Guy Livingstone; or, 'Thorough'

"Quanto minus est cum reliquis versari, quam tui meminisse."

The tidings of her son's illness reached Lady Catharine quickly at Kerton Manor. I did not hear of it till a day later, and when I arrived I found her nearly exhausted by sleeplessness and anxiety, though she had not been Guy's nurse for more than thirty-six hours.

The sick-bed of delirium taxes the energies of the watcher very differently from any other. There is a sort of fascination in the roll of the restless head, tossing from side to side, as if trying to escape from the pressure of a heavy hot hand; in the glare of the eager eyes, that follow you every where, with a question in them that they never wait to have answered; in the incoherent words, just trembling on the verge of a revelation, but always leaving the tale half told, that creates a perpetual strain on the attention, enough to wear out a strong man.

There have been men, they say, who, sensible of the approach of delirium, chose the one person who should attend them, and ordered their doors to be closed against all others, preferring to die almost alone to the risk of what their ravings might betray; but I have heard, also, that there are secrets—secrets shared, too, by many confederates—to which neither fever or intoxication ever gave a clew. The hot blood grew chill for an instant, and the babbling tongue was tied when the dreamer came near the frontier ground, where the oath reared itself distinct and threatening as ever, while all else was fantastic and vague.

There was something of this in Guy's case. We could hear distinctly many of his broken sentences, relating sometimes to the hunting-field, sometimes to the orgies of wine or play. There were names, too, occurring now and then, which to his mother were meaningless, but to me had an evil significance. Once or twice—not oftener—he was talking to Flora Bellasys. But when the name of Constance Brandon came, the harsh loud voice sank into a whisper so low that if you had laid your ear to his lips you would not have caught one syllable. Very, very often I had occasion to remark this, and to wonder how the heart could guard its treasure so rigidly when the brain was driving on, aimless as a ship before the hurricane with her rudder gone.

On the fifth day after Guy's illness began, an angel might have interceded for him in the stead of a pure true-hearted woman, for Constance was dead.

I saw Lady Catharine tremble, and bend her head down low when she heard the news, as if herself crushed by the blow which would fall so heavily on her son. She had known but very little of Constance; that little had made her love her dearly—who could help doing that? Yet it was not Constance she was regretting then. I could see the same thought was in her mind as in mine—who will tell Guy this if he recovers? I did all I could to spare her; but the anxiety she felt when out of the sick-room tried her almost more than the bodily fatigue. It was best to let her have her way. I never guessed, till then, the extent of a weak woman's endurance.

It was a close struggle, indeed, between life and death. The fire of the fever died out when there was little left for it to feed on. The arm which, a month ago, was fatal as old Front-de-Bœuf's, had not strength enough in its loosened sinews to lift itself three inches from the coverlet.

Guy had fallen at last into a heavy sleep. The doctors said it was the turning-point. If he woke quite calm and sane, the immense power of his constitution would probably enable him to rally; if not, the worst that could be feared was certain.

He woke after many hours. There was such a stillness in the room as he unclosed his eyes that you might have heard his mother's heart beat as she sat motionless by his bedside. They recognized her at once—heavy and dim as they were—for he tried to turn his head to kiss her hand that lay on the pillow beside him. Then we knew that he was saved; and I saw, for the first time, tears stream down Lady Catharine's worn cheeks. She could check the evidence of her grief better than that of her joy.

He saw me, too, as I came forward out of the shadow. "Is that you, Frank?" he said, faintly. "How very good of you to come." We would not let him speak any more.

On the third day after the change for the better, I was alone with the invalid. He turned to me suddenly, and spoke in a low voice, but so steady that it surprised me. "Frank, what have you heard of Constance?"

Had I been arming myself to meet that question—disciplining my voice and countenance for days, only to fail so miserably at last? I felt unspeakably angry and self-reproachful when I saw that my face had told him all.

"When did she die?" He went on in the same measured tone, without taking his eyes off me. I think he had nerved himself just enough for the effort, and was afraid of breaking down if he paused.

I could speak now, and told him. I was going on to tell him, too, how calmly and happily her life had ended (her aunt had written all this to Lady Catharine), when Guy stopped me—not coldly, but with a hopeless sadness in his accent very painful to hear. "Thank you; it is meant kindly, but I would rather not speak of this, even to you—at least for some time."

His self-command carried him through bravely, but it only just lasted out. Then he turned his head aside and threw his arm across it. As I drew back to the window, I saw the quivering of the long, emaciated fingers that veiled his face. I did not look again till Guy's voice called to me, quite composedly, for I did not dare to pry into or meddle with the secrets of the strong heart that knew its own bitterness so well.

I told Lady Catharine what had passed. She was very much relieved to hear that it was all over. She never opened her lips on the subject to her son; indeed, though those two understood each other thoroughly, there were wonderfully few confidences between them.

Guy's convalescence was slow—far slower than we had hoped for. It seemed as if some spring was broken in his being not easily to be replaced. He was moody and listless always, speaking very seldom; but his words and manner, when he did talk, were gentler and more kindly than I ever remembered them.

One of his first visitors was Colonel Mohun. He had been incessant in his inquiries, and had offered to share our watching, but Lady Catharine would not hear of it. She had a sort of dread at the idea of that grim face lowering over the sick man's bed.

No one was present at their first interview. Ralph was more moved than he cared to show at his old friend's altered looks and ways; but he gave him the account of his search after the lost letter conscientiously, without sparing a single detail. "It must have gone hard with Guy," he remarked to me, thoughtfully, as he came away. "He's very far from right yet. When I told him what Willis had done, I made sure he would be very angry. He only said, 'Poor wretch! He acted under orders, and did not know what mischief he was doing.' He wants rousing; but I am sure I don't know what is to do it."

Forgiveness and forgetfulness of injuries seemed to that hard old heathen the most dangerous sign of bodily and mental debility.

He came almost daily after that, and I think his rough ways, and sharp, sarcastic remarks acted on Livingstone as a sort of tonic—bitter, but strengthening.

A few days later Mrs. Vavasour called. She, too, saw Guy alone. She surely had a message to deliver, or she would not have ventured on an interview which must have been so painful to both. It did not last long; but when she came down, her thick black veil was drawn closely over her face, and that evening Guy was denied to Ralph Mohun.

One afternoon Livingstone was quite by himself. The colonel had gone into Warwickshire for a few days' hunting; Lady Catharine had paid her usual visit and had gone back to her hotel, and I was out for an hour or two. We did not mind leaving him a good deal alone; indeed, he preferred it very often, and said so.

His servant came in, looking rather puzzled, to say that a lady wished to see him. She would not give her name, but said that she would not detain him many minutes.

Guy had not time to refuse admittance to the visitor, she followed so close upon her message. Though she was closely-wrapped in her mantle, and her veil fell in triple folds, there was no mistaking the turn of the haughty head, the smooth, elastic step, and the lithe undulations of a figure matchless between the four seas. No wonder that he drew his breath hard as he recognized Flora Bellasys.

Treu und fest.

As the door closed, Flora advanced quickly. "Confess you are surprised to see me," she said, holding out her little gloved hand. The courtesy toward the sex, which was hereditary with the Livingstones, contrasting strangely with their fierce, ungovernable tempers, made him not reject it; but his lay passive and nerveless in her slender fingers, never answering their eager pressure; it had no longer the elastic quiver of repressed strength that she remembered and liked so well.

"I am surprised to see you here, and so soon," he answered, coldly; "but I knew we should meet before long."

"The surprise does not seem too charming," Miss Bellasys said, pouting her scarlet lip as she threw herself into a deep bergère opposite to the couch on which Livingstone had already sunk down again—he was very weak and unsteady in his movements still.

Was it by chance or calculation that a fold of her dress disarranged displayed the slender foot, with its arched instep—set off by the delicate brodequin, a labor of love to the Parisian Crispin—and the straight, beautifully-turned ankle, cased in dead-white silk? The latter, I think; for Flora knew how to fall as well as Cæsar or Polyxena, and had studied her part to its minutest shade. It was by the senses that she had always been most successful in attacking Guy, and she knew that, in old days, no point of feminine perfection had a greater attraction for him.

The temptation, if so it was intended, had about as much effect upon him now as it might have had on weather-beaten St. Simeon Stylites when his penances had lasted twenty years.

After a minute's silence, during which Flora was gazing intently on her companion, leaning her chin upon her hand, she spoke again.

"I fear you must have been very ill. How—how changed you are!"

Livingstone was, indeed, fearfully altered. The healthy brown of his complexion had given place to a dull, opaque pallor; there were great hollows under the prominent cheek-bones, and his loose dressing-robe of black velvet hung straight down from the gaunt angles of the immense joints and bones. His voice sounded deeper than ever as he replied,

"Yes, I have been very ill, and I am utterly changed. But you must have had something more important to say to me, or you would hardly have ventured on this step."

She was getting very nervous—inexplicably so for her, who generally kept her head, while she made others lose theirs,

"No. I only wished—" she hesitated, trying to force a smile, and then broke off suddenly—"Guy, do speak kindly to me. Don't look at me so strangely."

His answer came, brief and stern.

"I will speak, then. Miss Bellasys, on what authority from me did you venture to interfere in my concerns so far as to intercept my correspondence?"

She tried denial still; it was her way; she always would do it, even when it could avail nothing—perhaps to gain time.

"I don't know what you mean. I never—"

Livingstone interrupted her, with a curl of contempt on his lip.

"Stop, I beg of you. It is useless to stoop lower than you have done already. I have Willis's written confession here. Ah! I know your talents too well to accuse you without material proof."

She raised her head, haughtily enough now. There was something Spartan about that girl. She had such an utter recklessness of exposure—it was in failure that she felt the shame.

"At least you ought not to reproach me. You might guess my motive—my only one—without forcing me to confess it. Have I not gratified your pride enough already?"

"You know that is not the question," Guy answered, gravely. "Yet you are half right. I could not reproach you for any fair, honest move. In much, I own myself more guilty than you. But this is very different. Miss Bellasys, you must have distrusted greatly your own powers of fascination before you stooped to such cruel treachery."

"I did not know what I was doing," she whispered; "I did not know she was dying. Ah! Guy, have pity!"

"But you knew it might kill her to find her letter—such a letter—unanswered. You knew what she must have suffered before she wrote it. You did all this in cold blood, and now you say to me, 'Have pity!' If an accountable being—not a woman and her miserable instrument—had wronged me so, I would have risked my soul to have revenge; and, because that is impossible, you think that I feel less bitterly? You might have known me better by this time."

Instead of being softened by her appeal, his heart, features, and tone were hardening more and more.

The sting of defeat, imminent and unavoidable, that, ere this, has driven strong and wise men headlong into the thickest of the battle to hunt for death there, proved too much for a temper never well regulated.

"You have decided, then?" she cried, passionately, her eyes flashing and her lip quivering. "After all I have risked and borne for you, I am to be sacrificed to a shadow—a memory—the memory of that cold, pale statue of propriety?" She checked herself suddenly, only just in time.

Guy had sprung to his feet, excitement bringing back for the moment all his lost strength. If Ralph Mohun had seen him, he would not have feared that the wrathful devil was cast out. It was raging within him then, untamed and dangerous as ever.

"Do you dare to insult her now that she is dead—and to me, not a month after I have lost her? It is not safe: take care, take care!"

The tempest of his passion made him forget, for the first time in his life, the weakness of her who had roused it.

Flora was only a woman after all, though haughty and bold of spirit as any that had breathed. Her own outbreak of anger vanished before that terrible burst of wrath, just as the camp-fire, when the prairie is blazing, is swallowed up in the great roaring torrent of flame. She bowed her head on her hands, trembling all over in pure physical fear. Guy felt ashamed when he saw the effect of his violence, and spoke more gently than he had done yet.

"Forgive me. I was very wrong; but I have not learned to control myself—I never shall, I fear; but you ought not to say such words, even if I could bear them better. Now it is time that we should part; you have staid here too long already. You must not risk your reputation for me, who can not even be grateful for the venture. We shall never meet again, if we can avoid it; it would be strange to do so as mere acquaintance, and in any other way—no, don't stop me—it is impossible. It will be long before I go much into society again, so I shall not cross your path."

Flora knew it was hopeless then. She was quite broken down, and did not raise her head from her hand, through the fingers of which, half shading her face, the tears trickled fast. Guy heard her murmur, very low and plaintively, "I have loved you so long—so dearly!"

Mistress as she was of every art that can deceive, I believe she only spoke the simple truth then. With all the energy of her strong and sensual nature, I believe she did worship Livingstone. To most men she would have been far more dangerous thus, in the abandonment of her sorrow, than ever she had been in the insolence of her splendid beauty.

There are some women, very few (Johnson's fair friend, Sophy Streatfield, was one), whom weeping does not disfigure. Their eyelids do not get red or swollen; only the iris softens for a moment; and the drops do not streak or blot the polished cheeks, but glitter there, singly, like dew on marble; their sobs are well regulated, and follow in a certain rhythm; and the heaving bosom sinks and swells, not too stormily. It is a rare accomplishment. Miss Bellasys had not practiced it often, being essentially Democritian—not to say Rabelaisian—in her philosophy; but she did it very well. Like every other emotion, it became her.

Guy hardly glanced at her, and never answered a word.

She rose to go; then turned all at once to try one effort more. "Yes, we must part," she said. "I know it now. But give me a kind word to take with me. I shall be so lonely, now that you are my enemy. Will you not say you wish me well? Ah! Guy, remember all the hours that I have tried to make pleasant for you. Say 'Good-by, Flora,' only those two little words, gently." Her voice was broken and uncertain, but full of music still, like the wind wandering through an organ.

Just at that moment I opened the door. (I had not an idea Livingstone was not alone.) I closed it before either had remarked my entrance, but not before I had caught sight of a very striking picture.

Guy was leaning one arm against the mantel-piece; the other was crossed over his chest: on that arm Flora was clinging, with both her hands clenched in the passion of her appeal. Her slight bonnet had fallen rather back, showing the masses of her glorious hair, and all her flushed cheeks, and her eyes that shone with a strange lustre, though there were tears still on their long, trailing lashes. I saw the impersonation of material life, exuberant and vigorous, yet delicately lovely—the Lust of the Eye incarnate.

He stood perfectly still, making no effort to cast her off. Had he done so with violence, it would scarcely have evinced more repulsion than did the expression of his face. There was no more of yielding or softening in the set features and severe eyes than you would find in those of a corpse three hours old, whose spirit has passed in some great anger or pain. Can you guess what made him more than ever hard and unrelenting? He was thinking who tried to win a kind farewell from him six months ago, and utterly failed. Should her rival have this triumph, too, over the dead?

As he answered deliberately, each slow word shut out another hope, like bolts shot, one by one, in the lock of a prison door.

"I remember nothing of the past except your last act, for which I will never, never forgive you. I form no wish for your welfare or for the reverse. There shall not stand the faintest shadow of a connecting link that I can break asunder. Between you and me there is the gulf of a fresh-made grave, and no thought of mine shall ever cross it—so help me God in Heaven!"

Flora's last arrow was shivered: if she had had another in her quiver, she would have had no courage to try it after hearing those terrible words. She caught his hand, however, before he could guess her intention, and pressed her lips upon it till they left their print behind, and then she was gone. Her light foot hardly sounded as it sprang down the stairs, but its faint echo was the last living sound connected with Flora Bellasys that ever reached the ear of Guy Livingstone.

When I heard more of the interview, I thought, and think still, that he erred on the side of harshness. He was so fixed and steady in his purpose that he could have afforded to have compromised a little in expressing it. But he did things in his own way, and fought with his own weapons—effective, but hardly to be wielded by most men, like the axe of the King-maker or the bow of Odysseus. In carrying out his will, he was apt to consider the softer feelings of others as little as he did his own. It was just so with him when riding to hounds: he went as straight as a line, and if he did not spare his horses, he certainly did not himself.

To each man alive, one particular precept of the Christian code is harder to realize and practice than all the rest put together. It was this, perhaps, which drove the anchorites on from one degree of penance to another, and made them so savage in self-tormenting. When the macerated flesh had almost lost sensation, the thorn that had galled it sometimes in their hot youth rankled incessantly, more venomous than ever. That one injunction—"Forgive, as you would hope to be forgiven"—was ever a stumbling-block to Guy.

Besides all this, he knew, better than any one, what sort of an adversary he was contending against; one with whom each step in negotiation or temporizing was a step toward discomfiture. It was like the Spaniard with his navaja against the sabre: your only chance is keeping him steadily at the sword's-point, without breaking ground; if he once gets under your guard, not all the saints in the calendar can save you.

Perhaps, then, he was right, after all. Certainly Ralph Mohun thought so, as he listened to a sketch of the proceedings with a grim satisfaction edifying to witness.

As for me, before I went to bed that night, I read through those chapters in the "Mort d'Arthur" that tell how the long, guilty loves of Launcelot and Guenever ended. In the present case, there was certainly wonderfully little penitence on the lady's side, but yet there were points of resemblance which struck me. [I always think the queen must have been the image of Flora.] It is worth while wading through many chapters of exaggeration and obscurity to come out into the noble light of the epilogue at last.

Good King Arthur is gone. It bit deep, that blow which Mordred, the strong traitor, struck when the spear stood out a fathom behind his back; and Morgan la Fay came too late to heal the grievous wound that had taken cold. The frank, kind, generous heart, that would not mistrust till certainty left no space for suspicion, can never be wrung or betrayed again. The bitter parting between the lovers is over too; and Launcelot is gone to his own place, without the farewell caress he prayed for when he besought the queen "to kiss him once and never more." After a very few short months, the beautiful wild bird has beaten herself to death against her cage, and the vision comes by night, bidding Launcelot arise and fetch the corpse of Guenever home. She wandered often and far in life, but where should her home be now but by the side of her husband? Hardly and painfully in two days, he and the faithful seven accomplish the thirty miles that lay between; so utterly is that unearthly strength, before which lance-shafts were as reeds, and iron bars as silken threads (remember the May night in Meliagraunce's castle), enfeebled and broken down. He stands in the nunnery-church at Almesbury; he hears from the queen's maidens of the prayer that was ever on her lips through those two days when she lay a dying, how "she besought God that she might never have power to see Sir Launcelot with her worldly eyes." Then, says the chronicler, "he saw her visage; yet he wept not greatly, but sighed. And so he did all the observance of the service himself, both the dirge at night and the mass on the morrow." Not till every rite was performed, not till the earth had closed over the marble coffin, did Launcelot swoon.

I know nothing in fiction so piteous as the words that tell of his dreary, mortal sorrow. "Then, Sir Launcelot never after ate but little meat, nor drank, but continually mourned until he was dead; and then he sickened more and more, and dried and dwined away; for the bishop nor none of his fellows might make him to eat, and little he drank; so that he waxed shorter by a cubit than he was, and the people could not know him; for evermore day and night he prayed; but needfully as nature required, sometimes he slumbered a broken sleep; and always he was lying groveling on King Arthur's and Queen Guenever's tomb. And there was no comfort that his fellows could make him; it availed nothing."

We know it can not last long; we know that the morning is fast approaching, when they will find him "stark dead, and lying as he had smiled;" when they will bear him forth, according to his vow, to his resting-place in Joyous Guard; when there will be pronounced over him that famous funeral oration—the truest, the simplest, the noblest, I think, that ever was spoken over the body of a sinful man.

It was long before Livingstone's health recovered the check to its improvement given by that interview. However, as the spring advanced he began to regain strength rapidly, and toward the end of May he and I started in the Petrel, which he had just bought, for a cruise in the Mediterranean.

It would seem hard that any one, coasting for the first time along the shores of Italy, and penetrating ever and anon far into the interior, should not feel and display some interest in the succession of pictures, of living Nature and dead Art, that meet you at every step. I can not say that I ever detected the faintest symptom of such in my companion. He strayed with me through the old Forum, and through Adrian's Villa, and lingered by the Alban Lake; but it was more to keep me in countenance than any thing else. I liked them better this second time of seeing them than I did the first; I doubt if they left an impression on his mind equal to the dimmest photograph that ever was the pride of an amateur and the puzzle of his friends. The brilliant landscapes made up of bold headlands, hanging woods, and sunny bays fared no better. Guy did not come on deck for two hours after we cast anchor off Mola di Gaeta.

Our ciceroni were much pained and scandalized at an indifference which exceeded all they had yet encountered in the matter-of-fact Signori Inglesi. I saw one of them look quite relieved when, after quitting us, he had to listen to an excitable young Jewess endeavoring to express her raptures in the most execrable Italian. The physical effort it cost her was awful to witness, especially as she was wintering in Italy for her lungs. O, long-suffering stones of the Coliseum! which returned the most barbarous echo—the growls from the cells when their tenants scented the Christian; the jargon of the Goth and the Hun; or the lingua Anglo-Romana in bocca Bloomsburiana? The two first-named classes, at all events, confined themselves to their own dialect, and spoke it, doubtless, with perfect propriety. However, in the present instance, the custode took the sentimental ebullition of the Maid of Judah for an amende honorable, and rubbed his key complacently.

I do not believe that our travels brought to Guy a single distraction to the great sorrow that all the while held him fast.

A German philosopher under similar circumstances would have written reams and spoken volumes (eating and drinking all the while Pantagruelically), theorizing and abstracting his emotions till they vanished into cloud and vapor. A true disciple of Rousseau or Lamartine would have analyzed his grief, dividing it into as many channels as Alexander did the Oxus, till the main stream was lost, and each individual rivulet might be crossed dry-shod. Both would have shed tears perpetual and profuse. I read the other day of a Frenchman who, in the midst of a mixed assembly, remembering that on that day ten years he had lost a dear friend, instantly went out and wept bitterly. He was so charmed with the happiness of the thought that, as he says, "I took the resolution henceforth to weep for all whom I have loved, each on the anniversary of their death."

Can you conceive any thing more touching than the picture of the Bereaved One consulting his almanac and then "going at it with a will?" It was an athletic performance certainly; but remember what condition he must have been in from the constant training.

From the episode of Niobe down to the best song in the "Princess," how many beautiful lines have been devoted to those outward and visible signs of sorrow?

Sadder elegiacs, more pathetic threnodies might have been written on the tears that were stifled at their source, either from pride or from physical inability to let them flow. Great regrets, like great schemes, are generally matured in the shade. If I had to choose the tombs where most hopes and affections are buried, I should turn, I think, not to those with the long inscriptions of questionable poetry or blameless Latinity, but to where just the initials and a cross are cut on the single stone.

The philosophical and poetical mourners hardly suffered much more than Guy did during those months, and for long after too, though he was always quite silent on the subject, and would speak cheerfully on others now and then, and though, from the day that he parted with Constance to that of his own death, his eyes were as dry as the skies over the Delta. He used to lie for hours in that state of utter listlessness which gives a reality to the sad old Eastern proverb, "Man is better sitting than standing, lying down than sitting, dead than lying down."

With all this, however, his health improved every day. After the wild life he had led lately, the perfect rest and the clear pure air refreshed him marvelously. It had the effect of coming out of a room heated and laden with smoke into the cool summer morning. His strength, too, had returned almost completely. I found this out at Baiæ.

The guardian of the Cento Camerelle, a big lazzarone, became inordinately abusive. My impression is that he had received about fifteen times his due; but, seeing our yacht in the offing, he conceived the idea that we were princes in our own country, and ought to be robbed in his proportionally. Guy's eyes began to gleam at last, and he made a step toward the offender. I thought he was going to be heavily visited; but Livingstone only lifted him by the throat and held him suspended against the wall, as you may see the children in those parts pin the lizards in a forked stick. Then he let him drop, unhurt, but green with terror. A year ago, a straightforward blow from the shoulder would have settled the business in a shorter time, and worked a strange alteration in good Giuseppe's handsome sunburnt face. But the old hardness of heart was wearing away. I had another proof of this some days later.

We were dropping down out of the Bay of Naples. Though we weighed anchor in early morning, it was past noon before we cleared the Bocca di Capri, for there was hardly wind enough to give the Petrel steerage-way. The smoke from our long Turkish pipes mounted almost straight upward, and lingered over our heads in thin blue curls; yet the sullen, discontented heave and roll in the water were growing heavier every hour. The black tufa cliffs crested with shattered masonry—the foundations of the sty where the Boar of Capreæ wallowed—were just on our starboard quarter, when Riddell, the master, came up to Livingstone. "I think we'd better make all snug, sir," he said. "There's dirty weather to windward, and we haven't too much sea-room." He was an old man-of-war's boatswain, and had had a tussle, in his time, on every sea and ocean in the known world, with every wind that blows. He had rather a contempt for the Mediterranean, esteeming it just one degree above the Cowes Roads, and attaching about as much importance to its vagaries as one might do to the fractiousness of a spoiled child. If he had been caught in the most terrible tempest that ever desolated the shores of the Great Lake, I don't believe he would have called it any thing but "dirty weather." He was too good a sailor, though, not to take all precautions, even if he had been sailing on a piece of ornamental water; and he went quickly forward to give the necessary orders, after getting a nod of assent from Guy.

The latter raised himself lazily on his arm, so as to see all round over the low bulwarks. There was a blue-black bank of cloud rolling up from the southwest. Puffs of wind, with no coolness in them, but dry and uncertain as if stirred by some capricious artificial means, struck the sails without filling them, and drove the Petrel through the water by fits and starts.

"I really believe we are going to have a white squall," Guy remarked, indifferently. "Well, we shall see how the boat behaves. Riddell only spoke just in time."

Suddenly his tone changed, and he said, quickly and decidedly, "Hold on every thing!"

The master turned his weatherwise eye toward the quarter where the danger lay, and frowned. "We're none too soon with it, Mr. Livingstone. If there's a yard too much canvas spread when that reaches us, I won't answer for the spars."

Deeper and deeper the blackness came rushing down upon us, an angry ridge of foam before it—the white squall showing its teeth.

Guy took the old man by the arm, and pointed to an object to leeward that none on board had remarked yet. It was a small barca with four men in it. They were Capriotes, as we found afterward, the boldest boatmen in the Bay. Had they been pure-bred Neapolitans, they would have been down on their faces long ago, screaming out prayers to a long muster-roll of saints. As it was, they stood manfully to their oars, straining every muscle to reach us; there was no other safety for them then. "They will never get alongside in time, unless we bear down to meet them," Livingstone said, "and what chance will they have in ten minutes hence?"

Riddell was only half satisfied. His creed evidently was that a sailor's first duty is to his own ship; but neither he nor any one else ever argued with Guy. "As you like, sir," he grumbled, somewhat discontentedly. "Keep her full, Saunders; we shall fetch them so."

If a stitch of sail had been taken off our vessel she could never have reached the barca, though her crew strove hard to meet us. She forged down slowly enough as it was, but we were just in time to take them on board.

"Reef every thing now!" Riddell shouted, leaping himself first into the rigging like a wild-cat. "Cheerily, men—with a will!" All his ill-humor was gone when the peril became imminent.

We were strong-handed, and the four Capriotes did us seaman's service; but it was "touch and go." The last man had scarcely reached the deck when the line of foam was within half-cable's length. Then there came a sound unlike any I had ever heard before in the elements, beginning with a whistling sort of scream and deepening into a roar as of many angry voices, bestial and human, striving for the mastery; and then the Petrel staggered and reeled over almost on her beam-ends, in the midst of a white boiling caldron of mad water. She recovered herself, however, quickly, quivering and trembling as a live creature might do after severe punishment; and we drove on, the strong arms at the wheel keeping her well before the blast. In a very few minutes, I suppose (though it seemed very long), I heard old Riddell say, "Sharp while it lasted, Mr. Livingstone; but they're right to call it a squall. They've nothing down here-away like a good right down hard gale."

I looked up, clearing my eyes, blinded with the hissing spray, just as Guy answered, coolly as ever. He had run his arm through a becket, and did not seem to have moved otherwise, whereas I disgraced myself by falling at full length as the squall struck us.

"Ah! you've got difficult to please; it's always so when one sees so much of life. Never mind, Riddell, the Mediterranean does its best, and perhaps we'll go and try your tornadoes some day. Where's the barca now?"

Where? The eyes that could have told you that must have looked a hundred fathoms deep. There was not the faintest vestige of such a thing to be seen—not even a shivered plank. The poor Capriotes' "bread-winner" had gone the way of Antonio's argosies—another whet to the all-devouring appetite, for which nothing that swims is too large or too small.

It was almost calm again when we landed the rescued men at Salerno; we were glad to get rid of them, for their gratitude was overpowering, especially as all the salt water that had soaked them could not disguise the savor of their favorite herb.

You may break, you may ruin the clay if you will, but the scent of the garlic will cling to it still.

Guy gave them enough to buy two such boats as they had lost—about as much as one wins or loses in an evening's whist, with fair luck and half-crown points.

This incident showed the change that was coming over my companion. His principle had always been that a man who could not help himself was not worth helping. He never asked for aid himself, and never gave it to his own sex, as a rule. I believe his rescuing me at B—— was a solitary case, and I took it as a great compliment. You will say this one was only an act of common humanity. If you had known the man, you would have thought, as I did, that the words of her, who was an angel then, were bearing fruit already.

Nothing happened of the slightest interest as we ran down through the Straits of Messina, and up the eastern coast of Calabria. We did not stay to see Sicily then, for we had settled to be in Venice by a certain day, to meet the Forresters.

If I were to be seduced into "word-painting," the Queen of the Adriatic would tempt me. I know no other scene so provocative of enthusiasm as the square acre round St. Mark's. All things considered, the author of the "Stones of Venice" seems very sufficiently rational and cold-blooded.

We can not all be romantic about landscapes. Nature has worshipers enough not to grudge a few to Art. For myself, admiring both when in perfection, I prefer hewn stones to rough rocks—the Canalazzo to any cascade. The glory of old days that clings round the Palace of the Doges stands comparison, in my mind's eye, with the Iris of Terni.

But why trench on a field already amply cultivated? I will never describe any place till I find a virgin spot untouched by Murray, and then I will send it to him, with my initials. Does such exist in Europe? "Faith, very hardly, sir." Nil intentatum reliquit. What obligations do we not owe to the accomplished compilers? Rarely rising into poetry (I except "Spain"—the field, and bar one), never jocose, they move on, severe in simplicity, straight to their solemn end of enlightening the British tourist. Upright as Rhadamanthus, they hold the scales that weigh the merits of cathedrals, hotels, ruins, guides, pictures, and mountain passes, telling us what to eat, drink, and avoid. Let us repose on them in blind but contented reliance.

I heard of one man, clever but eccentric, who became so exasperated at seeing the volumes in every body's hand, and hearing them in every body's mouth, that he conceived a sort of personal enmity to them, impiously dissenting from their conclusions and questioning their premises. The well-known red cover at last had the same effect on him as the scarlet cloak on the bull in the corrida, making him stamp and roar hideously. The angry gods had demented him. Væ misero! How could such sacrilege end but badly? Braving and deriding the solemn warning of the prophet, he attempted a certain pass in the Tyrol alone, and, losing his way, caught a pleurisy which proved fatal. He died game, but, I am sorry to say, impenitent, speaking blasphemy against the book with his last breath. Discite justitiam, moniti, et non temnere—

Such heresy, be it far from me! If I had my will, I protest I would found a "Murray's Traveling Fellowship" in one or both of the Universities. If I had the poetic vein, I would indite a pendant to Byron's iambics to that enlightened bibliopole. He published "Childe Harold," and the Hand-book to Every Where. Could one man in one century do more for the Ideal and the Real?