windows of stained glass. Flowers adorned it, intertwined with the soft cloudy gray moss, a profusion of blossoms which could not be equaled in any Northern church, because of its very carelessness. Not the least impressive incident, at least to Northern eyes, was the fact that the ranks of the children singing, “Onward, Christian soldiers,” were headed by an officer in the United States uniform, the colonel commanding the post, who was also the superintendent of the Sunday-school. And when, in reading his report, the superintendent bowed his head in acknowledgment of the rector’s cordial aid and sympathy, those who knew that the rector had been himself a soldier all through those four long years, and fighting, too, on the other side, felt their hearts stirred within them to see the two now meeting as Christian soldiers, bound together in love for Christ’s kingdom, while around them, bearing flower-crowned banners, stood children both from the North and from the South, to whom the late war was as much a thing of the dead past as the Revolution of seventy-six.

As we came out of the church the rising moon was shining over Anastasia Island, lighting up the inlet with a golden path.

“Let us go up once more to the old fort,” whispered Sara, keeping me in the deep shadow of the trees as John Hoffman passed by, evidently seeking us.

“Alone?”

“Yes; there are two of us, and it will be quite safe, for the whole town is abroad in the moonlight. Do content me, Martha. I want to stand once more on that far point of the glacis under my look-out tower. That tower is my fate, you know. Come; it will be the last time.”

We walked up the sea-wall and out on to the glacis, with the light-house flashing and fading opposite; the look-out tower rose high and dark against the sky. Feeling wearied, I sat down and leaned my head against one of the old cannon; but Sara went out to the far point, and gazed up at the look-out.

“My fate!” she murmured; “my fate!”

A quick step sounded on the stone; from the other side, leaping over the wall, came John Hoffman; he did not see me as I sat in the shadow, but went out on to the point where the solitary figure stood looking up at the ruined tower.

“Sara,” he said, taking her hand, “shall we go back to ten years ago?”

And Fate, in the person of the old watch-tower, let a star shine out through her ruined windows as a token that all was well.

Vol. L. – No. 296 – 13