Isham Frederic Stewart
The Strollers

Half-disdainfully, the land baron mingled with the heterogeneous assembly; half-ironically, his eye swept the group at the bar–the paid spy, the needy black-sheep; the patriot, the swashbuckler; men with and without a career. As Mauville stepped forward, a quiet, dark-looking man, obviously a Mexican, not without a certain distinguished carriage, immediately approached the newcomer.

“You have come? Good!” he said, and drew Mauville aside. They conversed in low tones, occasionally glancing about them at the others.

In the hall below the rhythm of a waltz now made itself heard, and the land baron, having received certain papers which committed him to a hazardous service, prepared to leave.

“Here’s luck!” said a man on his left, raising his glass. At these words several of the company turned.

“Send it south!” roared a Texan Furioso, emptying his tumbler.

“Send it south!” echoed the others, and “south” the fragrant juleps were “sent,” as the land baron unceremoniously tore himself away from the group.

“They say the floods are rising,” said the man with whom Mauville had conferred, at the door.

“All the better if the river’s running wild!” answered the other. “It will be easier running the guard.”

“Yes,” returned the Mexican, extending his hand, with a smile; “in this case, there’s safety in danger!”

“That’s reassuring!” replied the land baron, lightly, as he descended the stairs.

On reaching the floor below he was afforded a view through an open door into a large room, lighted with many lamps, where a quadroon dance, or “society ball,” was in progress. After a moment’s hesitation he entered and stood in the glare, watching the waltzers. Around the wall were dusky chaperons, guarding their charges with the watchfulness of old dowagers protecting their daughters from the advances of younger sons. Soft eyes flashed invitingly, graceful figures passed, and the revelry momentarily attracted Mauville, as he followed the movements of the waltzers and heard the strains of music. Impulsively he approached a young woman whose complexion was as light as his own and asked her to dance. The next moment they were gliding to the dreamy rhythm around the room.

By a fatal trick of imagination, his thoughts wandered to the dark-haired girl he had met in the Shadengo Valley. If this now were she, the partner he had so unceremoniously summoned to his side. How light were her feet; what poetry of motion was her dancing; what pleasure the abandonment to which she had resigned herself! Involuntarily he clasped more tightly the slender waist, and the dark eyes, moved by that palpable caress, looked not unkindly into his own. But at the glance he experienced a strange repulsion and started, as if awakening from a fevered sleep, abruptly stopping in the dance, his arm falling to his side. The girl looked at him half-shyly, half-boldly, and the very beauty of her eyes–the deep, lustrous orbs of a quadroon–smote him mockingly. He felt as though some light he sought shone far beyond his ken; a light he saw, but could never reach; ever before him, but always receding.

“Monsieur is tired?” said the girl, in a puzzled tone.

“Yes,” he answered bluntly, leading her to a seat. “Good-night.”

“Good-night,” she replied, following his retreating figure with something like regret.

The evening bells, distinct and mysterious, were sounding as he emerged from New Orleans’ Mabille, and their crystalline tones, rising and falling on the solemn night, brought to mind his boyhood. Pictures long forgotten passed before him, as his footsteps led him far from the brightly-lighted streets to a sequestered thoroughfare that lay peacefully on the confines of the busy city; a spot inviting rest from the turmoil yonder and in accord with the melancholy vibrations of the bells. He stood, unseen in the shadow of great trees, before a low rambling mansion; not so remote but that the perfume from the garden was wafted to him over the hedge.

“A troubadour!” he said scornfully to himself. “Edward Mauville sighing at a lady’s window like some sentimental serenader! There’s a light yonder. Now to play my despairing part, I must watch for her image. If I were some one else, I should say my heart beats faster than usual. She comes–the fair lady! Now the curtain’s down. All that may be seen is her shadow. So, despairing lover, hug that shadow to your breast!”

He plucked a rose from a bush in her garden, laughing at himself the while for doing so, and as he moved away he repeated with conviction:

“A shadow! That is all she ever could have been to me!”

CHAPTER III
FROM GARRET TO GARDEN

“Celestina, what do you think this is?” Waving something that crackled in mid air.

“A piece of paper,” said Celestina from her place on the hearth.

“Paper!” scoffed Straws. “It’s that which Horace calls a handmaid, if you know how to use it; a mistress, if you do not–money! It is–success, the thing which wrecks more lives than cyclones, fires and floods! We were happy enough before this came, weren’t we, Celestina?”

The girl nodded her head, a look of deep anxiety in her eyes.

“Oh, why did the critics so damn the book it fairly leaped to popularity!” went on the bard. “Why did they advise me to learn a trade? to spoil no more reams of paper? To spoil reams of paper and get what–this little bit in return!”

“Is it so very much money?” asked Celestina.

“An enormous amount–one thousand dollars! And the worst of it is, my publishers write there may be more to come.”

“Well,” said the child, after a long, thoughtful pause, “why don’t you give it away?”

“Hum! Your suggestion, my dear–”

“But, perhaps, no one would take it?” interrupted Celestina.

“Perhaps they wouldn’t!” agreed Straws, rubbing his hands. “So, under the circumstances, let us consider how we may cultivate some of the vices of the rich. It is a foregone conclusion, set down by the philosophers, that misery assails riches. The philosophers were never rich and therefore they know. Besides, they are unanimous on the subject. It only remains to make the best of it and cultivate the vanities of our class. Where shall I begin? ‘Riches betray man into arrogance,’ saith Addison. Therefore will I be arrogant; while you, my dear, shall be proud.”

“That will be lovely!” assented Celestina, as a matter of habit. She went to the bed and began smoothing the sheets deftly.

“My dear!” expostulated Straws. “You mustn’t do that.”

“Not make the bed!” she asked, in surprise.

“No.”

“Nor bring your charcoal?”

“No.”

“Nor wash your dishes?”

“Certainly not!”

Celestina dropped on the floor, a picture of misery.

“Too bad, isn’t it?” commented Straws. “But it can’t be helped, can it?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head, wofully; “it can’t be helped! But why–why did you publish it?”

“Just what the critics asked, my dear! Why? Who knows? Who can tell why the gods invented madness? But it’s done; for bad, or worse!”

“For bad, or worse!” she repeated, gazing wistfully toward the rumpled bed.

“If somebody tells you fine feathers don’t make fine birds, don’t believe him,” continued the poet. “It’s envy that speaks! But what do you suppose I have here?” Producing a slip of paper from his vest pocket. “No; it’s not another draft! An advertisement! Listen: ‘Mademoiselle de Castiglione’s select seminary. Young ladies instructed in the arts of the bon ton. Finesse, repose, literature! Fashions, etiquette, languages! P. S. Polkas a specialty!’ Celestina, your destiny lies at Mademoiselle de Castiglione’s. They will teach you to float into a drawing room–but you won’t forget the garret? They will instruct you how to sit on gilt chairs–you will think sometimes of the box, or the place by the hearth? You will become a mistress of the piano–‘By the Coral Strands I Wander,’ ‘The Sweet Young Bachelor’–but I trust you will not learn to despise altogether the attic pipe?”

“You mean,” said Celestina, slowly, her face expressing bewilderment, “I must go away somewhere?”

Straws nodded. “That’s it; somewhere!”

The girl’s eyes flashed; her little hands clenched. “I won’t; I won’t!”

“Then that’s the end on’t!” retorted the bard. “I had bought you some new dresses, a trunk with your name on it, and had made arrangements with Mademoiselle de Castiglione (who had read ‘Straws’ Strophes’), but perhaps I could give the dresses away to some other little girl who will be glad to drink at the Pierian–I mean, the Castiglione–spring.”

Celestina’s eyes were an agony of jealousy; not that she was mercenary, or cared for the dresses, but that Straws should give them to another little girl. Her pride, however, held her in check and she drew herself up with composure.

“That would be nice–for the other little girl!” she said.

“The only difficulty is,” resumed Straws, “there isn’t any other little girl.”

At that, Celestina gave a glad cry and flew to him, throwing her arms around his neck.

“Oh, I will go anywhere you want!” she exclaimed.

“Get on your bonnet then–before you change your mind, my dear!”

“And aunt?” asked Celestina, lingering doubtfully on the threshold.

“Your aunt, as you call that shriveled-up shrew, consented at once,” answered Straws. “Her parental heart was filled with thanksgiving at the prospect of one less mouth to fill. Go and say good-by, however, to the old harridan; I think she has a few conventional tears to shed. But do not let her prolong her grief inordinately, and meet me at the front door.”

A few moments later, Straws and the child, hand-in-hand, started on their way to the Castiglione temple of learning and culture. If Celestina appeared thoughtful, even sad, the poet was never so merry, and sought to entertain the abstracted girl with sparkling chit-chat about the people they met in the crowded streets. A striking little man was a composer of ability, whose operas, “Cosimo,” “Les Pontons de Cadiz,” and other works had been produced at the Opéra Comique in Paris. He was now director of the French opera in New Orleans and had brought out the charming Mademoiselle Capriccioso and the sublime Signor Staccato. The lady by his side, a dark brunette with features that were still beautiful, was the nimble-footed Madame Feu-de-joie, whose shapely limbs and graceful motions had delighted two generations and were like to appeal to a third. Men who at twenty had thrown Feu-de-joie posies, now bald but young as ever, tossed her roses.

“I don’t like that lady,” said Celestina, emphatically, when the dancer had passed on, after petting her and kissing her on the cheek.

“Now, it’s curious,” commented the bard, “but your sex never did.”

“Do men like her?” asked the child, with premature penetration.

“They did; they do; they will!” answered Straws, epigrammatically.

“Do you like her?”

“Oh, that’s different! Poets, you know, are the exception to any rule.”

“Why?”

“Because–Really, my dear, you ask too many questions!”

Although Straws and Celestina had left the house early in the day, it was noon before they reached the attractive garden, wherein was sequestered the “select seminary.”

In this charming prison, whose walls were overrun with flowering vines, and whose cells were pretty vestal bowers, entered the bard and the young girl, to be met on the front porch by the wardeness herself, a mite of a woman, with wavy yellow hair, fine complexion and washed-out blue eyes. Sensitive almost to shyness, Mademoiselle de Castiglione appeared more adapted for the seclusion of the veil in the Ursuline Church than for the varied responsibilities of a young ladies’ institute. At the approach of the poet, she turned, looked startled, but finally came forward bravely.

“Oh, I’ve read it again, Mr. Straws!” she exclaimed, impetuously.

“What?” he returned, sternly, pausing at the foot of the steps.

“Your–your lovely Strophes!” she continued, timidly.

The bard frowned. “All great men profess to scowl at flattery,” thought Straws. “She will have but a poor opinion of me, if I do not appear an offended Hector!”

“Mademoiselle, I excessively dislike compliments,” he began aloud, but having gone thus far, his courage and lack of chivalry failed him in the presence of her dismay; he forgot his greatness, and hastened to add, with an ingratiating smile: “Except when delivered by such a charming person!”

“Oh, Mr. Straws!”

“This, Mademoiselle,” resumed the bard, “is the young girl I spoke about. Her mother,” he added in a low voice, “was a beautiful quadroon; her father”–here Straws mentioned a name. The wardeness flushed furiously. “Father died; always meant to make it right; didn’t; crime of good intentions! Virago of an aunt; regular termagant; hates the girl! Where was a home to be found for her? Where”–gazing around him–“save this–Eden? Where a mother–save in one whose heart is the tenderest?”

Diplomatic Straws! Impulsively the wardeness crossed to Celestina; her blue eyes beamed with sentiment and friendliness. “I will give her my personal attention,” she said. And then to the young girl: “We will be friends, won’t we?”

“Yes,” replied Celestina, slowly, after a moment’s discreet hesitation. She was glad the other did not kiss her like Feu-de-joie.

“I always like,” said the wardeness, “to feel my little girls are all my little friends.”

“Mademoiselle,” exclaimed the bard, “I’ll–I’ll dedicate my next volume of poems to you!”

“Really, Mr. Straws!”

“For every kindness to her, you shall have a verse,” he further declared.

“Then your dedication would be as long as Homer!” she suddenly flashed out, her arm around the child.

Straws looked at her quickly. It was too bad of him! And that borrowed Don Juan smile! Nothing could excuse it.

Castiglione busied herself with Celestina’s ribbons. “Whoever did tie that bow-knot?” she observed.

“Good-by, Celestina,” said Straws.

Celestina put her arms gravely about his neck and he pressed his lips to her cheek. Then he strode quickly toward the gate. Just before passing out, he looked back. The wardeness had finished adjusting the ribbon and was contemplatively inspecting it. Celestina, as though unconscious of the attention, was gazing after the poet, and when he turned into the road, her glance continued to rest upon the gate.

CHAPTER IV
“THE BEST OF LIFE”

On a certain evening about a month later, the tropical rains had flooded the thoroughfares, until St. Charles Street needed but a Rialto and a little imagination to convert it into a watery highway of another Venice, while as for Canal Street, its name was as applicable as though it were spanned by a Bridge of Sighs. In the narrow streets the projecting eaves poured the water from the roof to the sidewalks, deluging the pedestrians. These minor thoroughfares were tributary to the main avenues and gushed their rippling currents into them, as streams supply a river, until the principal streets flowed swiftly with the dirty water that choked their gutters. The rain splashed and spattered on the sidewalks, fairly flooding out the fruit venders and street merchants who withstood the deluge for a time and then were forced to vanish with their portable stores. The cabby, phlegmatic to wind and weather, sat on his box, shedding the moisture from his oil-skin coat and facing a cloud of steam which presumably concealed a horse.

The dark night and the downpour made the cafés look brighter. Umbrellas flitted here and there, skilfully piloted beneath swinging signs and low balconies, evading awning posts and high hats as best they might. There were as many people out as usual, but they were hurrying to their destinations, even the languid creole beauty, all lace and alabaster, moved with the sprightliness of a maid of Gotham.

Straws, editor and rhymster, was seated on the semi-Oriental, semi-French gallery of the little café, called the Veranda, sipping his absinthe, smoking a cheroot and watching the rain drip from the roof of the balcony, spatter on the iron railing and form a shower bath for the pedestrians who ventured from beneath the protecting shelter. Before him was paper, partly covered with well-nigh illegible versification, and a bottle of ink, while a goose-quill, tool of the tuneful Nine, was expectantly poised in mid air.

“Confound it!” he said to himself. “I can’t write in the attic any more, since Celestina has gone, and apparently I can’t write away from it. Since she left, the dishes haven’t been washed; my work has run down at the heels, and everything is going to the dogs generally. And now this last thing has upset me quite. ‘In the twinkling of an eye,’ says the sacred Book. But I must stop thinking, or I’ll never complete this poem. Now to make my mind a blank; a fitting receptacle to receive inspiration!”

The bard’s figure swayed uncertainly on the stool. In the lively race through a sonnet, it was often, of late, a matter of doubt with Straws, whether Bacchus or Calliope would prevail at the finish, and to-night the jocund god had had a perceptible start. “Was ever a poet so rhyme-fuddled?” muttered the impatient versifier. “An inebriating trade, this poetizing!”–and he reached for the absinthe. “If I am not careful, these rhymes will put me under the table!”

“Nappy, eh?” said a voice at his elbow, as a dripping figure approached, deposited his hat on one chair and himself in another. The newcomer had a long, Gothic face and a merry-wise expression.

The left hand of the poet waved mechanically, imposing silence; the quill dived suddenly to paper, trailed twice across it, and then was cast aside, as Straws looked up.

“Yes,” he replied to the other’s interrogation. “It’s all on account of Celestina’s leaving me. You ought to see my room. Even a poet’s soul revolts against it. So what can I do, save make my home amid convivial haunts?” The poet sighed. “And you, Phazma; how are you feeling?”

“Sober as a judge!”

“Then you shall judge of this last couplet,” exclaimed Straws quickly. “It has cost me much effort. The editor wanted it. It seemed almost too sad a subject for my halting muse. There are some things which should be sacred even from us, Phazma. But what is to be done when the editor-in-chief commands? ‘Ours not to reason why!’ The poem is a monody on the tragedy at the theater.”

“At the St. Charles?” said Phazma, musingly. “As I passed, it was closed. It seemed early for the performance to be over. Yet the theater was dark; all the lights had gone out.”

“More than the lights went out,” answered Straws, gravely; “a life went out!”

“I don’t exactly–Oh, you refer to Miss Carew’s farewell?”

“No; to Barnes’!”

“Barnes’!” exclaimed his surprised listener.

“Yes; he is dead; gone out like the snuff of a candle! Died in harness, before the footlights!”

“During the performance!” cried the wondering Phazma. “Why, only this afternoon I met him, apparently hale and hearty, and now–you tell me he has paid the debt of nature?”

“As we must all pay it,” returned Straws. “He acted as if he were dazed while the play was in progress and I could not but notice it, standing in the wings. The prompter spoke of it to me. ‘I don’t know what is the matter with Mr. Barnes,’ he said, ‘I have had to keep throwing him his lines.’ Even Miss Carew rallied him gently between acts on his subdued manner.

“‘This is our last performance together,’ he said absently. She gave him a reproachful look and he added, quickly: ‘Do I appear gloomy, my dear? I never felt happier.’

“At the end of the second act he seemed to arouse himself, when she, as Isabella, said: ‘I’ll fit his mind to death, for his soul’s rest.’ He gazed at her long and earnestly, his look caressing her wherever she moved. Beginning the prison scene with spirit, he had proceeded to,

 
“‘Reason thus with life;
If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing
That none but fools would keep–’
 

When suddenly he threw up his arms and fell upon the stage, his face toward the audience. With a cry I shall never forget, Miss Carew rushed to him and took his head in her arms, gazing at him wildly, and calling to him piteously. The curtain went down, but nothing could be done, and life quickly ebbed. Once, only, his lips moved: ‘Your mother–there!–where the play never ends!’ and it was over.”

“It is like a romance,” said Phazma, finally, at the conclusion of this narration.

“Say, rather, reality! The masque is over! In that final sleep Jack Pudding lies with Roscius; the tragedian does not disdain the mummer, and beautiful Columbine, all silver spangles and lace, is company for the clown. ’Tis the only true republic, Phazma; death’s Utopia!”

“But to think he should have died with those words of the poet on his lips?”

“A coincidence!” answered Straws. “No more notable than the death of Edmund Kean, who, when he reached the passage ‘Farewell, Othello’s occupation’s gone!’ fell back unconscious; or that of John Palmer, who, after reciting ‘There is another and a better world,’ passed away without a pang.”

A silence fell between the two poets; around them shadows appeared and vanished. Phazma finished his syrup and arose.

“Don’t go,” said Straws. “My own thoughts are poor company. Recite some of your madrigals, that’s a good fellow! What a wretched night! These rain-drops are like the pattering feet of the invisible host. Some simple song, Phazma!”

“As many as you please!” cried his flattered brother-bard. “What shall it be?”

“One of your Rhymes for Children. Your ‘Boy’s Kingdom,’ beginning:

 
“When I was young, I dreamed of knights
And dames with silken trains.”
 

“Thou shalt have it, mon ami!”

And Phazma gaily caught up the refrain, while Straws beat time to the tinkling measures.

The last entry in the date-book, or diary, of Barnes seems curiously significant as indicating a knowledge that his end was near. For the first time in the volume he rambles on in a reminiscent mood about his boyhood days:

“The first bit of good fortune I ever enjoyed was when as a lad in sweeping a crossing in the neighborhood of the Strand I found a bright, shining sovereign. How tightly I grasped it in my little fist that night when I slept in a doorway! I dared not trust it in my pocket. The next night I walked to the ticket-seller at Drury Lane, and demanded a seat down stairs. ‘Gallery seats sold around the corner,’ said this imposing gentleman with a prodigious frown, and, abashed, I slunk away. My dream of being near the grand people vanished and I climbed once more to my place directly under the roof.

“My next bit of good fortune happened in this wise. Sheridan, the playwright-orator, attracted my attention on Piccadilly one day, and, for the delight of gazing upon him, I followed. When he stopped, I stopped; when he advanced, I did likewise. I felt that I was treading in the footsteps of a king. Suddenly he paused, wheeled about and confronted me, a raw-boned, ragged, awkward lad of fourteen. ‘What one of my creditors has set you following me?’ he demanded. ‘None, sir,’ I stammered. ‘I only wanted to look at the author of “The Rivals.”’ He appeared much amused and said: ‘Egad! So you are a patron of the drama, my boy?’ I muttered something in the affirmative. He regarded my appearance critically. ‘I presume you would not be averse to genteel employment, my lad?’ he asked. With that he scribbled a moment and handed me a note to the property man of Drury Lane. My heart was too full; I had no words to thank him. The tears were in my eyes, which, noting, he remarked, with an assumption of sternness: ‘Are you sure, boy, you are not a bailiff in disguise?’ At this I laughed and he left me. The note procured me an engagement as errand boy at the stage-door and later I rose to the dignity of scene-shifter. How truly typical of this man’s greatness, to help lift a homeless lad out of the gutters of London town!

“But I am rambling on as though writing an autobiography, to be read when I am gone–”

Here the entry ceases and the rest of the pages in the old date-book are blank.