BLUE BLOOD
Dennis's mind was a chaos of conflicting feelings. The picture had
deeply interested him, and so did the beautiful girl that it by strange
coincidence so strongly resembled. It could not be otherwise with one
of his beauty-loving nature. And yet the impression made by the face
in the painting--of something wrong, discordant--was felt more
decidedly in respect to the living face.
But before he had time to realize what had just passed the lady and
her father appeared at the door of the office, and he heard the latter
say: "I know you are right, my dear. It's all wrong. The arrangement
of the store is as stiff and methodical as if we were engaged in selling
mathematical instruments. But I have not time to attend to the matter,
and there is not one in the store that has the least idea of artistic
combination, unless it is Fleet. I have noticed some encouraging
symptoms in him."
"What! he of the duster and mop? I fear our case is desperate, then,
if he is our best hope."
Dennis's cheeks were burning again; but, turning his back, he rubbed
away harder than ever at a Greek god that he was polishing. But they
gave him no thought. Speaking with a sudden animation the young lady
said, "Father, I have a great mind to try it myself--that is, if you
are willing."
"But, my daughter, I could not permit you to be engaged in any such
employment before our customers."
"Certainly not! I would come early in the morning, before art-customers
are stirring. I really should enjoy the task greatly, if I had any one
to help me who could in some faint degree comprehend the effects I
wished to produce. The long spring mornings soon to come would be just
the time for it. To what better use could I put my taste and knowledge
of art than in helping you and furthering our plan for life?"
Mr. Ludolph hesitated between his pride and his strong desire to gain
the advantages which the acceptance of this offer would secure. Finally
he said: "We will think about it. I am expecting a great many new and
beautiful things early in the spring, and no doubt it would be well
then to rearrange the store completely, and break up the rigid system
into which we have fallen. In the meantime I appreciate your offer,
and thank you warmly."
Dennis's heart leaped within him at the thought of instruction from
such a teacher, and he longed to offer his services. But he rightly
judged that the proposal would be regarded as an impertinence at that
time. The successor of Pat Murphy was not expected to know anything
of art, or have any appreciation of it. So he bent his head lower, but
gave Jupiter Olympus such a rubbing down as the god had deserved long
ago. In a moment more Miss Ludolph passed him on her way out of the
store, noticing him no more than she did his dust-brush.
Mr. Ludolph was the younger son of a noble but impoverished German
family, and was intensely proud of his patrician blood. His parents,
knowing that he would have to make his own way in the world, had sent
him, while a mere boy, to this country, and placed him in charge of
a distant relative, who was engaged in the picture-trade in New York.
He had here learned to speak English in his youth with the fluency and
accuracy of a native, but had never become Americanized, so much family
pride had he inherited, and $o strongly did he cling to the traditions
of his own land.
He showed great business ability in his chosen calling, especially
displaying remarkable judgment in the selection of works of art. So
unusual was his skill in this direction, that when twenty-one years
old he was sent abroad to purchase pictures. For several years he
travelled through Europe. He became quite cosmopolitan in character,
and for a time enjoyed life abundantly. His very business brought him
in contact with artists and men of culture, while his taste and love
of beauty were daily gratified. He had abundant means, and money could
open many doors of pleasure to one who, like him, was in vigorous
health and untroubled by a conscience. Moreover, he was able to spend
much time in his beloved Germany, and while there the great ambition
of his life entered his heart. His elder brother, who was living
inexclusive pride and narrow economy on the ancient but diminished
ancestral estate, ever received him graciously. This brother had
married, but had not been blessed or cursed with children, for the
German baron, with his limited finances, could never decide in what
light to regard them. Too poor to mingle with his equals, too proud
to stoop to those whom he regarded as inferiors, he had lived much
alone, and grown narrower and more bigoted in his family pride day by
day. Indeed, that he was Baron Ludolph, was the one great fact of his
life. He spent hours in conning over yellow, musty records of the
ancient grandeur of his house, and would gloat over heroic deeds of
ancestors he never thought of imitating. In brief, he was like a small
barnacle on an old and water-logged ship, that once had made many a
gallant and prosperous voyage richly freighted, but now had drifted
into shallow water and was falling to decay. He made a suggestion,
however, to his younger brother, that wakened the ambition of the
latter's stronger nature, and set him about what became his controlling
purpose, his life-work.
"Make a fortune in America," said his brother, "and come back and
restore the ancient wealth and glory of your family."
The seed fell into receptive soil, and from that day the art and
pleasure loving citizen of the world became an earnest man with a
purpose. But as he chose his purpose mainly from selfish motives it
did not become an ennobling one. He now gave double attention to
business and practical economy. He at once formed the project of
starting in business for himself, and of putting the large profits
resulting from his judicious selection of pictures into his own pocket.
He made the most careful arrangements, and secured agencies that he
could trust in the purchase of pictures after he should return to the
United States.
During his stay in Paris, on his way back, an event occurred that had
a most untoward influence on his plans and hopes. He fell desperately
in love with a beautiful French woman. Like himself, she was poor, but
of patrician blood, and was very fascinating. She attracted him by her
extreme beauty and brilliancy. She was very shrewd, and could seem
anything she chose, being a perfect actress in the false, hollow life
of the world. In accordance with Parisian ideas, she wanted a husband
to pay her bills, to be a sort of protector and base of general
operations. Here was a man who promised well, fine-looking, and, if
not rich, capable of making large sums of money.
She insinuated herself into his confidence, and appeared to share his
enthusiasm for the darling project of his life. He felt that, with
such a beautiful and sympathetic woman to spur him on and share his
success, earth would be a Paradise indeed; and she assured him, in
many delicate and bewitching ways, that it would. In brief, he married
her; and then learned, in bitterness, anger, and disgust, that she had
totally deceived him. To his passionate love she returned indifference;
to his desire for economy, unbounded extravagance, contracting debts
which he must pay to avoid disgrace. She showed an utter unwillingness
to leave the gayety of Paris, laughing in his face at his plan of life,
and assuring him that she would never live in so stupid a place as
Germany. His love died hard. He made every appeal to her that affection
prompted. He tried entreaty, tenderness, coldness, anger, but all in
vain. Selfish to the core, loving him not, utterly unscrupulous, she
trod upon his quivering heart as recklessly as upon the stones of the
street. Soon he saw that, in spite of his vigilance, he was in danger
of being betrayed in all respects. Then he grew hard and fierce. The
whole of his strong German nature was aroused. In a tone and manner
that startled and frightened her, he said: "_We_ sail for New York in
three days. Be ready. If you prove unfaithful to me--if you seek to
desert me, I will _kill_ you. I swear it--not by God, for I don't
believe in Him. If He existed, such creatures as you would not. But I
swear it by my family pride and name, which are dearer to me than life,
if you leave a stain upon them you shall _die_. You need not seek to
escape me. I would follow you through the world. I would kill you on the
crowded street--anywhere, even though I died myself the next moment. And
now look well to your steps."
The glitter of his eye was as cold and remorseless as the sheen of
steel. She saw that he meant and would do just what he said.
The woman had one good point--at least, it turned out to be such in
this case. She was a coward naturally, and her bad life made her dread
nothing so much as death. Her former flippant indifference to his
remonstrances now changed into abject fear. He saw her weak side,
learned his power, and from that time forward kept her within bounds
by a judicious system of terrorism.
He took her to New York and commanded her to appear the charming woman
she could if she chose. She obeyed, and rather enjoyed the excitement
and deceit. His friends were delighted with her, but he received their
congratulations with a grim, quiet smile. At times, though, when she
was entertaining them with all grace, beauty, and sweetness, the thought
of what she was seemed only a horrid dream. But he had merely to catch
her eye, with its gleam of fear and hate, to know the truth.
He felt that he could not trust to the continuance of her good behavior,
and was anxious to get away among strangers as soon as possible. He
therefore closed his business relations in New York. Though she had
crippled him greatly by her extravagance, he had been able to bring
out a fair stock of good pictures, and a large number of articles of
virtue, selected with his usual taste. The old firm, finding that
they could not keep him, offered all the goods he wanted on commission.
So
in a few weeks he started for Chicago, the most promising city of the
West, as he believed, and established himself there in a modest way.
Still the chances were even against him, for he had involved himself
heavily, and drawn to the utmost on his credit in starting. If he could
not sell largely the first year, he was a broken man. For months the
balance wavered, and he lived with financial ruin on one side, and
domestic ruin on the other. But, with a heart of ice and nerves of
steel, he kept his hand on the helm.
His beautiful collection, though in an unpretentious store, at last
attracted attention, and after some little time it became _the_ thing in
the fashionable world to go there, and from that time forward his
fortune was made.
When his wife became a mother, there was a faint hope in Mr. Ludolph's
heart that this event might awaken the woman within her, if aught of
the true woman existed. He tried to treat her with more kindness, but
found it would not answer. She mistook it for weakness on his part.
From first to last she acted in the most heartless manner, and treated
the child with shameless neglect. This banished from her husband even
the shadow of regard, and he cursed her to her face. Thenceforth will
and ambition controlled his life and hers, and with an iron hand he
held her in check. She saw that she was in the power of a desperate
man, who would sacrifice her in a moment if she thwarted him.
Through cowardly fear she remained his reluctant but abject slave,
pricking him with the pins and needles of petty annoyances, when she
would have pierced him to the heart had she dared. This monstrous state
of affairs could not last forever, and, had not death terminated the
unnatural relation, some terrible catastrophe would no doubt have
occurred. Having contracted a western fever, she soon became delirious,
and passed away in this unconscious state, to the intense joy and
relief of her husband.
But the child lived, thrived, and developed into the graceful girl
whose beauty surpassed, as we have seen, even the painter's ideal. Her
father at first cared little for the infant, but secured it every
attention. As it developed into a pretty girl, however, with winning
ways, and rich promise, he gradually associated her with his hopes and
plans, till at last she became an essential part of his ambition.
His plan now was briefly this: He would entangle himself with no
alliances or intimate associations in America, nor would he permit his
daughter to do so. His only object in staying here was the accumulation
of a large fortune, and to this for a few years he would bend every
energy of mind and body. As soon as he felt that he had sufficient means
to live in such style as befitted the ancient and honorable name
of his family, he would return to Germany, buy all he could of the
ancestral estate that from time to time had been parted with, and
restore his house to its former grandeur. He himself would then seek
a marriage connection that would strengthen his social position, while
his daughter also should make a brilliant alliance with some member
of the nobility. Mr. Ludolph was a handsome, well-preserved man; he
had been most successful in business, and was now more rapidly than
ever accumulating that which is truly a power with Europeans of blue
blood, as with democratic Americans. Moreover, his daughter's beauty
promised to be such that, when enhanced by every worldly advantage,
it might well command attention in the highest circles. He sought with
scrupulous care to give her just the education that would enable her
to shine as a star among the high-born. Art, music, and knowledge of
literature, especially the German, were the main things to which her
attention was directed, and in her father, with his richly stored mind,
faultless taste, and cultured voice, she had an instructor such as
rarely falls to the lot of the most favored.
When Christine Ludolph was about sixteen years of age, events occurred
which might have greatly marred her father's plans. She secretly formed
a most unfortunate attachment, which came near resulting in a
clandestine marriage. Although the world would have judged her harshly,
and the marriage could only have been exceedingly disastrous to her
future life, the motherless girl was not very much to blame. Even among
the mature there is a proverbial blindness in these matters. She was
immature, misled by her imagination, and the victim of uncurbed romantic
fancies. But, after all, the chief incentive to her folly was a natural
craving for the love and sympathy which she had never found in her own
home. To her chilled young heart these gifts were so sweet and
satisfying that she was in no mood to criticise the donor, even had
her knowledge of the world enabled her to do so. Thus far, in his care
of Christine, Mr. Ludolph had conformed to the foreign ideas of
seclusion and repression, and the poor girl, unguided, unguarded by
kind womanly counsel, was utterly unsophisticated, and she might have
easily become the prey of the unscrupulous man whose chief incentive
had been her father's wealth. Mr. Ludolph fortunately discovered the
state of affairs in time to prevent gossip. Under his remorseless
logic, bitter satire, and ridicule her young dream was torn to shreds.
The man whom she had surrounded with a halo of romance was shown to
be worthless and commonplace. Her idol had chiefly been a creature of
the imagination, and when the bald, repulsive truth concerning him had
been proved to her in such a way that she could not escape conviction,
she was equally disgusted with him and herself.
For some weeks Mr. Ludolph treated his daughter with cold distrust.
"She will be like her mother, I suppose," he thought. "Already she has
begun to deceive me and to imperil everything by her folly;" and his
heart was full of bitterness toward his child. Thus the poor girl dwelt
in a chilled and blighting atmosphere at a time when she most sorely
needed kindness and wise guidance.
She was very unhappy, for she saw that her father had lost all
confidence in her. She fairly turned sick when she thought of the past.
She had lived in the world of romance and mystery; she had loved with
all her girlish power; and, however wrongly and unjustly, by the
inevitable laws of association she connected the words "love" and
"romance" with one whom she now detested and loathed. Within a week
after her miserable experience she became as utter a sceptic in regard
to human love, and happiness flowing from it, as her father had taught
her to be respecting God and the joy of believing. Though seemingly
a fair young girl, her father had made her worse than a pagan. She
believed in nothing save art and her father's wisdom. He seemed to
embody the culture and worldly philosophy that now became, in her
judgment, the only things worth living for. To gain his confidence
became her great desire. But this had received a severe shock. Mr.
Ludolph had lost all faith in everything save money and his own will.
Religion was to him a gross superstition, and woman's virtue and truth,
poetic fictions.
He watched Christine narrowly, and said just enough to draw out the
workings of her mind. He then decided to tell his plan for life, and
give her strong additional motives for doing his will. The picture he
portrayed of the future dazzled her proud, ambitious spirit, and opened
to her fancy what then seemed the only path to happiness. She entered
into his projects with honest enthusiasm, and bound herself by the
most solemn promises to aid in carrying them out. But in bitterness
he remembered one who had promised with seeming enthusiasm before, and
he distrusted his daughter, watching her with lynx-eyed vigilance.
But gradually he began to believe in her somewhat, as he saw her looking
forward with increasing eagerness to the heaven of German fashionable
life, wherein she, rich, admired, allied by marriage to some powerful
noble family, should shine a queen in the world of art.
"I have joined her aspirations to mine," he said, in self-gratulation.
"I have blended our ambitions and sources of hope and enjoyment, and
that is better than all her promises."
When Dennis saw first the face that was so beautiful and yet so marred
by pride and selfishness, Christine was about nineteen years old, and
yet as mature in some respects as a woman of thirty. She had the perfect
self-possession that familiarity with the best society gives. Mr.
Ludolph was now too shrewd to seek safety in seclusion. He went with
his daughter into the highest circles of the city, and Christine had
crowds of admirers and many offers. All this she enjoyed, but took it
coolly as her right, with the air of a Greek goddess accepting the
incense that rose in her temple. She was too proud and refined to flirt
in the ordinary sense of the word, and no one could complain that she
gave much encouragement. But this state of things was all the more
stimulating, and each one believed, with confidence in his peculiar
attractions, that he might succeed where all others had failed. Miss
Ludolph's admirers were unaware that they had a rival in some as yet
unknown German nobleman. At last it passed into a proverb that the
beautiful and brilliant girl who was so free and courtly in society
was as cold and unsusceptible as one of her father's statues.
Thus it would seem that when circumstances brought the threads of these
two lives near each other, Dennis's and Christine's, the most impassable
barriers rose between them, and that the threads could never be woven
together, or the lives blended. She was the daughter of the wealthy,
aristocratic Mr. Ludolph; he was her father's porter.
Next to the love of art, pride and worldly ambition were her strongest
characteristics. She was an unbeliever in God and religion, not from
conviction, but from training. She knew very little about either, and
what light she had came to her through false mediums. She did not even
believe in that which in many young hearts is religion's shadow, love
and romance, nor did her father take a more worldly and practical view
of life than she.
In marked contrast we have seen the character of Dennis Fleet, drawing
its inspiration from such different sources.
Could two human beings be more widely separated--separated in that
which divides more surely than continents and seas?
Could Dennis have seen her warped, deformed moral nature, as clearly
as her beautiful face and form, he would have shrunk from her; but
while recognizing defects, he shared the common delusion, that the
lovely outward form and face must enshrine much that is noble and ready
to blossom into good, if the right motives can be presented.
As for Christine, she had one chance for life, one chance for heaven.
She was _young_. Her nature had not so hardened and crystallized in evil
as to be beyond new and happier influences.