Philip II., the greatest monarch of modern times,perhaps the greatest of all time, the extent and diversity of his dominions considered, and the ability of the races over which he ruled taken into the account,was under the painful necessity of putting his eldest son, Don Carlos, in close confinement, from which he never came forth until he was brought out feet foremost, the presumption being that he had been put to death by his father's orders. Carlos has been made a hero of romance, but a more worthless character never lived. On his death-bed Philip II. was compelled to see how little his son Philip, who succeeded him, cared for his feelings and wishes. Peter the Great put to death his son Alexis; and Frederick William I. of Prussia came very near taking the life of that son of his who afterward became Frederick the Great.
Jealousy is so common a feeling in Oriental royal houses, that it is hardly allowable to quote anything from their history; but we may be permitted to allude to the effect of one instance of paternal hate in the Ottoman family at the time of its utmost greatness. Solyman the Magnificent was jealous of his eldest son, Mustapha, who is represented by all writers on the Turkish history of those times as a remarkably superior man, and who, had he lived, would have been a mighty foe to Christendom. This son the Sultan caused to be put to death, and there are few incidents of a more tragical cast than those which accompanied Mustapha's murder. They might be turned to great use by an historical romancer, who would find matters all made to his hand. The effect of this murder was to substitute for the succession that miserable drunkard, Selim II., who was utterly unable to lead the Turks in those wars that were absolutely essential to their existence as a dominant people. "With him," says Ranke, "begins the series of those inactive Sultans, in whose dubious character we may trace one main cause of the decay of the Ottoman fortunes." Solyman's hatred of his able son was a good thing for Christendom; for, if Mustapha had lived, and become Sultan, the War of Cyprusthat contest in which occurred the Battle of Lepantomight have Lad a different termination, and the Osmanlis have been successful invaders of both Spain and Italy. It was a most fortunate circumstance for Europe, that, while it was engaged in carrying on civil wars and wars of religion, the Turks should have had for their chiefs men incapable of carrying on that work of war and conquest through which alone it was possible for those Mussulmans to maintain their position in Europe; and that they were thus favored was owing to the causeless jealousy felt by Sultan Solyman for the son who most resembled himself: and Solyman was the greatest of his line, which some say ended with him.
UNDER THE PEAR-TREE
IN TWO PARTSPART I
CHAPTER I
One Sunday morning, long ago, a girl stood in her bed-room, lingeringly occupied with the last touches of her toilet.
A string of beads, made of pure gold and as large as peas, lay before her. They had been her mother's,given to her when the distracted state of American currency made a wedding-present of the precious metal as welcome as it was valuable. Three several times, under circumstances of great pecuniary urgency, had the beads sufficed, one by one, to restore the family to comfort,to pay the expenses of a journey, to buy seed-grain, and to make out the payment of a yoke of oxen. Afterwards, when peace and plenty came to be housemates in the land, the gold beads were redeemed, and the necklace, dearer than ever, encircled the neck of the only daughter.
The only daughter took them up, and clasped them round her throat with a decisive snap. But the crowning graces remained in the shape of two other ornaments that lay in a small China box. It had a head on the cover, beautifully painted, of some queen,perhaps of the Empress Josephine, the girl thought. The hat had great ostrich-feathers, that seemed proper to royalty, and it was a pretty face.
In the box lay a pin and ring. On the back of the pin was braided hair, and letters curiously intertwined. The young girl slipped the ring on her own finger once more, and smiled. Then she took it off, with a sigh that had no pain in it, and looked at the name engraved inside,DORCAS FOX.
Whoever saw this name in the town records would naturally image to himself the town tailoress or nurse, or somebody's single sister who had been wise too long,somebody tall, a little bent, and bony,somebody weather-beaten and determinedlooking, with a sharp, shrewd glance of a gray eye that said you could not possibly get the better of her and so need not try,somebody who goes out unattended and fearless at night; for, as she very properly observes, "Who'd want to speak to me?"
This might have described the original owner of the pin and ring, who had died years before, and left the ornaments for her namesake and niece, when she was too young to remember or care for her, but not the niece herself. She was young, blooming, twenty-two, and the belle of the country-village where she dwelt.
The bed-room where the girl stood and meditated, after her fashion, was six feet by ten in dimensions, and the oval mirror before which she stood was six inches by ten. It was a genuine relic of the Mayflower, and had been brought over, together with the great chest in the entry, by the grand-grand-grandmother of all the Foxes. If anybody were disposed to be skeptical on this point, Colonel Fox had only to point to the iron clamp at the end, by which it had been confined to the deck; that would have produced conviction, if he had declared it came out of the Ark. This was a queer-looking little mirror, in which the young Dorcas saw her round face reflected: framed in black oak, delicately carved, and cut on the edge with a slant that gave the plate an appearance of being an inch thick.
Sixty years ago there were not many mirrors in country-towns in New England; and in Colonel Fox's house this and one more sufficed for the family-reflections. In the "square room," a modern long looking-glass, framed in mahogany, and surmounted by the American emblem of triumph, was the astonishment of the neighbors,and in Walton those were many, though the population was small.
Dorcas looked wistfully and wishingly at the oval pin; but with no more notion of what she was looking at than the child who gazes into the heavens on a winter night. When she looked into the oval mirror, no dream of the centuries through which it had received on its surface fair and suffering faces, grave, noble, self-sacrificing men, and scenes of trial deep and agonizing,no dream of the past disturbed the serene unconsciousness of her gaze. She looked at the large pearls that formed the long oval pin, and at the exquisite allegorical painting, which, in the quaint fashion of the time of its execution, was colored with the "ground hair" of the beloved; so materializing sentiment, and, as it were, getting as near as possible to the very heart's blood. Yet the old gold, the elaborate execution of the quaint classical device, and the fanciful arrangement of the braided hair interwoven with twisted gold letters, all told no tales to the observer, whose unwakened nature, indeed, asked no questions.
The little room, so small that in these days a College of Physicians would at once condemn it, as a cradle of disease and death, had nevertheless for twenty years been the nightly abode of as perfect a piece of health as the country produced. Whatever might be wanting in height and space was amply made up in inevitable and involuntary ventilation. Health walked in at the wide cracks around the little window-frame, peeped about in all directions with the snow-flakes in winter and the ready breezes in summer, and settled itself permanently on the fresh cheeks and lips of the light sleeper and early riser.
Beside the white-covered cot there stood a straight-backed, list-seated oaken chair, a mahogany chest of drawers that reached from floor to ceiling, and a little three-legged light-stand. Everything was covered with white, and the room was fragrant with the lavender and dried rose-leaves with which every drawer was scrupulously perfumed. There was no toilet-table, for Dorcas had use neither for perfumes nor ointment. No Kalydors and no Glycerines came within the category of her healthful experience. Alert and graceful, she neither burnt her fingers nor cut her hands, and had need therefore of no soothing salves or sirups; and as she did not totter in scrimped shoes or tight laces, and so did not fall and break her bones, she had no need even of that modern necessity in all well-regulated families, "Prepared Glue." There was no medicine-chest in Colonel Fox's house. Healthy, occupied, active, and wisebut not too wisewas Dorcas Fox.
It is no proof that Dorcas was a beauty, that she looked often in the little mirror. Ugliness is quite as anxious as beauty on that point, and is even oftener found gazing with sad solicitude at itself, if haply there may be found some mollifying or mitigating circumstance, either in outline or expression. But Dorcas's face pleased herself and everybody else.
A certain freedom and ease, the result partly of a symmetrical form, and partly of conscious good-looks, gave the grace of movement to Dorcas which attracted all eyes. Almost every one has a sense of harmony, and old and young loved to watch the musical motion of Dorcas Fox, whatever she might be doing,whether she queened it at the "Thanksgiving Ball," and from heel-and-toe, pigeon-wing, or mazy double-shuffle, evolved the finest and subtlest intricacies of muscle, or whether, on the Sabbath, walking behind her parents to meeting, she married the movement to the solemnity of the day, and, as it were, walked in long metre.
She always was in Hallelujah metre to the Blacks, Whites, Grays, Greens, and Browns that color so largely every New-England community; and the youths who were wont to form the crowd that invariably settled at the corner of the meeting-house waited only till Dorcas Fox went up the "broad-oil" to express open-mouthed admiration. After her fashion, she was as much wondered at as the Duchess of Hamilton in her time, and with much more reason, since Dorcas was composed of real roses and lilies.
On Sunday, though the Puritanic doctrine prevailed, as far as doctrine can, of not speaking week-day thoughts, or having them, if they would keep away, yet inevitably, among the younger portion of the flock, the day of "meeting" was one of more than religious importance; and many lads and lasses who were never attracted by Father Boardman's eloquent sedatives still made it a point to be regular in their attendance at meeting twice on every Sunday. From far and near came open one-horse wagons, piled high with weekly shaven and dressed humanity,young and old with solemn and demure faces, with brown-ribboned queues, and garments of domestic making. Fresh, strong, tall girls of five feet ten, dressed in straw bonnets of their own handiwork, and sometimes with scarlet cardinals lightly flung over their shoulders, sprang over the wagon-thills to the ground. Now and then the more remote dwellers came on horseback, each Jack with his Gill on a pillion behind, and holding him with a proper and dignified embrace.
Hard-handed youths, with bright, determined faces,men nursed in blockhouses, born in forts,men who had raised their corn when the loaded gun went every step with the hoe and the plough,such men, of whom the Revolution had been made, who could say nothing, and do everything, stood in a crowd around the meeting-house door. There was some excitement in meeting each other, though there was very little, if anything, to say. There was time enough in those days. Progress wasn't in such a hurry as now. Inventions came calmly along, once in a man's life, and not, as now, each heel-trodden by that of his neighbor, tripping up and passing it, in the speed of the breathless race.
The sun itself seemed to shine with a calmer and silenter radiance over the broad, leisurely land.
Time enough, bless you! and the Sunday, any way, is so long!
This Sunday morning, at ten o'clock, Dorcas has already been up and dressed six hours. Everything having the remotest connection with domestic duties has been finished and laid aside long ago, and she has devoted the last two hours to solitary meditations, mostly of the kind already mentioned.
In the great oven, since last night, has lain the Sunday supper of baked pork-and-beans, Indian-pudding, and brown bread, all the better the longer they bake, and all unfailing in their character of excellence. In the square room, in the green arm-chair, sits the Colonel, fast asleep.
Four hours ago, he fumed and fretted about barn and cow-house, breakfasted, and had family-prayers. Since then, he has donned his Sabbath array, both mental and bodily. Mentally, having dismissed the cares of the week, he has strictly united himself with his body, and gone to sleep. Bodily, he appears in a suit of hemlock-dyed, with Matherman buttons, knee- and shoe-buckles of silver. His gray hair is neatly composed in a queue, his full cheeks rest on his portly chest, and the outward visibly harmonizes with the inward man. He sleeps soundly now, purposing faithfully to keep awake during the three-and-twenty heads of the minister's discourse. If he finds it too much for him, he means to stand, as he often does. Sometimes he partakes freely of the aromatic stimulants carried by his wife and daughter as bouquets. The southernwood wakes him, and the green seeds of the caraway get him well along through the sermon.
Mrs. Fox steps softly in, rustling in the same black taffeta she always wears, and the same black silk bonnet,worn just fifty-two days in a year, and carefully pinned and boxed away for all the other three hundred and thirteen.
As fashions did not come to Walton oftener than once in ten years, it followed that apparel among the young people wore very much the expression of individual taste, while among the elders it was wont to assume the cast now irreverently designated by "fossil remains." And, really, it did not much matter. Whatever our country-grandmothers were admired and esteemed for, be sure it was not dress.
As the clock pointed to half-past ten, the door opened quickly, and Dorcas stood on the threshold, like a summer breeze that has stopped one moment its fluttering, and hovers fresh, sweet, and sunny in the morning air. The breath of her presence, if indeed it were not association, roused old Colonel Fox from his sleep. He glanced at her, took the ready arm of his wife, looked again at the clock, and passed out over the flat door-stone with his cocked hat and cane, as became an invalid soldier and a gentleman. Behind them, hymn-book in hand and with downcast eyes, walked Dorcas. Not a word passed between the parents and their only daughter. On Sunday, people were not to think their own thoughts. And familiarity between parents and children, never allowed even on week-days, would have been unpardonable unfitness on the Sabbath.
They reached the church-door just as the minister, with his white wig shedding powder on his venerable back, passed up the broad-aisle. A perfectly decorous throng of the loiterers followed, and the pews rapidly filled. The Colonel and his wife, being persons of consequence, took their way with suitable dignity and deliberation. In the three who turned, about half-way up the broad-aisle, into a square pew, a physiognomist would have seen at one glance the characteristic features of each mind. In the Colonel, choleric, fresh, and warm-hearted, a good lover, and not very good hater. In his wife, "a chronicler of small-beer," with a perfectly negative expression. One might guess she did no harm, and fear she did no good,that she saved the hire of an upper servant,that she was an inveterate sewer and cleaner, and would leave the world in time with an epitaph.