第16章 THE RETURN(1)

NEXT morning we were up by half-past five, according to agreement, and it was ten by the clock before our Jew boys returned to pick us up.Kelmar, Mrs.Kelmar, and Abramina, all smiling from ear to ear, and full of tales of the hospitality they had found on the other side.It had not gone unrewarded; for I observed with interest that the ship's kettles, all but one, had been "placed." Three Lake County families, at least, endowed for life with a ship's kettle.

Come, this was no misspent Sunday.The absence of the kettles told its own story: our Jews said nothing about them; but, on the other hand, they said many kind and comely things about the people they had met.The two women, in particular, had been charmed out of themselves by the sight of a young girl surrounded by her admirers; all evening, it appeared, they had been triumphing together in the girl's innocent successes, and to this natural and unselfish joy they gave expression in language that was beautiful by its simplicity and truth.

Take them for all in all, few people have done my heart more good; they seemed so thoroughly entitled to happiness, and to enjoy it in so large a measure and so free from after-thought; almost they persuaded me to be a Jew.There was, indeed, a chink of money in their talk.They particularly commanded people who were well to do."HE don't care - ain't it?" was their highest word of commendation to an individual fate; and here I seem to grasp the root of their philosophy -it was to be free from care, to be free to make these Sunday wanderings, that they so eagerly pursued after wealth; and all this carefulness was to be careless.The fine, good humour of all three seemed to declare they had attained their end.Yet there was the other side to it; and the recipients of kettles perhaps cared greatly.

No sooner had they returned, than the scene of yesterday began again.The horses were not even tied with a straw rope this time - it was not worth while; and Kelmar disappeared into the bar, leaving them under a tree on the other side of the road.I had to devote myself.I stood under the shadow of that tree for, I suppose, hard upon an hour, and had not the heart to be angry.Once some one remembered me, and brought me out half a tumblerful of the playful, innocuous American cocktail.I drank it, and lo! veins of living fire ran down my leg; and then a focus of conflagration remained seated in my stomach, not unpleasantly, for quarter of an hour.I love these sweet, fiery pangs, but I will not court them.The bulk of the time I spent in repeating as much French poetry as I could remember to the horses, who seemed to enjoy it hugely.And now it went -"O ma vieille Font-georges Ou volent les rouges-gorges:"and again, to a more trampling measure -

"Et tout tremble, Irun, Coimbre, Sautander, Almodovar, Sitot qu'on entend le timbre Des cymbales do Bivar."The redbreasts and the brooks of Europe, in that dry and songless land; brave old names and wars, strong cities, cymbals, and bright armour, in that nook of the mountain, sacred only to the Indian and the bear! This is still the strangest thing in all man's travelling, that he should carry about with him incongruous memories.There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and now and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the earth.