'MY wanderings, dating from the day I landed at Genoa, would fill
with their narrative a book far larger than 'Livingstone's Travels.'
I journeyed over all the traversable regions of Africa; in India I
have been wherever the foot of the white man has trodden; I spent a
year and a half in China; almost as long in Syria; and I went every
where over the continent of Europe. Then I passed six months in
Sweden; most of that time living at my native town, Jönpöping, until
at last the sound of my mother's tongue spoken by stranger mouths
became absolutely unbearable to me, and I left the country never to
return. I will see Great Britain, I said. No better place for that
purpose, at least to begin with, than London. So I went there; and,
with all the curiosities I had collected in my vagabond life, opened
a shop as Exhibitor and Taxidermist, in Piccadilly.
'By this time, you will perceive, I had quite abandoned my original
idea of returning to America to open a museum. It takes no longer
for the world in general; or the world of New-York, to forget its
largest man, than for a heaping measure of grain to close up the gap
after a hand is withdrawn. And I was a long way from the conceit of
fancying myself even a large man. Probably, I said to myself, there
are a dozen in my place by this time. I will not go back to revive
a name wiped out; it is at least more entertaining to stay here and
try chalking out a new one. If I fail, why, the remittances still
come regularly.
'So up went the old sign on a fresh board: 'Orloff Ruricson,
Taxidermist and Aviarian Professor.' In about three months from the
opening of the establishment, the collection was a little more than
self-supporting, and the Taxidermy throve at the rate of ten guineas
a week. I got some favorable critiques in the _Times_; some body
called me the Minor Zoological Gardens; and gradually my aviarianism
came into play. Lord Crinkum consulted me about his Chinese
pheasants, and Lord Crankum got my general views on fighting-cocks.
The Honorable Miss Dingleton, like Mr. Pecksniff, only with more
money to bestow on the object, thought she would like to see my
ideas of a grotto. I gave it to her, and of course every alderman's
wife must have me fussing about her cobble-stones out in what she
called a suburban willer. That's the great beauty of art in England,
looked at in the paying light; the moment you're so fortunate as to
get a lord by the nose, you lead all Cockneydom whithersoever you
will. It's a country where every body shuts his eyes, and grabs the
next bigger man by the coat-tail. So, on the whole, I got along.'
'That was all very well, looked at in the paying light, as you say,'
interrupted John Tryon, 'but you must have been terribly lonely
during the long winter evenings. Didn't you have any body to speak
to: any body to _love_?'
'Nobody. I had learned the misery of that by lessons enough, I
should think. Even in the desert I never made a pet of my camel, and
most people do that, to the extent, at least, of complimenting the
lovely beast upon his patience. I had nothing to care for and cared
for nothing. I was now thirty years old, you see, and had travelled.
'I had kept the shop in Piccadilly for a year. I stood one morning,
at the expiration of that period, in a room of the back-shop, where
I prepared specimens, and was consulted. My clerks had just taken
down the shutters, and were chattering to each other behind the
counter. I was pensive that morning, a mighty unusual thing for me,
and their gabble disturbed me. I meditated calling out to them to
be still, when the shop-door opened, the front-door looking on the
street, and some one said:
''Please, Sir, can you give me any work?'
'Good heavens! I started to my feet, and yet seemed in such a dream
that I could scarcely move them after I was erect. Who spoke? It was
a low, sweet, woman's voice, the like whereof I had not heard for
nine years! Not that it was low, or sweet, or a woman's; not that it
was all these together, but that it was _the voice_.
''Get out with you, beggar!' answered the chattering clerks, with
unanimous fierceness; and I heard the front shop-door shut slowly,
as by a tired, feeble hand.
'In a second more and she would be gone; I should never see her
again! That thought awakened me, and gave wings to my feet. I dashed
through the shop; my clerks looking at me as if they thought I had
suddenly gone mad. I jerked the door open, and saw a lithe girl's
figure moving wearily away among the hurrying crowd: her back toward
me.
''Who asked for work?' I called out aloud.
Among the few that turned to look was this lithe figure. She turned
hastily, anxiously, deprecatingly, and again I heard that wonderful
voice.
''It was I, Sir.'
''Come into the shop, if you please. Let us talk about it.'
''You are not vexed with me, Sir?'
'As the girl said this she cast her great brown eyes upon me so
piteously, so helplessly, seeming so intensely to fear displeasure,
yet so wistfully to beg help, that all at once there flashed before
me the harbor of Genoa! I saw it for an instant as distinctly
as we now see the Kaaterskill Clove; saw the villainous Italian
smirking across his organ; saw the glassy, shining waters of the
Mediterranean; and the drowning face of Beppo going down therein;
_with those same eyes in it_!
''Vexed with you? With _you_? GOD knows I am not!' was my first wild
exclamation, as soon as this strange phantasmagoria passed by; and I
saw Piccadilly, and its crowd, and the slender girl, again, standing
there uncared for, like myself, in the great ocean of London being.
''Come in, I say! Come in! For the love of GOD, come in!' I
continued passionately, reckless who heard me.
''Work, food, money, help, any thing, every thing! I will give you
all.'
'This I said beseechingly, yet neither this nor the passionate
command did the girl, timid as she was, seem to regard as at all
strange or out of place. She only came confidingly toward me, put
her hand in mine, and I led her into the back-shop, while the
chatterers stared.
'I bade her take off her faded bonnet, and sit down. As she obeyed,
her golden brown hair caught on a pin in the bonnet behind; its
soft, well-grown mass lifted from her neck, and there I beheld,
close where the brown joined the white, _a small red crescent mark
reaching almost from ear to ear_!
'I seemed to be wandering through a chain of dreams. I tried
to speak, but in vain. To think, but as vainly. She disengaged
the bonnet, and let it droop upon her shoulders. Her face, thus
disclosed, was the most beautiful array of human features, flushed
through by the light of the most beautiful human soul, I ever saw,
or mused of, or believed in, in my life!
'She sat in the chair opposite me. As for me, I gazed and gazed.
Modestly inviting questions, she looked me frankly in the eyes; and
then, as in wonder that I did not speak, threw her head backward,
and perused my face curiously. This posture elevated her chin. I was
about to say something, but just then _I saw under that chin another
crimson mark, the slenderest of slender lines, as if the finest
knife-point dipped in blood had been drawn clear across the throat
by a nervous hand_. I durst not say to myself what I was reminded of
by _that_. Not even to think of it at all. I half-feared that I had
become insane, rubbed my forehead, and kept repeating: 'Oh! it is
only her bonnet-strings tied too tightly, that is all!'
'I would not trust myself with questioning her then. Not a word of
any kind did I speak to her, except to say gently, that she might
consider herself my apprentice in the art of bird-stuffing; and that
all her necessities should be provided for.
'I had a little bed made for her in the room of the old Yorkshire
woman, who minded my solitary establishment for me. She was an
orphan, so she said afterward; and had walked all the way from the
Stafford Potteries, where her only relative, an aunt, was just dead:
hoping to find work in London, that might keep her from the street.
She was eighteen years of age, and had never known father or mother.
'Once more I had a living creature to feel an interest in, to become
attached to. Whatever was mysterious in her arrival, her appearance,
or her voice, I dismissed from my mind as mere curious coincidences,
at once too frivolous, too perplexing to be followed up. There was
the real substantial fact: a girl without home or friends. Now what
was to be done with her?
'I settled that question gradually day by day. I taught her, in the
daytime, to help me at my specimen-table; in the evening, to read
and write. The rapidity with which she caught by the right end, and
made her own every new process, either of brain or fingers, was
astonishing. She was my constant wonder and delight. So imitative
yet so original; so talented but so modest withal; so bright and
sportive, so docile and grateful; she soon became my right hand and
right eye in all I had to do.
'As soon as I had dressed her presentably, the clerks saw her
superiority as they could not through old clothes, and did it
unquestioning reverence. But for this _reverence_ I verily believe
they would have come in a body, and thrown themselves at her feet,
entreating her to take her pick within the first month after she was
domesticated with me. For they were all desperately in love with
her: devouring her with their eyes as she went in and out among them
so modestly and yet so loftily, like a queen in disguise.
'Well, I did not wonder; I could forgive them. For, six months after
she had entered my shop-door, the homeless wayfarer, I awoke to
the fact that I was in love with her myself. For the first time in
all the days of my manhood, did I know what it was to feel a woman
wrought into the texture of my life, so that pulling her away seemed
an endless pain to look forward to; and before I knew that it had
happened. And that combination of circumstances only, as I view it,
is adequate to constitute _love_, on which marriage may be honorably
founded.
As soon as I knew that I loved Bessie Cartwright--that was her
name--I began to torture myself with the question whether I ought to
tell her of it _yet_. Whether, if I did so, her simple heart, out of
mere gratefulness, would not instantly give itself up as a matter
of debt and honor to the man whom she regarded only in the light of
a benefactor. And I had rather have any thing happen than this, my
own loneliness till I died even, than this, so galling to me if I
discovered it when it was too late, so ruinous to every thing that
was best in her young growing womanhood.
'As in the old days, it was my custom still to look at the memorials
of my lost friends, when times went hard with me, and my spirits
fell. So, one evening, after I had been musing painfully in my
room for a couple of hours, I took from my battered old trunk Miss
Brentnall's portrait, the Flicker, and the Marmoset, which I had
embalmed after his death in the harbor of Genoa.
'I ranged them on my table, and with a feeling of mournful pleasure
gazed from one to the other, dwelling upon all the past which they
recalled.
'As I sat thus employed, I heard Bessie's tap at the door; I called,
'Come in!' and she entered, with her reading-book for the evening's
lesson. Seeing the unusual array upon my table, she asked me: 'What!
working still?'
''No; not working, Bessie,' I replied; 'thinking.'
''May I see who that is?' said she artlessly, pointing to the
daguerreotype.
''Oh! certainly. Though you must not laugh at it. It is a very
homely lady, but a very good one; and, while she lived, my dearest
friend.' So I handed it to her.
'She bent her brown head down to the shaded drop-light on my table,
and held the portrait close to it. I watched her to see the effect
of that strange world-wronged face on the beautiful, Heaven-favored
one.
'I saw Bessie Cartwright grow pale as death! Her eyes became fixed
like a cataleptic person's. But her head moved, from the portrait
to the Flicker, from the Flicker to the Marmoset. The portrait fell
from her hand, she grasped hurriedly at the table, and then fell to
the floor.
''Dead: dead like the rest!' said I, with a fierce coldness; 'and
because I have loved her.'
'I pulled the shade from the drop-light, and drew it to the edge
of the table, so that the light fell full on the prostrate girl. I
called her by name, and got no answer. I loosened her dress, and
in doing so pushed the heavy knot of her brown hair away from her
neck. That scarlet crescent glowed there in the midst of the marble
whiteness, like a flame!
'I turned her upon her back, and beneath her chin saw the slender
crimson line, burning also brighter than ever, while all the throat
was deadly pale. 'Bessie! Bessie! speak to me once, only once more.'
I spoke passionately at her ear.
'Still no answer. I looked in agony at the dead things which had
once been mine; saw plainest of all the Flicker; and again that
strange suspicion which I had felt the first day I ever saw the
girl, awoke in my brain.
'I bent my mouth to her ear, and softly said: 'Brenta!' At that
instant her great dark eyes opened, she read my face wistfully, and
then her lips murmured:
''Orloff, dear Orloff! I told you I would meet you again; I have
kept my word.'
'It was the voice that became silent ten years before in the
sick-room next my own!
''Miss Brentnall!' I exclaimed, not knowing what I said.
''Orloff, dear Orloff!' replied _the voice_, once more from the lips
of Bessie Cartwright.
'And then the blood came rushing back to the young girl's face.
Timidly she sat up, passed her hand across her eyes, and said
faintly:
''Oh! I have had _such_ a dream!'
''What was it, dear child?' I asked.
''I thought that picture you showed me was I. Then I felt myself
dying. You were by me till all the room grew dark. I hardly remember
what came then; but I have had, oh! so many strange thoughts, and
been in so many strange places! I thought I was killed with a little
knife: I was on the sea; I was close by a great town that rose from
the water's side; I was drowning: then I was myself again in the old
dress I wore when I came to you; then I seemed to be all things at
once, and you called me a name I had heard before, when I lay in the
bed dying; and oh! forgive me, Sir, I called you by your Christian
name, Orloff, _dear_ Orloff! I said, do forgive me: I will never do
it again.'
''You must do something else than that,' said I, no longer
awe-stricken and trembling, for in a moment the mystery of my life
had parted like a fog, and I saw its meaning beyond in the clearest
of heaven's twilight. 'Something else than that, Bessie. You must
never call me by any other name than _dear_ Orloff! Can you call me
that? For _I love you_: GOD only knows how I love you. Can you?'
'The girl looked at me with parted lips; caught her breath quickly;
hid her face in my bosom; and once more after all those years the
beloved voice, knowing what it said, replied:
''Orloff, _dear_ Orloff.'
'Bessie Cartwright is my wife. Not until years afterward did I tell
her the meaning of her dream; nor how through lives and deaths she
had followed me to save and claim her own. She knows it now; we both
keep it for the grateful wonder of our prayers; a mystery like all
mysteries had we but the key, with its grand, beneficent meaning,
unmeaning, contemptible only to those who read it wrong or not at
all.'
'And you do mean to tell to me zat ze beautiful lady you have now
espouse, be vonce in ze body of ze vare ugly woman, ze red-head bird
vat you call him, and ze marmosette; you mean to say to me zat?'
'I'd like to ask that question too,' said John Tryon.
'I mean to tell you both,' answered Orloff Ruricson, 'that you can
put _your own interpretation_ on _my facts_. Also, that if you ever
break our confidence in telling my history with its proper names,
then good-by to your friendship with Orloff Ruricson.'
I have been permitted to state the facts without the names. Let me
also be permitted to state them without my interpretation.