upon a howitzer; on the 21st of June his body lay upon the same howitzer at the same door, wrapped in the flag for which he gladly died as the symbol of human freedom. And so, drawn by the hands of young men lately strangers to him, but of whose bravery and loyalty he had been the laureate, and who fitly mourned him who had honored them, with long, pealing dirges and muffled drums, he moved forward.
Yet such was the electric vitality of this friend of ours, that those of us who followed him could only think of him as approving the funeral pageant, not the object of it, but still the spectator and critic of every scene in which he was a part. We did not think of him as dead. We never shall. In the moist, warm midsummer morning, he was alert, alive, immortal.
1
Stillfleet and His News
Home!
The Arago landed me at midnight in midwinter. It was a dreary night. I drove forlornly to my hotel. The town looked mean and foul. The first omens seemed unkindly. My spirits sank full fathom five into Despond.
But bed on shore was welcome after my berth on board the steamer. I was glad to be in a room that did not lurch or wallow, and could hold its tongue. I could sleep, undisturbed by moaning and creaking woodwork, forever threatening wreck in dismal refrain.
It was late next morning when a knock awoke me. I did not say, “Entrez,” or “Herein.”
Some fellows adopt those idioms after a week in Paris or a day in Heidelberg, and then apologize,—“We travellers quite lose our mother tongue, you know.”
“Come in,” said I, glad to use the vernacular.
A Patrick entered, brandishing a clothes-broom as if it were a shillalah splintered in a shindy.
“A jontlemin wants to see yer honor,” said he.
A gentleman to see me! Who can it be? I asked myself. Not Densdeth already! No, he is probably also making a late morning of it after our rough voyage. I fear I should think it a little ominous if he appeared at the threshold of my home life, as my first friend in America. Bah! Why should I have superstitions about Densdeth? Our intimacy on board will not continue on shore. What’s Hecuba to me, or I to Hecuba?
“A jontlemin to see yer honor,” repeated the Pat, with a peremptory flourish of his weapon.
“What name, Patrick?”
“I misremember the name of him, yer honor. He’s a wide-awake jontlemin, with three mustasshes,—two on his lip, and one at the point of his chin.”
Can it be Harry Stillfleet? I thought. He cannot help being wide-awake. He used to wear his beard à la three-moustache mode. His appearance as my first friend would be a capital omen. “Show him up, Pat!” said I.
“He shows himself up,” said a frank, electric voice. “Here he is, wide-awake, three moustaches, first friend, capital omen. Hail Columbia! beat the drums! Robert Byng, old boy, how are you?”
“Harry Stillfleet, old boy, how are you?”
“I am an old boy, and hope you are so too.”
“I trust so. It is the best thing that can be said of a full-grown man.”
“I saw your name on the hotel book,” Stillfleet resumed. “Rushed in to say, ‘How d’ ye do?’ and ‘Good-bye!’ I’m off to-day. Any friends out in the Arago?”
“No friends. A few acquaintances,—and Densdeth.”
“Name Densdeth friend, and I cut you bing-bang!”
“What! Densdeth, the cleverest man I have ever met?”
“The same.”
“Densdeth, handsome as Alcibiades, or perhaps I should say Absalom, as he is Hebrewish?”
“That very Alcibiades,—Absalom,—Densdeth.”
“Densdeth, the brilliant, the accomplished,—who fascinates old and young, who has been everywhere, who has seen everything, who knows the world de profundis,—a very Midas with the gold touch, but without the ass’s ears? Densdeth, the potent millionnaire?”
“Yes, Byng. And he can carry a great many more adjectives. He has qualities enough to make a regiment of average men. But my friends must be built of other stuff.”
“So must mine, to tell the truth, Harry. But he attracts me strangely. His sardonic humor suits one side of my nature.”
“The cynical side?”
“If I have one. The voyage would have been a bore without him. I had never met and hardly heard of him before; but we became intimate at once. He has shown me much attention.”
“No doubt. He knows men. You have a good name. You are to be somebody on your own account, we hope. Besides, Densdeth was probably aware of your old friendship with the Denmans.”
“He never spoke of them.”
“Naturally. He did not wish to talk tragedy.”
“Tragedy! What do you mean?”
“You have not heard the story of Densdeth and Clara Denman!” cried Stillfleet, in surprise.
“No. Shut up in Leipsic, and crowding my studies to come home, I have not heard a word of New York gossip for six months.”
“This is graver than gossip, Byng. It happened less than three months ago. Densdeth was to have married Clara Denman.”
“The cynical Densdeth marry that strange child!”
“You forget your ten years’ absence. The strange child grew up a noble woman.”
“Not a beauty,—that I cannot conceive.”
“No; but a genius. Once in a century Nature sends such a brave, earnest, tender, indignant soul on this low earth. All the men of genius were in love with her, except myself. But Densdeth, a bad genius, seemed to have won her. The wedding-day was fixed, cards out, great festivities; you know how a showy man like Denman would seize the occasion for splendor. One night she disappeared without sign. Three days afterward she was floated upon the beach down the bay,—drowned, poor thing!”
“What!” cried I, “Clara Denman, my weird little playmate! Dead! Drowned! I did not imagine how tenderly I had remembered her.”
“I was not her lover,” said Harry, “only a friend; but the world has seemed a mean and lonely place since she passed away so cruelly.”
The mercurial fellow was evidently greatly affected.
“She had that fine exaltation of nature,” continued he, “which frightens weak people. They said her wild, passionate moods brought her to the verge of madness.”
“A Sibylline soul.”
“Yes, a Sibyl who must see and know and suffer. Her friends gave out
