On the Lightship BY Herman Knickerbocker Vielé

Author of "The Inn of the Silver Moon," "Myra of the Pines," "The Last of the Knickerbockers," "Heartbreak Hill," etc.

Introduction by THOMAS A. JANVIER

DUFFIELD & COMPANY 1909

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Copyright, 1909, by DUFFIELD & COMPANY —— Published September, 1909

THE PREMIER PRESS NEW YORK

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INTRODUCTION

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INTRODUCTION

"On Board the Light-Ship" is the title—retained in loving deference to his intention—that would have been given to this collection of stories by their author. Had Vielé lived but a little while longer, he would have justified it by placing them in a setting characteristically fantastic and characteristically original.

He had planned to frame them in an encircling story describing, and duly accounting for, the chance assemblage aboard a vessel of that unusual type of a heterogeneous company; and—having in his own fanciful way convincingly disposed of conditions not precisely in line with the strictest probability—so to dovetail the several stories into their encirclement that the telling of them, in turn, would have come[Pg 10] easily and naturally from those upcasts of the sea.

It was a project wholly after his own heart. I can imagine the pleasure that he would have found in working his machinery—always out of sight, and always running with a silent smoothness—for getting together in that queer place his company of story-tellers. He would have used, of course, the Light-ship and the light-keepers as his firmly real ground-work. Ship and crew would have been presented in a matter-of-fact way, in keeping with their recognized matter-of-fact existence, that subtly would have instilled the habit of belief into the minds of his readers: and so would have led them onward softly, being in a way hypnotized, to an equal belief—as he slipped lightly along, with seemingly the same simplicity and the same ingenuousness—in what assuredly would not have been matter-of-fact explanations of how those story-tellers happened to be at large upon the ocean before they were taken on board!

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That far I can follow him: but the play of fancy that he would have put into his explanations—as he accounted in all manner of quite probable impossible ways for such flotsam being adrift, and for its salvage aboard the Light-ship—would have been so wholly the play of his own alert individual fancy that it is beyond my ken. All that I can be sure of—and be very sure of—is that his explanations of that marine phenomenon, and of the coming of its several members up out of the sea and over the ship's rail, would have been very delightfully and very speciously satisfying. That the explanations might have been less convincing when critically analyzed is a negligible detail: the only essential requirement of a fantastic tale being that it shall be convincing as it goes along.

Even my bald outline of this story—that now never will be told—shows how harmoniously in keeping it is with Vielé's literary method. He delighted in creating delicately fantastic conditions lightly [Pg 12]bordering upon the impossible; and, having created them, in so re-solving their elements into the seemingly commonplace and the apparently probable that the fine art with which he worked his transmutations was veiled by the very perfection of its accomplishment.

Such was the method that he employed in the making of what I cherish as his master-piece: "The Inn of the Silver Moon"—a story told so simply and so directly, and with such a color of engaging frankness, that each turn in its series of airily-adjusted impossible situations is accepted with an unquestioning pleasure; and that leaves upon the mind of the reader—even when released from the spell that compels belief throughout the reading of it—a lasting impression of verity. It was the method, precisely, of an exquisite form of literary art that has not flowered more perfectly, I hold with submission, since the time of the so-called Romantic School in Germany: when de la Motte Fouqué [Pg 13]created "Undine," and Eichendorff created the "Good-for-Nothing," and all the world went at a gay quick-step to bright soft music that had been silent for nearly three hundred years.

Beyond recognizing the fact that it is of the same genre, to class "The Inn of the Silver Moon" with "Undine" is to belittle it by an over-claim; but to class it with "Aus dem Leben eines Tongenichts" is to make a comparison in its favor: since Eichendorff's happy ending is a little forced and a little tawdry; while Vielé's happy ending is as inevitable as it is gracious—a result flowing smoothly from all the precedent conditions, and so deftly revealed at the crisic culminating moment that a perfecting finish is given to the delightingly perfect logic of its surprise.

The manner of the making of the two stories is identical; and so is their peculiar charm. In his preface to his translation of the "Good-for-Nothing," forty years and more ago, Charles Godfrey Leland wrote:[Pg 14] "Like a bird, the youthful hero flits along with his music over Austria and Italy—as semi-mysterious in his unpremeditated course, fed by chance, and as pleasing in his artless character"; which is close to being—if for artless we read sophisticated artlessness—an accurate description of the joint journeying of Monsieur Vifour and Mademoiselle de Belle Isle. And Leland added: "It is strikingly characteristic of the whole book that it abounds in adroitly-hidden touches of art which produce an effect without betraying effort on the part of the writer. We are willing to declare that we never read a story so light and airy, or one betraying so little labor; but critical study soon tells us quant' é difficile questa facilità! All this ease is the grace of a true genius, who makes no false steps and has carefully

estimated his own powers." That description fits "The Inn of the Silver Moon" to a hair!

In part, it applies only a little less closely to "Myra of the Pines"—in which is much[Pg 15] the same gay irresponsibility of motive and of action; the same light touch, so sure that each delicate point is made with a firm clearness; and the same play—save for the jarring note struck by the "pig-man"—of a gently keen and a very subtle humour: that maintains farce on the plane of high comedy by hiding artful contrivance under a seeming artlessness; and that sparklingly crystallizes into turns of phrase so seemingly spontaneous in their accurate appositeness that the look of accident is given to them by their carefully perfected felicity.

"The Last of the Knickerbockers" has this same humour and this same happiness of phrasing; and in its serious midst is set the fantastic episode of "The Yellow Sleigh"—that needs only to be amplified to become another "Inn of the Silver Moon." But there its resemblance to Vielé's other stories ends. Least of all has "The Inn of the Silver Moon" anything in common with it. That delectable thistle-down romance goes trippingly over sunbeams in a [Pg 16]straightaway course that has no intricacies: with all the interest constantly focussed upon a heroine and a hero to whom all the other characters are minor and accessory; and with never a break in the light-hearted note that is struck at the start. "The Last of the Knickerbockers," a blend of comedy and semi-tragedy, is far away from all this—both in spirit and in form. It is the most largely and the most seriously conceived of Vielé's works: not a romance, but a novel with a substantial plot carefully developed in intricate action; and while the main interest is centred—as properly

it should be—upon a wholly charming heroine and a wholly satisfying hero, these pleasing young people are made to know, and to keep, their place in a crowd of strong characters strongly drawn.

It is a good story to read simply as a story; but it is more than that, it is a document: an ambered preservation of a phase of New York society that already almost has vanished, and that soon will have [Pg 17]vanished absolutely—when the last Mrs. and Mr. Bella Ruggles shall have closed to decayed aristocracy the last shabbily pretentious boarding house in the last dingy Kenilworth Place; and when decayed aristocracy, so evicted, shall be forced to dwell in apartment-houses of the bell-and-speaking-tube type, and to dine (as Alida prophetically put it) "at Italian tables-d'hôte—like the Café Chianti, in grandfather's old house, where they have music and charge only fifty cents, including wine"!

So true a presentment as this story is of New York's old-time strait faiths and straiter social customs will outlive long, I am confident, the great mass of the fiction of Vielé's day. It will be actively alive while even a faint memory of those faiths and customs is cherished by living people; and when all of such ancients shall have retired (with the final befitting dignity attendant upon a special license) to their family homes beneath the shadows of St. Mark's and Trinity, carrying their [Pg 18]memories with them, it will become, as I have said, a document: preserving the traditions which otherwise would have been buried with them; and so linking permanently—as they linked temporarily—New York's ever-increasingly ardent present with its ever-paling less strenuous past.

As to "The Inn of the Silver Moon," I can see no end to the lastingness of it: since in the very essence of it is that which holds humanity with an enduringly binding spell. The luring charm of a happy love-story—charged with gay fantasy and epigrammatic grace and gently pungent humour—is a charm perpetual and irresistible: that must hold and bind while ever the world goes happily in ever-fresh sunshine, and happily has in it ever-fresh young hearts.

Thomas A. Janvier.

New York, June 20, 1909.

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THE STORY OF IGNATIUS, THE ALMONER

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THE STORY OF IGNATIUS, THE ALMONER

Though this happened at the Butler Penfields' garden party, the results concern Miss Mabel Dunbar more than any one else, except, perhaps, one other. Mabel had been invited, as she was invited everywhere, partly because she was a very pretty girl, and helped to make things go, and partly through public policy.

"So long as the dear child remains unmarried," Mrs. Fessenden had said, "we must continue to buy our tea from her."

For Mabel owed her amber draperies to the tea she sold and everybody bought because her grandmother had lived on Washington Square. In society, to speak of tea was to speak of Mabel Dunbar; to look in Mabel's deep brown eyes was to think of tea, and, incidentally, of cream and sugar.

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"I used to consider her clever," Mrs. Fessenden remarked, "until she became so popular with clever men.... It is really most discouraging.... See, there is Lena Livingston, who has read Dante, pretending to talk to her own brother-in-law, while Mabel, who is not even married, walks off with Archer Ferris and Horace Hopworthy, one on each side."

"I do wonder what she talks to them about," speculated Mrs. Penfield, and Mrs. Fessenden replied:

"My dear, you may depend, they do not let her talk."

Mrs. Penfield reflected, while three backs, two broad and one slender and sinuous as a tea-plant, receded toward the shrubbery.

"I wonder which one Mabel will come back with?" she said.

"If Jack were here, he would give odds on Mr. Hopworthy," replied Jack's wife.

"Of course, Mr. Hopworthy is the coming man," observed Mrs. Penfield. "But Mr. Ferris has 'arrived.'"

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"Yes," assented Mrs. Fessenden, "as Jack says, he has arrived and taken all the rooms.... But, then, I have great faith in Mr. Hopworthy. You know Jack's aunt discovered him."

"Yes," said Mrs. Penfield, "I remember, but, Clara, it was you that introduced him."

"Oh, that was nothing," murmured Clara. "We were very glad——"

"My two best men!" sighed Mrs. Penfield, her eyes upon the shrubbery, where nothing now was to be seen.

"Yes," acquiesced her friend, "but think how badly that last Ceylon turned out."

Meanwhile, the three had found a cool retreat, an arbour sheltered from the sun and open to the air, wherein a rustic garden seat, a table and a chair extended cordial invitations.

"Ah, this is just the place!" cried Archer Ferris. "By shoving this seat along a trifle, and putting this chair here, we can be very comfortable."

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It was noticeable that Mr. Ferris retained possession of the chair. As for the vacant place beside her on the bench, Mabel's parasol lay upon it. Mr. Ferris beamed as only the arrived can beam.

"With your permission, I will take the table," said Mr. Hopworthy, looking to Miss Dunbar, who smiled. Mr. Ferris became overcast.

"I fear our conversation may not interest you," he told the other man. "You know, you do not write short stories."

And this was not the first time in the last half hour that Mr. Ferris had offered Mr. Hopworthy an opportunity to withdraw. The latter smiled, a broad, expansive smile.

"Oh, but I read them," he persisted, perching on the table. "That is," he added, "when there is plot enough to keep one awake."

Here Mr. Ferris smiled, or, rather, pouted, for his mouth, contrasted with that of Mr. Hopworthy, seemed child-like, not to say cherubic.

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"Plots," he observed, "are quite Victorian. We are, at least, decadent, are we not, Miss Mabel?"

Mabel smoothed her amber skirt, and tried to look intelligent.

"Oh, yes, indeed," she said.

"Now, there was a story in last week's Bee called 'Ralph Ratcliffe's Reincarnation,'" continued the gentleman on the table. "Did you read it, Miss Dunbar?"

"I laid it aside to read," she answered, with evasion.

"Pray don't. It's in my weakest vein," remonstrated Mr. Ferris. "One writes down for the Bee, you know."

"Pardon me," said Mr. Hopworthy, "I did not recognize the author's name as one of yours."

"No one with fewer than twelve names should call himself in literature," the other said, a little vauntingly.

Mr. Hopworthy embraced his knee.

"The plot of that story——" he had begun to say, when Mr. Ferris interrupted.

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"There are but seven plots," he explained, "and thirty situations. To one that knows his trade, the outcome of a story should be from the very beginning as obvious as a properly opened game of chess."

"How interesting it must be to write," put in Miss Dunbar appreciatively. Perhaps, in her simple way, she speculated as to where the present situation came among the thirty, and whether the sunbeam she was conscious of upon her hair had any literary value.

"Do you ever see the Stylus?" inquired Mr. Hopworthy, from whose position the sunbeam could be observed to best advantage.

"Sir," said Mr. Ferris, through his Boucher lips, "I may say I am the Stylus."

"Really!" cried the lady, though she could not have been greatly surprised.

In truth, her exclamation veiled the tendency to yawn often induced in the young by objective conversation. If clever people[Pg 27] only knew a little more, they would not so often talk of stupid things.

"Ah, then it is to you we owe that spirited little fabliau called 'The Story of Ignatius, the Almoner'?" remarked Mr. Hopworthy, almost indifferently.

"A trifle," said the other; "what we scribblers call 'hack.'"

Mr. Hopworthy's broad mouth contracted, and he might have been observed to suffer from some suppressed emotion.

"But you wrote it, did you not?" he asked, beneath his breath.

"I dashed it off in twenty minutes," said the other.

"But it was yours?" insisted Mr. Hopworthy.

"When I wrote that little story——" said Mr. Archer Ferris.

"'The Story of Ignatius, the Almoner?'" prompted Mr. Hopworthy, with unnecessary insistence.

"'The Story of Ignatius, the Almoner,'" repeated Mr. Ferris, flushing[Pg 28] slightly, while Mr. Hopworthy seemed to clutch the table to keep himself from bounding upward.

"I was convinced of it!" he cried. "No other hand could have penned it. The pith, the pathos, passion, power, and purpose of the tale were masterly, and yet it was so simple and sincere, so logical, so convincing, so inevitable, so——"

"Spare me," protested Mr. Ferris, not at all displeased. "But it had a sort of rudimentary force, I own."

"And have you read it, Miss Dunbar?" inquired Mr. Hopworthy, almost letting slip one anchor.

"No," she replied, "but I have laid it aside to read. I shall do so now with added pleasure."

"Unless the author would consent to tell it to us in his own inspired words——" said Mr. Hopworthy, regarding his boot toe with interest. Miss Dunbar caught at the suggestion.

"Oh, do!" she pleaded. "I should so love to hear a story told by the author."

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"An experience to remember," murmured Mr. Hopworthy.

"I am afraid it would be rather too long to tell this afternoon," demurred the author, with a glance of apprehension toward the sky.

"But you dashed it off in twenty minutes," the other man reminded him.

"That is another reason," said the writer. "Work done with such rapidity is apt to leave but a slight impression on the memory."

"Perhaps a little turn about the grounds——" suggested Mr. Hopworthy.

Miss Dunbar had put up her amber parasol, and the lace about it fell just across her eyes. This left the seat beside her free.

"Perhaps a little turn——" urged Mr. Hopworthy again. Mr. Ferris regarded him defiantly.

"As you have read my story, sir," he said, "I can scarcely hope to include you in my audience."

"But it is not at all the sort of thing one is satisfied to hear but once," Mr. [Pg 30]Hopworthy declared, in a tone distinctly flattering. Mr. Ferris moved uneasily.

"I really forget how it began," he asserted. "Perhaps another time——"

"If I might presume to jog your memory——" said Mr. Hopworthy, with deference.

"Oh, that would be delightful!" exclaimed Miss Dunbar. "With two such story-tellers, I feel just like Lalla Rookh."

Mr. Ferris was upon his feet at once.

"I suggest we adjourn to the striped tent," he said; "they have all sorts of ices there."

"Oh, but I mean the Princess, not frozen punch," declared Mabel, settling herself more securely in the corner of the garden seat. "Please sit down, and begin by telling me exactly what an almoner is."

Mr. Ferris hesitated, cast one glance toward the open lawn beyond the shrubbery, another to the amber parasol, and sat down in the other corner. Mr. Hopworthy slipped from the table to the vacant chair.

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"An almoner," explained the Stylus, in as nearly an undertone as the letter of courtesy permitted, "is a sort of treasurer, you know.... In a monastery, you understand.... The monk who distributes alms and that sort of thing."

"Oh, then it is a mediæval story!" cried Mabel. "How delightful!"

"No, modern," corrected Mr. Hopworthy.

"Modern in setting, though mediæval in spirit," said Mr. Ferris, taking off his hat.

"Ah, that, indeed!" breathed Mr. Hopworthy. "I shall not soon forget your opening description; that picture of the old cathedral, lighted only by the far, faint flicker of an occasional taper, burning before some shrined saint. I can see him now, Ignatius, the young monk, as he moves in silence from one to another of the alms-boxes, gathering into his leathern bag the offerings that have been deposited by the faithful."

"I think he had a light," suggested the[Pg 32] author of short stories, who was listening, critically.

"Of course; a flaming torch."

"How sweet of him!" Mabel murmured, and Mr. Hopworthy went on.

"There were twelve boxes—were there not?—upon as many pillars, and in each box, in addition to the customary handful of copper sous, there lay, as I recall it, a silver coin——"

"You will perceive the symbolism," the author whispered.

"It is perfect," sighed Mabel.

"Never had such a thing occurred before," continued Mr. Hopworthy, who appeared to know the story very well, "and in the solitude of his cell, Ignatius sat for hours contemplating the riches that had so strangely come into his hand. His first thought was of the poor, to whom, of right, the alms belonged; but, when he recalled the avarice of The Abbot, his heart misgave him——"