play, one night, when a companion, a young society woman (who was
trying to unlearn in a theatre all she had been taught as an amateur)
edged close to me and whispered: “Look at the woman in the box; is she
not beautiful?”
I looked and answered quickly: “She is handsome, not beautiful.”
“I can’t see any difference between the meaning of the words,” she
pouted, “but look well at her, I have something to tell you when----.”
Here the action of the play parted us, but brought me close to the
box. I had needed no urging to look well at its occupant. I could
scarcely take my eyes from her, there was something so strange, so odd
about her. She was not young. She was most stately in air and figure.
Her head was most beautifully shaped, her features regular, her chin
firm and deeply cleft, and her eyes--not black, not brown--yet dark,
radiantly dark. Their soft shining seeming to contradict the cold
strength of her face. Her brows--ah, at last, here was the bizarre
touch! Her eyebrows formed one straight line. I don’t mean that they
nearly met or were thinly joined; they were thickly and darkly united,
in one threatening sweep, above her glowing eyes, giving that hint of
tragedy to her face that so surely accompanies united brows on either
man or woman.
Once her eyes caught mine and calmly held them fast, and in that
moment, as a child may flash a blinding ray of sunlight from a mirror
into your face, there flashed into my mind these words: “Only a
qualified admiration, eh? And you feel something, eh? You don’t know
what? No! and you won’t know either, my dear!” and I ended the act with
cheeks as hot from wounded feeling as though the words had actually
been spoken to me.
I was not in the second act, neither was the “young society woman,”
or at least she was on the stage for about three minutes, after which
she came, swelling visibly with importance, for in very truth she had
something to reveal, and first exacting, on word of honor, promise not
to tell (I only do it now, when: “In Paris suddenly----”). She quickly
began: “You can see she is a lady, can’t you? Born in Boston--perfectly
lovely family--old--very old, you know! Was splendidly educated, and
the very day of her _début_ in society--I don’t know who brought her
out, her mother was dead, you know--that very day her father killed
himself! Ruined--no courage and all that--she had no near relatives!
Went off alone--went abroad--worked at teaching or companioning or
something! Things then went wrong--troubles came, awful troubles!
Oh--oh!” The speaker’s eyes looked fairly scared, her hands trembled,
she drew close to me, and holding fast a fold of my dress, she with
desperate haste flung out these words: “She--that American woman--that
lady sitting there--she has been accused of murder! Why, she has stood
trial for her life!”
I could only gaze at her in stupid silence, and after a moment she
rambled on about her uncle being Madame de B----’s lawyer, and
his having charge of her affairs over here, as she would not live
here--would not settle anywhere in fact--just wandered from place to
place, etc.
As last I broke in, with a gasp: “Murderess! She a murderess? But
why--how?”
“Oh!” cried my informant: “She was innocent, of course, or I should not
know her (I had not thought of that). But she had a narrow escape, and
owed it to a man she had always hated; to the dead man’s valet.”
Again, and more impatiently, I broke in: “But why--how--who?”
She caught the last word, “who,” and went on: “Who was killed? Why,
Count de Varney! He was a wicked, old wretch! Had a palsied arm, and
was broken in health when Miriam first met him! Well, for years she
bore his name, and she was the active mistress of his great, lonely
home, and a most devoted nurse to him, but she was terribly alone! The
servants, who disliked her because she was a foreigner, she ignored
all save one, the Count’s valet--him she loathed! She tried to have
him sent away and failed, and he knew she had failed. Not a pleasant
situation, was it? I must tell you, that in the left wing of the great
building there was a room whose windows chanced to overlook those of
the private apartments of the Count and Countess, in the main building.
This peculiarity was well known, too, and highly valued by the spying
servants, and from that room came the evidence that so nearly ruined
their hated mistress. The Count had been improving, but as his strength
increased his temper roughened, and one day, through one of his
bursts of rage, she learned that she had been cruelly, deliberately
betrayed--tricked!--by the merest mockery of a marriage; one that, in
France at least, was utterly worthless! Surprise--anguish--shame--all
at last were lost in fury! A fury so wild--so filled with threats--that
the Count fairly quailed before it--begged to be spared a
scandal--swore he would yet marry her--nay, he would now, this moment,
draw up his will and make her his heiress! Give all to her in her
maiden name--so that she should be protected, should aught happen to
him before he could marry her! This will he proceeded to have drawn
up at once, for you see, during those past years, Miriam had learned
much of his outrageous past--knew more of his secret ill-doings than
he quite realized--knew, indeed, that he had placed himself within the
reach of law! And now, in her otherwise helpless anger, she determined
to at least punish him with a great fright. So she secretly prepared
and sent an unsigned letter, of seeming friendly warning, to the Count,
telling him of the very worst of his past acts. That he had been
discovered at last, and that by the evening of that day the officers
would arrive at the _château_ to arrest him! The letter came--Count de
Varney read it! Miriam had thought to frighten him, and she succeeded
so perfectly that the old man--white-lipped--rose from the table, and
took his trembling way to his own room, where he hurriedly and clumsily
hung himself.”
“Why,” I cried, “I thought you said he had been murdered?”
“Wait!” she said impatiently--“Wait! Over in the wing-room there was
a woman, not spying on the movements of her master or mistress--she
afterwards swore--but being in love with the valet, she was watching
for him, and so happened to be a witness to the hanging of the old
Count. No sooner--swore this woman--had her master kicked away the
chair on which he had been standing, than a door opened and Madame de
Varney entered. For one instant she stood apparently stunned by the
sight before her--and then she laughed! She made no movement to call
for help--she offered no help herself, but came closer to the writhing,
horribly-struggling, hanging figure! The woman swore that once her
master threw out his hand imploringly--that she thought he touched her
mistress, she was so close to him--but she, the witness, turned faint
just then at the awful drawing up of the hanging man’s limbs and did
not see quite clearly--but another servant joined just then, and both
watched--and swore that only when the master was quite still did the
mistress move, and then she went first to a desk and looked at some
papers, and then rushed to the door, throwing it open and calling for
help! She rang the bell violently, and the valet rushed in at her
call, as if he had been standing at the very door--but before he made
a movement to cut down the body, he spoke fiercely and rapidly to the
Countess, and turned to the swaying figure of the Count de Varney, who
had died horribly of slow strangulation!
“The trial was long, for that part of the world. The scandal was
great, the mock-marriage being scoffed at and Madame Miriam de B----
treated simply as an adventuress. The will in her favor told against
her greatly, but, to the stupefaction of every one, the valet defended
her--swearing _he_ had seen his master before his mistress had--that
he was _dead before she entered the room_--that he had gone for help,
not wishing to touch the body without a witness being present, etc.
She swore that her husband was dead when she found him--but without
the valet she would certainly have been condemned to long, long
imprisonment at the very least. She lives under an assumed name now,
and just wanders over the world, as houseless as----”
“Third act; everybody ready!” shouted the call-boy.
I looked about in a bewildered way for my fan and my handkerchief, and
went to my place on the stage, saying to myself: “I will not look that
way again to-night.”
The third act was known, in theatrical parlance, as the strong act of
the play. In it I had to attempt to poison my rival, who had formerly
been my beloved friend, and at the very last moment, when the poison
was at her very lips, with a strong revulsion of feeling, I had to
snatch it away and swallow it myself, and then proceed with the death
scene, which naturally followed.
I had kept my promise; I had not looked once toward the stage-box. I
had worked myself well into my character again and was doing my best
to be _it_, and not myself. That night I had just reached my half
unconscious victim and was cautiously raising the poisoned drink to her
lips, when some absolutely _outside_ power dragged my unwilling eyes
from her face and left me staring straight into the eyes of the woman
“who had been tried for her life”!
The actress beside me wondered what had happened--what I had forgotten!
No fly enmeshed in spider’s web was ever held more helplessly than I
was held for a moment’s time by that devilish face, leaning from the
shadow of the curtained box. Strained and eager, it was white as chalk.
The lips were parted--the nostrils quivering--while her thunderous
brows frowned fiercely above the cruel eyes that held me! And while I
looked, so surely as ever Murder raised its head to look through human
eyes, so surely Murder triumphant looked at me through hers!
The actress at my side made a faint movement; the spell was broken! I
gave the shuddering cry that belonged to the situation, and raising the
glass to my own lips, quickly swallowed the poison, and at the very
moment of so doing, from the private box, low, but perfectly distinct,
came the contemptuous words: “You fool! You fool!”
I went on with my scene and ended the play.
At the end no sign of approbation came from the private box. With some
irritation, I asked myself if she expected me to change the action of a
play to gratify her savage taste?
The box was what is called a “stage-box,” and it is generally held by
the manager for his family, or for visiting artists, as it is apt to
open just inside the stage door. As I approached, I saw the box door
open. Two or three steps led up to it. At the foot of them stood the
young lady who had told me the story, and who was the hostess of Madame
de B----. She saw me and called: “Madame wishes to see you!”
Madame de B---- looked her name--Miriam--as she stood there. Her
stately figure was so beautiful, her face so calm and handsome--but I
shrank from her now; I could not forget the face I had seen but a few
moments ago. She stood at the top of the steps; I was one step lower,
while her young hostess waited at the door. She did not speak. I noted
the elegance of her gown, and followed the movement of her white,
ungloved hands as she raised some black lace to drape about her head
and shoulders--Spanish fashion--and so I met her eyes, and instantly
there was neither theatre nor hostess--there was nothing--there was
no one, but just she and I. I set my teeth hard and bore her look. A
hot flush swept over me, then I felt my eyebrows lifting of their own
accord, a faint chill crept slowly about the roots of my hair, and
presently I saw the evil, hot light glowing in her eyes again, and
dreading the coming of what I had seen there before, I spoke suddenly,
imploringly, and said: “O Madame, _was_ he dead, or _was_ he alive,
when you found him?”
Her lips drew back in silent laughter, her eyes danced in burning
triumph: “_Alive! Alive!! Poor, little fool! Alive!!_” and then she
leaned over me, and gripping me hard upon the shoulders, she looked
deep down into my eyes, and then she said slowly, with the devil in her
face: “I--wonder--what--became--of--that--devoted--valet?”
She laughed aloud, turned suddenly to gather up her skirt, and I threw
out my hand and felt my way by the wall, down the steps, and so into my
own dressing room, where I burst into wild sobbing.
Two or three nights passed, and then my friend remarked that dear,
handsome Madame de B---- had sailed again.
“It was funny,” she said, “the idea of asking you to come to her box,
and then never opening her lips to you, wasn’t it?”
I looked stupidly at her: “Why, what do you mean?” I asked. “You stood
in the door all the time--you must have heard her speaking?”
“Why, she never opened her lips--except when she laughed, as you went
out!”
I was sorely puzzled--until perhaps a week after--_apropos_ of nothing,
my little chatter-box remarked: “You know poor Madame de B---- was one
of Count de Varney’s nurses at the very first of their acquaintance. He
was a victim of insomnia. A doctor called the Count’s attention to her.
She used to make him sleep, sometimes even against his will. The doctor
said she had most unusual _mesmeric_ power.”
* * * * *
We never spoke again of Madame de B----, but sometimes on an
autumn night, dark and chill, with the rain falling stealthily on
the sodden leaves that give forth no rustle when a cautious foot
presses them, I have caught myself repeating those ominous words:
“I--wonder--what--became--of--that--devoted--valet?” But now to that
query there can be but one answer: “In Paris suddenly, Madame de
B----.”
Two Buds
Two Buds
“There is no poetry in life to-day!” We were walking down Euclid
Avenue, and my friend had been expressing her hot disapproval of
many things in this really excellent world of ours, ending with that
youthfully positive assertion: “There is no poetry in life to-day!”
I mildly suggested that she might not recognize it as poetry, if she
saw it, as poems were not always bound in white and silver nor yet in
blue and gold--some, indeed, never reaching the honor (?) of binding at
all.
By the fierceness of her contempt for the opinion of another, one
could easily measure her utter inexperience, but she finally closed
her address by haughtily informing me that she was not to be deceived
by “bindings”--that all poetry was sacred to her, whether she found it
in the polished, metrical form of verse, or simply expressing itself
in human action--but in these days there was no poetry--conscious or
unconscious--for--she got no further; my fingers were on her wrist in
that unintentionally savage clutch that never fails to secure immediate
attention and later remembrance--and I was whispering: “Look! Look
well! at the old man approaching!”
I’m sure, though, she needed no such reminder--no one could help
looking at him--and, at first glance, only his snowy hair kept the
laugh from one’s lips. A well-grown boy of twelve would have been
“mad as a hopper” if he had not stood, at least, even in height with
this old, old man. His gait was half-trot, half-shuffling walk, and
his speed remarkable--but little as he was, he leant forward in a
peculiar way. His nationality, after fifty-five unbroken years in
America, was stamped so clearly on face and figure that his tongue’s
thick, disobedient English was not needed to proclaim him an ancient
Dutchman. His garments would have wrung laughter from a telegraph
pole--the saddest thing on earth. That his wife made his trousers there
could be no doubt, for if you looked at _them_ only, you could never
tell which way the man was going to walk. Then, short as his little
legs were, his trouser-legs were still shorter, while he could have
stowed away quite a nice, little outfit in that portion of them known
as the “slack.” This breadth of beam and shortness of keel gave to the
public gaze a generous margin of clean, white stocking. His collar,
which was an integral part of his shirt--and not, to use his own
words, “a flimsy-flamsy yump-a-bout-ting what wont stay hitched!”--was
of immaculate whiteness, but utterly innocent of starch, and on his
venerable head he wore an antique, “panama” hat. A Dutch friend, who
cultivated coffee, had picked this “panama” in Java, when it was
green--so to speak--and sent it here, and the older citizens had, for
twenty-odd years, watched its slow ripening under the American sun--and
in its wearer’s eyes it had just reached its prime. Before the quaint,
little body reached us, I whispered: “It is not poverty that makes
him dress like that--he owns the big ‘Buckeye Block,’ besides his
dwelling-house up town,” and I saw her eye renew its slackening hold
on him, so great is our unconscious deference to money that already
he seemed less grotesque to her, because she saw him through the
softening, yellow light his gold cast upon him--and then he dragged off
his well-ripened “panama,” and stopped to tell me “youst how glad vas
he to see me!”
For he had entered this country j-less, and j-less he remained, using
y in place of j with such smiling confidence that it was “all right”
that no one had the heart to sternly put him in the wrong by correcting
him. My wise, young friend smiled quite brightly upon him, and when he
had passed, demanded of me all I knew about him, “because he was such a
dear--and so individual--you know!”
I assured her there was nothing to tell--that he was simply an ignorant
but honest man, who by the hardest work and almost incredible economy
had risen to wealth, and she surprised me by replying “that there was
more than that in his face, even for her, a stranger, to see--and what
was the secret of the almost child-like gentleness of his clear, blue
eyes?”
Whereupon, we lunched in a quiet corner of a quiet room and over
many--too many--cups of coffee, I told her that his name was
Knights--Jacobus Knights--and I had made his acquaintance while I was
still so young that the salient features of my own personality were
the length of my braids and the whiteness of my aprons. He used to
rear vegetables and then sell them from a cart, which he pushed when
it was full and dragged when it was empty. Being sent after him one
day by a lady, I called out lustily: “Boy--boy--you boy! Stop--stop--I
say!” thus making the mistake that many an older and wiser person made
daily, and one that was greatly facilitated by the tailless jacket and
flat cap the little man wore. Really, it savored of the uncanny to thus
address a question to the back of childhood and receive your answer
from the unshaven lip of maturity. He seemed to be quite used to the
error, and only laughed and said: “Dat is noddings--youst noddings at
all! Whad I make mit you--onion--squash--eh, whad now?”
Two years later I came to live on S---- street, and right opposite,
little Mr. Knights had his little play-house of a home, his doll of a
blond baby, and his tremendous wife. No, her size was not the result
of comparison, she was really a tremendously big woman, from whose
deep chest and strong, column-like throat there issued the thin,
little voice of a complaining, “cheeping” chick too weak to break its
imprisoning shell. She was a spring of pure Dutch undefiled. Not one
English sentence could she command, but she was a friendly creature,
and hobnobbed deprecatingly but successfully with her neighbors through
the medium of a ponderous but expressive and ever-smiling pantomime.
Never were such workers known before. I doubt if they could have
recognized their own breakfast had they met it, by daylight. Certainly
they had, for at least forty years, taken that meal by artificial
light--candle or oil, whichever was the cheaper. Any morning between
half-past four and five o’clock the neighbors could see, through the
dim light, a pretty little incident. The cart, heavily laden, stood
outside the gate; the small pedler with the boy-body and the man-face,
with a broad, leather band or collar across his neck, hooked its ends
to the shafts of the cart, thus placing on his shoulders part of the
heavy weight and at the same time causing the curious forward bend of
body that disfigured his walk to-day. When he was quite ready for his
start, the door opened and the big woman appeared, holding in her brown
arms a little, night-gowned figure, its bare, pink feet curled up in
her one broad hand--baby dreams still lingering mistily in the sleepy,
blue eyes, and while one wee hand pushed back impatiently the blond
tangle of curls, the other one tossed uncounted kisses to the father
dimly seen, while a sweet, bird-like voice cried: “Bye-bye, Papa!
Bye-bye! Ick lief dy! Bye-bye!”
For this little one had the gift of tongues, and from babyhood Dutch
and English were simply convertible terms with her--and the adoring
father, with cap off, stood and smiled, and smiled, and waved his
earth-stained, stumpy hand, and blessed her with all the tender Dutch
blessings that he knew, and then put on his cap--took up his load
and started on the way that would have been so hard, so ugly, but for
those baby kisses that bloomed like flowers on his path and sweetened
all his day. When he had gone quite out of sight the little Rosie
was returned to the great, Dutch bed to complete her sleep, and in a
few moments the mother was crouching between the rows of vegetables,
looking like a monster toad, and was weeding--weeding--weeding,
until with almost breaking back she began to carry water and
sprinkle--sprinkle--sprinkle, and after that the household tasks of
other women began--washing--scrubbing--ironing--baking, yet always
and ever with it all, there were little, white garments for Rosie,
and time to put them on, and when the child outgrew the vegetable
basket she had passed a great part of her life in, playing with a few
marigolds or a hollyhock flower--she could not have salable ones like
mignonette or pinks--the mother feared many things--for, as “Little
Knights” (that was what the neighbors called him), explained in slow,
back-end-first sentences, the vegetable basket arrangement had been
very satisfactory to both parties, and his wife could plant or hoe or
weed without anxiety, having simply to put out her hand now and then
and pull the basket after her. But now that was all past, and his wife
was “full up mit dem fears,” and when questioned as to the nature of
the fears that were filling her up, his blue eyes seemed both surprised
and reproachful that they could not see for themselves the possible
dangers in small Rosie’s path. “In place of first,” he explained, “der
was de cleanness--she mighd get dirty de garden in! Den,” his eyes
grew round at that, “der vas de red-peppers--she might touch dem and
aftervards rup her sveet eyes!” but when at the end of a long list of
possibilities, he cried out: “Unt dem pees--dem honey pees--what pite
mit dere tails--suppose dey make mit dere stingers on her? Ach Gott!
Ach Gott!” and, caught in a linguistic tangle, he fell into deep Dutch,
from which he emerged breathless and excited. Now that is a condition
no Dutchman will endure, so without apology, he trotted off home to
soothe himself with the one smoke he allowed himself each day, and
then to--rest? Oh, no, there was much work done in that small house by
night as well as by day--and mind, there are old neighbors still to
support this statement--they used actually to work in the garden by
moonlight--not habitually, but often enough, Heaven knows! And what was
the object of all this ceaseless labor--of their astonishing economies?
Before the coming of their baby girl, they had been little more than
two patient, dumb beasts of burden. Born and bred to work--they
worked--but dully--without hope or special object--but when God had
sent into their lives that laughing, pretty thing, and formed her
delicately that she might arouse their tenderness, they had changed.
They looked at one another, and each, smiling, saw the other anew.
They dreamed for her--they hoped now for her--they prayed now heavy,
laborious, loving prayers for her. Truly she had been the “locust and
wild honey” that fed them in their wilderness--so now it was for her
they labored and were therefore never tired.