III.

She was a dear old stupid town in my day.  She boasted but half a dozen thinly populated streets.  One might pass through these streets almost any day, at almost any hour of the day, footing it all the way from the dismantled fort on the seaside to the ancient cemetery, grown to seed, at the other extremity of the settlement, and not meet half a score of people.

Geese fed in the gutters, and hissed as I passed by; cows grazing by the wayside eyed me in grave surprise; overhead, the snow-white sea-gulls wheeled and cried peevishly; and on the heights that shelter the ex-capital the pine-trees moaned and moaned, and often caught and held the sea-fog among their branches, when the little town was basking in the sunshine and dreaming its endless dream.

How did a man kill time in those days?  There was a studio on Alvarado Street; it stood close to the post-office, in what may be generously denominated as the busiest part of the town.  The studio was the focus of life and hope and love; some work was also supposed to be done there.  It was the headquarters of the idle and the hungry, and the seeker after consolation in all its varied forms.  Choice family groceries were retailed three times a day in the rear of the establishment; and there we often gathered about the Bohemian board, to celebrate whatever our fancy painted.  Now it was an imaginary birthday—­a movable feast that came to be very popular in our select artistic circle; again it was the possible—­dare I say probable?—­sale of a picture at a quite inconceivable price.  There were always occasions enough.  Would it had been the case with the dinners!

The studio was the thing,—­the studio, decked with Indian trophies and the bleached bones of sea birds and land beasts, and lined with studies in all colors under heaven.  Here was the oft-lighted peace-pipe; and Orient rugs and wolf-skins for a siesta when the beach yonder was a blaze of white and blinding light, that made it blessed to close one’s eyes and shut out the glare—­and to keep one’s ears open to the lulling song of the sea.

Here we concocted a plan.  It was to be kept a profound mystery; even the butcher was unaware, and the baker in total darkness; as for the wine-merchant, he was as blind as a bat.  We were to give the banquet and ball of the season.  We went to the hall of our sisters,—­scarcely kin were they, but kinder never lived, and their house was at our disposal.  We threw out the furniture; we made a green bower of the adobe chamber.  One window, that bore upon the forlorn vacuum of the main street, was speedily stained the deepest and most splendid dyes; from without, it had a pleasing, not to say refining, medieval effect; from within, it was likened unto the illuminated page of an antique antiphonary—­in flames; yes, positively in flames!