The Yale literary magazine (Vol. LXXXIX, No. 3, December 1923)

She received him at the head of the steps, with great cordiality, and led the way to the parlor.

“Mrs. Poëy, you have no idea how splendid it is to get back after such a long time,” he told her as they sat down. Whereupon they talked of old times, while he avoided speaking of Yzlita-Audrey until Mrs. Poëy should mention her. The sun was setting as they spoke at length on the changes in Havana, on the passing of the old American colony and its replacement by one grossly new. Mrs. Poëy did not seem so unhappy as Mayo had expected to find her after her daughter’s departure. In fact, she looked very cheerful and carefree. How brave women were!

Then, as dusk quickly came, they sat in silence for a few moments. It was the sort of silence that can fall only between two friends of long standing. And into the silence stepped Yzlita-Audrey, swiftly.

“Mother,” she began, but stopped as she realized there was a visitor. “_Henry!_” Her recognition through the dimness of the room came joyfully, her voice as thrilling as a midnight bell.

After an unreal moment of amazement, all Mayo could do was to turn to Mrs. Poëy and slowly say, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why didn’t you ask me?” she laughed back, with her inscrutable, quiet smile; and then, suddenly brisk, “Well, I must go upstairs on a thousand errands.” Her eyes, however, were very kind as she left the room.

Mayo turned to find that Yzlita-Audrey was standing slimly outlined against the dusk of a tall French window, as she gazed pensively down at the garden. He burst into a laugh for very joy—a laugh full of the happiness that came flooding over him with the removal of that mantle of sorrow. At the sound, the figure in the window turned, and her quiet mirth came to him as she said, “You funny man! I love your laugh, but I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re laughing at.”

“Not the slightest?”

“Well—perhaps, the very slightest.... But how are you? I suppose you’ve come on your honeymoon, to mock an old maid?” The tone was bantering, but seriousness underlay it.

“Nothing less!—six wives and four hundred hat-boxes!” He joined her at the window, and told the story of his trip. “And you?”

“Oh, Nino was a bad little boy, so I spanked him verbally and sent him away. And that’s that.” She moved her hands in pretty finality, and made a humorous little move. “Besides,” she added, “Italy is so far away.”

“From Cuba?”

“Oh, yes,—Cuba,” as though that were an afterthought.

“And only from Cuba?” he pursued.

“Oh, Italy’s far from all sorts of places.” Then, as he waited, “Silly Mr. Fisherman! And it’s ever so far from—wherever you live now.”

“Elysium, General Delivery,” he supplied.

“Elysium, then,” with elaborate boredom.

They stood at the window in silence, and watched a moon almost full move slowly up the sky. Its wan radiance bathed the clusters of palms on the plain that spread behind the house at the horizon, and put uncertain silver fingers on the garden below them. Mayo turned to gaze at the girl beside him, and saw the moon’s caress on her hair.

“Yzlita-Audrey.” He lingered over the name. “This is like a dream come true.”

After a long moment, she answered musingly, “It’s almost too good to be true. I am so glad you’re here.—Tell me, did you ever really think I’d run off and marry an Italian count?”

Mayo took her reverently in his arms, and said with actual sincerity, “Why, the very idea! It never occurred to me you would. That’s why I came back.”

R. P. CRENSHAW, JR.

_Portfolio_

_Song_

You roses that lean away to the South, You lilies the wind wanders over Carry these kisses away from my mouth To the pretty curved lips of my lover. Please her and soothe her and smooth her hair, Fragrant, and colored with pansies, Lull her and sing to her dreaming there, Maiden sweet with her fancies.

And you, O winds, that so carelessly go, Lifting across the green grasses, You, O winds, who exultantly know That she is the Lady of Lasses, Breathe on and warm her and charm her there, And into the dusk of her sleeping Bring her soft melodies crooning where Honeysuckle is creeping.

F. D. ASHBURN.

“_Moon Magic_”

He lifted his head. He was drowsy and the dim light created an atmosphere of restfulness. The rough wooden bench on which he sat lay against the wall and the hardness of it, and the stone behind him, caused him to move uneasily in an attempt to adjust himself to a greater degree of comfort. He ceased to wonder why he stayed. It was an old church seldom visited by tourists, perhaps because there was little of beauty about its grey walls and ancient altar-stones. True, it had its tradition and history, but little had occurred in this out-of-the-way corner of England to cause the traveller to turn his steps thither. Moss grew within the crevices, while the cold sides of a dismembered tomb, lying open to the fading sunlight through a ruined corner, was the chapel of a horde of flowers that climbed up and about it in long trailing wreaths.

Another corner, on the far side, contained the hideously modern statue of a saint who stood with a finger warningly upraised, his gaze upon one sandalled foot which stood revealed from beneath the painted cassock. A sign beside him besought the curious to burn a candle; but there were no candles and the saint himself seemed to have fallen on hard days: his color had faded and his nose was broken.

Through the one-time windows the evening sun was slipping away beneath a rose and gold cloak, and the blue of the hills was dark against the paler blue of the sky. The mists from below crept up slowly, like white shepherds driving their sheep. It became thicker, after a little, and darker; the saint in his corner became a dim misshape, and, when the man raised his head again, it was nearly dark. He sprang to his feet with an exclamation and crossed towards the door, but he could not see his way and he felt around the wall until he came to the tomb, where he paused for a moment to consider.

From somewhere below, there came a faint piping. He raised his head to listen, but it had gone and a feeling akin to apprehension stole over him. It was strange to be alone in this once holy place, and he determined to wait until the moon had risen and he could see to make his way down to the village again. Something stirred before him and a small shape scurried past his feet; he could hear it scraping across the stone flagging. He called to it gently and there was silence which, although he listened for several minutes, was not broken.

Drowsiness came upon him. He lay back upon the stone and closed his eyes. When he awoke the moon was shining down upon him softly, a silver Argos on a winking sea. He was strangely content, and it seemed at last that the moon was falling and he could hear laughing voices about him, and that a fierce, wild wind was lashing itself around him. He felt himself lifted and carried he knew not where; but the moon was beside him, small like a lantern, and he turned his head to watch it glimmer.

He thought he stood upon a high tower, while the wind sang about him and the moon lay still at his feet like a silver bubble. Below him lay the land, barren and grey like a dusky desert, while through it ran a blue stream threading its way to the distant horizon. Then the wind caught him up again and the moon brushed against his hand as they rose.

They were passing over a mighty sea and he saw, tossing upon the crest of a mighty wave, a tiny ship, and he seemed to hear the cries of the sailors; and the wind bore him on its way until he found himself upon the shore of the sea, the moon hanging a little above him. Beside him stood a warrior, clad in armor and leaning upon his shield. He moved a little nearer and, as he looked into his face, the warrior turned away and let his shield fall upon the ground. Whereupon the waves crept up around it and carried it away with them down into the sea.

He stood upon a city wall. Below him the people were crowding the marketplaces. Some carried torches and others garlands. It was a time of rejoicing, but, hovered against the wall, he saw a beggar, old and blind. He called upon the wind to take him away and he saw no more.

Their way lay over strange lands and grey mountains, and he lay half sleeping as the wind bore him on its way. At last he felt himself falling.

He lay upon a barge going down a golden river. He could hear the boatmen singing as they swept their oars against the side. He opened his eyes. For a moment he stared fixedly and saw above him two shining stars which laughed and danced like liquid flames. He knew at once that they were eyes, the eyes of a woman bent low over him. Her lips gleamed red against the whiteness of her face, and about her white shoulders her black hair tumbled like an angry sea. She was singing softly above the chant of the boatmen and her words were these:

“Come sail with me along Romance’s golden streams, Our ship, Imagination, and our sailwinds—dreams!”

He reached his arms up to her, but her face had faded and he could see only the moon high above, a dim white light steady, clear, and cold.

He lay in the green rushes and saw the face of a water nymph laughing at him through the parted reeds. He stood within the vaulted chambers of a mighty castle where ghosts of dreams he dreamt which never came true, paced to and fro before him. At last he stood alone in a great lonely place, vastness about him and vastness below him. And then the moon fell beside him and he saw that she was a maid clad in silver cobwebs and sheen and that across her eyes was a mask of cloud. She put her lips to his and, though her lips were still, she sang:

“Night has been pierced and dawn’s scarlet Runs from the wound.”

* * * * *

He awoke with a start. The mists of morning lay about. The saint in his corner was smiling, or was it a ray of sunlight which lay across his lips? The mists were shot with amber and gold. It was morning.

PHILIP J. D. VAN DYKE.

_Echo_

As through the park at dusk we went, My Lady Evelyn and I, The night-winds through the tall trees sent A low moan trailing to a sigh.

And happy voices hushed to see The majesty soft darkness lent, While all romance came back to me, As through the gathering night we went.

And I would have it always so, To live in joy until I die, That through the dusk might ever go My lady Evelyn and I.

R. P. CRENSHAW, JR.

_Book Reviews_

_The High Place._ By JAMES BRANCH CABELL. (McBride.)

The hearts of young men have always provided Mr. Cabell with a ready stamping-ground. Youth which has not yet lost its imagination, which is still hoping its disillusionments are bad dreams, slips into the spirit of the Cabellian fantasy with too ardent asperity, so that when Jurgen or Manuel awakens in the world of things as they are, youth suffers more than any old man may. None of us have ever had much sympathy with the church-league critics of the manners of Poictesme, since the very elements which aroused the righteousness of these people formed an essential and legitimate part of our dreams and our ideals. We were thankful that if life held little promise to our masculine delicacy of desire, _Jurgen_ at least provided us with a satisfactory literature. That is more or less our reason for wishing Mr. Cabell’s tales to go unchallenged, and for our thinking his formerly slight eroticism a necessary factor in the weaving of his enchantments.

Now, even the illusion of Poictesme has worn thin from over-handling. Still in the _High Place_ there are those rare moments of adventure or frustration we have learned to expect and love. But Mr. Cabell has disclosed that his mind can be filthy as well as fantastic. His double meanings are here inexcusable both for their schoolboy crudity and for their quite obvious irrelevance to the general scheme of things; it is not a question of morals, but of taste. When certain passages remain inexplicable except as unadulterated smut, we cannot help smiling at the irony of the exalted title. What Mr. Cabell regard as his _High Place_ is sometimes far too low to sustain his reputation. We advise those who are unacquainted with this author to begin elsewhere in his works.

D. G. C.

_Hassan._ By JAMES ELROY FLECKER. (Alfred A. Knopf.)

James Elroy Flecker is dead. But from London comes word that “Hassan”, his latest and great work, is playing, and has for months played, to packed houses. Flecker lived most of his life in the Orient, and has in this play indelibly caught its beauty, its poetry, and its cruelty.

The setting of “Hassan”, and the manner in which it is outlined through the characters, is the feature of a work whose merits are legion. The background is one of liquid beauty, a tissue woven of moonbeams and fancies, and of all the things in which the East finds inspiration. The lyric passages are delightful, and sometimes burst spontaneously into haunting poetry.

Upon this background there move living characters. Hassan, a humble confectioner of Bagdad at the time of Haroun Al Raschid, is an ugly man with a poetic soul. He falls in love, and his love is not returned until the Caliph Haroun raises him to power. With loss of power, love leaves him again. Subtle touches of humor and innuendo abound in the play, and serve to outline its essential tragedy.

In the Oriental spirit which “Hassan” so well portrays, there is a gorgeousness of beauty which is too highly colored long to retain its first unfaded charm for a Westerner. Perhaps the reason why “Hassan’s” influence holds is that in it a Westerner has given his own practical application to the scenes he describes, from a mind kindred to our own. However that may be, the work is strong and fundamental, and fascinatingly interprets an unfamiliar view of life. The setting is painted in enduring colors from Hassan’s love lyric to those final deep-toned stanzas:

“We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go Always a little further; it may be Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow, Across that angry or that glimmering sea.

“White on a throne or guarded in a cave There lives a prophet who can understand Why men were born; but surely we are brave, Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.”

R. P. C., JR.

_The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall._ By THOMAS HARDY.

“The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall” is, in Mr. Hardy’s own words, “a new version of an old story”. And yet this version, it would seem, lies closer to Gottfried of Strasburg and the traditional Celtic story of “Tristram and Iseult” than many we have had of late, closer in spirit at least if not in actual incident. This authenticity of spirit might have been expected, though, for the realm of the tragic queen “at Lintagel in Lyonnesse” lies within Mr. Hardy’s own special province of Wessex, and Queen Iseult and Iseult the Whitehanded are after all but a step removed from the heroines of the Wessex novels.

Mr. Hardy has chosen for his play, with an admirable sense of the dramatic, that point in the story of the “twain mismated” when for the last time the paths of their lives converged, when for the last time Tristram came from Brittany—to see his Iseult the Fair and after a brief moment of bitterness and ecstacy to fall at her feet, stabbed in the back by her husband, King Mark. The spirit of Mr. Hardy’s play and the spirit of Mr. Hardy’s characters are, I have said, essentially that of the thirteenth century chronicler. There is a certain rudeness and strength and withal a certain other-worldliness against which the slender flame of the passion of Tristram and Iseult burns with exceeding brilliancy. There is a certain subtlety in the painting of such emotions as the jealousy of the Queen Iseult and of Iseult the Whitehanded in such a line as the Queen Iseult’s—

“Love, others’ somewhile dainty, Is my starved, all-day meal!”

—which gives to these figures of legend an unsuspected glow of life. But through it all there is the firmness of touch and the strange broken felicity of expression which we have found so characteristic of Mr. Hardy.

“... the seas sloped like houseroofs all the way.”

says Iseult of her journey to Brittany.

“I’ll fade your face to strangeness in my eyes!”

are Tristram’s words to his wife, Iseult the Whitehanded. Somewhere Iseult speaks of “the self-sown pangs of prying”. And in the music of such lines as those of Iseult the Whitehanded, broken with tragedy, lies the note of the play itself:—

“... This stronghold moans with woes, And jibbering voices join with winds and waves To make a dolorous din!...”

Plays of the nature of “The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall” demand, it must be remarked, a curious type of production. On its title page Mr. Hardy has called his work “a play for mummers in one act requiring no theatre or scenery”. So it will be given by the local players in Mr. Hardy’s own town of Dorchester. He has himself, in the preface to “The Dynasty”, suggested for “such play of poesy and dream ... a monotonic delivery of speeches, with dreamy conventionalized gestures, something in the manner traditionally maintained by the old Christmas mummers, the curiously hypnotizing impressiveness of whose automatic style—that of persons who spoke by no will of their own—may be remembered by all who ever experienced it”. The effectiveness of such a manner, coupled with Mr. Hardy’s blank verse and the brooding accompaniment of the chorus of chanters—the shades of dead old Cornish men and the shades of dead Cornish women—would be very great indeed.

It is enough to say, though, that Mr. Hardy has held his position of eminence for almost fifty years and that in “The Famous Tragedy of the Queen of Cornwall” his power has not been lost. In such lines as—

“Nor life nor death Is worth a special quest,”

we read the old hand.

R. L. P.

_Young Felix._ By FRANK SWINNERTON. (George H. Doran.)

In “Young Felix”, Frank Swinnerton has thoroughly exposed the Hunter family. Grumps, Auntie Lallums, Ma and Pa, Godfrey and Felix—every one is perfectly distinct and deeply comprehended. It is a beautiful tale of bubbling mirth overcoming every disaster, for there is the charm of the Hunter family—no matter how great the opposition may be, their infinite good-nature rises to the top and the day is saved. As some one said of Felix, “He would be a great success in any profession—or a great failure”.

It is a pleasant contrast to the presentday novels of youth in America. If the lack of sophistication in the young Felix seems improbable, at least it is better to err on that side than the ultra-mature nature of our own precocious urchins. There is quite enough humor in this book without exaggerating the unruly side of youth. The story throughout is of the lowest stratum of middle-class life already so well handled by Arnold Bennett, the early H. G. Wells, Hugh Walpole, and John Galsworthy. We have no such quintet over here, but we can take comfort in the fact that they are writing in the same language and enriching it.

There is much in “Young Felix” which recalls the earlier “Nocturne”, and yet I believe this is even finer. It has the same lovely quiet, but there is added a treasure of irrepressible humor that outshines anything Swinnerton has ever done. As Mr. Wells says: “Seen through his art, life is seen as one sees things through a crystal lens, more intensely, more completed, and with less turbidity.”