The Ancient City

“What are your names, children?” I asked.

“They’s jes Lou-ee-zy and Low-ii-zy,” replied a voice from within-doors. “They’s twins, and I’s took car’ ob dein allays.”

It was a crippled old auntie who spoke. She told us her story, with long digressions about “ole massa” and “ole miss.”

“After all, I suspect you were more comfortable in the old times, auntie,” I said.

“What’s dat to do wid de acquisition ob freedom?” replied the old woman, proudly. “De great ting is dis yer: Lou-ee-zy is free, and Low-ii-zy is free! Bot’ ob dem! Bot’ ob dem, ladies!”

“I have never been able to make them confess that they were more comfortable in the old days, no matter how poor and desolate they may be,” I said.

“The divine spark in every breast,” replied Eugenio. “But where is the spring, Hoffman? I like your barren; it smacks of the outlaw and bold buccaneer, after the trim wheat fields of the North, and there is a grand sweep of sky overhead. Nevertheless, I own to being thirsty.”

“It is not ordinary thirst,” replied John; “it is the old yearning which Ponce de Leon always felt when he had come as far as this.”

“He came this way, then, did he?”

“Invariably.”

“If I had been here at the time I should have said, ‘Ponce’ (of course we should have been intimate enough to call each other by our first names) – ‘Ponce, my good friend, have your spring a little nearer while you are magically about it!’ ” And taking off his straw hat the poet wiped his white forehead, and looked at us with a quizzical expression in his brilliant eyes.

“It is warm,” confessed Aunt Diana, who, weary and worried, was toiling along almost in silence. Mokes was nearly out of sight with the “other young lady;” Iris and the Captain were absorbed in that murmured conversation so hopeless to outsiders; and Spartan matron though she was, she had not the courage to climb around after the Professor in cloth boots that drew like a magnet the vicious cacti of the thicket. Miss Sharp had leather boots, and climbed valiantly.

At last we came to the place, and filed in through a broken-down fence. We found a deserted house, an overgrown field, a gully, a pool, and an old curb of coquina surrounding the magic spring.

“I wonder if any one was ever massacred here?” observed Sara, looking around.

“The Fountain of Youth,” declaimed John, ladling out the water. “Who will drink? Centuries ago the Indians of Cuba came to these shores to seek the waters of immortality, and as they never returned, they are supposed to be still here somewhere enjoying a continued cherubic existence. Father Martyn himself affirms in his letter to the Pope that there is a spring here the water thereof being drunk straightway maketh the old young again. Ladies and gentlemen, the original and only Ponce de Leon Spring! Who will drink?”

We all drank; and then there was a great silence.

“Well,” said the poet, deliberately, looking around from his seat on the curb, “take it altogether, that shanty, those bushes, the pig-sty, the hopeless sandy field, the oozing pool, and this horrible tepid water, drawn from, to say the least, a dubious source – a very dubious source – it is, all in all, about the ugliest place I ever saw!”

There was a general shout.

“We have suspected it in our hearts all winter,” said the “other young lady;” “but not one of us dared put the thought into words, as it was our only walk.”

The poet staid with us a day or two longer, and charmed us all with his delightful, winsome humor.

“Do you know, I really love that man,” I announced.

“So do I,” said Iris.

“That is nothing,” said John; “he is ‘the poet whom poets love,’ you know.”

“But we are not poets, Mr. Hoffman.”

“We are only plebes, and plebes may very well love what poets love, I think.”

“But it does not always follow,” I said.

“By no means. In this case, however, it is true. All love Eugenio, both poets and plebes.”

“He is the Mendelssohn of poets,” I said; “and, besides that, he is the only person I ever met who reminded me of my idea of Mendelssohn personally – an idea gathered from those charming ‘letters’ and the Auchester book.”

The next evening Eugenio and Sara went off for a stroll on the sea-wall; two hours later Sara came back to our room, laid a blank book on the table, and threw herself into a chair.

“Tired?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“It is a lovely evening.”

“Yes.”

“Did you have a pleasant time?”

“Yes.”

I knew that blank book well; it contained all Sara’s printed stories and verses; my eyes glanced toward it.

“Yes,” said Sara; “there it is! I gave it to him yesterday. I knew he would read it through, and I knew also that I could read his real opinion in those honest eyes of his.”

“Well?”

“There isn’t a thing in it worth the paper it is written on.”

“Oh, Sara!”

“And what is more, I have known it myself all along.”

“Is it possible he said so?”

“He? Never. He said every thing that was generous and kind and cordial and appreciative; and he gave me solid assistance, too, in the way of advice, and suggestive hints worth their weight in gold to an isolated beginner like myself. But – ”

“But?”

“Yes, ‘but.’ Through it all, Martha, I could see the truth written in the sky over that old look-out tower; we were on the glacis under that tower all the time, and I never took my eyes off from it. That tower is my fate, I feel sure.”

“What do you mean? Your fate?”

“I don’t know exactly myself. But, nevertheless, in some way or other that look-out tower is connected with my fate – the fate of poor Sara St. John.”

In John Hoffman’s room at the same time another conversation was going on.

John. “Has she genius, do you think?”

Eugenio. “Not an iota.”