# THE HAPPY ISLES.

It may be that the tides will wash us down...

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles...

## PRELIMINARY.

You may believe as much as you like of this explanation —
or as much as you can. I only affirm that the vision came to
me, then and there, as I shall try to recall it...

It came through looking at a portrait: my great-grandfather
Inwood's. He was that stern old Mark Inwood who had been one of
Washington's generals, and whose martial figure, in the colonial
buff-and-blue, leans carelessly on the cannon in the right-hand fore-
ground of Trumbull's "Surrender of Burgoyne", in the Rotunda of the
Capitol at Washington.

It is not of that youthful figure I am thinking, but of the
portrait of the same man at seventy-five and more. There he still
hangs, on the wall facing me; a stern old Roman, but with a twinkle
in the eyes and about the corners of the mouth; the firm chin resting
on his white stock, his unpowdered hair drawn back, in the old fashion,
to a queue in the nape; yet a man of the new age in spite of his

3.

Rembrandt Peale had even done. It was the General's way to have the best. He had had them painted when he and Mrs. Inwood had celebrated their golden wedding, and they hung in the library, in the place of honour, one on each side of the Italian mantelpiece with its slim caryatides of marble.

It was twenty years since the house had been built; and its terraced gardens, its orangery with arcades and pilasters "in the French style", the spacious panelled rooms, the Italian mantels, the massive doors of mahogany, still filled its owner with the same quiet satisfaction as when, in a glow of wax-lights, he had first thrown it open to his friends. Like everything he had ever done, or had a part in, there was something at once sober and prodigal about the stuff and the dimensions of his house.

His eyes turned from his wife's effigy to her own figure, sitting opposite him on the other side of the hearth. She too had been a busy woman all her days; vigilant house-keeper, devoted mother and accomplished hostess. The traditions of good company had not yet been lost, and Mrs. Inwood's amenity is celebrated in the diary of many a noble émigré. But those days were past. The children were married and middle-aged, the entertainments were over, and the old couple sat alone in their handsome house, as if quietly waiting together for another last visitor to come. Mrs. Inwood was a very old woman now, older by several years than her husband; she sat opposite to him in a kind of festive repose, her frail features smoothed to waxen serenity, her white hands at leisure in the rich folds of her shot silk dress. Yet her inactivity was not inanition. She still looked at her husband with those small quick eyes so full of their many years together; and all those years were in the firm tone with which she presently said: "If you've no objection, General Inwood, I should be glad to have you look

5.

andirons surmounted by gilt eagles which General Buonaparte had
given him on his last visit to France, in 1803. The old pointer who
lay by the hearth turned on his side and opened a lazy eye; the tortoise
-shell cat on her cushion blinked at her master and narrowed her lids
in sleep. The General walked toward the study. He looked at his wife
from the threshold: her head had sunk forward a little; she too was
dropping into her evening doze. He opened the study door and
went in.

8.

with a touch of swagger.

"That's for Captain Vigours to settle," said his father, while Mrs. Inwood interjected: "Oh, child, don't make light of the Barbary pirates!" and Mark answered, colouring again: "To be sure, sir, it's for Captain Vigours; I meant only that I trust I shall never do anything to be an obstacle to the voyage."

His mother still regarded him with uncomforted eyes. "Who can tell, in those Popish countries? And with nothing but salt food at sea? When I think of my poor cousin Grace Henryson, compelled to languish out her days so far from home, and among those outlandish people..."

At this second mention of the name Mr. Inwood's gnarled and rosy face became purple. "And damn lucky, ma'am, was your cousin Grace, to be offered the hand of an honest man like Henryson" —("But not a gentleman," breathed Mrs. Inwood) — "and live in a balmy climate too. Ain't she a happy wife and mother, ma'am? And after the way she begun her life..."

"Now, I do beg of you, Mr. Inwood, spare my unhappy relative, please!"

Mrs. Inwood was a slight morsel of a woman, who hardly reached to mighty husband's shoulder; but when she took a certain tone, no one — and he least of all — could forget that she had been Kitty Drewe, daughter of his Excellency the Governor's aide-de-camp, and who might have married the younger son of a poor Scottish Earl (a lieutenant in her father's regiment) had she not given the preference to James Inwood, colonial merchant and land-owner. Mrs. Inwood, being of a passionate and possessive nature, and disposed to think well of every one and everything connected with her, had never regretted her choice; and Colonial New York, in the eighteenth century, was a pleasant enough

I3.

said the sailor earnestly.

Mark roused himself with a start and followed. They were leaving the quay — more's the pity! — but only to turn into a wide street or mall, bordered by great silver-trunked trees and their naked branches. The sculptured portal of a church; tall stone houses with balconies; stalls piled with flowers, and those gay foreign vegetables that look like flowers; the sellers of them, dark-eyed under flapping straw or figured kerchief, beckoning and inviting; and a turn of the head, and the harbour glinting at his back. One saw it even from Mr. Henryson's balcony; he said he had chosen his lodging for the prospect, which reminded him of Marseilles, when he had been Mr. Inwood's shipping-agent. Not that he regretted having retired from business; he was busy enough still, in his own way. But he was used to the bustle of a port, and liked to watch the noise and hurry of it while he enjoyed his leisure. "For I'm nothing if not a philosopher, young gentleman," said Mr. Henryson, taking a pinch of snuff from a horn box shaped like a shell.

Mark could not make up his mind if he liked Mr. Henryson very much or not at all. The former shipping-agent was a small spare man, soberly dressed in snuff-colour, with a lean parchmenty kind of face, grey eyes between reddish lids, and a crooked smile that flashed out suddenly and then vanished before it could brighten his features. His voice was rather high, with an occasional crack, and he drummed on his snuff-box with long dry nails while he talked. He gave Mark a proper welcome, was very much at his service, and politely wondered what had brought him to Toulon. The room they sat in was small, icily neat, and without other signs of use than two chairs, a jar of snuff, an ink-well on a table, and a receptacle containing what looked like small packets of flower-seeds.

I4.

Mark explained that the *Catherine Inwood*, caught in a fierce gale after leaving Marseilles and Toulon, and already strained by the storms she had met in the Atlantic, had been cancelled to put in at Toulon at daybreak, and was now anchored under the point of Saint Landrier, while Captain Vigours, his arm broke by a fall, lay aboard of her and cursed his luck and the elements. The ship was in a bad way, and would no doubt have to be dry-docked and undergo lengthy repairs before she could proceed farther; and Mark had hurried ashore to get pratique and hunt up his father's former agent.

Mr. Henryson, at this, once more expressed himself as eager to be of service, and putting on his coat and hat, hastened after Mark to the quay. The two were rowed out to the *Catherine Inwood*, and the agent dealt briskly with the captain's difficulties. The latter was brought into the "Maison Dieu" or hospital of Toulon, where his broken arm was set, and Mr. Henryson employed himself about the ship's docking and the affairs of the crew. The day passed in hurryings to and fro, signing papers and despatching of business; and though Mark had come ashore before eight in the morning, it was past three when he found himself again at Mr. Henryson's. The two had had a bottle of muscadine wine and a dish of stewed hare at one of the coffee-houses on the quay; and Mr. Henryson now enquired of Mark where he proposed to lodge.

Mark had no notion, but said he had seen a respectable-looking inn near the port. Mr. Henryson appeared to hesitate; then he said in his sudden way: "These rooms of mine here are only for show; I have but one bed, and no means of lodging you. But if you will put up with plain country fare, and unbleached sheets, I will take you to my house outside the town. At least you'll not be alone in a strange city."

16

unintelligible. Then, having looked Mark over, she shouldered his
portmanteaux, and disappeared up a flight of brick stairs, while Mark
followed his host ~~into a room~~ across the passage. The room was plain and
neat, like the agent's lodging in Toulon, but the walls were lined
with books, and glass cases containing insects, dried flowers and
mineralogical specimens.

"This is where I live," said Mr. Henryson.

Mark began to look about him. On the shelves he saw the names
of well-known botanists and geologists: Linnaeus, de Saussure,
Candolle, Buffon, Tournefort. It was plain that Mr. Henryson's fancy
was for the natural sciences. The young man took down a book labelled
"The Natural History of Provence".

"You take an interest in such things?" Mr. Henryson asked,
"his hand on Mark's arm."

Mark nodded: there were times when he wondered if there were
anything in the visible world he did not take an interest in, so
rich, varied and incalculable seemed the wonders unrolled before him
when ~~each time~~ he opened his eyes on a new day.

"I've always had a fancy to learn what I can of things and
people," he said with a shy smile.

The old man's guarded features began to twitch with excitement. "To learn — to learn — to learn: the only pleasure!" And how lavishly Nature spreads the board!"

He gazed passionately at the book he had taken from Mark's
hands. "Here you will find some of the items of the feast. It is a
fairly good repertory of the principal characters of Provence. If
you can stand my plain fare, and are content to nourish yourself on
the wonders of the universe, I think you'll be happy under my roof."
He handed back the book, snapped his thin lips shut, and opened the

17.

door. "Margar!" he called.

A voice from the kitchen shouted back: "What's all the to-
do about?"

"We're hungry, my good Margar!" said Mr. Henryson with
unexpected meekness.

"Hungry? Well, so am I; and in a muck of sweat besides,
standing here half the day over your *bouillabaisse*."

There was a long pause, during which Mark studied the book-
shelves, and Mr. Henryson, with the hang-dog air of a scolded school-
boy, stood with his hands behind him and his eyes absently fixed on
a case of butterflies.

At last the voice from the kitchen shouted again: "Well,
why don't you come along then? Who's waiting now, I'd like to know?"

Mr. Henryson signed to Mark to precede him, and to the young
man's surprise they reentered the kitchen. An unbleached linen cloth
had been laid at one end of a rough table. Two tallow candles in brass
candlestick, lit it, and three plates of coarse painted ware were
laid: no doubt Mrs. Henryson would appear presently. But the agent,
seating himself, put his guest on his right, and his cook, flushed
and steaming, plumped into the other chair, and thrust a large round
arm across her master to help herself to bread.

"You will see," said Mr. Henryson, with a timid smile, as
he filled Mark's glass, "what a succulent meal this high-tempered
but accomplished young woman will set before us."

It was a kind of succulence not immediately to the young
man's taste, though he came afterward to enjoy it: a blend of garlic,
olive-oil and strange herbs clothing everything with the same heady
flavour. But Mark was hungry and excited, and the wine — a ripe
Château-Neuf-du-Pape — dissipated the last reluctant of his palate.

18.

He ate and drank with a generous impartiality, and the meal over,
drew up his chair with Mr. Henryson to the kitchen fire — for the
night had fallen cold — while Margaï, after rapidly sweeping the
remains of the meal into a tall carved cupboard, sat down opposite
them, distaff in hand, and stretched her feet to the blaze.

The meal — or perhaps the sight of Mark — had mellowed
her temper, and presently, at Mr. Henryson's request, she began to
sing, in a shrill but not unpleasant voice, some curious old peasant-
songs of the country, unintelligible to Mark, but evidently, from
her look and intonation, dealing mainly with the sentiment of love.
The matter seemed to move her, for presently she got out a stone jug,
went from the room and brought the jug back filled with a cool
sparkling wine that flashed like fireflies in the mouth. When they
had all pledged each other cordially and repeatedly in this vintage
the party broke up for bed. Mr. Henryson, with an affectation of
gallantry, kissed the hand which had prepared so delectable a bouilla-
baisse; but when Mark would laughingly have done the same the lady
caught him about the neck and planted a kiss on his lips. Only the
garlic and the scratch of her whisker saved him.

Mark had meant to enquire of Mr. Henryson if his wife and
daughter were away, or obliged, for some reason, to keep their rooms;
but as the evening advanced he became more and more convinced that
it would be wisest to ask nothing at all; and by the time he had bade
his host goodnight he felt no need of more enlightenment.

20.

and a reverse of fortune compelled him to follow it. He was a fair humanist, with a memory as well stored with classical allusions as any college Don, and a remarkable familiarity with the witty and blasphemous philosophers of modern France; but his chief bent had always been toward the natural sciences, and his unfulfilled ambition the possession of a cabinet of mineral specimens. The rude woodland life of the colonies had developed in Mark somewhat of the same tastes, which, indeed, were growing general at the time; and to his scientific curiosity the young man joined a love of nature less common in his day.

He took great pleasure in his rambles with his host over the steep hills and cliffs about Toulon. He even began to relish Mr. Henryson's dry comment on men and manners, and his stinging quotations from Montesquieu and Voltaire, which reminded Mark of the little sharp-flavoured black olives that added such zest to the bread and cheese they ate on the mountain-side. But he continued to wonder that a man so much at ease with the "Almighty should cut so small a figure in the conduct of his own affairs. For Mr. Henryson had never yet mentioned his wife; and Mark understood that it was because he was ashamed to do so.

The retired shipping-agent, like many men when they withdraw from an important business, had gradually made himself a small one in its likeness. In spite of his varied tastes there were doubtless days when his leisure hung heavy; Mark even fancied that, for all his philosophy, he was vain enough to cling to his reputation as a figure in the business of a great port. At any rate, he went daily to Toulon to receive his few clients; and while his business was being despatched, Mark hung about the coffee-houses of the port. These hours of waiting never seemed long to the young man. Though he had already had glimpses of maritime cities such as Corunna, Lisbon and

21.

Malaga, yet he chanced to have touched there in stormy or sullen weather, and it was at Toulon he first saw the glory of the southern winter. The Mediterranean, he knew, could vie in violence with the Atlantic; but when gales dropped and clouds disbanded summer at once possessed the land. The weather just then was at its fairest. Day after day light breezes ruffled the sea under a firm blue sky fading downward to silver. The landscape glistened as if after a heavy shower, but it was sun and not rain that so polished it. Every object was facetted like a cut jewel; even the bare red earth under the olives sparkled as if the trees dropped diamonds instead of fruit.

But though the scenery delighted Mark, and he had an eye for all its aspects; yet he was happiest on the quay. He was at the age when every new face is full of mystery and promise; and in this foreign scene peopled from all parts of the globe there was always fresh food for his curiosity. First it was a turbaned Turk who arrested him, then a black man, as like as a twin to his father's own Cicero, but wrapped in a ragged striped cloak, and hung with strange amulets and weapons; and from these he turned to watch the embarking of a party of veiled beauties, said to be Georgians on their way to the Sultan of Morocco. A waddling bedizened Jewess attended them, and they were guarded by a man with a fierce white face, earrings and a double chin, at once womanish and terrible to look at.

But to Mark's plain colonial eye even the townsfolk were a show: slant-eyed flower-girls, a cassia bud between their lips and ribbonsed trays slung on their necks; Popish priests and barefoot friars, impish black boys trotting after fine ladies, doctors and leeches in wide-brimmed hats, sallow Jews with prophets' heads and greasy gabardines, gypsy women hung with coins, and bright wool braid-ed in their hair, nuns slipping past in pairs, eyes down and hidden

23.

port vanished like an incantation, and he saw the snow-lit parlour
on the Battery, his mother in her paduasoy dress, and Mr. Inwood's
gnarled and rosy face flushed with the fire and his third glass of
negus. How little time and space signified, when the sight of a folded
paper and a well-known seal could scatter them like snow-flakes on
the pane!

The letter, full of familiar news, and containing a long
postscript of good advice from Mrs. Inwood, concluded with unexpected
instructions. Mr. Inwood informed his son that the long-delayed
shipment of furs had come to hand, and was to be despatched to Europe
in a few weeks on the *Catherine Inwood's* sister ship, the *Peter de
Salles*; and Mark was enjoined to await the latter vessel, leaving
Captain Vigours to proceed without him.

24.

The announcement was no surprise; but had Mark been totally unprepared his disappointment could not have been greater. The Oriental figures mingling with the throng of Toulon had increased his eagerness to see the mysterious world from whence they came; and though Mr. Henryson assured him that a later season would be more favourable for the East, and though the marketing of the furs, if successful, was sure to advance him in his father's business, Mark would have thrown all to the winds to be up and off with Captain Vigours.

A steep grove of Aleppo pines sheltered Mr. Henryson's house to the north. Mark sat there one afternoon, brooding on his disappointment. The view he had of the sea reminded him that early that morning the Catherine Inwood had set sail from Toulon; and he pictured a distant speck of white in the offing as her sails bellying merrily to the north-wester. By this time he might have been far away on her, and not cabined in this warm garden with a morose old botanist and his termagant servant. Mark felt a sudden indifference to all that his host had shown him and told him: youths of his parts were not meant to hunt for rare simples on stony hillsides, or to compare the eyes on butterflies' wings, when they might be gazing into human eyes as young and ardent as their own... The analogy called up that wistful face with the butterfly mouth, hidden away in the orange-wood box at home; and Mark, for the hundredth time, fell to wondering why Mr. Henryson never mentioned his wife. He had long since guessed that a mystery hung about the lady. He had never heard her name but with a "poor" preceding it; and had always known that material want was not intended. This made thematter delicate to touch, and under that roof especially; and he let the days slip by, walking, botanizing, enjoying the native wines with his odd host, and never finding his opportunity

26.

she seemed to guess what Mark was looking for. "Ah, to be sure, you know me only from that old miniature," she said. "But Grace Drewe died when you were a baby."

"Nevertheless, ma'am, I should have known you from it anywhere," Mark declared, getting to his feet, and kissing her hand with a flourish he had learnt in France. She laughed.

"Ah, well — I wouldn't call Grace Drewe to life if I could. Youth — youth! The troublesome business: like walking through a crowd of cut-purses with a Rajah's diamond round one's neck. One or another of the crew is sure to get it — well, and welcome, says I! Oh, boy, if only you knew the blessedness of being rid of that bit of property! Luckily it's a lesson we all learn, if the Lord gives us time..."

She continued to fix her great eyes on him, but with an air of derisive satiric indifference; and he guessed her to be so taken up with her own affairs that she seldom emerged from them for more than a moment. Yet in that moment he was sure she had remarked that he was unpowdered and in his plain travelling-clothes, with undyed woollen stockings knit by Mrs. Inwood. "What a colonial hobbledehoy she'll take me for!" he thought.

"Well," she said, with a kind of bleak sprightliness, "come here and I'll kiss you —" and he found himself clasped to a thin bosom hung with scented laces, and felt a cold touch on his cheek. That perfume and that coldness! He looked at her perplexedly, wondering if the southern sun could play such tricks on one in sleep. Again Mrs. Henryson seemed to guess his thought.

"You were sleeping full in the sun; it's unwholesome in this climate. Remember next time to cover your face with your handkerchief."

He was about to answer: "But what I should have missed,

29.

lives near the hôtel de Mauvanne. Yes, yes; the plan delights me;
you must come. The Comte de Mauvanne will, I am sure, be happy to
invite to his house the son of my cousin Kitty Drewe. Your mother
is well, my child?" Her eyes grew absent-minded; she patted her laces
with a cadaverous hand, and gathered up her reticule, her scarves,
her stick. To Mark's reply that his family had been well when he last
heard from home she vouchsafed no notice; her eyes, drawn inward again,
were plainly fixed on her own affairs. Declining the young man's hand
to her carriage, she left the house attended by Mr. Henryson, who, in
his zeal and self-abasement, had nearly walked backward before her to
the gate. The white pigeons circling overhead dropped to the crest of
the garden wall to watch her go. Mark wondered that neither husband
nor wife had named their daughter.

35.

himself at Mrs. Henryson's entrance, and made a few steps — three,
to be exact — toward Mark.

"Monsieur le Comte, permit me to present my young cousin
from the colonies, grandson of His Excellency the late Royal Governor
of the Province of New York," Mrs. Henryson <ins>softly</ins> proclaimed.

Mark bowed, and his host proffered a plump gouty hand.
"His Excellency the Governor's grandson and Madame Henryson's cousin
is most welcome to my house," he said, in an amiable voice which
contrasted oddly with his peppery red face and bristling eye-brows.
"And where the devil," thought Mark, "does he place my father's son?"
But like all colonials he had been brought up to think that Europeans
had bad manners, and that allowances must be made for them; so he
merely bowed again, and followed Mrs. Henryson, who was now plunging
into the crowd before the Bishop, and rehearsing Mark's titles to recognition.

The expression of the prelate's sloping countenance suggest-
ed that the province of New York was on a planet unknown to him,
and its governor less than a mote to his mind's eye; but he raised
a great amethyst ring to Mark's astonished lips, and hoped the young
gentleman had had an agreeable journey. At the same moment the double
doors opened, and the sour-faced butler, bowing before the Bishop,
announced that his lordship was served. His lordship offered a hand
to Mrs. Henryson, the Count led forth the most consequent of the
lappeted ladies, and the whole company moved to the dining-room, with
Mark at the head of the procession. He noticed that Mademoiselle de
Mauvarne still clung to Mrs. Henryson, and had a seat at her side.

His knowledge of French was not sufficient for him to follow
the cross-volleys of talk about the table. Even had he known the
language better, he would have been put off by the running trills,
the lifts and drops of these gay foreign voices, and the dramatic

37.

was preluding to the Marjolaine; and presently her voice, clear
and bright as a little fountain, shot up above the hot faces and
rich colours about her. For the first time her own face defined
itself to Mark: small and round, smooth as a pearl, the brows arching
tenderly over shy astonished eyes. Her mouth, as she sang, opened
like a round pink corolla, in which the thin voice hummed like a
sipping insect. She sang without expression, without gestures, without
a glance to right or left; it was as though something emanated from
her that built a crystal wall between her small cool figure and the
company.

Her remoteness seemed to bring her nearer to Mark. She re-
minded him of a young Quaker girl he had known in New York, and he
felt that, if her own shyness could be overcome, he could talk to her
easily. But she noticed him no more than the rest; he could see that
behind that crystal wall she moved in a little world of her own, empty
as air to others, but full of objects and interests intensely visible
to her. What were they, he wondered? As the conjecture brushed him he
looked up, and saw, leaning in the window near the spinet, a young
man in a dark coat, dressed in an enforced slum colo-
Mark had not noticed him before; yet he was a handsome and distinguish-
ed figure, dressed with elegance, and carrying his twenty-five years
or so with, a grace, naturally free from preconception.

The eyes of this young gentleman never left Douce de Mauvanne;
when she was from the spinet he advanced and said a few words which
called a flush to her face. Mark, noting this, observed also
that the Bishop and Mrs. Henryson exchanged a smiling glance. He felt
the pang of a stranger who surprises, in a throng of unknown people,
one of their hidden springs of action. At home it might have been he
who was bowing and complimenting the girl, while their elders glanced

38.

and smiled; here he was of no more account than the floor under her feet. A sense of isolation, and an unreasoning jealousy of the young man in the *plume-colored* coat, filled his heart with bitterness. Suddenly he felt a tap on the shoulder, and met Mrs. Henryson's *disembarrassed* eyes.

"You're admiring my pupil's singing? She is, the most accomplished young lady in Provence; and so she is being told, if I'm not mistaken, by her betrothed, the Comte de Montrieux. Their engagement was announced today; it is the cause of all this rejoicing. You will join the gentlemen at lansquenet, my cousin?"

The winter dusk had fallen. Candles were brought in branching silver candelabra; a footman in ragged livery climbed on a stool to light the crystal chandeliers; another drew the curtains, shutting out dark branches and winter sky. Mark stood withdrawn, too shy to take leave, too moody to join the players. He felt overwhelmed with the sense of his ungainliness, his inarticulateness, and the long way he was from home.