Detmold: A Romance: Part Vi

XIII.

THE WATER FARM.

ON the following morning Hyson repaired, as soon as he had taken breakfast, to the lodgings of Detmold, to consult with him about the morrow’s expedition to the farm of Signor Niccolo. There was now to be a general breaking up of the company. The pleasant associations in the strange old city were at an end. The Starfields were to leave for Venice a day later, and he himself, after adding to his stock of information what Signor Niccolo might have to impart, felt that there was little requiring his presence in this locality, and hoped to meet them soon in Switzerland. He knew nothing of the painful events of the night before except the breaking of the mirror, and to that, if his thoughts for an instant recalled it, he attached no more importance than if it had been the breaking of a camp-stool or a diningtable.

As he passed through the bureau of his hotel, a message from Antonio was handed him. It was to notify him thus in advance that Antonio could not join in the excursion to Signor Niccolo’s, on account of an indisposition. It assured him that everything would he done for his entertainment just as if he himself were present, and desired him a happy journey.

This was a disappointment, because he had wished to have the advantage of Castelbarco’s graphic explanations both there and by the way. At the lodgings of Detmold another awaited lnm. The servant, assured him that Detmold had suddenly gone away.

“ When ? ”

“ Early this morning, by the train to the eastward.”

“ Where has he gone, and when is he coming hack — to-day? Did he not leave any message? ”

“ He did not leave any message, Signore. He took some clothing with him.”

“ That does not look as if he were intending to come back to-day. It is uncivil, to say the least,” he muttered, and turned away.

It occurred to him to call upon Castelbarco personally, to see if his illness were serious, and also to learn whether he knew anything of the cause of Detmold’s sudden departure.

Castelbarco came down with heavy circles about his eyes and a sallow and disordered complexion.

“ I see, I see.” said his visitor; ‘'late hours and overfatigue. You have not had enough sleep.”

Copyright, 1878, by HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & Co.

“ No, I was restless. I slept very little.”

” I thought you were an older hand at a little dissipation than that. Still you can sleep enough to-day to make up for it, and you will be all right in the morning. I must insist upon taking you with me to Signor Niccolo’s. The fresh air and the sunlight will do you good. It will make another man of you. Detmold has suddenly gone away and left me in the lurch, and I am entirely alone. If you abandon me too, I shall not get on with the farmers at all, and might as well give it up.”

” Detmold has gone!” exclaimed the Italian, with sharp surprise. “ Whither?”

“ He left no message with his servant. I hoped that perhaps you might know something about it. Most likely he had a telegram to meet somebody somewhere, but if so, or in any ease, I do not understand why he could not leave word.”

“ I know nothing of it,” said Castelbarco.

An expression compounded of many emotions passed over his features: there seemed to be in it pain, remorse, fear, and even a trace of triumph.

“ I have passed a bad night,” said he, “ and am now suffering; but perhaps you are right; it may revive me to see the open country. I will go with you.”

His countenance continued troubled during the interview. He pressed his hands together nervously, and his eyes, instead of looking at his interlocutor, gazed absently beyond him.

“ I will call for you, then, with my fiacre, at the appointed hour,” said Hyson, at parting, “ and we two will make the expedition.”

“ No, permit me,” said the Italian. “ We will go in one of my conveyances. I have a driver who knows the road well; he was once a farm hand with Niccolo. It was my intention that we should go in this way.”

They were to drive instead of going by rail, as they might have done, to Vicenza, at least, in order to see the country more thoroughly, and to diverge, if they saw fit, here and there from the main road, which follows the line of the railway.

Hyson made no doubt that the depression of Castelbarco was due to some superstitious dread connected with the breaking of the mirror. It was a confirmation of the prediction of Signor Benotti the night before. It was now his turn to indulge a slight feeling of contempt. In the evening he took his leave of the. Starfields, whom he should not find upon his return. There were mutual wishes that they might soon meet again. He told them of the unexplained departure of Detmold. All joined in thinking it strange except Alice, who was more reticent on the subject than the rest, but was secretly much troubled.

She recalled the expression of his face in the mirror, the forlorn sadness of his voice. Had he gone away with some desperate intent, through the loss of her esteem or shame at the exposure that had been made? This frightful charge of Castelbarco’s,—it could not be true. Why had not Hyson known it? Why, indeed, had it never interfered with the apparent friendliness of Castelbarco himself? Was it possible that one so delicate, so high-minded, so devoted to all that was beautiful and noble as Detmold, was involved in shameful connections, — was perhaps himself a criminal? She would never believe it. But then —his emotion — his own admission?

She was possessed by no absorbing affection ready to go to any lengths for its object, to share with him not only adversity but disgrace, if disgrace there were. Yet her interest in Detmold had grown with every moment of their pleasant intercourse at Verona, and she had been touched by his foolish verses. If it had been necessary to define her feeling towards him in these last days, it could have taken no other name than love. This was not forgotten nor abandoned, but if this that was told were true — of course — she was hopelessly puzzled. What could she think? There was something to be explained. He would write to her. There must be some favorable explanation. Yes, undoubtedly he would at once write to her, and the mystery would be dispelled. She looked impatiently for letters. The first mail brought none, nor the second; day after day and week after week went by, as she pursued her journeys, and no letters came.

In the morning, at the hour of starting, Castelbarco was much as usual, and showed little trace of his indisposition of the previous day.

The white post-road to Vicenza skirts the lower spurs of the Tyrolean Alps. It stretches between rows of fig and mulberry trees garlanded with vines, as if for a perpetual festival. The terraced hill-sides climb to ruddy Scaligerian castles. There are blue mountain planes always in sight. The vegetation here is not as dense as farther to the west and south, where Lombardy is a jungle of maize, vines, and fig-trees. The great canals are replaced by others smaller and less complete. The water in them runs more rapidly, and, though full of silt, has not the marshy aspect noticeable elsewhere. In an endless net-work of subsidiary canals and ditches it percolates merrily about the roots of the flax and Indian corn, crosses the marcite meadows in thin sheets, and collects in the stagnant pools of the rice marshes. Stalwart acquaiuoli, or water bailiffs, are seen striding away in the fields to see that all is secure.

The travelers passed through many a pretty village with its campanile, its red roofs, and its bold saint poised upon the dome of the church. Here and there small valleys, stretching into the hills horizontal to their course, reminded Hyson of his own distant territory. Castelbarco spoke to him of the country to the northeast, towards Bassano, as even more pleasing, and he promised himself to see it. They made a diversion to the battle-field of Arcola, over the narrow causeway which leads to it through marshes in which the Little Corporal, in the morning of his fame, floundered to his waist under the fire of Austrian grenadiers.

When in sight of the square castles of Montecchio upon the slopes of the Monti Berici, they turned off by a less traveled road, crossed the swift Bacchiglione below Vicenza, and towards night-fall arrived at the domain of Signor Niccolo.

During the day Castelbarco was of strangely variable humor. His mood swung like a pendulum; it was always dangerously beyond the point of equilibrium; he was gay to excess, then gloomy. He indulged in boisterous merriment, then sat abstracted, drew heavy sighs, and once Hyson thought he saw a tear steal down his cheek. He endeavored to rally him, but the effort was poorly received. He enlarged upon the capabilities of the Paradise Valley; drew comparisons; found here a mountain, there a gully or a stream, that recalled some of its features; and avowed his purpose of incorporating in it, at no distant day, all the attractive circumstances they saw about them, and more. At last Hyson begged to know if it might not be a relief— unless it were of a character that ought not to be disclosed — to state what it was that so troubled him.

“ It is nothing that could be explained,” said Castelbarco. “ I am dissatisfied with myself a little.’'

“ So are all the rest of us,” said Hyson, reassuringly, “but it does not pay to feel so. One must get in the habit of considering that although he is not altogether what he would like to be, he is a very fine fellow compared with a great many others. But has it not something to do with the breaking of the mirror? ”

“ Partly that. I have apprehensions, almost, a presentiment, of evil. But you must understand I am a skeptic,—I do not believe in trivial signs. Our ancestor who made such an inscription knew nothing about the destiny of his race, nor could it be in any way connected with the integrity of a material object. He must have been a superstitious man, strangely imposed upon by others.”

“ You reason as clearly as clock-work. I was quite certain that a straight-up, handsome fellow like you was not to be annoyed by a picayune, old woman’s tradition. As to presentiments, I have had scores of them. They never come true. Once, when I had a presentiment that I was going to meet with a railroad accident, I traveled to California and back in perfect safety. Another time, when I had none at all, I was smashed up on the Harlem road, and had to go on crutches for six months.”

Signor Niccolo greeted the son of his wealthy customer and his friend with effusion. “ Welcome,” said he; “come in. Ah, you are in season; the wheat has stalks like pipe-stems. It is a poor place, this of ours, but you shall have the best there is in it. I have been ill, but Heaven be praised!— Come with me. You are tired. Run, Giacomo, — lazy-bones, — some cool water from the spring! and you, Taddea, a flask of the Breganze wine! You shall dine, and then Emilia shall sing you some of her pretty songs.”

The house of Signor Niccolo was of rubble-stone covered with coarse stucco, tinted, and here and there painted with a madonna or a view of souls toasting in purgatory, in faded fresco. It was preceded by a court-yard and a wall, on the gate-posts of which were grotesque plaster figures. The rooms were floored with brick, except the best one, which had tiling of blue and white china. The ground rose in the rear, and then descended. At the top was a little terrace and an arbor of vines resting un piers of whitewashed brick. It was a prosperous-looking farm, with full barns and numerous cattle.

The Signora Niccolo, dark, buxom, and bright-eyed, was twenty years her husband’s junior. A blooming child played about the room with chairs and strings, pretending to run a train of cars to Venice. Hyson took passage, and was soon upon such intimate terms with the engineer that he could have had a free pass upon the road indefinitely.

When the family assembled at the hospitable supper board, there joined them a young lady of eighteen, who had lightish-brown hair, a slight figure of medium height, and demure manners. It was the pretty Emilia, a niece and adopted daughter, engaged in musical studies at Milan, but now spending a vacation at home. She had American and English fellow students, and had learned a good deal of the language, which she spoke with a quick, soft pronunciation. Taddea, a servant in a half-contadina costume, waited at table.

“If you do not all eat a great deal,” said Niccolo, “ you will have Emilia to settle with. She has attended to the preparation of the dishes herself.”

When the cloth was removed, the old gentleman, after adjusting to his eyes a more accurate pair of spectacles, and making a great show of clearing for action, spread upon the table his maps, his plans, his parchments, his authorities upon the water rights,—a system of jurisprudence which is the growth of nearly a thousand years. At the basis is the principle that the water is indissolubly joined to the land, and can by no means be transferred separately.

“ This preliminary survey we must take,” said Niccolo, “ to understand the design of the whole. To-morrow we shall see how the theory is perfectly put in practice.”

He showed the location of his different crops, and the method of treating those to which the water is applied. He talked learnedly of the carbonates of lime, the salts of iron, the gypsum, held in suspension by the water in its course from the mountains, and brought, down to be infiltrated about the roots of the vegetation. He explained the methods of payment of rent by the peasants who sub-let from the farmers, — the affitto a mezzadria, or payment in miscellaneous crops, the affitto a grano, or payment in wheat alone.

“ And here is my lease,” said he, spreading out a roll, “ which I receive from my landlord. It runs for nineteen years. At its commencement there was made an inventory of everything on the place, down to the last mulberry-tree. When the time expires we must make another inventory, showing how everything stands then. If something is lacking, very well; I pay for it. If, on the other hand, I have added something of value, a proper allowance is made to me for it. Here,” he went on, “ is the plan of my windmill. Do you see how it works in cleaning the rice? The wheels raise by cogs the heavy beam A, which at the height C is let loose and falls forty-five times a minute into a granite mortar below. There are some things I shall change; I am applying my mind to it now. I have also other attachments, by which I make it grind and do various work. Do you notice how it is located? It is but a few steps down the lane from my barns, and at my time of life every step counts, I can tell you.”

Whether it was the good Breganze wine or only a return oscillation of the pendulum, Castelbarco was for the moment as cheerful as the rest. He interpreted the rapid talk of the farmer, marred by a patois which was mainly unintelligible to Hyson. Emilia sat by, and took a lively interest in the proceedings. She helped the padrone arrange his papers, or read a name or a letter for him which his old eyes were not sharp enough to pick out. Her frilled sleeves fell back, as she rested both elbows upon the table, and showed a pair of round, shapely arms. At them and into her bright eyes the student of irrigation looked, and asked her questions about music and Milan, to the detriment of the weighty matters spread out for his inspection. She said to him, in an undertone, smiling, “ I fear you are not paying sufficient attention to the padrone.”

“ It is true,” he replied; “ but we have a saying that blood runs thicker than water.”

The family retired at a good hour. Before they went Emilia sang for them some of her songs in a very sweet and flexible voice.

“ When you are a great prima donna you must come to America, and we will give you an immense ovation,” said Hyson. “ I will see to it myself. You will grow very wealthy, besides.”

“ When I do,” said she, “ I shall buy an immense farm, ever so much larger than this, and have orchards and vineyards and flowers, — especially all kinds of animals. I like animals so much.”

“ She might be a customer for the Paradise Valley,” thought Hyson.

He tossed about uncomfortably for some time, prevented from sleeping by a warm atmosphere. He heard Castelbarco, whose apartment adjoined his own, pacing the floor. He slept, and dreamed of the pretty ways of Emilia. He awoke late in the night, and heard Castelbarco still pacing. He arose and went to expostulate with him. His candle had burnt out, but it could be seen that he had not undressed. Hyson rested lightly upon the side of the bed.

“ I hope you arc not keeping up those disagreeable feelings still, — presentiments and so on,” said he.

“I cannot free myself from them,” said the other, throwing himself down also.

“ This comes of belonging to an old family. In our country, where it makes no difference what family you belong to, as long as you are presentable and have money in your pocket, such a thing could never happen. It is only one more argument for our free institutions.”

“ It is not that alone, but its coincidence with other circumstances. Would that I dared to tell you. If one had failed in a dearly cherished project, and not only failed but incurred hatred where he most wished esteem, that would justify such a feeling, would it not? ”

“ It was not my intention to intrude upon your confidence,” said Hyson; “ but if there is any way in which I can be of the least service, I hope you will do me the favor to command me.”

“ Well, I will tell you all,” said the miserable young man, commencing again to walk. “ You shall be the judge; you shall see that I did not act with deliberation, that it was not my purpose to say the words I did. But no,—what do I promise? To speak of it is to extend the injury. You can do nothing. What is done is done.”

Hyson was of a sympathetic nature, and would gladly have done anything in his power to alleviate the trouble of his friend. But this is one of the mysterious things of life, that pain constitutes a vast loneliness. No matter how close the proximity and warm the compassion of anxious hearts, the sufferer must writhe and twist alone, while they can only marvel at what is so near yet so impervious to help.

He essayed a word or two further of cheer, and then left him, hoping sleep would produce a beneficial change. A light breeze stirred the heavy air. He looked from his window and saw the arms of the Signor Niccolo’s windmill, rising from behind a row of pollarded trees, barred against the sky like a great cross.

XIV.

THE BLOW OF A SHADOW.

In his brick-floored chamber, with its bedstead tipped with brass, its porcelain stove, and its vine - shaded windows, down in the heart of the Italian country, Hyson heard all night long slight purling noises, like the whistle of birds, as the water rippled over obstructions in its onward course. Of all sizes, down to the miniature channels that run in a plowed furrow, the canals are woven throughout the plain of Lombardy like threads of silver in a rich tissue. They give it an almost cloying fertility. They pass over, under, and through each other by sluices, bridges, and siphons without end. The smallest differences of level are taken advantage of in drawing off the water and returning it to its channels. Over and under a single canal are counted three hundred and forty bridges and passages, five of which are aqueducts across mountain torrents.

The young man dreamed of Emilia; of the Paradise Valley, which now seemed to be teeming with people and running with streams like this; of Castelbarco stalking up and down interminably in the midst of it; of Detmold, and of the dark windmill. He was awakened at day-break by the hoarse cooing of pigeons.

The coming heats of the day were presaged by a perfect hush, in which one could fancy he detected the hum of the illimitable mechanism of growth, — the opening of petals, the spreading of roots, the movement of sap, and the assimilation of chlorophyl. The unfamiliar objects outside had an exaggerated strangeness in the gray light. He arose, made copious ablutions, and looking in at the apartment of Castelbarco found it vacant. The bed had been occupied, however. Doubtless he had gone out to stroll and refresh himself in the coolness of the morning. Unable to sleep longer, he thought he could do no better than to follow the example.

He passed quietly down the stairs and out at the rear door, which stood ajar, to the terrace. The air was soft and grateful. Fine cobwebs strung with beads of dew were spun among the grass blades. He watched from the arbor the gradual bloom of the morning. Peasants came out of the buildings and began to busy themselves about the work of the day; the clinking milk-cans were filled; the stock was driven to pasture; the fowls cackled lustily in the barnyard. Everything was astir early, to accomplish as much as possible before the lassitude of the afternoon heats. Castelbarco was seen at a long distance, disappearing behind some shrubbery.

Hyson followed and sauntered at ease in the plantations. His meditations were mainly cheerful. If he had any preoccupation, it was with the singular conduct of Castelbarco, and perhaps for an instant a puzzled speculation about Detmold. Of a bright, airy nature, the world had gone well with him, yet not so well as to stagnate an active mind, or to destroy his sense of the value of the good things he enjoyed. He seized not only the day, but the hour and the minute. He was enabled by his own excellent temper to extract whatever contentment there was from the most adverse surroundings. If he had his periods of depression also, they were brief, like overcloudings in April, and left no permanent trace.

He noticed everything in his walk amongst the vegetation of the Italian farm, drew comparisons, and sanguinely forecast the greatness of his American valley when it should have blossomed into a garden like this. The sun was high in a heaven of unclouded blue when he overtook Castelbarco. The latter was walking slowly, with his hands behind him, and crossed by a path at right angles to his own. It led by the rice marshes at the end of the estate.

“ Well met!” said Hyson, cheerily. “ I shall not ask after your state of mind. No one could be melancholy on such a morning, if he tried. We do right — you and I — to come out and enjoy it while the rest are sleeping. I have to attribute my pleasant walk to you. I did not think of it until I discovered your absence.”

“ I was oppressed almost to suffocation,” said Castelbareo, “and came forth for relief.”

“ Oh, come, come, my boy! you must not mope again to-day. Trouble is nothing only in thinking of it. Try to turn your thoughts away, and then it no longer exists. It is your liver that is out of order, or perhaps you are overworked.”

“ Call it what you will, never have I been so weighed upon by uneasiness and foreboding. Perhaps — how suddenly he ” —

“ You must keep quiet and rest today instead of joining in the lively tramp of exploration I intend to lead our friendly host. The pretty Emilia will entertain you while we are gone. We shall see what effect that will have. It will be melancholy indeed if she does not dissipate it with her music.”

They followed the path by the rice marshes in single file. Low mud walls, from fifteen to eighteen inches high, with outlets, surrounded the growing crop. The thick, needle - like blades, kept most of the time flooded, showed just above the surface of the water. These fields, from which every vestige of shade is removed as hurtful to the crop, he festering in the sun, and breed malarial poison. Too wet to plow, they must be broken up with the spade, and at the proper season the sower wades in the soft mud to scatter the seed.

“ I will have no rice culture in the Paradise Valley,” said Hyson. “ Perhaps I could not if I would. Labor is too dear in our country to let us mix lives freely with our products, as you Europeans, who have so large a surplus of them, can afford to.”

“ Yes, it seems that there is a flavor of calamity and death even in the innocent vegetables,” said Castelbareo, with a sigh.

But now they were met by a domestic, who had come to find them, with a pair of excellent saddle - horses. The Signor Niccolo had observed them from his lookout point, and desired that they would mount, in order to have them try the horses, which he had lately bought, that they might not be too fatigued for the further rambles of the day, and also that they might not be late for the good breakfast which was awaiting them. This exercise and the company of Hyson exerted a beneficial effect upon the spirits of Castelbarco. Another of his sudden changes of demeanor — in which, however, after the experience of the preceding day. Hyson put no confidence as a permanent recovery — ensued. He sat erect in his saddle and his eye brightened over the surrounding landscape, as they rode side by side up the hill. He apologized for his past moroseness, which, he said, was a reminiscence of an unhappy disposition too much indulged in his youth. He had exaggerated certain circumstances. He hoped that any words he might have inadvertently let fall would not be misconstrued. Then, in a flow of volubility, he talked of current light topics at Verona and elsewhere, referred to his life in America, and made plans for further expeditions and pleasures, in which Hyson was to engage with him. His hilarity, contrasted with his recent gloom, had a dash of wildness in it, and jarred a little upon Hyson’s nerves. He even made clumsily humorous suggestions as to what Hyson should do in his Paradise Valley. “ You Americans are fond of doing things on a great scale,” said he. “ Now, you must get your government to import the Monti Berici, and set them up in your valley bodily. The proceeds will help us pay our national debt. We need it badly. Taxes are very heavy, and we will do anything for money.”

“ We do not lack mountains,” said Hyson. “ The little Monti Beriel are very well, but I can show you my Sierra Nevada peaks, eight and nine thousand feet high. What I would like, if it were practicable, would be a sprinkling of your antiquities,—ruins, and so on. You are ahead of us in your old bric-à-brac, — that is all. No matter how well we are provided in other respects, I do not see how we are ever going to be very picturesque. There seems to be no purpose now, as formerly, that requires becoming structures to be set up on all the crags and inaccessible lookout points, to accent them and show the domination of the human race. We have no faith to make us build mountain convents and rock-cut chapels, and castles we shall have no need of if we live a hundred thousand years. Since we are secure and no longer fear sudden raids by unscrupulous neighbors with arms in their hands, and since gas and water connections are of so much importance, life has come down into the low places where commercial business can be transacted with neatness and dispatch.”

The horses ambled easily up the incline, which was scored with the wheeltracks of the wains used in harvesting the crops. The domestic buildings were near at hand. Signor Niccolo could be seen waving a salutation from his terrace. Emilia, in a wide hat and long gloves with gauntlets, was coming over the edge of the hill with the robust child to meet them. The manner of Castelbarco was now blithe and open, and his countenance was free from a trace of trouble.

His gayety had supervened, apparently, only to make the contrast of a dreadful termination the more appalling. He was to be destroyed by a shadow out of that beautiful bright morning, hardly more startling and fatal than that which by his agency had stricken down Detmold in the perfumed brightness of the fête. As the riders paced along by the row of dark trees which Hyson had seen from his window, the arms of the great windmill were suddenly loosed, and began with a sharp creak their first revolutions for the day. The broad, deep bars of their whirling shadows swept out from an opening, and diagonally down upon them across the road. The new horses, not yet sufficiently broken, as it appeared, to the strange appearances, winced and quivered a moment as if under an actual blow. That upon which Hyson was mounted bore him away in an uncontrollable gallop, nearly riding down Emilia, who clung to the hedge for safety. The young Italian’s animal, the more spirited of the two, bolted furiously into the air, and threw the rider from his seat with a wrench that seemed to dislocate every joint.

When Hyson could control his movements and return, Castelbarco lay in the road with his head unnaturally bent forward under his breast. A stream of blood from his mouth mingled with the dust. His neck was broken.

Signor Niccolo was seen running from the terrace, and peasants from the mill. Emilia was standing by, her face white with awe. The child, who held her hand, was regarding the limp body curiously.

XV.

DETMOLD AT TRASIMENE.

Where, in the mean time, was Detmold ? Had he indeed sought refuge in the dreadful resource of suicide, as vividly imagined by the unfortunate Antonio, and even vaguely dreaded by Alice? No; his mind at the last rested upon too solid a basis of moderation and sterling common sense. He had a conception of a sturdy courage which endures the slings and arrows of adversity to the end, and esteems the attempt to escape by self-destruction cowardly and degrading. He had been schooled in unhappiness, too, and lapsed not unnatural into a condition of which he knew well most of the dolorous phases. Yet what misery was ever so sharp as this? All that he had known of seemed trivial in comparison. To have been cast down so utterly from the very pinnacle of success! The white - sailed bark of rescue had passed him by, as he tossed upon his spar, and left him to perish.

But short of the final point of suicide, on that night Detmold trod all the successive steps of despair. He wandered about the city, sometimes walking rapidly, then slowly, with his eyes fixed as if in a stupor. He might have been seen at Santa Anastasia, at the Castel Vecchio, or haunting the Amphitheatre like an uneasy ghost. He went out upon the Ponte Navi, and, planting his elbows on the parapet, remained gazing down into the stream. It twisted under the arches in snake-like eddies. The reflection of a red lantern, somewhere down in the obscurity of the margins, surged upon the surface as if it were a liquid flame bubbling up from below. From under this rugged bridge which she had brightened with her presence, that, should be forever dissociated from darkness and suffering, should he now be taken out swollen, half-decomposed, drowned at night ? He dallied sullenly with the thought. The gloom and the swift water were full of oblivion and fatal sweetness. They called to him, and the tugging at his heart was hard to resist.

The first gray of daylight found him still there. He turned away homeward cold and dazed, and almost forgetting what had happened. But the implements of his labor, the accessories of his daily life, about his chamber, all permeated with memories of her, renewed his pain intolerably. His disappointment was all-pervading and absolute, like that of a child which has longed with a desire that admits of no alternative. He rested his head against the wall for a moment. “ Oh, why,” he cried, “could it not be? ”

He tore to pieces the sketches that came in his way. The picture which he had fancied to make of her upon a golden background, over which he had struggled so valiantly with his ignorance of the painter’s technicalities, he dashed savagely down, and stamped upon it. Then, in a sudden exhaustion, he threw himself upon the bed, and slept dreamlessly for a time. His heart was heavier than lead in his bosom even before he awoke. He resolved, the moment he opened his eyes, to go away. It was still time for the early train to the eastward. He threw a few things into a satchel, notified the servant, and was gone. At Padua he bought a ticket for the south, and plunged into the interminable tunnels of the Apennines that debouch finally above the smiling prospect of Florence. Their roaring seemed to try to out-Herod his grief. He would have liked to go on endlessly in these resounding caverns. From Florence he sped, without intermission, towards Rome, finding in the whirling succession of objects a stupefying distraction. Half-way down, in the heart of ancient Etruria, the fancy took him to alight at one of the small walled cities near the shore of lake Trasimene. A shabby conveyance took him across the plain and up the height, aud he rested at the poor inn in the small, unevenly paved square.

Without, and from a distance, the castellated hill city was as fair to see as those that figure in the backgrounds of the pictures of the early masters. Within it was rough and sordid, but everywhere picturesque. Thick-walled gray houses, with windows that were scarcely more than loop-holes, grew out of the gray rock, and the misty green of olive orchards softened its rugged slopes.

Here Detmold drank the red wine of the country, — perhaps something too much of it, — and wandered aimlessly about. He saw in his walks the contadinas, with their white bodices and blue and scarlet aprons, in the tawny grain, or holding mild heifers by the horns; or the brown, red-capped men plowing with the sacred white oxen of the classics. He poked out bits of broken antiquities with his stick. He traced the course of the conqueror Hannibal, and followed down to its junction with the lake the brook Sanguinetto, which ran fuller of blood than ever of water the day it sluiced the shambles of the butchered consul Flaminius and his Romans.

Amid these classic surroundings, as time went on, reminiscences of his school days, long forgotten, came back, a sense of the quaint incongruity between the pictures presented of them in the dry and plodding discourse of pedagogues and the glowing charm of the originals. The low hills and neighboring mountains were of crude browns, greens, and purples, as the changing hours of the day went over their bold lines, softened by little of the atmospheric subtlety of the north. The sky above them was as opaque as the ungradated blues of the mosaics in the churches.

Detmold saw the trains sweep by to Rome, or heard them rattling afar when distant among the hills. They were full of travelers from the ends of the earth ; among them, perhaps, acquaintances of his own. He had but to stretch out his hand to touch this full artery of the world’s life; yet how remote did he seem from it, and from all the interests of the vast circulation of force and purpose of which it formed a part.

In the evening, at times, he took the skiff of some half-savage fisherman on the shore and pulled out upon the Water. Adrift in the dusk, in the strange country, upon the lonely lake, he listened to the cry of the hit tern. He could almost persuade himself that he had passed into another state, for the moment painless, like that devised by the old theologians for infants dead without baptism. He made by degrees such acquaintances as enabled him to inspect at ease numbers of blackened old pictures of ancestors, saints, and mythological personages, which constituted part of the treasures of the place. He found himself drawn to them by the sympathy of a certain analogy. They had once been beautiful, and the light, had gone out of them as it had out of his own life. He, like them, was to go on henceforth into an everdeepening gloom.

At last, one day, a notion that was often in his head, and as often rejected as idle and worse than useless, since it could not result, in putting a better face upon the matter than it already had, and might bear an appearance of pusillanimity, was allowed to have its way. It was the idea of writing to Alice. There was even a gleam of hope in it, — a gleam as pale as that of the daylight which catches upon the damp wall of a tunnel at a little distance from its mouth. He had believed her noble and generous. He had endowed her with all conceivable perfections, without having seen in her the exercise of any except those lighter ones that play upon the surface of an untroubled life. Might it not be that she would display them now? Perhaps, perhaps — wild and far-off supposition — she would cleave to him even in disgrace. But why should she make sacrifices? Was he worthy of sacrifices, indeed? On his side, he would have gloried in them for her, and believed himself none the more meritorious. But she was a lovely creation, not to be theorized about on equal terms, Even in the view that she was incapable of self-abnegation for such an object, he had scarcely a shade of disparagement for her. Weakened by the consciousness of what he knew, and what she now knew as well, it was a faint heart truly that had pursued this fair lady from the first.

He set himself to present to her the details of the story as it was, to bid her a final farewell, and to extend his wishes for her future welfare. It caused from time to time the renewal of his pain in its first violence. To pluck forth the baneful secret and lay it before the eyes of her from whom it should have been foever hidden, oh, cruel task!

Days were spent in preparing statements full of qualifications, of fine analyses, of rhetoric, to palliate or throw the most favorable light upon his own conduct and that of his father, in order to retain a shadow of a hold upon her sympathies. One after another he tore them up and wrote anew. The letter as it reached Alice at last was as follows ; —

“ A month has passed since the hope of happiness I had had the temerity to cherish was shattered. I do not know with what mysterious infamy I have been credited in the mean time. The effect of the disclosure was sufficiently pictured upon your face, and my admissions and my flight gave color to the worst surmises. In the bitterness of the moment, and in recognition of it as a fitting payment for my duplicity, I conceded everything. I

saw only the one consequence, the loss of your esteem and the ruin of my hopes. For any trifling offsets I cared nothing. But now, in a frame of mind which is calmer, I desire to make you a brief communication. If it overstep the bounds of conventional propriety, I beg for it the indulgence of the last that will probably ever pass between us.

“ The story was told to you in a bald and malignant form by an enemy. I hid it from you, and would always have done so. because I loved you. But since concealment is no longer possible, I wish myself to lay before you the miserable circumstances in the existence of which our separation is involved. There is no other who could present to you, even if disposed, the few redeeming features of the case. I do not hope to change the judgment you have already arrived at, nor is your sympathy demanded. Only the history may, at some unoccupied moment, be the occasion of a passing reflection upon the strange inequality with which happiness is meted out, and serve to enhance by its contrast the untroubled serenity of your own lot.

“ It was said to you that my father was a convict, and that I first saw the light within prison walls. With a slight modification this is true. My father was a convict. I was born to a heritage of shame, not within the prison walls, but close under their heavy shadow, which has scarcely ever for a moment lifted.

“ My father was a prosperous trader in one of the smaller cities of Illinois in the early days of its settlement. Associated with him was a partner, James Belford. They were both young men of good Eastern families, and educated in the best Eastern counting-rooms. They went to the West separately, in quest of more favorable opportunities than were afforded at home. After various experiments they met and formed a copartnership. The locality was favored with a rapid growth, and they reaped the benefit of it. They became the foremost merchants of the place. The society about them was not rude, but bold and unencumbered with many of the conventionalisms of the older sections from which it had been gathered. All was dash and activity. The partners thrived so well that they were shortly enabled to return to the East and bring back young wives, who had been their sweethearts before they started out into the world.

“ Both weddings were celebrated in the season of reckless profusion preceding the panic of 1847. This crash found the store of Belford & Detmold almost bare of goods. Everything was sold upon credit in the period of extravagance immediately preceding. Debts due them on all sides were worthless, and their own obligations were maturing. There was no means of replenishing their stock. They saw themselves upon the verge of bankruptcy. Their young wives, the sweeping away of the accumulations of their years of labor, the dissipation of the fair hopes they had entertained, made the idea unbearable.

“ They were met by a terrible temptation, and yielded to it. They endeavored to save themselves by the shameful expedient of a robbery. It was so foreign to the record and characters of both, and planned, besides, with so little judgment, that they seem to have been stricken with sudden madness. The burdens of the most abject poverty would have been infinitely lighter than the consequences which they brought upon themselves.

“ It happened that there stood on a side track of the railway passing through the place, very near to their warehouse, two car-loads of goods from the East which had by some means strayed from their destination, and awaited an owner. It afterwards appeared in evidence that the merchant of a neighboring city, who had purchased and forwarded them, had died at the East during the transaction of his business. The markings were improperly made, his heirs knew little of his affairs, communications were slow, and it was a considerable time before the property wms traced and looked for. The station agent at Marburg had shown the goods to them among others, and speculation was rife as to their ownership.

“ It was not by my father, as I have learned from him, that the desperate idea of retrieving their fortunes by the seizure of these goods was first broached,— though that makes little difference. Nor was it adopted without long hesitation and argument. It was resolved upon one dark night when the partners sat late over their books, casting about in vain for some means of escape, and it was put in execution at once. They persuaded themselves that it was but a species of informal loan, — of a piece with the dash and enterprise of the driving community. The property as it lay benefited no one, but it could do them an incalculable service. They were to seek out the owner afterwards, — this was the method in which they reconciled themselves to it, — and restore the full value of everything. The goods were a general assortment selected for an establishment similar to their own, and could be sold without detection. They were transferred, partly to the shelves of the store, and partly to receptacles planned in the walls of their warehouse. The cars, externally made good, showed no evidence of the robbery. A considerable time passed before it was discovered. There was no clue to the depredators. It was not until the arrival of proper inventories and descriptions from the East that the goods could have been identified even if discovered. Then the country was scoured for common malefactors. Bedford & Detmold were as far above suspicion as the officers of justice themselves.

“ But a detective who came from a great city to work up the ease, with a full experience of the darker aspects of human character, omitted nothing from his search. The criminals were unskilled. They construed the first semblance of investigation as discovery. They abandoned the specious theory by which they had defended the act and in a complete breaking down of self-possession confessed all. It was at first deemed incredible by the community; then the industrious young merchants, who had enjoyed so fair a repute, sank to the lowest depths of infamy.

“ By the connivance of officials who were softened at the spectacle of such a devastation, one of the firm was allowed to assume in court the burden of the crime, and declare the innocence of the other. The latter was to remain at large to provide for the support of the families of both. The choice between themselves was to be determined by lot. The lot to bear the penalty for both fell upon my father. He stood forth, and obtained a momentary shade of sympathy in proclaiming, ‘ I alone am guilty.’

“ My mother would not receive the aid of Belford. Indeed he was too broken to be capable of rendering aid. He removed to the East, and never afterwards returned. It was said that he had changed his name and succeeded well in the world; again, that he had sunk to a mere wreck and died by his own hand. We never knew which, if either, of these accounts was true, or if indeed he be not still living. My mother would have gone any lengths rather than acquaint her family with what had befallen her. She removed to the prison town, and eked out a subsistence during the three long years of the sentence, extending to my father what scanty comfort she could. It was here and thus that I was born into the world, — I who have aspired to mingle the dark strand of my life with the pleasant brightness of yours.

“ But the story is not yet finished. The future of its principal actor was not that of an ordinary criminal. You will never see my father, and any opinion you may entertain of him can have no effect upon his well-being; but I would have you know something of — as it seems to me — his bravery, his effort at reparation. And yet, in every word in which I praise him I convict myself of selfishness and cowardice.

“ I should have stood with him against a censorious world, and aided him to hear his heavy burdens. Instead of doing so I have sought refuge in flight and concealment. Alas, that such a course has no longer any motive!

“ My father was broken down by his prison life and his acute sense of disgrace. At its close he. was ill, and lay at the point of death; but he recovered, and his character, as I have heard, was changed. He had been impetuous, exacting, self-indulgent. He became patient, self-denying, and, above all, conscientious to the last degree. He returned to his home, and added to the completed sentence of the law a lifetime of voluntary expiation. He was once more successful. Commencing at the lowest round of the holder, he rose to prominence; but it is a prominence clouded by a stigma which the lapse of time has not effaced. For years his life was a martyrdom. He endured scoffs and insults, but with unflinching resolution, and lived them down. He has relieved much suffering and caused none, and his honesty is a proverb. He won back his commercial Standing, but never that which opened freely to us the avenues of social life. Such is my story.

“ Now you know all. You know the he my life has been to avoid the shame of the disclosure which I have at last been forced to make to you. I said to myself, ‘ The guilt was not mine, and I will not bear its punishment.’ I tried to escape the decree of an inevitable destiny. Never was I so wholly impressed with the necessity of concealment as whgn I first knew you and began to cherish my illusive hopes. I knew that so proud a family as yours could not stoop, not merely to one of less station and fortune, but to one on a lower than any social plane, — that of crime. I tried to persuade myself at times that the importance of this secret was created by a morbid imagination; that the world, if it knew, would not visit ignominy upon me who was innocent. I feared I had lost the faculty of judging. But how well I judged appeared in your remorseless words upon the hill-side of Torri. Fate seemed on that day to bring the currents of our lives to the point of contact, only to sweep them forever apart.

“ I bid you with this a final farewell. In doing so, in spite of the humiliation and disappointment in which I am involved, I cannot bring myself to say that if our relations were to be lived over again I should act differently. The hours I spent with you were almost the only happy hours of my life. Had I not deceived you I should not. have known them. The prospect of your love seemed to me something subtile and exquisite beyond words. I will not say that I could ever have let the dictates of duty weigh for a moment against it.

“ I beg that you will not suffer yourself to be annoyed at this. It is a presumption that is wholly of the past. Henceforth I can occupy no place in your thoughts, nor do I deserve to do so. As for me, I can never forget you. I shall live in the hope that, though unseen and unheard of, it may be my fortune to be able to add some fragment of happiness to the full share which I trust is always in store for you. ”

W. H. Bishop.