In The Footprints Of The Padres Part 15

It crowned the very brow of the cliff; it proudly overlooked all the neighbors; it was a Gothic ruin girded about with a mantle of ivy and dense creepers, yet not all of the perennial leaf.a.ge that clothed it, even to the eaves, could disguise the fact that the major portion of the mansion had been razed to the ground lest it should topple and go crashing into that gulf below. There, once upon a time, in a Gothic garden shaded by slender cypresses, walked the golden youth of the land; there, feminine lunch parties, pink teas, highly exclusive musicales and fashionable hops, flourished mightily; now the former side-door served as the front entrance to all that was left of the mansion; the stone that was rejected had become the headstone of the corner, as it were; it was an abrupt corner to be sure, with the upper half of its narrow door filled with small panes of gla.s.s; its modest threshold was somewhat worn; but upon the platform before it a large egg-shaped jar of unmistakable Chinese origin encased the roots of a flowing cactus that might have added a grace to the proudest palace in the Misty City. This was the modest portal of the Eyrie; ivy vines sheltered it like a dense thatch; ivy vines clung fast to a deep bay window that nearly filled one side of the library of the old mansion, now a living-room; ivy vines curtained the glazed wall of a conservatory where some one slept as in a bower. A weird dwelling place was this the moon shone upon, where pigeons nested and cooed at intervals in all the green nooks thereof.

She shone on the tall slim panes of gla.s.s in the bay window till they shimmered like ice, and brightened the carpet on the floor of the room--a carpet that was faded and frayed; she threw a soft glow upon the three walls beyond the window; where were low, convenient shelves of books; there were books, books, books everywhere--books of all descriptions, neither creed nor caution limited their range. Many pictures and sketches in oil or water-color--some of them unframed--were upon the walls above the book-shelves; there were bronze statuettes, graceful figures of lute-strumming troubadours upon the old-fashioned marble mantel; there were busts and medallions in plaster, and a few casts after the antique. Heaped in corners, and upon the tops of the book-shelves lay bric-a-brac in hopeless confusion; toy canoes from Kamchatka and the Southern seas; wooden masks from the burial places of the Alaskan Indians and the Theban Tombs of the Nile Kings; rude fish-hooks that had been dropped in the coral seas; sharks' teeth; and the strong beak of an albatross whose webbed feet were tobacco pouches and whose hollow wing-bones were the long jointed stem of a pipe; spears and war-clubs were there, brought from the gleaming sh.o.r.es of reef-girdled islands; a Florentine lamp; a roll of papyrus; an idol from Easter Island, the eyes of which were two missionary shirt b.u.t.tons of mother-of-pearl, of the Puritan type; your practical cannibal, having eaten his missionary, spits out the shirt b.u.t.tons to be used as the eyes which see not; carved gourds were there, and calabashes; Mexican pottery; and some of the latest Pompeiian antiquities such as are miraculously discovered in the presence of the amazed and delighted tourist who secretly purchases the same for considerably more than a song.

There were pious objects, many of them resembling the Ex Votos at a shrine; an ebony and bronzed indulgenced crucifix with a history, and Sacred Hearts done in scarlet satin with flames of shining tinsel flickering from their tops.

There were vines creeping everywhere within the room, from jars that stood on brackets and made hanging gardens of themselves; creepers, yards in length that sprung from the mouths of water-pots hidden behind objects of interest, and these framed the pictures in living green; a huge wide-mouthed vase stood in the bay window filled with a great pulu fern still nourished by its native soil--a veritable tropical island this, now basking in the moonlight far from its native clime. j.a.panese and Chinese lanterns were there; and an ostrich egg brought from Nubia that hung like an alabaster lamp lit by a moonbeam; and fans, of course, but quaint barbaric ones from the Orient and the Equatorial Isles; and framed and unframed photographs of celebrities each bearing an original autograph; and easy chairs, nothing but the easiest chairs from the very far-reaching one with the long arms like a pair of oars over which one throws his slippered feet, and lolls in his pajamas in memory of an East Indian season of exile, to the deep nest-like sleepy hollow quite big enough for two, in which one dozes and dreams, and out of which it is so difficult for one to rise. Over all this picturesque confusion grinned a fleshless human skull with its eye sockets and yawning jaws stuffed full of faded boutonnieres.

The moon shone, but paler now for it was growing late, on a closed coupe that rolled rapidly from the Club House in the early morning after a High Jinks night, and clattered through the streets accompanied by the matutinal milk wagons with their frequent, intermittent pauses; thus it rolled and rolled over the resounding pavement toward that house on the hill top, The Eyrie.

The vehicle zigzagged up the steep grade, and stopped at the foot of the long stairway; some one alighted and exchanged a friendly word or two with the driver, for in that lonely part of the town it was pleasant to hear the sound of one's own voice even if one was guiltily conscious of making conversation; then with a cheerful "Good-night," this some-one climbed the steps while the vehicle hurried away with its jumble of hoofs and wheels. A key was heard at the outer door; the door sagged a little in common with everything about the house--and a tenant pa.s.sed into the Eyrie.

Enter Paul c.l.i.theroe, sole scion of that melancholy house whose foundations had sunk under him, and left him, at the age of five and twenty, master of himself, but slave to fortune.

In the dim light he closed and fastened the outer door; from a hall scarcely large enough for two people to pa.s.s in, he entered the inner room with the confident step of a familiar. Having deposited hat, cane and ulster in their respective places--there was a place for everything or it would have been quite impossible to abide in that snuggery--he sank into one of the easy chairs, rolled a cigarette with meditative deliberation, lighted it and blew the smoke into the moonlight where it a.s.sumed a thousand fantastic forms.

The silence of the room seemed emphasized by the presence of its occupant; he was one who under no circ.u.mstances was likely to disturb the serenity of a house. In most cases a single room takes on the character of the one who inhabits it; this is invariably the case where the apartment is in the possession of a woman; but turn a man loose in a room, and leave him to himself for a season, and he will have made of that room a witness strong enough to condemn or condone him on the Last Day; the whole character of the place will gradually change until it has become an index to the man's nature; where this is not the case, the man is without noticeable characteristics.

Those who knew Paul c.l.i.theroe, the solitary at the Eyrie, would at once recognize this room as his abode; those of his friends who saw this room for the first time, without knowing it to be his home, would say: "Paul c.l.i.theroe would fit in here." A kind of harmonious incongruity was the chief characteristic of the man and his solitary lodging.

He sat for some time as silent as the inanimate objects in that singularly silent room. An occasional turn of the wrist, the momentary flash of the ash at the end of his cigarette, the smoke-wreath floating in s.p.a.ce--those were all that gave a.s.surance of life; for when this solitary returned into his well-chosen solitude he seemed to shed all that was of the earth earthy, and to become a kind of spectre in a dream.

Having finished his cigarette, Paul withdrew into the conservatory, his sleeping room, half doll's house and half bower, where the ivy had crept over the top of the cas.e.m.e.nt and covered his ceiling with a web of leaves. Shortly he was reposing upon his pillow, over which his holy-water font--a large crimson heart of crystal with flames of burnished gold, set upon a tablet of white marble--seemed almost to pulsate in the exquisite half-lights of approaching dawn.

It may not have been manly, or even masculine, for him thus literally to curtain his sleep, like a faun, with ivy; it may not have been orthodox for him to admit to his Valhalla some of the false G.o.ds, and to honor them after a fashion; the one true G.o.d was duly adored, and all his saints appealed to in filial faith. That was his nature and past changing; if he could not look upon G.o.d as a Jealous G.o.d visiting His judgments with fanatical justice upon the witted and half-witted, it was because his was a nature which had never been warped by the various social moral and religious influences brought to bear upon it.

He may have lacked judgment, in the eyes of the world, but he had never suffered seriously in consequence. It may not have been wise for him to fondly nourish tastes and tendencies that were usually quite beyond his means; but he did it, and doing it afforded him the greatest pleasure in life.

You will pardon him all this; every one did sooner or later, even those who discountenanced similar weaknesses or affectations--or whatever you are pleased to call them--in anyone else, soon found an excuse for overlooking them in his case.

He was not, thank heaven, all things to all men; all things to a few, he may have been--yea, even more than all else to some, so long as the spell lasted; to the majority, however, he was probably nothing, and less than nothing. And what of that? If he did little good in the world, he certainly did less evil, and, as he lay in his bed, under a white counterpane upon which the dawning light, sifting through the vines that curtained the glazed front of his sleeping room, fell in a mottled j.a.panese pattern, and while the ivy that covered the Gothic ceiling trailed long tendrils of the palest and most delicate green, each leaf glossed as if it had been varnished, this unheroic-hero, this pantheistic-devotee, this heathenized-Christian, this half-happy-go-lucky aethestic Bohemian, lay upon his pillow, the incarnation of absolute repose.

And so the morning broke, and the early birds began to chirp in the ivy and to prune their plumage and flutter among the leaves; and down the street tramped the feet of the toilers on their way to forge and dock.

Over the harbor came the daffodil light from the sun-tipped eastern hills, and it painted the waves that lapped the sleek sides of a yacht lying at anchor under the hill. A yacht that Paul had watched many a day and dreamed of many a night; for he often longed with a great longing to slip cable and hie away, even unto the uttermost parts.

II.

WHAT THE SUN SHONE ON

He shone on the far side of the eastern azure hills and set all the tree tops in the wood beyond the wold aflame; he looked over the silhouette out of a cloudless sky upon a Bay whose breadth and beauty is one of the seven hundred wonders of the world; he paved the waves with gold, a path celestial that angels might not fear to tread. He touched the heights of the Misty City and the sea-fog that had walled it in through the night as with walls of unquarried marble--albeit the eaves had dripped in the darkness as after a summer shower--and anon the opaque vapors dissolved and fled away. There she lay, the Misty City, in all her wasted and scattered beauty; she might have been a picture for Poets to dream on and Artists to love--their wonder and their despair--but she is not; she is hideous to look upon save in the sunset or the after-glow when you cannot see her, but only the dim vision of what she might have been.

He rose as a G.o.d refreshed with sleep and called the weary to their work, and disturbed the slumbers of those that toil not and spin not, and have nothing to do but sleep.

There were no secrets from him now; every detail was discovered; and so having gilded for a moment the mossy shingles of the Eyrie he stole into the room where Paul c.l.i.theroe pa.s.sed most of his waking hours, and through the curtain of ivy and geraniums that screened the conservatory from the eyes of the curious world, and where Paul was at this moment sleeping the sleep of the just. From the bed of the ravine below the Eyrie rose the rumble and roar of traffic. The hours pa.s.sed by. The sleeper began to turn uneasily on his pillow. The sound of hurrying feet was heard upon the board walks in front of the Eyrie-cliff; many voices, youthful voices, swelled the chorus that told of the regiments of children now hastening to school. From dreamland Paul returned by easy stages to the work-a-day world. He arose, donned a trailing garment with angel sleeves and a large crucifix embroidered in scarlet upon the breast--that robe made of him a cross between a Monk and a Marchioness--slipped his feet into sandals and entered the larger chamber which was at once living-room and library. He opened the shutters in the deep bay window and greeted the day with the silent solemnity of a fire-worshipper; gave drink to his potted palms and ferns and flowering plants; let his eye wander leisurely over the t.i.tles of his books; lingered a little while over his favorites and patted some of them fondly on the back. Taking a small key from its nail by the door he opened the mail box without, carrying his letters to his writing table and leaving them there unopened. He loved to speculate as to whom the writers were and what they may have said to him. This piqued his curiosity, and tided him over a scant breakfast at an inexpensive but fly-blown restaurant where he was wont to eat or make a more or less brave effort to eat whenever he had the wherewithal to settle for the same. Breakfast over and gone the young man returned to his Eyrie, and in due course was at his writing table, and at work upon the weekly article that had been appearing in the Sunday issue of one of the popular Dailies for an indefinite period, and the price of which had on several occasions kept him from becoming a conspicuous object of charity.

Having written himself out for the day, as he was apt to in a few hours, he wandered down to the Club for a bit of refreshment which was sure to be forthcoming, for his friends there were ever ready to dine him, or more frequently to wine him, merely for the pleasure of his company.

[Ill.u.s.tration: San Francisco in 1856]

So the afternoon waned and the dinner hour approached; fortunately this hour was usually bespoken and for a little while at least he was lapped in luxury. On his way home he was very apt to turn in at the wicker gates of a typical German Rathskellar where he was unmolested; where the bl.u.s.tering pipes of a colossal orchestrion brayed through an aria from Trovatore with more sound than sentiment and all unmindful of modulation.

He was at home by midnight, for the beer and the bravura ceased to flow at the witching hour. Then he lounged in the easy chair, gradually and not unconsciously shedding all the worldly influences that had been clothing him as with a hair-shirt even since he first went forth that morning. Safely he sank into the silence of the place. Every breath he drew was balm; every moment healing. So he pa.s.sed into the silence, enfolded by invisible arms that led him gently to his pillow where he sank to sleep with the trustful resignation of a tired babe.

If this routine was ever varied it was a variation with a vengeance.

"From grave to gay, from lively to severe" might have been engraved upon his escutcheon. It chanced that the family motto was Festina Lente; this also was appropriate; had he not all his life made haste slowly? For this very reason he had been accounted one of the laziest of his kind; his indolence was a byword merely because he did not throw himself into an easy chair at the Club, of an evening, and bewail his fate; because he did not puff and blow and talk often of the work he had accomplished, was accomplishing, or hastening forward to accomplishment.

With all his faults, thank heaven, that sin cannot be charged against him.

III.

BALM OF HURT WOUNDS

He was scrimping in every way; his case was growing desperate. The books, the pictures, the bric-a-brac so precious in his eyes, he was loath to part with; moreover, he was well aware that if he were to trundle his effects down to an auction-room they would not bring him enough to cover his expenses for a single week. "Better to starve in the midst of my household G.o.ds," thought he, "than to part with them for the sake of prolonging this misery." The situation was in some respects serio-comic. While he seemed to have everything, he really had almost nothing; he was in a certain sense at the mercy of his friends and dependent upon them.

As the dinner hour approached, Paul was called upon to make choice of the character of his table-talk; there were several standing invitations to dine at the houses of old friends, and these were a boon to him, for at such houses the homeless fellow felt much at home. There were special invitations, sometimes an embarra.s.sing profusion of them--all kindly, some persistent, and some even imperative; thus the dinner was a fixed fact; the mood alone was to be consulted in his choice of a table and after all how much of the success of a dinner depends upon the mood of the diner!

Paul's income was uncertain; while he had written much, and traveled much as a special correspondent, he had never regularly connected himself with any journal, and he knew nothing of the routine of office-work. Sometimes, I may say not infrequently, he could not write at all; yet his pen was his only source of revenue, and often he was without a copper to his credit. He was, therefore, constrained to dine sumptuously with friends, when he would have found a solitary salad a sweet alternative, and independence far more acceptable. The state of the exchequer was very often alarming, and his predicament might have cast a stronger man into the depths; but Paul could fast without complaint, when necessary, for he had fasted often; and, to confess the truth, he would much rather have fasted on and on, than parted with any of the little souvenirs that made his surroundings charming in spite of his privations. The friends who loved and fondled him were wont to send messengers to his door with gifts of flowers, books, pictures and the like, when soup-tickets would have been more serviceable, though by no means more acceptable. It had happened to him more than once, that having failed to break his fast--for he had a judicious horror of debt, born of bitter experience--he received at a late hour as tokens of sincere interest in his welfare, scarf pins, perfumery and scented soap; or it may have been a silk handkerchief bearing the richly wrought monogram of the happy but hungry recipient. At any rate these testimonials of his popularity were never edible. Was this hard luck? He went from one swell dinner to another, day after day, with never so much as a crumb between meals. It of course made some difference to him--this prolonged abstinence--but fortunately, or unfortunately, the effect upon him mentally, morally and physically was hardly visible to the naked eye.

He had a dress coat of the strictly correct type, which he had worn but a few times; he had lectured in it; once or twice, he had recited poems in it to the audiences of admiring lady friends. It was of no use to him now, and he felt that he should never need it again. On the street below him was a small shop, kept by the customary Israelite. Again and again, Paul had noted the sun-faded frock-coat swinging from a hook over the sidewalk in front of this shop; he had said, "I will take this coat to him; it is a costly garment; divide the original price of it by the number of times I have worn it and I find it has cost me about ten dollars an evening. Perhaps this old-clothes dealer will pay me a fair price for it; Jew though he be, he may be possessed of the heart of a Christian!"

Alas and alack! All of c.l.i.theroe's sufferings could be traced to the cool, calculating hardness of the Christian's heart. Probably it was prejudice alone that caused him to trust the Christian, and distrust the Jew.

From day to day he pa.s.sed the shop, striving to muster courage enough to enter and propose his bargain. At first he had imagined the dealer offering him but ten dollars for the coat--it had cost him a goodly sum; a little later he concluded that ten dollars was too little for any one to offer him; he might take twenty; a day later thirty seemed to him a probable offer, and shortly after he imagined himself consenting to receive fifty dollars, since the coat was in such admirable repair.

One day he took it to the dealer; he was not cordially welcomed by the man in shirt sleeves, with whom of late he had held innumerable imaginary conversations. The shop was extremely small and dark; the odor of dead garments pervaded it. With an earnest and kindly glance, Paul invited the sympathy of Abraham the son of Moses who was the son of Isaac; he saw nothing but speculation in those eyes. His coat was examined and tossed aside, as possessing few attractions. c.l.i.theroe's heart sunk within him; and it sank deeper and deeper as it began to dawn upon him that the Hebrew had no wish to possess the garment, and, if he did so, he did so only to oblige the Christian youth. A bargain was at last struck; Paul departed with five dollars in his pocket--his dress-coat was a thing of the past.

What could he do next to extricate himself from his dubious dilemma? He had a small gold watch, a precious souvenir: "Gold is gold," said he, "and worth its weight in gold." He had the address of one who was known far and wide as "Uncle." He had heard of persons of the highest respectability seeking this uncle when close pressed, and there finding temporary relief at the hands of one who is in some respects a good Samaritan in disguise. Paul found it absolutely impossible for him to enter the not unattractive front of this establishment but there was a "private entrance" in a small dark alley-way; so delicate is the consideration of an uncle whose business it is to nourish those in distress.

One night, it was late at night, c.l.i.theroe stole guiltily in through the private entrance, and sought succor of his uncle: this was an unctuous uncle, who was as sympathetic and emotional as an undertaker. Paul exhibited his watch; not for worlds would he part with it forever; money he must have at once, and surely some good angel would come to his a.s.sistance before many days; this state of affairs could not exist much longer. Mine uncle examined the watch with kindly eyes; with a pathetic shake of his head, a pitiful lifting of his bushy eyebrows, a commiserating shrug of his fat shoulders, and a petulant pursing of his plump lips as much as to say, "Well, it is a pity, but we must make the best of it, you know"--he told c.l.i.theroe he would advance him ten dollars on the watch. For this the boy was to pay one dollar per week, and in the end receive his watch, as good as new, for the sum of ten dollars, as originally advanced. Paul hesitated, but consented since he had no choice in the matter.

"What name?" asked the Uncle, benevolently.

"P. c.l.i.theroe," said Paul under his breath, as if he feared the whole world might know of his disgrace; he looked upon this transaction as nothing short of disgrace, and he wished to keep it a profound secret.

"Oh, yes; I know the name very well. Well, Mr. c.l.i.theroe, here is your ticket; take good care of it; and here is your money--you will always pay your money in advance, and weekly, until you redeem your pledge. I deduct the dollar for the first week."

c.l.i.theroe took the proffered money, and withdrew. To his surprise and chagrin he found himself possessed of but nine dollars. "It will not go far," thought he with a heavy sigh; "and where is the dollar to come from? I don't see that I have gained much by this exchange."

What he gained was this: for fifteen weeks he managed by the strictest economy to pay his dollar. At the end of that time, he no longer found it possible to even pay a dollar and the affair with the Uncle ended with his having lost, not only his watch, but sixteen dollars into the bargain.

A month has pa.s.sed: the sun is streaming through the tall narrow windows of a small chapel; the air is flooded with the music that floats from the organ loft, the solemn strains of a requiem chanted by sweet boy-voices; clouds of fragrant incense half obscure the altar, where the priest in black vestments is offering the solemn sacrifice of the Ma.s.s for the repose of the soul of one whom Paul had loved dearly ever since he was a child. There is one chief mourner kneeling before the altar--it is Paul c.l.i.theroe.