The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1881-05-12


over his face, and he was wrapned n
the chin in shapeless dreadnaucbt
| Nevertheless, one could see that he
wore tawny, gold-shot beard, flowing
/ IN the wind ike spun silk. II was =
striking beard, full of glints and glooms,
like the braided hair of a Venetian
/ beauty, one that made the owner. oDce
seen, scarcely again to be forgotten
I 1t was such beard as realist in the
ideal worshiping Renaissance might
have represented upon the face Of the
Crucltied-He who died we NAV believe
after thirty-three years had brought
HIM to the strong noon of earth
life with yet upon him the morning
freshness of his divinelv eternal Youth
Two women, Gmbed like Michael
Angeles Ewes, carried the stranger upon
their arms through the last few feet Of
foam, and left him dry-shod upon the
shore
Elise heard sudden cry, and saw a
long shudder run over her mistress
figure.
''Mademoiselle, are you nlY8 she
asked, but received no other answer
than might be gathered from a closer
folding of the Waterproof around the
slender frame and heavy clutch upon
the thick blue veil.
The stranger, evidently amused at
the manner Of his coming ashore
bit of NEUROLOGICAL by-play in which
Europas captured Jove instead of vice
versa -gazed smilingly upon the assem-
blage of inquisitive islanders. Sudden
" his brown eyes, red with salt spray.
rested upon the elegant figure, seeming
to strive to penetrate with their keen
gaze the veil which, like a mask, hid
SO completely the artistic features.
The woman turned away, clutching
as she did so to the arm of Elise with
convulsive grasp, as if she feared lest
she should fall.
But, saacta Mario" she heard a
grand mother say as she did so. "but
the stranger must have a great errand
to charter the Italia, and that, too,
upon such day as this"
All through its dying hours a light
burned behind the green-tinged and
smoke-clouded window panes of the for
eign ladies studio, high up among the
cowled ghosts of the widowed old mon
astery, where the two women worked
swiftly and silently. Then at early
morning when the storm was dead and
only its wan shapow was upon sea and
sky, Elise, after their last cup of coffee
over the spirit lamp, and the last of the
eggs boiled in a denied basin, took the
key Of their appointments mobligiato to
their landlord, and told him that her
mistress would leave the island in an
hour i'll the market boat which three /
times every week took fish to the |
main and brought back the fruit, vege- |
tables and meat the little isle has neither |
soil nor space enough among its vine
yards and olive groves to produce for it
self. ''Wi1 Ia signorina not permit me
to bid her addio?" asked the snuffv Ital-
ian, aggrieved that the mysterious lady
should escape, and he, her landlord never
have seen her face. For had be not de-
veloped a wry neck as well as an eve
askew by the energetic persistence Of
his attempt to do so ever since the day
nearly year before that yellow-sailed
fellucca had come glinting over from the
main and a stylish gray-robed figure
closely yelled and accompanied by an
elderly French woman, had climbed the
lava path from tbs sea to his @442eefl n i95d
an epidemic of strabismus, and wry
necks ever since the mysterious foreign
err came to mathis and vespers III the
tiny round-domed and minaretted
church, that looked 50 like toy saved
from the ruin of old Byzantium And
had they not said to him, every moth
er's son and daughter, every grand
mother of them all, dozen times apiece
at least;
"Signor Freschetti, it is flying in the
face of Fate to let your rooms to wo-
man who hides herselffrom honest folks
as she does, and even paints pictures
with all but her eyes tied up III thick
veil? How do we know that she has
not the evil eve? Did not Marietta,
whom she painted last month, immedl-
ately fall i'll and never been able to earn
biolcaiocoo since? And did not Felice,
one evening from her studio,
feel so strangely that he stopped INTO
Scopher's cafe and drank one little glass
of wine, which made him so mad that he |
went home home and beat poor Anita, |
his wife, till she lost her front teeth,
and has never looked herself since |
Did not Carmella, who carries home her |
linen, fall down from the roof where she |
was turning the drying figs, and escape
with her life only because she had car
ried the blessed Virgin in the church a |
new string of beads that morning? Did |
not-etc., ETC.. etc, etc.
And now did not the snuffy landlord |
himself know that not an islander but
I l. oil fol broad
for month for chance to see her face
even at the risk of the evil eye?
To think that now she was to escape,
still mysterious and yelled. He fairly
turned yellow at the thought.
LA Sigaora will receive your com
pliments through me, answered Elise.
Whereupon the landlord took snuff,
and became jaundiced.
Three hours later the two women
disembarked on the main amid scarlet
capped boatmen, half naked sailors
cast in bronze, mandolin tinkling con
tadini, colorful pile Of vegetables, and
all the picturesque and romantic
disorder of the most picturesque, roman
tic and disorderly of lands.
There was hurried drive across an
ill-smelling city, and afterwards hours
and hours of travel through paling day
light and deep night. Then came
hurried change by pickering lamplight
in the commonplace station Of a
wondrous city whose august melancholy
of shattered palaces and ruined temples
is deep well of poetry in the thirsty
desert of the world More long hours
over a paid, skelton-dotted region
where only the ages dead seem to live
then more changes. another day with
the same sea that ensphered their island
shining upon their left hand as il
sparkled around that already distant isle,
and olive-clad heights rising skyward
upon their right. Then came marble
city rising from a sapphire sea, Venus
new born with every fresh day. Then
were more swift rushings through lumi-
nous. days and Opaque nights, among