Hints to Pilgrims

"Oh, don't you know her work? She's a poet and she writes for the people downstairs. She's the Countess Sillivitch."

"Sillivitch!" I answered, "of course I know her. She is the greatest poet, maybe, of all time."

"No doubt about it," said the poet excitedly, "and there's a poem of hers in this number. She writes in italics when she wants you to yell it. And when she puts it in capitals, my God! you could hear her to the elevated. It's ripping stuff."

"Dear me," I said, "I should like to read it. Awfully. It must be funny."

"It isn't funny at all," the poet answered. "It isn't meant to be funny. Did you read her 'Burning Kiss'?"

"I'm sorry," I answered.

The poet sighed. "It's wonderfully realistic. There's nothing old-fashioned about that poem. The Countess wears painted stockings."

"Bless me!" I cried.

"Stalks with flowers. She comes from Bulgaria, or Esthonia, or somewhere. Has a husband in a castle. Incompatible. He stifles her. Common. In business. Beer spigots. She is artistic. Wants to soar. And tragic. You remember my study of a soul?"

"The rainy night? Yes, I remember."

"Well, she's the one. She sat on the floor and told me her troubles."

"You don't suppose that I could meet her, do you?" I asked.

The poet looked at me with withering scorn. "You wouldn't like her," he said. "She's very modern. She says very startling things. You have to be in the modern spirit to follow her. And sympathetic. She doesn't want any marriage or government or things like that. Just truth and freedom. It's convention that clips our wings."

"Conventions are stupid things," I agreed.

"And the past isn't any good, either," the poet said. "The past is a chain upon us. It keeps us off the mountains."

"Exactly," I assented.

"That's what the Countess thinks. We must destroy the past. Everything. Customs. Art. Government. We must be ready for the coming of the dawn."

"Naturally," I said. "Candles trimmed, and all that sort of thing. You don't suppose that I could meet the Countess? Well, I'm sorry. What's the bit of red paper on the wall? Is it over a dirty spot?"

"It's to stir up my ideas. It's gay and when I look at it I think of something."

"And then I suppose that you look out of that window, against that brick wall and those windows opposite, and write poems – a sonnet to the girl who stuck out her tongue at me."

"Oh, yes."

"Hot in summer up here?"

"Yes."

"And cold in winter?"

"Yes."

"And I suppose that you get some ideas out of that old tin bath-tub and those ash-cans."

"Well, hardly."

"And you look at the moon through that dirty skylight?"

"No! There's nothing in that old stuff. Everybody's fed up on the moon."

"It's a snug place," I said. And I came away.

I circled the stairs into the denser smell which, by this time, I found rather agreeable. The embalmer's door was open. In the gloom inside I saw the apprentice busied in some dark employment. "I got somethin' to show you," he called.

"Tomorrow," I answered.

As I was opening the street door, a woman came up the steps. She was a dark, Bulgarian sort of woman. Or Esthonian, perhaps. I held back the door to let her pass. She wore long ear-rings. Her skirt was looped high in scollops. She wore sandals – and painted stockings.

Autumn Days

IT was rather a disservice when the poet wrote that the melancholy days were come. His folly is inexplicable. If he had sung through his nose of thaw and drizzle, all of us would have pitched in to help him in his dismal chorus. But October and November are brisk and cheerful months.

In the spring, to be sure, there is a languid sadness. Its beauty is too frail. Its flowerets droop upon the plucking. Its warm nights, its breeze that blows from the fragrant hills, warn us how brief is the blossom time. In August the year slumbers. Its sleepy days nod across the heavy orchards and the yellow grain fields. Smoke looks out from chimneys, but finds no wind for comrade. For a penny it would stay at home and doze upon the hearth, to await a playmate from the north. The birds are still. Only the insects sing. A threshing-machine, far off, sinks to as drowsy a melody as theirs, like a company of grasshoppers, but with longer beard and deeper voice. The streams that frolicked to nimble tunes in May now crawl from pool to pool. The very shadows linger under cover. They crouch close beneath shed and tree, and scarcely stir a finger until the fiery sun has turned its back.

September rubs its eyes. It hears autumn, as it were, pounding on its bedroom door, and turns for another wink of sleep. But October is awakened by the frost. It dresses itself in gaudy color. It flings a scarlet garment on the woods and a purple scarf across the hills. The wind, at last, like a merry piper, cries out the tune, and its brisk and sunny days come dancing from the north.

Yesterday was a holiday and I went walking in the woods. Although it is still September it grows late, and there is already a touch of October in the air. After a week of sultry weather – a tardy remnant from last month – a breeze yesterday sprang out of the northwest. Like a good housewife it swept the dusty corners of the world. It cleared our path across the heavens and raked down the hot cobwebs from the sky. Clouds had yawned in idleness. They had sat on the dull circle of the earth like fat old men with drooping chins, but yesterday they stirred themselves. The wind whipped them to their feet. It pursued them and plucked at their frightened skirts. It is thus, after the sleepy season, that the wind practices for the rough and tumble of November. It needs but to quicken the tempo into sixteenth notes, to rouse a wholesome tempest.

Who could be melancholy in so brisk a month? The poet should hang his head for shame at uttering such a libel. These dazzling days could hale him into court. The jury, with one voice, without rising from its box, would hold for a heavy fine. Apples have been gathered in. There is a thirsty, tipsy smell from the cider presses. Hay is pitched up to the very roof. Bursting granaries show their golden produce at the cracks. The yellow stubble of the fields is a promise that is kept. And who shall say that there is any sadness in the fallen leaves? They are a gay and sounding carpet. Who dances here needs no bell upon his ankle, and no fiddle for the tune.

And sometimes in October the air is hazy and spiced with smells. Nature, it seems, has cooked a feast in the heat of summer, and now its viands stand out to cool.

November lights its fires and brings in early candles. This is the season when chimneys must be tightened for the tempest. Their mighty throats roar that all is strong aloft. Dogs now leave a stranger to go his way in peace, and they bark at the windy moon. Windows rattle, but not with sadness. They jest and chatter with the blast. They gossip of storms on barren mountains.

Night, for so many months, has been a timid creature. It has hid so long in gloomy cellars while the regal sun strutted on his way. But now night and darkness put their heads together for his overthrow. In shadowy garrets they mutter their discontent and plan rebellion. They snatch the fields by four o'clock. By five they have restored their kingdom. They set the stars as guardsmen of their rule.

Now travelers are pelted into shelter. Signboards creak. The wind whistles for its rowdy company. Night, the monarch, rides upon the storm.

A match! We'll light the logs. We'll crack nuts and pass the cider. How now, master poet, is there no thirsty passage in your throat? I offer you a bowl of milk and popcorn. Must you brood tonight upon the barren fields – the meadows brown and sear? Who cares now how the wind grapples with the chimneys? Here is snug company, warm and safe. Here are syrup and griddle-cakes. Do you still suck your melancholy pen when such a feast is going forward?

On Finding a Plot

AYOUNG author has confessed to me that lately, in despair at hitting on a plot, he locked himself in his room after breakfast with an oath that he would not leave it until something was contrived and under way. He did put an apple and sandwich prudently at the back of his desk, but these, he swore, like the locusts and wild honey in the wilderness, should last him through his struggle. By a happy afterthought he took with him into retirement a volume of De Maupassant. Perhaps, he considered, if his own invention lagged and the hour grew late, he might shift its characters into new positions. Rather than starve till dawn he could dress a courtezan in honest cloth, or tease a happy wife from her household in the text to a mad elopement. Or by jiggling all the plots together, like the bits of glass in a kaleidoscope, the pieces might fall into strange and startling patterns.

This is not altogether a new thought with him. While sucking at his pen in a former drouth he considered whether a novel might not be made by combining the characters of one story with the circumstance of another. Let us suppose, for example, that Carmen, before she got into that ugly affair with the Toreador, had settled down in Barchester beneath the towers. Would the shadow of the cloister, do you think, have cooled her southern blood? Would she have conformed to the decent gossip of the town? Or, on the contrary, does not a hot color always tint the colder mixture? Suppose that Carmen came to live just outside the Cathedral close and walked every morning with her gay parasol and her pretty swishing skirts past the Bishop's window.

We can fancy his pen hanging dully above his sermon, with his eyes on space for any wandering thought, as if the clouds, like treasure ships upon a sea, were freighted with riches for his use. The Bishop is brooding on an address to the Ladies' Sewing Guild. He must find a text for his instructive finger. It is a warm spring morning and the daffodils are waving in the borders of the grass. A robin sings in the hedge with an answer from his mate. There is wind in the tree-tops with lively invitation to adventure, but the Bishop is bent to his sober task. Carmen picks her way demurely across the puddles in the direction of the Vicarage. Her eyes turn modestly toward his window. Surely she does not see him at his desk. That dainty inch of scarlet stocking is quite by accident. It is the puddles and the wind frisking with her skirt.

"Eh! Dear me!" The good man is merely human. He pushes up his spectacles for nearer sight. He draws aside the curtain. "Dear me! Bless my soul! Who is the lady? Quite a foreign air. I don't remember her at our little gatherings for the heathen." A text is forgotten. The clouds are empty caravels. He calls to Betsy, the housemaid, for a fresh neck-cloth and his gaiters. He has recalled a meeting with the Vicar and goes out whistling softly, to disaster.

Alas! In my forgetfulness I have skimmed upon the actual plot. You have recalled already how La Signora Madeline descended on the Bishop's Palace. Her beauty was a hard assault. Except for her crippled state she might herself have toppled the Bishop over. But she pales beside the dangerous Carmen.