The Ancient City. Woolson Constance Fenimore
Sebastian,” replied Miss Sharp, reading slowly from her guide-book in the fading light. “ ‘After three hours and one-half of this torture the exhausted tourist finds himself at the San Sebastian River, where a miserable ferry conveys him, more dead than alive, to the city of St. Augustine.’ ”
“But here is no ferry,” I said.
“The ‘exhausted tourist,’ however, is here,” observed Sara, wearily.
“The guide-book is at least so far correct that we may reasonably conclude this to be the St. Sebastian – so called, I presume, from the mythical saint of that name,” remarked the Professor, peering out over his spectacles.
“Allow me,” said Miss Sharp, eagerly producing a second small volume from her basket. “This saint was, I believe, thrown into a well – no, that isn’t it. He was cast into a dungeon, and rescued by – by flying dragons – ”
“Oh no, Miss Sharp,” said Iris, as the baffled governess wrestled with the fine print. “Sebastian was the one noted for his arrows; don’t you remember the picture in my hand-book?”
Leaving the causeway, the omnibus entered the town through a gate of foliage, great pride-of-India-trees mingling their branches over the street for some distance, forming a green arched way whose vista made beautiful the entrance to the Ancient City, like the shaded pathway that led to the lovely land of Beulah in the old pictures of Pilgrim’s Progress. On each side we could see a residence back among the trees – one of stone, large and massive, with an orange grove behind, the golden fruit gleaming through the glossy foliage, and protected by a picturesque hedge of Spanish-bayonets; the other a wide house surrounded by piazzas overhung with ivy and honeysuckle, a garden filled with roses and every variety of flower, gray moss drooping from the trees at the gate, and a roof painted in broad stripes which conveyed a charming suggestion of coolness, as though it were no roof at all, but only a fresh linen awning over the whole, suited to the tropical climate. Sara said this, and added that she was sure there were hammocks there too, hanging somewhere in shady places.
“Really, very meritorious,” remarked Aunt Diana, inspecting the houses through her glasses, and bestowing upon them, as it were, her metropolitan benediction.
In the mean while the colored official was gayly sounding his bugle, and our omnibus rolled into the heart of the city – a small square, adorned with a monument. We noticed the upturned faces of the people as we passed; they were all counting. “One, two, three – only seven in all,” said a young girl, with the beautiful hopeless hectic on her cheek. “One, two – seven, only seven,” said a gentleman leaning on the railing near the post-office, with the weary invalid attitude we knew so well, having seen it all along the St. Johns. We learned afterward that one of the daily occupations of the invalids of St. Augustine is to watch this omnibus come in, and count the passengers, invariably announcing the number with a triumphant “only,” as much as to say, “Aha! old town!” thus avenging themselves for their enforced stay. It makes no difference how many come; the number may be up in the hundreds, but still the invalids bring out their “only,” as though they had confidently expected thousands.
“Oh, the water, the blue water!” cried Iris, as we turned down toward the harbor. “Shall I not sail upon you, water? Yea, many a time will I!”
“Are you fond of aquatic excursions, Mr. Mokes?” inquired Aunt Diana, taking out her vinaigrette. “What an overpowering marshy odor!”
“Oh, the dear salt, the delicious salt breath of the sea!” murmured Sara, leaning out with a tinge of color in her cheeks.
No, Mokes was not fond of aquatic excursions in the sort of craft they had about here: if he had his yacht, now!
“Voilà,” exclaimed Iris, “an officer! ‘Ah, ah, que j’aime un militaire, j’aime un militaire, j’aime un – ’ ”
“Iris,” interrupted Aunt Di, “pray do not sing here in the street.”
“Oh, aunt, you stopped me right on the top note,” said Iris, glancing down the street after the uniform.
Arrived at the hotel, Aunt Diana began inspecting rooms. Sara wished to go to one of the boarding-houses, and John Hoffman, who met us on the piazza, proposed his. “I have staid there several times,” he said. “The Sabre-boy waits on the table, and a wild crane lives in the back-yard.”
“The crane, by all means,” said Sara, gathering together her possessions. I preferred to be with Sara; so the three of us left the hotel for Hospital Street, passing on our way Artillery Lane, both names belonging to the British occupancy of the venerable little city.
“This is the Plaza,” said John, as we crossed the little square; “the monument was erected in 1812, in honor of the adoption of a Spanish constitution. The Spanish constitution, as might have been expected, died young; but St. Augustine, unwilling to lose its only ornament for any such small matter as a revolution away over in Spain, compromised by taking out the inscribed tablets and keeping the monument. They have since been restored as curiosities. Castelar ought to come over and see them.”
The house on Hospital Street was a large white mansion, built of coquina, with a peaked roof and overhanging balcony. We knocked, and a tall colored youth opened the door.
“The ‘Sabre,’ ” said John, gravely introducing him.
“Why ‘Sabre?’ ” I said, as we waited for our hostess in the pleasant parlor, adorned with gray moss and tufted grasses; “to what language does the word belong?”
“Child language,” replied John. “There was a little girl here last year, who, out of the inscrutable mysteries of a child’s mind, evolved the fancy for calling him ‘the Sabre-boy.’ Why, nobody knew. His real name is Willfrid, but gradually we all fell into the child’s fancy, until every body called him the Sabre-boy, and he himself gravely accepted the title.”
A tap at the window startled us. “The crane,” said John, throwing open the blind. “He too has come to have a look at you.”
An immense gray bird, standing nearly five feet high on his stilt-like legs, peered solemnly at us for some moments, and then stalked away with what seemed very like a sniff of disdain.
“He does not like our looks,” said Sara.
“He takes his time; not for him any of the light friendships of an hour,” replied John. “Cranie is a bird of unlimited aspirations, and both literary and æsthetic tastes; he has been discovered turning over with his bill the leaves of Tennyson’s poems left lying on the window-sill; he invariably plucks the finest roses in the garden; and he has been seen walking on the sea-wall alone in the moonlight, meditating, no doubt, on the vanities of mankind, with whom he is compelled reluctantly to associate.”
“Do you hear the sound of the breakers, Martha?” said Sara, waking me up in the middle of the night. We had the balconied room up stairs, and the sound of the distant surf came in through the open window in the intense stillness of the night. “It makes me feel young again,” murmured my companion; but I fell asleep and heard no more.
Before breakfast, which is always late in Florida, John Hoffman took us to see a wonderful rose-tree.
“You must have sprays of bloom by the side of your coffee-cups,” he said, “and then you will realize that you are really ‘away down upon the Swannee Ribber.’ ”
“Do you mean to tell me that the Suwannee is in ambush somewhere about here?” began Sara, in her lead-pencil voice. She always declared that her voice took a scratching tone when she asked a manuscript question.
“Not directly here, seeing that it flows into the Gulf of Mexico, but it is in Florida, and therefore will do for melodious comparisons. You will hear that song often enough, Miss St. John; it is the invariable resource of all the Northern sailing parties on the inlet by moonlight. What the Suwannee means by keeping itself hidden away over in the western part of the State I can not imagine. I am sure we Northerners for years have mentioned that ‘dar’s whar our hearts am turning ebber,’ in every key known to music.”
“The tune has a sweet melody of its own,” I said.