text:
A Moonlight Effect

WISH Philip were here to-night," sighed the girl. "I'm sure you do, Winnie," said Mrs. Vanrennen.

"It's so utterly beautiful," said the girl, closing her eyes and drawing in a deep breath of the scented air. "He would enjoy it so much, poor fellow."

Mrs. Vanrennen glanced at her companion and smiled the wise, indulgent smile that only five-and-fifty can bestow on the sweet disingenuousness of youth.

"It would improve his health to get away from the fog and damp of London, wouldn't it?" she said, with a tender touch of mockery, knowing full well that the said Philip was as strong as a young dromedary.

"It would," sighed the girl. "I wish he were in Algiers."

"My dear," said Mrs. Vanrennen touching the girl's cheek, "if I had a Philip I too would want to have him by my side on such a night as this, instead of a stupid old woman."

Winnie drew the kind fingers from her cheek, and kissed them.

"You understand, don't you. dear Mrs. Vanrennen?"

"Yes," she said, with a little catch in her throat. "I do." And she too took in a deep breath of the warm scented air.

It was a spring night in Mustapha, one of the hills that dominate the town of Algiers, Algerian springs are the midsummers of paler climes. The moon, hanging in splendor just above the long line of the hotel, flooded the broad terrace and worked a magic of soft light and shadow in the enchanted garden beyond; it silvered the strip of bay that met the horizon, just viable above the trees, and touched with mystery the fairy headland of Cape Matifou. From the garden the perfumes of the south mounted into the hot still night; magnolia and heliotrope and rose mingled with the spicy smells of the eucalyptus trees that stood, like majestic beggars, wrapped in their rags of bark. The bougainvillea stretched a great dark stain on the dim white of the hotel, and below it the ground-floor lights showed the bizarre outline of Moorish arches. Vague faint sounds ascended from the far-off Arab town, and now and then was beard the distant whistle of a steamer in the harbor. Three men sitting some yards away talked in low, lazy voices. Otherwise the terrace was silent and deserted; the end of the season had come, and few guests remained in the hotel. It was a languorous, sensuous night. The velvet canopy of the stars seemed to droop amorously over the warm earth.

"My dear," said Mrs, Vanrennen, "marry Philip as soon as you can. Don't wait for better prospects. Don't give up the substance for the shadow, which is a very pale thing and cold comfort." Said the girl: "You speak so sadly, Mrs. Vanrennen."

"I've had the shadow, dear."

"But you were married."

"Yes, I was married," said Mrs. Vanrennen. She had a remarkable voice, soft and low and and musical, a most sensitive instrument wherewith to express shades of feeling. The three little words had a cadence like a lament on the wood-wind. The girl slipped her hand into her companion's, and for a time there was silence. Presently Mrs. Vanrennen shivered, ever so slightly. The girl sprang to her feet.

"I'll go in and fetch you a wrap."

Mrs. Vanrennen murmured a word of thanks, but when the girl had already sped a few yards, she called to her, raising her voice:

"Winnie! The silk one on the dressing-table."

One of the men on the terrace started, looked keenly through the moonlight at the speaker, and rose. He was a tall, spare man, with a white mustache; his dinner-jacket hung as on a bony frame, but he held himself erect, and wore his Homburg hat jauntily cocked on one side. He walked past Mrs, Vanrennen to the end of the terrace, moved two or three paces so as to catch her face full in the moonlight, then with the air of a man who has made up his mind, marched up to her.

"What a beautiful night."

Mrs. Vanrennen acquiesced politely. "Yes; an enchanting night."

The man sat down in Winnie's chair.

"I'm sure of it! I've been wondering all the evening—but when you called out loud just now I was certain. There never was any one with a voice like yours. You're Molly Summers."

"And you? Good heavens!" She gazed into his face full-eyed, as if he had been a ghost. "Godfrey Deerhurst!"

"Yes," said he.

"I was thinking of you only five minutes ago." Her lips trembled, as she laughed. "Perhaps that was why I recognized you—otherwise—turn your face and let me see."

"I'm afraid thirty years' soldiering has battered it out of all recognition."

Yet he twirled his mustache with a certain complacency and drew himself up as if he hoped she would repudiate the suggestion. She felt this instinctively.

"I know you're sixty, but you don't look it. I am fifty-five, and do look it."

He protested gallantly. "Your voice is as young and fresh as when—good God! how it all comes back—whew! Thirty years ago and I've not seen you since—yes, your voice is unchanged, and your eyes are as bright—and your hands are as delicate. You used to have a tiny scar on the middle joint of the ring finger of your left hand."

She laughed happily and held out her hand in the moonlight. "I have it still—but you can't see it here. Fancy your remembering."

"Do you think there's anything about Molly Summers that I've forgotten? Gad! I shall never forget the day I came upon you in the cherry orchard—all pale sunlight and white blossom—you in your white dress and your face the most delicate blossom of all. And as I drew near you shook the trees, and the blossoms fell about you like snow. Do you remember?"

"Of course I do," she said in a whisper. Does a woman ever forget the delicious terror when for the first time a man's strong arm grips her and his lips crush hers? "But it has never occurred to me," she added simply. "that you gave a passing thought to the cherry blossoms."

She herself had seen nothing in the sun-filled universe but the radiant young Phoebus Apollo himself who had come gloriously triumphant to meet her. This, however, she did not confess, even after the lapse of thirty years.

Winifred tripped up the terrace with the gauze scarf. Mrs. Vanrennen took it with a word of thanks, but lay it on her lap instead of putting it round her shoulders. The old soldier rose courteously. Mrs. Vanrennen stumbled over the introduction.

"Winnie, this is an old friend of mine—Colonel—?" she paused uncertain.

"General."

"General Deerhurst."

He raised his hat. "I am afraid I have stolen your chair."

"Oh, please sit down," said the girl. "I must go in now."

"And shut yourself up from this beautiful night?"

"I can see it all from my window. In fact better, for I have a lovely view over the bay. And I must do some writing. Are you staying in the hotel?" she asked politely.

He explained that he had arrived late, after the dinner hour, from Biskra, whence he had been accompanied by his two friends. They were starting for England at some unearthly hour of the morning by the North German Lloyd steamer.

"You're not going to-morrow?" cried Mrs. Vanrennen quickly.

Then her cheeks flamed and she knew that she was blushing like a girl and was glad of the kind moonlight.

"Oh, no," he said. "Only the other fellows. I'm here for a few days Then I'll get home by Marseilles. I have a return ticket that way."

"So have we," said Mrs. Vanrennen.

One of the General's two friends rose and looked at his watch and the other rose also. The General excused himself and joined them. Mrs. Vanrennen turned to her young friend and asked if her hair was tidy.

"Isn't it strange—to meet here for the first time tor thirty years?"

"For thirty years?" echoed the girl, to whom such a retrospect was the dark backward and abysm of time. "But how did you manage lo recognize each other?"

The older woman looked up very pathetically at the young face.

"We haven't changed so very much, you know, dear," she faltered.

The men's voices were heard proclaiming the necessity of retiring early in view of (he absurd hour of departure, al which they railed like elderly Britons who consider respect for their physical comfort to be one of the chief ordinances of the Almighty. The General gleefully boasted of the good night's rest in front of him, and crowed over his companions. Then there were leave-takings. The two men went into the hotel and General Deerhurst rejoined the ladies. Winnie presently bade him good night and, stooping, kissed Mrs. Vanrennen.

"Give my love to Philip," said the latter, "and tell him how sorry we are for him."

The girl laughed and sped away sylph-like in the moonlight. The General followed her with his eyes till she had disappeared and then sank into the chair by Mrs. Vanrennen's side.

"Amazingly pretty girl. Charming figure. At first I thought it was your daughter."

"I have no children," she said with a sigh. "Winnie Graves is just a young friend who is accompanying a lonely woman on her travels."

"Are you—lonely?" he asked with a significant pause. "My husband died ten years ago," she replied.

"I've never married," said he shortly.

There was a spell of silence. The announcement came to the woman both as a reproach biting her heart with sudden remorse, and as a purely feminine, unregenerate joy. A man pays a woman a far higher compliment by remaining a bachelor for her sake than by merely marrying her. There is something heroic about the one, whereas the  heroism of the other soon wears thin.

"Tell me what you have been doing all your life?" she said at last.

He waved a deprecating hand.

"What's there to tell? I've been in India most of the time. Looking back, it doesn't seem long. I've seen no end of people die and their children get married and produce babies. I've also developed gout and a taste for Roman antiquities."

"You never thought of marrying?" she asked timidly.

"At first I plunged into my profession. Then I suppose my profession plunged into me. I got into fixed bachelor ways—and now—well— May I smoke?"

He received her permission, selected a cigar from his case and fumbled in his pockets. Then he murmured a petulant, "Confound it!"

"What's the matter?" she asked, with a smile, falling into intimacy with happy unconsciousness.

"That scoundrel of a man of mine," said he, gravely angered, "has forgotten to put in my cigar-cutter."

He found a penknife, however, and having performed the necessary operation, lit his cigar and smoked tranquilly. The fragrance mingled with the hundred sweet odors of the night.

They talked for a while of common things—the stages of his career—his work on the northwest frontier—her unexciting travels during and since her married life—the interest of this town of Algiers, where East and West are so subtly interfused yet so sharply divided—the beauty of Mustapha Supérieur, its thousand roses and its acanthus leaves. He told her also that he had an appointment at ten the next morning with the Governor of Algiers, an old friend, who was motoring him over to the Tombeau de la Chrétienne, the supposed burial place of Cleopatra, and to Tipasa, whose Roman remains he had never seen. The excursion would last the whole day. Mrs. Vanrennen felt an odd little pang of disappointment,

"We shall meet in the evening, I hope," she murmured,

"Of course. I shall look forward to it all day long. I'm sorry now," said he, "that I've pledged myself to go at all. But who could have foretold our meeting?"

"It's very, very strange," she said, dreamily.

The General puffed at his cigar for a few moments; then he said, bending over to her:

"Molly, you know you treated me damned badly."

"I suppose I did," she said, with. a sigh. "But I treated myself worse—much worse. Men can't understand these things."

The picture rose before her of the poor little rectory bedroom—of the corner of the scantily equipped dressing-table where she sat one awful night in her bed gown, and wrote her last letter to him; her hair was falling about her fingers as she wrote, and smudged the tears and ink that wet the paper, and she was too numb with misery to care. A tear of self-pity now fell, at the memory. "Why didn't you wait for me, Molly?"

"I told you in my letter. It's a poor tragic old story. You can read it from beginning to end in 'Auld Robin Gray.' It's literally true—every incident—all of it."

"Then you did think of the poor devil in India?"

"Yes," she said softly. "I did think of you."

"Much?"

"Very much."

She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the mild stars, smiling to herself. How was he to know the agony of longing, the torture of revolt—all the horrors and despairs of a woman? Thank God it was over and done with, buried in the long ago. Her bosom rose and fell with a sigh of relief. "Yes. I thought of you very much," she repeated.

"I often wondered whether you were having a bad time. I suppose you did."

"Don't let us talk of it now," she said. "Let us look on it as an evil dream. It is so simple to have you here with me—although you did drop on me from the moon. With a little imagination one might forget that the thirty years have gone by."

"'Pon my soul!" said he, "one might—and if one looks at you, it requires hardly any imagination at all. At first it was strange, devilish strange to see you—but now—you don't seem to have altered at all. By George, what glorious brown hair you had!"

It was with tremulous pride that she told him it was still brown and long, that there was scarcely a white hair in it.

"I wish I could say the same of mine," he laughed. "But I've kept it all. Look."

He took off his hat with a curious young eagerness and showed a shapely grizzled head. She bent forward and peered at it in the moonlight.

"Oh—Godfrey!" she cried.

"What?"

"You part it in just the same way as you used to. And there are the same little curls over the temples."

"You remember that, Molly?"

It was her turn to ask him whether he thought she could ever forget.

The moon shone full on them and the stars hung lower in the breathless scented air, as if envelop them. The man of sixty edged his chair near hers and the woman of fifty-five put her hand in his. They were quite alone on the terrace. The lights on the ground floor of the hotel had been put out. Just a dim gleam appeared far off from the vestibule, and on the second floor immediately above it, a window, Winifred's, was illuminated. Otherwise the whole dim white stretch lay in dark and silence. Not a sound from garden or from road beyond or from town below broke the stillness.

The pair, alone in the moonlight, talked in whispers like lovers, held by the witchery of the southern night. A deep languorous happiness swelled at the woman's heart. Now and again the white mustache brushed her finger-tips and a thrill ran through her body. The years fell away from her, and she became twenty-five again.

"Till now," said the General, "I've never realized how lonely I've been."

"Poor Godfrey," she said with a comforting squeeze of his fingers.

"But we've found each other again, Molly. It's wonderful, isn't it?"

"God is good. I never dreamed I should have this great happiness."

"I have dreamed of it often," the General declared. And then, in a lyrical outburst of self-delusion he vowed that never a day had passed but that he had thought of her and longed for her, that he had never given a passing fancy to another woman, that in the staring, blinding heats of the remorseless plains he had cooled his brain and soothed his heart with the picture of her among the cherry blossoms. And she, in her gentle woman's way, and in her soft musical voice into which lost dove notes crept insensibly, sang antistrophe in the moonlight pastoral. So they said many old, foolish, tender things, and they drew closer and closer together until her cheek rested on his shoulder as it had done in the days when their hearts were young.

A slight sound caused her to start, and they saw the hall porter appear at the end of the terrace, pause for a second as he looked at them, and then disappear into the vestibule. They laughed in the happy confusion of guilty boy and girl discovered. "We must go in, I suppose," she said regretfully.

The General took out his watch. "God bless my soul, it's past midnight. How the time has flown."

She took his arm and they walked slowly down the terrace. The faintest of all possible breezes sprang up and a breath of all the odors of the pale garden came full into their faces. He bent his head and kissed her on the lips.

"Till to-morrow evening," he said at the lift door.

"Till to-morrow evening. Good night."

The General returned to the terrace and walked up and down while he smoked a cigarette. Then he retired to his room on the first floor. As he straightened his body after bending down to insert the key in the lock, he clapped his hand to his back.

"That confounded lumbago!" he muttered. "Serves me right for sitting out in the moonshine."

Mrs. Vanrennen mechanically turned the electric switch as she entered her bedroom, but the sudden glare disconcerting her, she undressed by the moonlight and went to bed. Soon finding sleep impossible, she rose, put on a woolen wrapper and sat down in the armchair by the open window. Below her lay the terrace and the garden checkered with shadow and pale light in which gleamed duskily the oranges and the palms and the feathery pepper trees and the great geraniums and the gray roses and the mild grotesque cacti; and beyond these loomed the black mass of trees descending the slope, and over them she could see the strip of plain, and then the great sweep of the silver bay, with Cape Matifou on the east hugging it like a long tender arm. Beyond the Cape, just discernible against the sky, was the infinitely faint silver tracery of the snow-capped Atlas Mountains. The whole earth lay Endymion to the moon; and the perfumes of the night rose through the warm air. Happy tears welled into the woman's eyes. Love reigned eternally. God was good.

Only a few hours before she had been content to satisfy her elderly woman's sentimental cravings in a girl's sweet romance. Winifred and Philip worshiped her as the dearest creature on earth because she smoothed paths that were rough, and played fairy godmother in defiance of an unsympathetic world. In their innocent young hearts they thought it all pure altruism; and she herself, delicate-minded and generous, had never realized till now how personal had been her interest. She laughed to herself—for life had become one beautiful mellow laugh—and thought how poor and cold she must have been to seek warmth from the glow cast by the love of a boy and girl. Only a few hours ago she had been this chilly soul, and now, by such a miracle as had never happened beneath the moon since water was turned to wine, she was living in the deep rich splendor of her own romance.

She sat for a long, long time motionless by the window, in complete surrender of mind and body to the spell. The kiss still quivered on her lips; the tender words lingered in her ears. If death came, she could die happy, having tasted the sweetest that life could give, Her dream was inchoate; all that reached her intelligence was a pervading sense of happiness. The marble clock on the mantel-piece striking two aroused her. She started and shiveringly realized that the night had grown cold. She rose, intending to go to bed, but as she passed in front of the great gilt mirror, she caught a sight of herself, a pale ghost in the dim light. It was a shock, startling her from dreamland into the gray real world. She peered into the glass, but could not see. Then she sat, undecided, on the edge of the bed. Should she be brave and turn on the light and look at herself, or should she put chilling fancies from her and go to sleep in the dear warmth of her happiness? She felt five-and-twenty. Godfrey had said she had not changed. In his eyes she was five-and-twenty still. He had kissed her as if she had been five-and-twenty. What did it matter?

But she rose, nevertheless, with determination, turned the switch and confronted the mirror. In it she saw a woman of fifty-five.

She closed the window and drew the curtains, so as to shut out the moonlight, and came back to the glass. She stared calmly at herself for a long time. Then she went to bed and lay awake in the darkness, thinking, thinking. The glamor of the night had gone. The day would bring disillusion. For one perfect moonlit hour she had found her lost youth and had been desirable in a man's eyes. To-morrow he would see her as the old woman that she was. For one perfect moonlit hour they had been lovers who had kissed with young hearts and young lips. To-morrow they would meet as old folks in the piteousness of their gray hairs and shriveled bodies faded cheeks, and the magic would be  gone, and not all the strivings of their souls could ever bring back a touch of it. For one perfect moonlit hour the warm scented air of Paradise had enfolded them. To-morrow— Then all the woman's instinct rose imperiously. There must be no to-morrow.

The dawn crept into the room, and with it sounds of tramping men were heard in far-off corridors. A while later there was the scrunch of gravel beneath her window and the sound of wheels. She recognized the hotel omnibus, taking General Deerhurst's friends to the North German Lloyd steamer.

"If only he were going with them, how it would simplify matters," she thought. Then she reflected that after last night's happenings, even if he planned to accompany them, he would not have gone.

There must be no to-morrow, no disillusion, no fading of the splendor of her sacred hour into the light of common day. So much was certain. But how should the inevitable morrow be frustrated? Suddenly she remembered General Deerhurst's appointment with the Governor of Algiers at ten o'clock and the day's excursion to Tipasa. Fate was kind.

When dawn had broadened into daylight, she went into the adjoining room where Winifred Graves lay a-sleep, the window flung wide open. She paused before waking the girl and gazed at her, with a queer little clutch at the heart. This, in verity, was youth, fairer in the pitiless morning glare than in the softening glamor of the moonlight. Happy youth which need fear no Philip on the morrow!

Presently the girl woke, conscious of the strange presence.

"Oh, Mrs. Vanrennen!"

"Forgive me for waking you, dear, but I've not slept all night. I wanted to know whether you would mind our starting for England to-day?"

"To-day! Why what has happened?"

"Nothing," said Mrs. Vanrennen. "I have a sudden craving for home. I am too old to knock about in hotels. You won't think it horrid of me to cut short your holiday like this, will you? I'll try to make it up to you, dear, if I can," she added penitently. "I'll ask Philip to come and spend a few days with us at Bournemouth."

The girl sprang up in bed and threw her arms round Mrs. Vanrennen's neck and kissed her.

"Oh, you dear!" she cried. "I'll begin to pack at once."

Mrs. Vanrennen went back to her own room, greatly relieved at the settlement of her plans. General Deerhurst would be gone for the day by ten o'clock. Meanwhile Winifred and herself could take the midday boat to Marseilles. When he returned in the evening he would find her letter explaining all.

This letter she sat down now to write, in her bed gown and with her hair about her shoulders, just as she had written to him thirty years ago. But this time there were no tears for the hair to smudge. It was the letter of a woman who had entered for an unexpected hour the gates of Eden, it was the letter  of a sweet-souled lady. She was sure that he would understand. It he did not—for after all the masculine intelligence is uncertain in its comprehension of subtle things—if he did not, it was for him to follow, an ardent and irresistible lover, on her track. Her conscience allowed her this loophole.

She spent the morning in her room, busily packing, and only went down-stairs when it was time to start. So far she had avoided meeting him.

"Will you give this letter to General Deerhurst?" she said to the hall porter.

"General Deerhurst has gone, madame."

"I know. But he will be back this evening."

"Pardon, madame," said the hall porter. "He started this morning with the other two gentlemen by the North German Lloyd steamer. And justement he left a letter for you."

He searched in his pigeonholes and handed her the letter. She took it mechanically and walked in a dream to one of the little quiet bays in the lounge. She stared at it for a while as it lay unopened in her lap. Then she tore it, unread, into tiny pieces and threw them into the waste-paper basket.

title: A Moonlight Effect


text: Talk:A Moonlight Effect

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:A Moonlight Effect


text: Talk:American Magazine/A Christmas Mystery


text: Copyright, Its History and Its Law/Chapter 15


text:
Page:The House at Pooh Corner (1961).pdf/149

 as he fought his way along, and it seemed hours before he got them into the shelter of the Hundred Acre Wood and they stood up straight again, to listen, a little nervously, to the roaring of the gale among the tree-tops.

“Supposing a tree fell down, Pooh, when we were underneath it?”

“Supposing it didn’t,” said Pooh after careful thought.

Piglet was comforted by this, and in a little while they were knocking and ringing very cheerfully at Owl’s door.

“Hallo, Owl,” said Pooh. “I hope we’re not too late for I mean, how are you, Owl? Piglet and I just came to see how you were, because it’s Thursday.”

“Sit down, Pooh, sit down, Piglet,” said Owl kindly. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

They thanked him, and made themselves as comfortable as they could.

“Because, you see, Owl,” said Pooh, “we’ve been hurrying, so as to be in time for—so as to see you before we went away again.”

Owl nodded solemnly.

“Correct me if I am wrong,” he said, “but am I right in supposing that it is a very Blusterous day outside?”

“Very,” said Piglet, who was quietly thawing his


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Page:A Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Description of the District, or Zila, of Dinajpur.djvu/99

Rh Brahmins, however, justify the action; not from their alleging that a Kayostho should read the work of a Muni, but because the works that have been translated are not in reality the composition of Vyas.

Persons who are desirous of extending their knowledge to the study of the law (Smriti), after such a course of Vyakoron, are qualified to begin with the works of, a Brahmin of Nodiya, whose great-grandson is said to be still alive. His works are said to be very voluminous, and to consist of 28 books. Of those however 8 only are usually studied in this district, and these require five years of constant application. They are as follows:

1. Tithi Tottwo, which treats of the laws to be observed in the performance of ceremonies at new moons and eclipses. 2. Prayoschitto Tottwo, concerning the ceremonies which ought to be performed for the remission of sin. 3. Dayo Tottwo, concerning succession to property. 4. Molomas Tottwo, concerning what is to be done or omitted during the intercalary month of the lunar year. 5. Suddhi Tottwo, concerning what is to be eaten on certain days, especially those of mourning. 6. Udbaho Tottwo, concerning marriage. 7. Ahnik Tottwo, concerning the rules for prayer. 8. Sraddho Tottwo, concerning what is to be done in commemoration of deceased parents.

After this course of law one Pandit reads with his pupils one of the 18 Purans called Sribhagvot, as containing an useful illustration of the dry precepts of Roghunondon. He supposes that this work was written by Vyas in the end of the first Dwapor yugo age, and that it is prophetical, as it gives an account of the wars which followed soon after. He also supposes, that there have been a great many successions of these ages, in which the same personages and transactions that appeared in one appeared also in the others; and that the history of the wars which Vyas delivered at the end of the first Dwapor yugo, is just as applicable to the war which happened in the commencement of the present degenerate age, as it was to the war which immediately followed the first composition of the work, in which most people will be disposed to coincide with this learned man. This, however, is one of the works that have been translated into the profane tongue, and doubts are now raised concerning its authenticity. In this school men have usually finished their education in the law by the time that they are thirty years of age. Some of the Pandits however, in place of this flight to poetical regions, after having finished the usual 8 books of Roghunondon, teach the Prachín Smriti, composed by Sulpani, a Brahmin of Yosor (Jessore), which treats of the same subject with the 2nd book of Roghunondon. They then give their pupils the Sraddho Chintamoni, a work of, a Maithilo Brahmin, which treats on the laws for performing funeral ceremonies.

Grammar (Vyakoron) is a necessary preliminary to all science, but many proceed to study metaphysics or philosophy without attending to law, and many on the contrary study law without a previous knowledge of that important branch of knowledge. Metaphysics of the Nyayo Sastro are the glory of the Pandits of Bengal, and are no where in India so much studied. The Pandits here say, that the science was first disclosed by the god Sib to Gautom, who wrote a treatise on the subject that has been lost. Although the Brahmins strenuously assert the contrary, I think there is great reason to believe, that this Gautom is the same with the 4th great legislator of the Buddhists, whose doctrines being now thought heterodox will readily account for his philosophy having disappeared. The most ancient work on


text:
American Magazine/A Christmas Mystery

HREE men who had gained great fame and honor throughout the world met unexpectedly in front of the bookstall at Paddington Station. Like most of the great ones of the earth they were personally acquainted, and they exchanged surprised greetings.

Sir Angus McCurdie, the eminent physicist, scowled at the two others beneath his heavy black eyebrows.

“I'm going to a God-forsaken place in Cornwall called Trehenna,” said he.

“That's odd; so am I,” croaked Professor Biggleswade. He was a little, untidy man with round spectacles, a fringe of grayish beard and a weak, rasping voice, and he knew more of Assyriology than any man, living or dead. A flippant pupil once remarked that the Professor's face was furnished with a Babylonic cuneiform in lieu of features.

“People called Deverill, at Foullis Castle?” asked Sir Angus.

“Yes,” replied Professor Biggleswade.

“How curious! I am going to the Deverills, too,” said the third man.

This man was the Right Honorable Viscount Boyne, the renowned Empire Builder and Administrator, around whose solitary and remote life popular imagination had woven many legends. He looked at the world through tired gray eyes, and the heavy drooping blonde mustache seemed tired, too, and had dragged down the tired face into deep furrows. He was smoking a long black cigar.

“I suppose we may as well travel down together,” said Sir Angus, not very cordially.

Lord Boyne said courteously: “I have a reserved carriage. The railway company is always good enough to place one at my disposal. It would give me great pleasure if you would share it.”

The invitation was accepted, and the three men crossed the busy, crowded platform to take their seats in the great express train. A porter laden with an incredible load of paraphernalia, trying to make his way through the press, happened to jostle Sir Angus McCurdie. He rubbed his shoulder fretfully.

“Why the whole land should be turned into a bear garden on account of this exploded superstition of Christmas is one of the anomalies of modern civilization. Look at this insensate welter of fools traveling in wild herds to disgusting places merely because it's Christmas!”

“You seem to be traveling yourself, McCurdie,” said Lord Boyne.

“Yes—and why the devil I'm doing it, I've not the faintest notion,” replied Sir Angus.

“It's going to be a beast of a journey,” he remarked some moments later, as the train carried them slowly out of the station. “The whole country is under snow—and as far as I can understand we have to change twice and wind up with a twenty-mile motor drive.”

He was an iron-faced, beetle-browed, stern man, and this morning he did not seem to be in the best of tempers. Finding his companions inclined to be sympathetic, he continued his lamentation.

“And merely because it's Christmas I've had to shut up my laboratory and give my young fools a holiday—just when I was in the midst of a most important series of experiments.”

Professor Biggleswade, who had heard vaguely of and rather looked down upon such new-fangled toys as radium and thorium and helium and argon—for the latest astonishing developments in the theory of radioactivity had brought Sir Angus McCurdie his worldwide fame—said somewhat ironically:

“If the experiments were so important, why didn't you lock yourself up with your test tubes and electric batteries and finish them alone?”

“Man!” said McCurdie, bending across the carriage, and speaking with a curious intensity of voice, “d'ye know I'd give a hundred pounds to be able to answer that question?”

“What do you mean?” asked the Professor, startled.

“I should like to know why I'm sitting in this damned train and going to visit a couple of addle-headed society people whom I'm scarcely acquainted with, when I might be at home in my own good company furthering the progress of science.”

“I myself,” said the Professor, “am not acquainted with them at all.”

It was Sir Angus McCurdie's turn to look surprised.

“Then why are you spending Christmas with them?”

“I reviewed a ridiculous blank-verse tragedy written by Deverill on the Death of Sennacherib. Historically it was puerile. I said so in no measured terms. He wrote a letter claiming to be a poet and not an archaeologist. I replied that the day had passed when poets could with impunity commit the abominable crime of distorting history. He retorted with some futile argument, and we went on exchanging letters, until his invitation and my acceptance concluded the correspondence.”

McCurdie, still bending his black brows on him, asked him why he had not declined. The Professor screwed up his face till it looked more like a cuneiform than ever. He, too, found the question difficult to answer; but he showed a bold front.

“I felt it my duty,” said he, “to teach that preposterous ignoramus something worth knowing about Sennacherib. Besides I am a bachelor and would sooner spend Christmas, as to whose irritating and meaningless annoyance I cordially agree with you, among strangers than among my married sisters' numerous and nerve-racking families.”

Sir Angus McCurdie, the hard, metallic apostle of radio-activity, glanced for a moment out of the window at the gray, frostbitten fields. Then he said:

“I'm a widower. My wife died many years ago and, thank God, we had no children. I generally spend Christmas alone.”

He looked out of the window again. Professor Biggleswade suddenly remembered the popular story of the great scientist's antecedents, and reflected that as McCurdie had once run, a barefoot urchin, through the Glasgow mud, he was likely to have little kith or kin. He himself envied McCurdie. He was always praying to be delivered from his sisters and nephews and nieces, whose embarrassing demands no calculated coldness could repress.

“Children are the root of all evil,” said he. “Happy the man who has his quiver empty.”

Sir Angus McCurdie did not reply at once; when he spoke again it was with reference to their prospective host.

“I met Deverill,” said he, “at the Royal Society's Soirée this year. One of my assistants was demonstrating a peculiar property of thorium and Deverill seemed interested. I asked him to come to my laboratory the next day, and found he didn't know a damned thing about anything. That's all the acquaintance I have with him.”

Lord Boyne, the great administrator, who had been wearily turning over the pages of an illustrated weekly chiefly filled with flamboyant photographs of obscure actresses, took his gold glasses from his nose and the black cigar from his lips, and addressed his companions.

“I've been considerably interested in your conversation,” said he, “and as you've been frank, I'll be frank too. I knew Mrs. Deverill's mother, Lady Carstairs, very well years ago, and of course Mrs. Deverill when she was a child. Deverill I came across once in Egypt—he had been sent on a diplomatic mission to Teheran. As for our being invited on such slight acquaintance, little Mrs. Deverill has the reputation of being the only really successful celebrity hunter in England. She inherited the faculty from her mother, who entertained the whole world. We're sure to find archbishops, and eminent actors, and illustrious divorcées asked to meet us. That's one thing. But why I, who loathe country house parties and children and Christmas as much as Biggleswade, am going down there to-day, I can no more explain than you can. It's a devilish odd coincidence.”

The three men looked at one another. Suddenly McCurdie shivered and drew his fur coat around him.

“I thank you,” said he, “to shut that window.”

“It's shut,” said Boyne.

“Its just uncanny,” said McCurdie, looking from one to the other.

“What?” asked Boyne.

“Nothing if you didn't feel it.”

“There did seem to be a sudden draught,” said Professor Biggleswade. “But as both window and door are shut, it could only be imaginary.”

“It wasn't imaginary,” muttered McCurdie.

Then he laughed harshly. “My father and mother came from Cromarty,” he said with apparent irrelevance.

“That's the Highlands,” said the Professor.

“Ay,” said McCurdie.

Lord Boyne said nothing, but tugged at his mustache and looked out of the window as the frozen meadows and bits of river and willows raced past. A dead silence fell on them. McCurdie broke it with another laugh and took a whisky flask from his handbag.

“Have a nip?”

“Thanks, no,” said the Professor. “I have to keep to a strict dietary, and I only drink hot milk and water—and of that sparingly. I have some in a thermos bottle.”

Lord Boyne also declining the whisky, McCurdie swallowed a dram and declared himself to be better. The Professor took from his bag a foreign review in which a German sciolist had dared to question his interpretation of a Hittite inscription. Over the man's ineptitude he fell asleep and snored loudly.

To escape from his immediate neighborhood McCurdie went to the other end of the seat and faced Lord Boyne, who had resumed his gold glasses and his listless contemplation of obscure actresses. McCurdie lit a pipe, Boyne another black cigar. The train thundered on.

Presently they all lunched together in the restaurant car. The windows steamed, but here and there through a wiped patch of pane a white world was revealed. The snow was falling. As they passed through Westbury, McCurdie looked mechanically for the famous white horse carved into the chalk of the down; but it was not visible beneath the thick covering of snow.

“It'll be just like this all the way to Gehenna—Trehenna, I mean,” said McCurdie.

Boyne nodded. He had done his life's work amid all extreme fiercenesses of heat and cold, in burning droughts, in simoons and in icy wildernesses, and a ray or two more of the pale sun or a flake or two more of the gentle snow of England mattered to him but little. But Biggleswade rubbed the pane with his table-napkin and gazed apprehensively at the prospect.

“If only this wretched train would stop,” said he, “I would go back again.”

And he thought how comfortable it would be to sneak home again to his books and thus elude not only the Deverills, but the Christmas jollities of his sisters' families, who would think him miles away. But the train was timed not to stop till Plymouth, two hundred and thirty-five miles from London, and thither was he being relentlessly carried. Then he quarreled with his food, which brought a certain consolation.

The train did stop, however, before Plymouth—indeed, before Exeter. An accident on the line had dislocated the traffic. The express was held up for an hour, and when it was permitted to proceed, instead of thundering on, it went cautiously, subject to continual stoppings. It arrived at Plymouth two hours late. The travelers learned that they had missed the connection on which they had counted and that they could not reach Trehenna till nearly ten o'clock. After weary waiting at Plymouth they took their seats in the little, cold local train that was to carry them another stage on their journey. Hot-water cans put in at Plymouth mitigated to some extent the iciness of the compartment. But that only lasted a comparatively short time, for soon they were set down at a desolate, shelterless wayside junction, dumped in the midst of a hilly snow-covered waste, where they went through another weary wait for another dismal local train that was to carry them to Trehenna. And in this train there were no hot-water cans, so that the compartment was as cold as death. McCurdie fretted and shook his fist in the direction of Trehenna.

“And when we get there we have still a twenty miles' motor drive to Foullis Castle. It's a fool name and we're fools to be going there.”

“I shall die of bronchitis,” wailed Professor Biggleswade.

“A man dies when it is appointed for him to die,” said Lord Boyne, in his tired way; and he went on smoking long black cigars.

“It's not the dying that worries me,” said McCurdie. “That's a mere mechanical process which every organic being from a king to a cauliflower has to pass through. It's the being forced against my will and my reason to come on this accursed journey, which something tells me will become more and more accursed as we go on, that is driving me to distraction.”

“What will be, will be,” said Boyne.

“I can't see where the comfort of that reflection comes in,” said Biggleswade.

“And yet you've traveled in the East,” said Boyne. “I suppose you know the Valley of the Tigris as well as any man living.”

“Yes,” said the Professor. “I can say I dug my way from Tekrit to Bagdad and left not a stone unexamined.”

“Perhaps, after all,” Boyne remarked, “that's not quite the way to know the East.”

“I never wanted to know the modern East,” returned the Professor. “What is there in it of interest compared with the mighty civilizations that have gone before?”

McCurdie took a pull from his flask.

“I'm glad I thought of having a refill at Plymouth,” said he.

At last, after many stops at little lonely stations they arrived at Trehenna. The guard opened the door and they stepped out on to the snow-covered platform. An oil lamp hung from the tiny pent-house roof that, structurally, was Trehenna Station. They looked around at the silent gloom of white undulating moorland, and it seemed a place where no man lived and only ghosts could have a bleak and unsheltered being. A porter came up and helped the guard with the luggage. Then they realized that the station was built on a small embankment, for, looking over the railing, they saw below the two great lamps of a motor car. A fur-clad chauffeur met them at the bottom of the stairs. He clapped his hands together and informed them cheerily that he had been waiting for four hours. It was the bitterest winter in these parts within the memory of man, said he, and he himself had not seen snow there for five years. Then he settled the three travelers in the great roomy touring car covered with a Cape cart hood, wrapped them up in many rugs and started.

After a few moments, the huddling together of their bodies—for, the Professor being a spare man, there was room for them all on the back seat—the pile of rugs, the serviceable and all but air-tight hood, induced a pleasant warmth and a pleasant drowsiness. Where they were being driven they knew not. The perfectly upholstered seat eased their limbs, the easy swinging motion of the car soothed their spirits. They felt that already they had reached the luxuriously appointed home which, after all, they knew awaited them. McCurdie no longer railed, Professor Biggleswade forgot the dangers of bronchitis, and Lord Boyne twisted the stump of a black cigar between his lips without any desire to relight it. A tiny electric lamp inside the hood made the darkness of the world to right and left and in front of the talc windows still darker. McCurdie and Biggleswade fell into a doze. Lord Boyne chewed the end of his cigar. The car sped on through an unseen wilderness.

Suddenly there was a horrid jolt and a lurch and a leap and a rebound and then the car stood still, quivering like a ship that has been struck by a heavy sea. The three men were pitched and tossed and thrown sprawling over one another onto the bottom of the car. Biggleswade screamed. McCurdie cursed. Boyne scrambled from the confusion of rugs and limbs and, tearing open the side of the Cape cart hood, jumped out. The chauffeur had also just leaped from his seat. It was pitch dark save for the great shaft of light down the snowy road cast by the acetylene lamps. The snow had ceased falling.

“What's gone wrong?”

“It sounds like the axle,” said the chauffeur ruefully.

He unshipped a lamp and examined the car, which had wedged itself against a great drift of snow on the off side. Meanwhile McCurdie and Biggleswade had alighted.

“Yes, it's the axle,” said the chauffeur.

“Then we're done,” remarked Boyne.

“I'm afraid so, my lord.”

“What's the matter? Can't we get on?” asked Biggleswade in his querulous voice.

McCurdie laughed. “How can we get on with a broken axle? The thing's as useless as a man with a broken back. Gad, I was right. I said it was going to be an infernal journey.”

The little Professor wrung his hands. “But what's to be done?” he cried.

“Tramp it,” said Lord Boyne, lighting a fresh cigar.

“Its ten miles,” said the chauffeur.

“It would be the death of me,” the Professor wailed.

“I utterly refuse to walk ten miles through a Polar waste with a gouty foot,” McCurdie declared wrathfully.

The chauffeur offered a solution of the difficulty. He would set out alone for Foullis Castle—five miles further on was an inn where he could obtain a horse and trap—and would return for the three gentlemen with another car. In the meanwhile they could take shelter in a little house which they had just passed, some half mile up the road. This was agreed to. The chauffeur went on cheerily enough with a lamp, and the three travelers with another lamp started off in the opposite direction. As far as they could see they were in a long, desolate valley, a sort of No Man's Land, deathly silent. The eastern sky had cleared somewhat, and they faced a loose rack through which one pale star was dimly visible.

“I'm a man of science,” said McCurdie as they trudged through the snow, “and I dismiss the supernatural as contrary to reason; but I have Highland blood in my veins that plays me exasperating tricks. My reason tells me that this place is only a commonplace moor, yet it seems like a Valley of Bones haunted by malignant spirits who have lured us here to our destruction. There's something guiding us now. It's just uncanny.”

“Why on earth did we ever come?” croaked Biggleswade.

Lord Boyne answered: “The Koran says, 'Nothing can befall us but what God hath destined for us.' So why worry?”

“Because I'm not a Mohammedan,” retorted Biggleswade.

“You might be worse,” said Boyne.

Presently the dim outline of the little house grew perceptible. A faint light shone from the window. It stood unfenced by any kind of hedge or railing a few feet away from the road in a little hollow beneath some rising ground. As far as they could discern in the darkness when they drew near, the house was a mean, dilapidated hovel. A guttering candle stood on the inner sill of the small window and afforded a vague view into a mean interior. Boyne held up the lamp so that its rays fell full on the door. As he did so, an exclamation broke from his lips and he hurried forward, followed by the others. A man's body lay huddled together on the snow by the threshold. He was dressed like a peasant, in old corduroy trousers and rough coat, and a handkerchief was knotted round his neck. In his hand he grasped the neck of a broken bottle. Boyne set the lamp on the ground and the three bent down together over the man. Close by the neck lay the rest of the broken bottle, whose contents had evidently run out into the snow.

“Drunk?” asked Biggleswade.

Boyne felt the man and laid his hand on his heart.

“No,” said he, “dead.”

McCurdie leaped to his full height. “I told you the place was uncanny!” he cried. “Its fey.” Then he hammered wildly at the door.

There was no response. He hammered again till it rattled. This time a faint prolonged sound like the wailing of a strange sea-creature was heard from within the house. McCurdie turned round, his teeth chattering.

“Did ye hear that, Boyne?”

“Perhaps it's a dog,” said the Professor.

Lord Boyne, the man of action, pushed them aside and tried the door-handle. It yielded, the door stood open, and the gust of cold wind entering the house extinguished the candle within. They entered and found themselves in a miserable stone-paved kitchen, furnished with poverty-stricken meagerness—a wooden chair or two, a dirty table, some broken crockery, old cooking utensils, a fly-blown missionary society almanac, and a fireless grate. Boyne set the lamp on the table.

“We must bring him in,” said he.

They returned to the threshold, and as they were bending over to grip the dead man the same sound filled the air, but this time louder, more intense, a cry of great agony. The sweat dripped from McCurdie's forehead. They lifted the dead man and brought him into the room, and after laying him on a dirty strip of carpet they did their best to straighten the stiff limbs. Biggleswade put on the table a bundle which he had picked up outside. It contained some poor provisions—a loaf, a piece of fat bacon, and a paper of tea. As far as they could guess (and as they learned later they guessed rightly) the man was the master of the house, who, coming home blind drunk from some distant inn, had fallen at his own threshold and got frozen to death. As they could not unclasp his fingers from the broken bottle neck they had to let him clutch it as a dead warrior clutches the hilt of his broken sword.

Then suddenly the whole place was rent with another and yet another long, soul-piercing moan of anguish.

“There's a second room,” said Boyne, pointing to a door. “The sound comes from there.”

He opened the door, peeped in, and then, returning for the lamp, disappeared, leaving McCurdie and Biggleswade in the pitch darkness, with the dead man on the floor.

“For heaven's sake, give me a drop of whisky,” said the Professor, “or I shall faint.”

Presently the door opened and Lord Boyne appeared in the shaft of light. He beckoned to his companions.

“It is a woman in childbirth,” he said in his even, tired voice. “We must aid her. She appears unconscious. Does either of you know anything about such things?”

They shook their heads. and the three looked at each other in dismay. Masters of knowledge that had won them world-wide fame and honor, they stood helpless, abashed before this, the commonest phenomenon of nature.

“My wife had no child,” said McCurdie.

“I've avoided women all my life,” said Biggleswade.

“And I've been too busy to think of them. God forgive me,” said Boyne.

The history of the next two hours was one that none of the three men ever cared to touch upon. They did things blindly, instinctively, as men do when they come face to face with the elemental. A fire was made, they knew not how, water drawn they knew not whence, and a kettle boiled. Boyne, accustomed to command, directed. The others obeyed. At his suggestion they hastened to the wreck of the car and came staggering back beneath rugs and traveling bags which could supply clean linen and needful things, for amid the poverty of the house they could find nothing fit for human touch or use. Early they saw that the woman's strength was failing, and that she could not live. And there, in that nameless hovel, with death on the hearthstone and death and life hovering over the pitiful bed, the three great men went through the pain and the horror and squalor of birth, and they knew that they had never yet stood before so great a mystery.

With the first wail of the newly born infant a last convulsive shudder passed through the frame of the unconscious mother. Then three or four short gasps for breath, and the spirit passed away. She was dead. Professor Biggleswade threw a corner of the sheet over her face, for he could not bear to see it.

They washed and dried the child as any crone of a midwife would have done, and dipped a small sponge which had always remained unused in a cut-glass bottle in Boyne's dressing-bag in the hot milk and water of Biggleswade's thermos bottle, and put it to his lips; and then they wrapped him up warm in some of their own woolen undergarments, and took him into the kitchen and placed him on a bed made of their fur coats in front of the fire. As the last piece of fuel was exhausted they took one of the wooden chairs and broke it up and cast it into the blaze. And then they raised the dead man from the strip of carpet and carried him into the bedroom and laid him reverently by the side of his dead wife, after which they left the dead in darkness and returned to the living. And the three grave men stood over the wisp of flesh that had been born a male into the world. Then, their task being accomplished, reaction came, and even Boyne, who had seen death in many lands, turned faint. But the others, losing control of their nerves, shook like men stricken with palsy.

Suddenly McCurdie cried in a high pitched voice, “My God! Don't you feel it?” and clutched Boyne by the arm. An expression of terror came on his iron features. “There! It's here with us.”

Little Professor Biggleswade sat on a corner of the table and wiped his forehead.

“I heard it. I felt it. It was like the beating of wings.”

“It's the fourth time,” said McCurdie. “The first time was just before I accepted the Deverills' invitation. The second in the railway carriage this afternoon. The third on the way here. This is the fourth.”

Biggleswade plucked nervously at the fringe of whisker under his jaws and said faintly, “It's the fourth time up to now. I thought it was fancy.”

“I have felt it, too,” said Boyne. “It is the Angel of Death.” And he pointed to the room where the dead man and woman lay.

“For God's sake let us get away from this,” cried Biggleswade.

“And leave the child to die, like the others?” said Boyne.

“We must see it through,” said McCurdie.

A silence fell upon them as they sat round by the blaze with the new-born babe wrapped in its odd swaddling clothes asleep on the pile of fur coats, and it lasted until Sir Angus McCurdie looked at his watch.

“Good Lord,” said he, “it's twelve o'clock.”

“Christmas morning,” said Biggleswade.

“A strange Christmas,” mused Boyne.

McCurdie put up his hand. “There it is again! The beating of wings.” And they listened like men spellbound. McCurdie kept his hand uplifted, and gazed over their heads at the wall, and his gaze was that of a man in a trance, and he spoke:

“Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given”

Boyne sprang from his chair, which fell behind him with a crash.

 * Man—what the devil are you saying?”

Then McCurdie rose and met Biggleswade's eyes staring at him through the great round spectacles, and Biggleswade turned and met the eyes of Boyne. A pulsation like the beating of wings stirred the air.

The three wise men shivered with a queer exaltation. Something strange, mystical, dynamic had happened. It was as if scales had fallen from their eyes and they saw with a new vision. They stood together humbly, divested of all their greatness, touching one another like children, as if seeking mutual protection, and they looked, with one accord, irresistibly compelled, at the child.

At last McCurdie unbent his black brows and said hoarsely:

“It was not the Angel of Death, Boyne, but another Messenger that drew us here.”

The tiredness seemed to pass away from the great administrator's face, and he nodded his head with the calm of a man who has come to the quiet heart of a perplexing mystery.

“It's true” he murmured. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. Unto the three of us.”

Biggleswade took off his great round spectacles and wiped them.

“Gaspar, Melchior, Balthazar. But where are the gold, frankincense and myrrh?”

“In our hearts, man,” said McCurdie.

The babe cried and stretched its tiny limbs.

Instinctively they all knelt down together to discover if possible and administer ignorantly to its wants. The scene had the appearance of an adoration.

Then these three wise, lonely, childless men who, in furtherance of their own greatness, had cut themselves adrift from the sweet and simple things of life and from the kindly ways of their brethren, and had grown old in unhappy and profitless wisdom, knew that an inscrutable Providence had led them, as it had led three Wise Men of old, on a Christmas morning long ago, to a nativity which should give them a new wisdom, a new link with humanity, a new spiritual outlook, a new hope.

And when their watch was ended they wrapped up the babe with precious care, and carried him with them, an inalienable joy and possession, into the great world.

title: American Magazine/A Christmas Mystery


text:
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text:
Page:A Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Description of the District, or Zila, of Dinajpur.djvu/100

88 this subject now remaining, according to the Pandits of this place, is a treatise called Chintamoni, said to have been written by a Maithilo Brahmin; but it is so obscure and difficult, that few are able to comprehend its meaning. The works most usually studied have been composed in modern times, and are as follows:

1. Bhasha Porichhed, by Viswonath Siddhanto, of whose history the Pandits know nothing. This seems to be a treatise on perception, and is divided into four, according to the number of senses as reckoned by the Hindús. This treatise seems to be short or easy, as students usually are masters of it in 2 months. 2. Byapti Pongehok, the author unknown. Its study requires one year. 3. Singho Byaghro Lokhyon, or the doctrine of two brother philosophers of Maithilo, who probably from the violence of their arguments, are called the Lion and Tiger. Their real names have been lost in these titles, not ill suited for doctors of the schools. Their work requires 6 months study. 4. Vyodhikoron Dhorma Bochhinnabhab. 5. Purbo Pokhyo. 6. Siddhanto Lokhyon. The study of these three books occupies one year, and they seem to be a refutation of the objections against religion.

The minds of many students become confused by the abstracted nature of these investigations, and many of them are considered by the vulgar as little better than fools. The greater part however pursue their studies for 12 or 14 years more, reading a great variety of books, which it would be tedious to mention. In the Appendix to this book, however, I add a list of them in the native character, should any person be desirous of inquiring after them.

These three sciences, Grammar, Law, and Metaphysics, are considered as the noblest; and are the only knowledge which the Odhyapoks of Bengal will condescend to teach in their Chauvaris; and of those the study of Metaphysics is considered as by far the most honourable, and next to that is the study of the law.

There seem to be three other sciences, that are studied and taught by Pandits; but which, in this country, do not entitle them to be considered as Odhyapoks, nor their schools to be called Chauvaris. These sciences are Bedanto, Agom, and Jyotish, to which may be added medicine or rather magic.

The first is an investigation into the doctrine of the Beds concerning the Divinity, on which subject Pandits are exceedingly divided in their opinion; and in the south of India this appears to be the favourite study. In Dinajpúr the Brahmins seem to give themselves very little concern about the meaning of these sacred books, and content themselves with reading certain portions of them on certain occasions. In this they probably act judiciously, as the doctrine is delivered with such obscurity, that the systems founded on it by the most learned doctors of the south differ so widely, that the person whom one sect worships as the Supreme Being is by another considered as the Devil. There is no Bedanto Pandit in Dinajpúr. It is indeed alleged that there was none in Bengal until of late, when some learned men were brought from Benares by a rich Kayostho of Calcutta ( or Novokissen), who had acquired a large fortune in the service of Lord.

The Agom, or science which teaches the proper manner of worshipping the gods so as to obtain power, is the favourite part of divinity in Bengal. Several of the Dinajpúr Pandits have studied this, but none of them teach it; and those who wish to obtain a profound knowledge go to other places, especially to the neighbourhood of Dhaka, where the Tontros, or books which explain this doctrine, are much studied. The mode of worship accompanied by intoxication, indecency, or horrible practices,


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Page:A Geographical, Statistical, and Historical Description of the District, or Zila, of Dinajpur.djvu/101

Rh which these books are said to inculcate, is either altogether neglected, or carefully concealed in this district, although indecent figures are common in the ornaments of the places of worship. Indeed, I am told, that this mode of worship has made little progress among the Brahmins of Bengal, who are mostly married; and is chiefly confined to holy men, who have relinquished the world, and can trust themselves with safety in the midst of temptation. No books however are in such request as the Tontros, which I believe may be considered as a system of magic. In this country all the Brahmins who are of the sects of Sib or Sokti, acknowledge the Tontros to have been revealed by the former, and to be the proper guide in religious matters. Now in these books, there are said to be forms of invocations for six kinds of witchcraft.

1. Maron, by which an enemy may be killed. 2. Uchchaton, by which an enemy becomes a vagrant like an idiot. 3. Vosikoron, by which a person may procure the friendship of his enemy. 4. Stombhon, by which an enemy becomes dumb. 5. Vidiveshon, by which an enemy is made to quarrel with his friend. 6. Santi, by which a person may be cured of sickness.

These are supposed to be effectual only when pronounced by a Brahmin, and accompanied by sacrifices. The Brahmins of Kamrup are considered as the greatest adepts in this science, which is contained in the Tontro, called Sarodatilok. This I have stated on the authority of the Tontrosar composed by of Nodiya, who is supposed to have lived about 300 years ago, and to have been descended from Agom Vagis, the most learned person in the Tontros that has ever been known.

The lowest of all the sciences studied by Pandits, in their opinion, is the Jyotish, which comprehends astronomy and the knowledge of the past, the present, and the future, which is attained by means of the stars, and of the lines on the human hand or forehead. Many people have imagined, that the Jyotish were a sect of philosophers, who neglected fable, and followed reason as a guide, and who were numerous, and much respected in India. If there are any such philosophers, I have never met with them; all whom it has been my fortune to see, professed astrology, and most of them also practised chiromancy. Although all Hindús of high rank are addicted to this folly, the Pandits, who profess no other science, are considered as the lowest of all others; and indeed the science is often possessed and practised by Sudros, who are called Gonok, and who belong to the Daivoggno tribe, commonly called Daibok. In this district, however, the Daiboks procure a living chiefly by selling almanacks, and cannot make calculations. As the practice of astrology is profitable, a considerable number of Brahmins, even men very learned in other sciences, follow this art, and in this district almost every academician (Odhyapok) practises it more or less. No undertaking of any sort of consequence can commence in a Hindú family of rank, without a wise man having been consulted to find out the proper day. Whenever a child is born, the star of its nativity is calculated, by the art called Thikoji, which is not considered as difficult. Afterwards, the earliest opportunity is taken of procuring a man of profound science in the art called Koshthi, by which from the Thikoji he foretels the events of the child’s future life. Every Hindú of rank has two names, one public and one private, which last is only known to the parents, Gúrú, Purohit, and astrologers, and is carefully concealed from all others, lest any person should use it in enchantment (Montra, Bhibhut, or Gún), which is of no efficacy where the common name only is used.


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 clock slithered gently along the mantelpiece, collecting vases on the way, until they all crashed together on to what had once been the floor, but was now trying to see what it looked like as a wall. Uncle Robert, who was going to be the new hearthrug, and was bringing the rest of his wall with him as carpet, met Piglet's chair just as Piglet was expecting to leave it, and for a little while it became very difficult to remember which was really the north. Then there was another loud crack Owl's room collected itself feverishly  and there was silence.

In a corner of the room, the table-cloth began to

Then it wrapped itself into a ball and rolled


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Then it jumped up and down once or twice, and put out two ears. It rolled across the room again, and unwound itself.

“Pooh,” said Piglet nervously.

“Yes?” said one of the chairs.

“Where are we?”

“I’m not quite sure,” said the chair.

“Are we—are we in Owl’s House?”

“I think so, because we were just going to have tea, and we hadn’t had it.”

“Oh!” said Piglet. “Well, did Owl always have a letter-box in his ceiling?”


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112 B. Dwarf forms with leaves radially arranged on the branchlets.

5. Var. ericoides.

A low shrub with ascending branches. Leaves generally radially arranged, but occasionally two-ranked, uniform in size, falcate, short, acute, tapering to a fine cartilaginous point.

6. Var. nana.

A dwarf shrub. Leaves generally radially arranged, some being two-ranked; very variable in length, but always short, straight or falcate, often twisted or curved.

C. Varieties with leaves distichously arranged, assuming pendulous, prostrate, and other non-fastigiate habits.

7. Var. Dovastoni, Dovaston Yew.

A tree or large shrub, with spreading branches, arising in verticils, and becoming very pendulous at their extremities. Leaves dark green with an abruptly mucronate apex.

An account of the original tree, from which this variety has been propagated, is given in Loudon and in Leighton's Flora of Shropshire. This tree was planted as a seedling about the year 1777 at Westfelton, near Shrewsbury. It was in vigorous health in 1900, and measured then 8 feet 10 inches in girth at 4½ feet from the ground. Nineteen years previously its girth was 7 feet 11 inches. It is described as having a single leader, with branches pendulous to the ground. The original tree is monœcious; one branch only producing fertile berries, from which seedlings were raised, which reproduced the habit of the parent. Barron states that all his Dovaston yews are female trees. Carrière sowed seeds of this form on many occasions, and the offspring was always like the common yew, doubtless due to his Dovaston yews being fertilised by the pollen of ordinary yew trees in the vicinity.

Carrière further states that M.M. Thibaut and Keteleer obtained in 1865, from seeds of this variety, plants which were in the proportion of three-fourths variegated in foliage and one-fourth green; but in no case was the pendulous habit observed. The variegated plants passed into commerce as Dovastoni variegata; but these were simply ordinary variegated yews. A sub-variety, however, occurs in which the leaves of the Dovaston yew are variegated with yellow; and this is known as var. Dovastoni aureo-variegata.

8. Var. pendula.—Growing at Kew, this is an irregularly branching wide, low,


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 “I’m not quite sure,” said Pooh.

Owl turned at his voice, and frowned at as much of Pooh as he could see.

“Pooh,” said Owl severely, “did you do that?”

“No,” said Pooh humbly. “I don’t think so.”

“Then who did?”

“I think it was the wind,” said Piglet. “I think your house has blown down.”

“Oh, is that it? I thought it was Pooh.”

“No,” said Pooh.

“If it was the wind,” said Owl, considering the matter, “then it wasn’t Pooh’s fault. No blame can be attached to him.” With these kind words he flew up to look at his new ceiling.

“Piglet!” called Pooh in a loud whisper.

Piglet leant down to him.

“Yes, Pooh?”

"What did he say was attached to me?”

“He said he didn’t blame you.”

“Oh! I thought he meant Oh, I see.”

“Owl” said Piglet, “come down and help Pooh.”

Owl, who was admiring his letter-box, flew down again. Together they pushed and pulled at the armchair, and in a little while Pooh came out from underneath, and was able to look round him again.

“Well!” said Owl. “This is a nice state of things!”

“What are we going to do, Pooh? Can you think of anything?” asked Piglet.


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114 14. Var. glauca.

A vigorous shrub, with leaves, which are shining and dark green on the upper surface, and glaucous blue beneath.

E. Variety with differently coloured fruit.

15. Var. fructu luteo.

This variety only differs from the common yew in the aril of the fruit being yellow. A tree of this kind was discovered about the year 1817 at Glasnevin, near Dublin, growing on the property of the Bishop of Kildare.

Cuttings, however, were first distributed from a tree noticed in the grounds of Clontarf Castle in 1838. This tree was about 50 feet high in 1888. At Ardsallagh, Co. Meath, the residence of Mrs. M'Cann, there is a tree 30 feet high and 7 feet in girth, with yellow fruit, occurring in an avenue of old yews. There are several trees of this kind at Powerscourt, the best one of which was about 40 feet high in 1888. Bushes raised from the seeds of these trees are reported to be bearing yellow berries, from which it would appear that this variety comes true from seed. It is remarkable that all the yellow-berried yews known, except the one mentioned above as collected at Manipur, should occur in the neighbourhood of Dublin.

F. Variety with small leaves.

16. Var. adpressa.

A large spreading shrub with densely crowded branchlets, bearing remarkably small broad leaves, arranged on the shoots, as in the common yew. The leaves are dark green above, ¼–½ inch long, elliptic linear in outline, with a rounded apex, from which is given off a short mucro. The aril is broad and shallow, not covering the seed, which is 3-angled and often depressed at the summit.

This is by far the most distinct of all the forms, geographical and horticultural, not only in foliage, but also in fruit. It has been considered by many botanists to be a distinct species, conjecturally of Japanese or Chinese origin. It is not known in Japan, except as a plant introduced from Europe; and there is no reason for doubting the positive information as to its origin given by Messrs. James Dickson and Sons and by the late Mr. F.T. Dickson of Chester, though there is a slight discrepancy in their two accounts. The latter states that it was found as a seedling by his father amidst some yew seedlings about 1838, while the former give


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116 Gilbert White thought that male trees are more robust in growth than female trees; but we are unaware of any accurate observations on this subject. Kirchner, however, states that there is a slight distinction in the habit of the two sexes, male trees being taller with longer internodes and shorter leaves.

In early spring drops of mucilage may be observed glistening on the ovules of female trees in flower. The mucilage is secreted by the micropyle, and seems to entangle the grains of pollen which have been wafted on the ovules by the wind. The clouds of pollen which fly forth from the male flowers are well known. The pollen is liberated from the stamens by a very elaborate mechanism, which serves to protect the pollen grains in rainy weather. A good account of this is given by Kerner.

A large quantity of fruit of the yew falls to the ground in autumn; but the seeds in this case do not as a rule germinate. Natural reproduction seems to be effected by birds like the thrush and blackbird, which, attracted by the fleshy aril, devour the whole fruit. The seeds, protected by their hard testa, escape digestion and are voided at a distance. They rarely germinate in the first year after ripening; seedlings come up as a rule in the year following, a few even appearing in the third year.

The buds of the different geographical forms appear to differ more than the leaves themselves. The terminal bud is invested closely by the uppermost and youngest leaves and continues the growth of the shoot. The bud scales on unfolding remain at the base of the growing shoot, and on older branchlets persist as dry brownish scales, forming an involucre at the bases of the branchlets. Lateral buds are developed on the twigs at irregular intervals. Many of these remain dormant, retaining the power to take on growth at any moment. This explains the readiness with which the yew submits to pruning, and the facility with which it produces coppice shoots when the stem is cut. Spray or epicormic branches are frequently produced on the upper side of the branches or on the stem; and these also originate in dormant buds.

True root-suckers are never formed; but layering occurs, though very rarely, in branches which have come in contact with the ground.

With regard to the supposed great age of yew trees, which has been much exaggerated by authors—especially by the great Swiss botanist, De Candolle—we must refer our readers to Lowe, who has discussed the subject very thoroughly in chapter iii. of his work. He proves that the average rate of growth is about I foot of diameter in 60-70 years in both young and old trees. There is, however, abundant evidence to show that though old trees grow at intervals much more rapidly than young ones, they do not grow uniformly, but have periods of comparative rest, and that the increase of girth is fastest when old trees have lost their heads and the stem is covered with young shoots.


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 “Well, I had just thought of something,” said Pooh. “It was just a little thing I thought of.” And he began to sing:

“That was all,” said Pooh.

Owl coughed in an unadmiring sort of way, and said that, if Pooh was sure that was all, they could now give their minds to the Problem of Escape.

“Because,” said Owl, “we can’t go out by what used to be the front door. Something’s fallen on it.”


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118 occurrence of poisoning. Also the half-dried leaves would be, cceteris paribus, more potent than the fresh.

"Further and extended chemical researches, in conjunction with physiological experiments, are necessary to clear up the matter.

"The principle having a specific uterine action is possibly not the same as that which causes death."

This poison, if taken in sufficient quantity, is deadly to man, horses, asses, sheep, cattle, pigs, pheasants, and possibly other animals, but under ordinary circumstances small quantities of the leaves may be and are habitually eaten by live-stock without apparent injury, whilst it seems proved that the wood of the yew may be used for water vessels and for baths, as in Japan, without any deleterious effects.

Sargent, Silva of North America, vol. x., 63, says "no cases of poisoning by Taxus in North America appear to be recorded"; and Brandis, Forest Flora of British India, p. 541, says that "in India domestic animals are said to browse upon T. baccata without experiencing any bad effects."

With regard to the danger of allowing this tree to grow in hedges and fields where stock are pastured, there seems to be abundant evidence, which is well summarised by Mr. E.P. Squarey, and which my own experience entirely confirms, that though animals which have been bred and fed in places where they have access to yew are more or less immune, probably because they never eat it in sufficient quantity to do harm, yet that animals freshly turned into such places when hungry, or in winter and spring when there is little grass, are liable to die from eating it, and that fatal effects most commonly ensue when loppings or partially withered branches and leaves are eaten.

It has been held in more than one case that landowners, and others responsible for keeping up fences, who allow yew trees to remain insufficiently fenced, are liable to an action for damages if another person's cattle from adjoining land eat the branches and die.

With regard to the danger of yew trees in game coverts we have little exact knowledge, but in certain cases there seems to be evidence of its being poisonous to pheasants, and the following passage, which was communicated by Sir William ffolkes, Bart., of Hillington Hall, Norfolk, to the editor of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, 1892, p. 698, is worth quoting in full.

"Some years ago, when shooting through the coverts here the second time, we found about fifteen carcasses of pheasants under some yew trees. These could not have been overlooked the first time in picking up, as there was no stand anywhere near this place where so many pheasants could have been shot. My keeper informs me that it is after the pheasants have been disturbed by shooting that they take to perching in the yew trees. This may or may not be so, but at any rate it appears that, when they take to perching in these trees, they are apt to eat a few of the leaves. We now always drive them off the yew trees when they go to perch at night. I enclose some of the yew which poisoned the pheasants, and would like to add that never before this year have


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120 and attains its largest dimensions on deep sandy loam. It grows better under dense shade than any tree we have, and may therefore be used for underplanting beech -woods where bare ground is objected to, and where the soil is too poor and dry or too limy for silver fir. In such situations, however, it grows very slowly and produces little or no fruit.

No tree, except perhaps the oak, has a larger literature in English than the yew; and though a monograph on the Yew Trees of Great Britain and Ireland by the late John Lowe, M.D., was published by Macmillan so lately as 1897, I am able to add many records of trees not known to him, and shall not allude to most of the trees which he has described and figured.

It is strange that neither Loudon, Lowe, nor any other writer has, so far as I know, described the yews in the close walks at Midhurst, which, on account of their extraordinary height, form what I believe to be the most remarkable yew-grove in Great Britain or elsewhere.

The age and history of these wonderful trees is lost in obscurity, but it is said in Wm. Roundell's very interesting book on Cowdray that Queen Elizabeth was entertained at a banquet in these walks, so they must have been of considerable age and size 300 years ago.

The close walks are situated close to the town on the other side of the river, and consist of four avenues of yew trees forming a square of about 150 yards, together with a grove of yews at the upper end which average, as nearly as I could measure them, about 75 feet in height, but some probably exceed 80. These trees are for the most part sound and healthy, though little care has been taken of them, and some have fallen. They are remarkable not only for their great height, which exceeds that of any other yews on record in Europe, but on account of their freedom from large branches, many having clean boles of 20 - 30 feet with a girth of 8–9 feet. They stand so thick together that on an area of about half an acre or less—I made 213 paces in going round it—I counted about 100 trees and saw the stumps of 10 or 12 more, which would probably average over 30 cubic feet to each tree without reckoning the branches.

The ground below is absolutely bare of vegetation, and though I found some small seedlings among the grass and briars on the outside of this area, I do not think the yew grows from seed under its own shade.

The photographs (Plates 5432 [sic], 5533 [sic]) will give a fair idea of the appearance of this wonderful grove, and of the walks which lead to it. Some of the trees have a remarkable spiral twist in them like fluted columns, which I have not seen so well developed elsewhere.

The soil on which they stand seems to be of a light sandy nature, but deep enough to grow large fine timber of other species, and is, I believe, on the Lower Greensand formation.


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 no good thinking about it,” and Piglet said, “Then we’d better think of something else,” and began to at once.

But Pooh’s mind had gone back to the day when he had saved Piglet from the flood, and everybody had admired him so much; and as that didn’t often happen he thought he would like it to happen again. And suddenly, just as it had come before, an idea came to him.

“Owl,” said Pooh, “I have thought of something.”

“Astute and Helpful Bear,” said Owl.

Pooh looked proud at being called a stout and helpful bear, and said modestly that he just happened to think of it. You tied a piece of string to Piglet, and you flew up to the letter-box with the other end in your beak, and you pushed it through the wire and brought it down to the floor, and you and Pooh pulled hard at this end, and Piglet went slowly up at the other end. And there you were.

“And there Piglet is,” said Owl. “If the string doesn’t break.”

“Supposing it does?” asked Piglet, wanting to know.

“Then we try another piece of string.”

This was not very comforting to Piglet, because however many pieces of string they tried pulling up with, it would always be the same him coming down; but still, it did seem the only thing to do. So


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 salvation. In order not to tire or occupy your Majesty with an affair of so little weight and moment, although it means much to me, I declare, Sire, that, according to my desire and intention, I wrote to your Majesty exempting myself and bidding farewell to human and temporal pretensions, thinking that they were not necessary for me, and rather desiring to assist with what I had, some persons in need, debt, and obligation. Since then my affairs here have gone in the usual and ordinary way of the world, which is unlike, even contrary to, human project, plan, and judgment. Many times things are planned very differently from what actually happens afterwards, as is verified by my case. For I thought to have something to leave, and I am obliged to ask for aid; and I may truly say that it is not for myself, but for those whom I owe and am under strict and just obligations to satisfy and pay. The debts are such and so many, that no calculation can be made. In December, when I wrote to your Majesty by way of Malaca, according to my understanding the debts were somewhat more than thirty-eight thousand pesos. Although it is true that some were paid later, I have not adjusted or liquidated my debts so that I can state the amount; yet I can assure your Majesty that altogether I owe a very large sum at present. God knows how overcome with confusion I am when I consider my debts and obligations and the little I have to satisfy them. Thus, Sire, your Majesty cannot fail of the assistance which is necessary for one who has so little and owes so much, and who has to pay it and, moreover, answer and give account for his father and himself. Besides what was paid and spent by my father, after his death were contracted debts not far from twenty-


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 five or twenty-six thousand pesos, and in addition to the aforesaid, there are other things not yet cleared up of which the amount is not known. On account of all this I have ventured to give a report to your Majesty, so that, knowing the burden of obligations and the plight of this least of your Majesty's servants, who is in this land so distant and far from his own, your Majesty may be pleased with your royal and most pious compassion to take pity upon and show mercy to this, his most insignificant servant. For his relief, after God, he depends on the royal graciousness and aid of your Majesty, as from his king and lord, from whom and from whose magnanimity, after God, depends my weal, succor, and liberty. As necessity teaches those who suffer to seek plans and modes for relief, I shall propose to your Majesty what seems to me the most convenient and speedy remedy. I desire that your Majesty may be pleased but to grant me grace and license to send and despatch to Peru, if perchance it be expedient, and I am able so to do, a ship of two hundred and fifty or three hundred toneladas, with articles and goods from China—although I do not know what I can do with my small capital and means. Yet it is to be considered that here a ship is made and built at much less cost than elsewhere; and, if it were of no more than the said tonnage, it might be done in some way or other. This would be exceeding grace and relief for this least of your Majesty's servants, who humbly begs that it be so done. I ask it not with designs, plans, and desires for greater profits and riches, to be held and enjoyed; but for the relief and payment of so great necessities and strict obligations, and in behalf of others. If there should be anything left over after fulfilling


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 these obligations, and should your Majesty be pleased to grant me this grace according to my plan, there might result profit to this commonwealth. The cargo sent there could at the same time bring aid to me and relief to the commonwealth—or, as I say, convenience and profit. A ship of so little tonnage sent only once to Peru cannot take an excessive or inordinate cargo. For this reason also, I beseech your Majesty to grant me this grace; and although I have many excuses wherewith to move and incline the royal heart and compassion of your Majesty, by referring to several of my affairs and services, I omit to do so. I only supplicate your Majesty most humbly by the royal magnanimity and the necessity of this least of your Majesty's servants. May your Majesty be pleased to grant me this grace. Above all, I beseech the Divine Majesty of God our Lord that, if this be not meet for His glory or service, or if there may result therefrom some damage or prejudice to His cause or that of your Majesty, His Divine Majesty will move your Majesty not to permit or concede me this grace which I ask. May His Divine Majesty preserve your Majesty as He is able, and as we all desire and need. Amen. Manila, June 30, 1596.

[Endorsed: "Manila. To his Majesty, 1596; Don Luis Dasmariñas, June 30." "Keep this letter until the report of the residencia which is to be taken in his case and that of his father shall be received."]


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Sire:

At the close of the past year, ninety-five, I wrote to your Majesty via Malaca, giving a full account of some affairs of this place. The duplicate of that letter accompanies this, and I refer you to the same.

Every day the peace of this land is becoming more secure. Xapon is kept quiet by the presence of the Franciscan religious whom we have there. They have built churches and hospitals; and in March they wrote to us again, telling how they preached publicly and have made a large number of converts. They are fearful lest the fathers of the Society of Jesus will insist that they leave that country. Such a change would disturb everything, for the king loves them on account of their poverty and charity. If they did so, we should return to the former days of uneasiness.

Captain Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa set forth on the first of last April on the expedition for the pacification of Mindanao, with about fifty sail, large and small, two hundred and fourteen Spaniards, one thousand five hundred armed Indians, and a good store of artillery, ammunition, and supplies. In a week's time he came to the mouth of the river of Mindanao. The king and his people had retired


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 twenty-five leguas up the river to a village named Buhayen, where they fortified themselves. Governor Esteban Rodriguez followed them with the fleet, and landed the majority of the troops, whereupon an engagement took place there. The governor went with a few troops to arrange for an agreement, and an armed Indian assailed him. The captain received so severe a cut on the head with a campilan that he became unconscious and died within thirty hours, without having declared a successor to the government. The camp and fleet were fortified in a convenient place and a city was founded, which was called Murcia. The cabildo thereof elected as governor Captain Juan de Laxara, a captain of infantry of this camp, who had accompanied Estevan Rodriguez and the troops here assigned to the latter, and whom Estevan Rodriguez had appointed submaster-of-camp. He is in the said city, fortifying it, and claims to carry on the government thereof without being subject to this or any other, for he is a bold man. He asks aid, and it will be sent in due time. In the meanwhile steps are being taken to mollify him so that he will come to reason and not become petulant, on account of the inconveniences which might arise therefrom to the service of your Majesty, and the peace and welfare of this state. Since there is doubt as to what will happen, it will be even more desirable than when Estevan Rodriguez was living that your Majesty now give definite commands in respect to this matter. The said island of Mindanao is very large and rich, and is inhabited by many people. There is a steady increase in the number of those who submit to the sway of your Majesty, in addition to those already pacified. It is the first of these islands to recognize


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 FLAMING

YOUTH

157

“Do you think so? But Id be a rotten wife, Bobs,” she added, a cloud settling down upon her expressive face. “What kind of a training have I had to marry and have children to bring up?” “About the same as most of your set, haven’t you?” “Ves;

and look

at them!

There

isn’t one

of them

that’s true to her husband.” “Great Lord, Pat

me

‘Now, I have shocked you.” “Yes, you have. Not the fact—though it isn’t a fact so sweepingly—but that you at your age should know it or think it.” “Oh, I don’t mean necessarily that they go the limit. But they’re all out for a flutter with any attractive suitor that comes along.

Bobs, tell me something; if a married

woman goes necking around isn’t she more likely to—to go farther than a girl is?” “Depends on the individual. It isn’t the safest of pastimes for anyone, as I’ve suggested to you.” “But it’s such fun to make ’em crazy,” returned the irrepressible Pat. “Only,” she added pensively, “it isn’t such fun when you feel kind of crazy yourself. Yet it is, too. When I get married I’m going to everlastingly settle down and never look sideways at any other man. Bobs, what makes you think I ought to marry a man thirty years old?” “Tt’s about the right age for you. It will take a man of some wisdom and self-control to manage you, little Pat.” “More grandfather stuff!” she muttered fretfully. “I don’t want to marry a settled old thing. I want someone with some fun left in him.” “Two or three years from now thirty won’t look so senile.”

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 your Majesty, and is the most important for their security and the conquest of Maluco and other countries. By the papers which the governor sent in regard to the agreement that I had made with the said Captain Estevan Rodriguez, your Majesty will find that he is obliged to conclude the pacification and settlement, and maintain everything for one year, at his own expense. Your Majesty gave him the government and a certain repartimiento for two generations. He left a very considerable estate with which to carry out the agreement, and your Majesty will not go beyond your right in taking charge of it. There are left here two daughters, his heirs, the elder being four years old, by whom and their guardians efforts are being made that the undertaking may be carried out and aided as far as possible, until they become of age. To enjoy its control and favors, it would be well for the estate to be administered from this city. Upon this point your Majesty will provide according to the royal pleasure.

The governor persisted in his determination to carry out the expedition to Camboja, and at the beginning of this year despatched one ship and two junks, with men, artillery, and ammunition, under command of Captain Juan Xuarez Gallinato. Thus far we have received no word whatever from them. The governor is sending the document referring thereto; and, although it is rumored that but few troops were taken by them, in fact two hundred men left this city, and artifice was used, in order that the real number should not appear at the departure. They had, in truth, gone ahead some days earlier and awaited the vessels outside.

At the same time, he sent another expedition to


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Sire:

Through God's help, I entered the channel of these islands on the third of June of this present year, 1596. As the weather was bad, it was was necessary for me to make port at Ybalon, where I was forced to remain several days, because of contrary winds. Considering that this condition of affairs might endure longer, I determined to go overland to Manila; and did so, although with considerable hardship, as the country was completely overflowed on account of the heavy rains. However, I derived some advantage from this, for I thus saw a portion of the country and its products. It was of advantage in enabling me to master the affairs of the country, and to know what things it is advisable to provide to put it in good condition. I entered Manila on the fourteenth of July. As this letter is being written only three days after my arrival in this city, I cannot inform your Majesty thoroughly of the condition of this community. But my first sight of it has honestly pleased me very much. God and your Majesty must be thanked fervently, that in lands so remote and obscure the name and religion of God exists, and the authority and power of your Majesty; and this with so great hopes and dispo-


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 ship. I am sending your Majesty the report of the matter which has been received, and an account of their voyage and adventures, which are therein stated at greater length.

After such long voyages I am left in very poor health, and with little hope of recovery, on account of the climate of this country. I am very poor and spent, with fewer children than those I brought with me, for they have died on the way. Therefore I strongly desire that your Majesty grant me grace if it be possible, and permit me to go to España, and be pleased to provide for this garrison. With this I should feel well paid and satisfied after all my hardships and wanderings. Even though I do not deserve the rewards of my predecessors, I shall live content in returning to my home and fireside, God willing, to give your Majesty a true account of the many things I have seen, and of what would be best for the better service of your Majesty. I humbly beseech your Majesty to grant me this favor as soon as possible. May our Lord preserve for many years the royal person of your Majesty, as is necessary to Christendom and your Majesty's servants. Manila, July 6, 1596.