Ellis Wynne - "The Sleeping Bard"

Alexandre Dumas - "Le Capitaine Arena"

Anonymous - "The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III"

Gottfried Keller - "Die Leute von Seldwyla, Vol. 1"

Editorial
This article explores Rohinton Mistry's novel A Fine Balance (1996), alongside his short story "Lend Me Your Light" (1987), focussing on the tensions between the politically-distanced cosmopolitan migrant and the socially-committed local activist. My readings draw on Radhakrishnan's notion of diasporic "double duty" — of accountability to, rather than irresponsible detachment from, the homeland. Mistry's representations of migrants, I contend, are centrally concerned not only with the necessity, but also the difficulty, of performing such "double duty" through a sustained engagement with India's history and politics. In this light, I argue that Mistry offers representations of migrants whose attempts to distance themselves from local and national politics are revealed as impossible and irresponsible. Moreover, I suggest that Mistry's representations reveal an anxiety over his position as a migrant writer, and his work seems to mobilize writing as a means of avoiding a problematically apolitical detachment from India. Thus, Mistry establishes a tension between his representation of the migrant within his fiction and his negotiation of his own migrant position through his fiction.

The Spread Eagle and Other Stories

G >> Gouverneur Morris >> The Spread Eagle and Other Stories



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charlie Kirschner
and PG Distributed Proofreaders




THE

SPREAD EAGLE

AND OTHER STORIES

BY

GOUVERNEUR MORRIS

AUTHOR OF "THE FOOTPRINT, AND OTHER STORIES," ETC.

1910



_TO ELSIE, PATSIE, AND KATE_

_I had thought to sit in the ruler's chair,
But three pretty girls are sitting there--
Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.
I had thought to lord it with eyes of gray,
I had thought to be master, and have_ my _way;
But six blue eyes vote_: nay, nay, nay!
_Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.

Of Petticoats three I am sore afraid,
(Though Kate's is more like a candle-shade),
Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.
And I must confess (with shame) to you
That time there was when Petticoats two
Were enough to govern me through and through,
Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.

Oh Patsie, third of a bullying crew,
And Elsie, and Kate, be it known to you--
To Elsie, Patsie, and Kate,
That Elsie_ alone _was strong enough
To smother a motion, or call a bluff,
Or any small pitiful atom thereof--
Elsie, Patsie, and Kate.

So, though I've renounced that ruler's part
To which I was born (as is writ in my heart),
Elsie, Patsie, and Kate,
Though I do what I'm told (yes, you_ know _I do)
And am made to write stories (and sell them, too).
Still--I wish to God I had more like you,
Elsie, Patsie, and Kate_.

BAR HARBOR, _August_, 1910.




AUTHOR'S NOTE

Certain persons have told me (for nothing) that "White Muscats of
Alexandria" resembles a tale in the Arabian Nights. And so it does.
Most damningly. And this is printed in the hope of saving other
persons postage.




CONTENTS

_The Spread Eagle
Targets
The Boot
The Despoiler
One More Martyr
"Ma'am?"
Mr. Holiday
White Muscats of Alexandria
Without a Lawyer
The "Monitor" and the "Merrimac"
The McTavish
The Parrot
On the Spot; or, The Idler's House-Party_




THE SPREAD EAGLE

In his extreme youth the adulation of all with whom he came in contact
was not a cross to Fitzhugh Williams. It was the fear of expatriation
that darkened his soul. From the age of five to the age of fourteen he
was dragged about Europe by the hair of his head. I use his own
subsequent expression. His father wanted him to be a good American; his
mother wanted him to be a polite American, And to be polite, in her
mind, was to be at home in French and German, to speak English (or
American) with the accent of no particular locality, to know famous
pictures when you saw them, and, if little, to be bosom friends with
little dukes and duchesses and counts of the Empire, to play in the
gravel gardens of St. Germain, to know French history, and to have for
exercise the mild English variations of American games--cricket instead
of base-ball; instead of football, Rugby, or, in winter, lugeing above
Montreux. To luge upon a sled you sit like a timid, sheltered girl, and
hold the ropes in your hand as if you were playing horse, and descend
inclines; whereas, as Fitzhugh Williams well knew, in America rich boys
and poor take their hills head first, lying upon the democratic turn.

It wasn't always Switzerland in winter. Now and again it was Nice or
Cannes. And there you were taught by a canny Scot to hit a golf ball
cunningly from a pinch of sand. But you blushed with shame the while,
for in America at that time golf had not yet become a manly game, the
maker young of men as good as dead, the talk of cabinets But there was
lawn tennis also, which you might play without losing caste "at home,"
Fitzhugh Williams never used that term but with the one meaning. He
would say, for instance, to the little Duchess of Popinjay--or one just
as good--having kissed her to make up for having pushed her into her
ancestral pond, "Now I am going to the house," meaning Perth House, that
Mrs. Williams had taken for the season. But if he had said, "Now I am
going home," the little Duchess would have known that he was going to
sail away in a great ship to a strange, topsy-turvy land known in her
set as "the States," a kind of deep well from which people hoist gold in
buckets, surrounded by Indians. Home did not mean even his father's
house. Let Fitzhugh Williams but catch sight of the long, white shore of
Long Island, or the Brooklyn Bridge, or the amazing Liberty, and the
word fluttered up from his heart even if he spoke it not. Ay, let him
but see the Fire Island light-ship alone upon the deep, and up leaped
the word, or the sensation, which was the same thing.

One Fourth of July they were in Paris (you go to Paris for tea-gowns to
wear grouse-shooting in Scotland), and when his valet, scraping and
bowing, informed Fitzhugh Williams, aged nine, that it was time to get
up, and tub, and go forth in a white sailor suit, and be of the world
worldly, Fitzhugh declined. A greater personage was summoned--Aloys,
"the maid of madame," a ravishing creature--to whom you and I, good
Americans though we are, could have refused nothing. But Fitzhugh would
not come out of his feather-bed. And when madame herself came, looking
like a princess even at that early hour, he only pulled the bedclothes a
little higher with an air of finality.

"Are you sick, Fitzhugh?"

"No, mamma."

"Why won't you get up?"

His mother at least was entitled to an explanation.

"I won't get up," said he, "because I'm an American."

"But, my dear, it's the glorious Fourth. All good Americans are up."

"All good Americans," said Fitzhugh, "are at home letting off
fire-crackers."

"Still," said his mother, "I think I'd get up if I were you. It's lovely
out. Not hot."

"I won't get up," said Fitzhugh, "because it's the Fourth, because I'm
an American, and because I have nothing but English clothes to put on."

His mother, who was the best sort in the world, though obstinate about
bringing-up, and much the prettiest woman, sat down on the bed and
laughed till the tears came to her eyes. Fitzhugh laughed, too. His mind
being made up, it was pleasanter to laugh than to sulk.

"But," said his mother, "what's the difference? Your pajamas are
English, too."

Fitzhugh's beautiful brown eyes sparkled with mischief.

"What!" exclaimed his mother. "You wretched boy, do you mean to tell me
that you haven't your pajamas on?"

Fitzhugh giggled, having worsted his mother in argument, and pushed down
the bedclothes a few inches, disclosing the neck and shoulders of that
satiny American suit in which he had been born.

Mrs. Williams surrendered at once.

"My dear," she exclaimed, "if you feel so strongly about it I will send
your man out at once to buy you some French things. They were our
allies, you know."

"Thank you, mamma," said Fitz, "and if you'll give me the pad and pencil
on the table I'll write to granny."

Thus compromise was met with compromise, as is right. Fitz wrote a very
short letter to granny, and drew a very long picture of crossing the
Delaware, with Nathan Hale being hanged from a gallows on the bank; and
Mrs. Williams sent Benton for clothes, and wrote out a cable to her
husband, a daily cable being the one thing that he who loved others to
have a good time was wont to exact "Dear Jim," ran the cable, at I
forget what the rates were then per word, "I wish you were here. It's
bright and beautiful; not too hot. Fitz would not get up and put on
English clothes, being too patriotic. You will run over soon if you can,
won't you, if only for a minute," etc., etc.

I know one thing of which the reader has not as yet got an inkling, The
Williamses were rich. They were rich, passing knowledge, passing belief.
Sums of which you and I dream in moments of supreme excitement would not
have paid one of Mrs. Williams's cable bills; would not have supported
Granny Williams's hot-houses and Angora cat farm through a late spring
frost. James Williams and his father before him were as magnets where
money was concerned. And it is a fact of family history that once James,
returning from a walk in the mud, found a dime sticking to the heel of
his right boot.

Fitzhugh was the heir of all this, and that was why it was necessary for
him to be superior in other ways as well. But Europeanize him as she
would, he remained the son of his fathers. French history was drummed
in through his ears by learned tutors, and could be made for the next
few days to come out of his mouth. But he absorbed American history
through the back of his head, even when there was none about to be
absorbed, and that came out often, I am afraid, when people didn't
especially want it to. Neither could any amount of aristocratic training
and association turn the blood in his veins blue. If one had taken the
trouble to look at a specimen of it under a microscope I believe one
would have discovered a resemblance between the corpuscles thereof and
the eagles that are the tails of coins; and the color of it was
red--bright red. And this was proven, that time when little Lord Percy
Pumps ran at Fitz, head down like a Barbadoes nigger, and butted him in
the nose. The Honorable Fifi Grey, about whom the quarrel arose, was
witness to the color of that which flowed from the aforementioned nose;
and witness also to the fact that during the ensuing cataclysm no blood
whatever, neither blue nor red, came from Lord Percy Pumps--nothing but
howls. But, alas! we may not now call upon the Honorable Fifi Grey for
testimony. She is no longer the Honorable Fifi. Quite the reverse. I had
her pointed out to me last summer (she is Lady Khorset now), and my
informant wriggled with pleasure and said, "Now, there _is_ somebody."

"You mean that slim hedge-fence in lavender?" I asked.

"By jove, yes!" said he. "That's Lady Khorset, the wickedest woman in
London, with the possible exception of Lady Virginia Pure--the
Bicyclyste, you know."

I did know. Had I not that very morning seen in a Piccadilly window a
photograph of almost all of her?

Fortunately for Fitzhugh Williams's health and sanity, little children
are pretty much the same all the world over, dwelling in the noble
democracy of mumps, measles, and whooping-cough. Little newsboys, tiny
grandees, infinitesimal sons of coachmen, picayune archdukes,
honorableines, marquisettes, they are all pretty much alike under their
skins. And so are their sisters. Naturally your free-born American child
despises a nation that does not fight with its fists. But he changes his
mind when some lusty French child of his own size has given him a good
beating in fair fight. And the English games have their beauties (I dare
say), and we do know that they can fight--or can make the Irish and the
Scots fight for them, which is just as good. And it isn't race and blue
blood that keeps little Lady Clara Vere de Vere's stockings from coming
down. It's garters. And _they_ don't always do it. Point the finger of
scorn at little Archibald Jamison Purdue Fitzwilliams Updyke
Wrennfeather, who will be Duke of Chepstow one day; for only last night
his lordship's noble mother rubbed his hollow chest with goose grease
and tied a red flannel round his neck, and this morning his gerfalcon
nose is running, as the British would have run at Waterloo had not
"would-to-God-Bluecher-would-come" come up.

Peace, little bootblack; others bite their nails. See yonder night
garment laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a
plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the
back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come
through. In vain the little king-to-be may mumble the Canton flannel
with his mouth. He cannot bite his royal nails; and, hush! in the next
crib a princess asleep. Why that cruel, tight cap down over her ears?
It's because she _will_ double them forward and lie on them, so that if
something isn't done about it they will stick straight out.

So Fitzhugh Williams was brought up among and by children, fashionable
children, if you like. Snobs, many of them, but children all the same.
Some good, some bad, some rough, some gentle, some loving and faithful
with whom he is friends to this day, some loving and not faithful.
The dangers that he ran were not from the foreign children with whom
he played, fought, loved, and dreamed dreams; but from foreign
customs, foreign ways of doing things, foreign comfort, foreign
take-the-world-easiness, and all. For they _do_ live well abroad; they
do have amusing things to do. They eat well, drink well, smoke well, are
better waited on than we are and have more time. So Fitzhugh was in
danger of these things which have hurt the Americanism of more than one
American to the death, but he ran the dangerous gauntlet and came out at
the other end unscathed--into the open.

He could rattle off French and German like a native; he could imitate an
Englishman's intonation to perfection; and yet he came to manhood with
his own honest Ohio accent untouched. And where had he learned it? Not
in Ohio, surely. He had been about as much in Ohio as I have in the
moon. It was in his red blood, I suppose, to speak as the men of his
family spoke--less so, for his vocabulary was bigger, but plainly,
straightly, honestly, and with some regard for the way in which words
are spelled. So speak the men who are the backbone of liberty, each with
the honest accent that he is born to. Don't you suppose that Washington
himself held forth in the molten, golden tones of Virginia? Do you think
Adams said _bought_ and _caught_? He said _bot_ and _cot_. Did Lincoln
use the broad A at Gettysburg? I think that in the words he there spoke
the A's were narrow as heaven's gate. I think some of them struck
against the base of his nose before they came out to strengthen the
hearts of men, to rejoice God, and to thunder forever down the ages.

It is, of course, more elegant to speak as we New Yorkers do. Everybody
knows that. And I should advise all men to cultivate the accent and
intonation--all men who are at leisure to perfect themselves. But
honesty compels me to state that there has never been a truly great
American who spoke any speech but his own--except that superlatively
great Philadelphian, Benjamin Franklin--of Boston. He didn't talk
Philadelphianese. And you may cotton to that!




II

We must go back to the Fourth of July. When Benton returned with the
French clothes Fitzhugh Williams rose from his downy couch and bathed in
cold water. He was even an eager bather in France, rejoicing in the
feeling of superiority and stoicism which accompanied the pang and pain
of it. But in England, where everybody bathed--or at any rate had water
in their rooms and splashed and said ah! ah! and oh! oh!--he regarded
the morning bath as commonplace, and had often to be bribed into it.

He now had Benton in to rub his back dry, and to hand him his clothes in
sequence; it being his mother's notion that to be truly polite a man
must be helpless in these matters and dependent. And when he had on his
undershirt and his outer shirt and his stockings, he sat down to his
breakfast of chocolate and rolls and Rillet de Tours, which the butler
had just brought; and afterward brushed his teeth, finished dressing,
and ordered Benton to call a fiacre. But finding his mother's victoria
at the door he dismissed the hack, and talked stable matters with
Cunningham, the coachman, and Fontenoy, the tiger, until his mother
came--one of these lovely, trailing visions that are rare even in Paris,
though common enough, I dare say, in paradise.

They drove first of all to Gaston Rennette's gallery, where Fitz
celebrated the glorious Fourth with a real duelling pistol and real
bullets, aiming at a life-size sheet-iron man, who, like a correct,
courteous, and courageous opponent, never moved. And all the way to the
gallery and all the way back there was here and there an American flag,
as is customary in Paris on the Fourth. And to these Fitz, standing up
in the victoria, dipped and waved his hat. While he was shooting, his
mother took a "little turn" and then came back to fetch him; a stout man
in a blue blouse accompanying him to the curb, tossing his hands
heavenward, rolling up his eyes, and explaining to madame what a "genius
at the shoot was the little mister," and had averaged upon the "mister
of iron" one "fatal blow" in every five. Madame "invited" the stout man
to a five-franc piece for himself and she smiled, and he smiled, and
bowed off backward directly into a passing pedestrian, who cried out
upon the "sacred name of a rooster." And everybody laughed, including
Cunningham, whose face from much shaving looked as if a laugh must crack
it; and so the glorious Fourth was begun.

But the next event upon the programme was less provocative of pure joy
in the heart of Fitz.

"You don't remember the Burtons, do you, Fitz?" asked his mother.

"No," said he.

"Well," she said, "Mrs. Burton was a school-mate of mine, Elizabeth
Proctor, and I've just learned that she is at the d'Orient with her
daughter. The father died, you know--"

"I know _now_" interrupted Fitz with a grin.

He liked to correct his mother's English habit of "you-knowing" people
who didn't know.

"And I really think I must call and try to do something for them."

"The d'Orient," said Fitz, "is where they have the elevator that you
work yourself. Billy Molineux and I got caught in it between the third
and fourth floors."

"Well," said his mother, "would you mind very much if we drove to the
d'Orient now and called on the Burtons?"

Fitz said that he would mind _very_ much, but as he made no more
reasonable objection Mrs. Williams gave the order to Cunningham, and not
long after they stopped before the d'Orient in the Rue Daunou, and
Fontenoy flashed in with Mrs. and Master Williams's cards, and came out
after an interval and stationed himself stiffly near the step of the
victoria. This meant that Mrs. Burton was at home, as we say, or, "at
herself," as the French have it. If he had leaped nimbly to his seat
beside Cunningham on the box it would have meant that Mrs. Burton was
not "at herself."

So once more Mrs. Williams became a lovely, trailing figure out of the
seventh heaven, and Fitz, stoical but bored, followed her into the
court-yard of the hotel. Here were little iron tables and chairs, four
symmetrical flower-beds containing white gravel, four palm-trees in
tubs, their leaves much speckled with coal smuts; a French family at
breakfast (the stout father had unbuttoned his white waistcoat); and in
a corner by herself an American child sitting upon one of the
puff-seated iron chairs, one leg under her, one leg, long, thin, and
black, swinging free, and across her lap a copy of a fashion paper.

On perceiving Mrs. Williams the child at once came forward, and dropped
the most charming little courtesy imaginable.

"How do you do?" she said. "Poor, dear mamma isn't a bit well. But I
said that she would see you, Mrs. Williams. She said yesterday that she
wanted so much to see you."

In the event Mrs. Williams went up three flights in the elevator that
you worked yourself; only on this occasion the proprietor, hastily
slipping into his frock-coat and high hat (you could see him at it
through the office window), worked it for her. And Fitz remained with
the gloomy prospect of being entertained by little Miss Burton.

She was younger than Fitz by two years and older by ten--a serene,
knowing, beautiful child. When Fitz proposed that they sit in the
victoria, as softer than the iron chairs, she called him a funny boy,
but she assented. And as they went she tossed aside her fashion paper,
remarking, "_You_ wouldn't care for that."

When they had settled down into the soft, leather cushions of the
victoria she sighed luxuriously and said:

"This _is_ nice! I wish--" and broke off short.

"What?" asked Fitz.

"Oh," she said, "that the horses would start, and take us all over Paris
and back, and everybody would see us go by, and envy us. But mamma and
I," she said, "are devoted to fiacres--not smart, are they?"

"I don't mind," said Fitz, "if they go where I tell 'em to, and don't
set up a row over the _pourboire_."

"Still," said she, "it must be nice to have carriages and things. We
used to have. Only I can hardly remember. Mamma says I have a dreadfully
short memory."

"How long have you been abroad?" Fitz asked.

"Dear me," she said, "ever so long. I don't remember."

"Won't it be fun," said Fitz, "to go home?"

"America?" She hesitated. "Mamma says it's all so crude and rude. I
forget."

"Don't you remember America!" exclaimed Fitz, much horrified.

"Not clearly," she admitted.

"I guess you never saw Cleveland, Ohio, then," said Fitz, "'n' Euclid
Avenue, 'n' Wade Park, 'n' the cannons in the square, 'n' the
breakwater, 'n' never eat Silverthorn's potatoes at Rocky River, 'n'
never went to a picnic at Tinker's Creek, 'n' never saw Little Mountain
'n' the viaduct."

"You are quite right," said little Miss Burton, "I never did."

"When I grow up," said Fitz in a glow of enthusiasm, "I'm going to live
in America 'n' have a tower on my house with a flagpole, 'n' a cannon to
let off every sunset and sunrise."

"I shouldn't like that," said she, "if I were sleeping in the house at
the time."

"I shouldn't be sleeping," said Fitz; "I'd be up early every morning to
let the cannon off."

"I remember Newport a little," she said. "I'd live there if I were you.
Newport is very smart for America, mamma says. We're going to Newport
when I grow up. I'm sure it will be nicer if you are there."

Fitz thought this very likely, but was too modest to say so.

"If I ever go to Newport," he said, "it will be as captain of a cup
defender."

"I heard your mother call you Fitz," said little Miss Burton. "Is that
your name, or do you have them?"

"F-i-t-z-h-u-g-h," said Fitz, "is my name."

"Any middle name?"

"No."

"That's smarter," said she. "I haven't either."

"What _is_ your name?" asked Fitz, trying to feign interest.

"Evelyn," said she, "but my intimate friends call me Eve."

"Huh!" said Fitz grossly, "Eve ate the apple first."

"Yes," sighed Eve, "and gave Adam the core. Nowadays, I heard mamma say
to Count Grassi, it's the other way 'round."

"My father says," said Fitz, "that Eve ought to of been spanked."

Certain memories reddened Eve; but the natural curiosity to compare
experiences got the better of her maiden reticence upon so delicate a
subject. She lowered her voice.

"Do you yell?" she asked. "I do. It frightens them if you yell."

"I was never spanked" said Fitz. "When I'm naughty mamma writes to papa,
and he writes to me, and says he's sorry to hear that I haven't yet
learned to be a gentleman, and a man of the world, and an American.
That's worse than being spanked."

"Oh, dear!" said Eve, "I don't mind what people say; that's just water
on a duck's back; but what they do is with slippers--"

"And," cried Fitz, elated with his own humor, "it isn't on the
duck's--back."

"Are you yourself to-day," asked Miss Eve, her eyes filling, "or are you
just unusually horrid?"

"Here--I say--don't blub," said Fitz, in real alarm. And, knowing the
power of money to soothe, he pulled a twenty-franc gold piece from his
pocket and himself opened and closed one of her tiny hands upon it.

The child's easy tears dried at once.

"Really--truly?--ought I?" she exclaimed.

"You bet!" said Fitz, all his beautiful foreign culture to the fore.
"You just keep that and surprise yourself with a present next time you
want one."

"Maybe mamma won't like me to," she doubted. And then, with devilish
wisdom, "I think mamma will scold me first--and let me forget to give it
back afterward. Thank you, Fitz. I could kiss you!"

"Fire away," said Fitz sullenly. He was used to little girls, and liked
to kiss them, but he did not like them to kiss him. She didn't, however.

She caught his hand with the one of hers that was not clutching the gold
piece, and squeezed it quickly and let it go. Something in this must
have touched and made appeal to the manly heart. For Fitz said, averting
his beautiful eyes:

"You're a funny little pill, aren't you?"

The tiger sprang to the victoria step from loafing in front of a
jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue of himself. Madame
was coming.

"Take Evelyn to the lift, Fitz," said she. But first she kissed Evelyn,
and said that she was going to send for her soon, for a spree with Fitz.

They passed through the court-yard, Fitz carrying his hat like a
gentleman and a man of the world, and into the dark passage that led to
the famous elevator.

"Your mother's smart," said Eve.

"Can't you think of anything but how smart people are?"

"When I'm grown up," she said, "and am smart myself I'll think of other
things, I dare say."

"Can you work the lift yourself? Hadn't I better take you up?"

"Oh, no," she said, and held out her hand.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.