MIMI'S BIRTHDAY POSY.
George Newbold's birthday fell within the first week of May, and
certainly no more ideal spring morning could have dawned than that which
Esther had set apart to be especially celebrated in honour of her
spouse.
Mr. Newbold should, indeed, for the fitness of things, have been a young
and blooming maiden--rather than a man verging towards middle age, and
more or less disillusionised--to correspond with the rare loveliness and
freshness of creation, that sprang afresh to life as Aurora, with
blushing finger-tips, drew back the curtains of the night, and ushered
in the roseate dawn. Even as the surroundings belonged more to that
"garden of fair delights," consecrated by the Egyptians to Daphne, into
which naught but harmony and sensuous peace and pleasure was allowed to
enter, rather than to
"This live, throbbing age,
That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,
And spends more passion, more heroic heat,
Between the mirrors of its drawing-rooms
Than Roland with his knights at Roncevalles."
But Nature is ever prodigal and unreasoning; she stops not to consider
on whom to spend her largesse, she has no calculation in her giving, and
she seeks no return, since, with her keen perceptiveness, she knows we
mortals possess nothing of our own, no gift of jewel or of price, of
intellect or of beauty, that can compare with the least of those
benefits she pours with such lavish hand upon us.
Does not all creation join with the angelic choirs to hymn her praises?
What song of mortal measure, sung by mortal tongue, can equal in
strength and melody that heavenly canticle? Nay, let us stand rather
with bowed head and reverent mien, lifting our hearts in silent ecstasy,
thankful if we may so much as catch a distant echo of those "divine
praises," borne to us maybe on the wings of the far west wind; or a
reflection of the golden glory of that paradise, ensnared in the
luminous fragility of a sunset cloud.
It is all we can hope for on this lower earth, and who of us dare count
on ever realising the terrible sublimity, the awful purity, of "the
beatific vision"?
It was very early in the morning when little Marianne came running down
the broad terrace steps, and stood alone amidst the varied riches of
Esther's flower garden. Her sunny hair was all unbound, and lay upon her
shoulders and about her forehead, still damp from the morning's bath,
glistening like threads of gold washed in a wavelet of sunshine. Her
white frock glanced in and out against the tender background of early
green foliage, as she ran from flower to flower, plucking here a
blossom, and there a bud, studying each attentively before adding them
to the bouquet in her hand, with the gravity of childhood, which invests
every action with a separate importance.
And as she flew about rejoicing, as only children and animals can
rejoice, in the mere pleasure of being, she sang from time to time the
rhyming measure of a nursery song, which fell unheeded from her lips,
and that had no sense or meaning, but sprang as spontaneously from her
heart as did the song of the little brown thrush, who was pouring out
his weight of thanksgiving, with such overwhelming rapture as to shake
his very soul, and cause the quivering cat-kin on which he perched to
bend and sway beneath its vibrations.
The windows of the Folly were still closed and curtained. Its inmates
were as yet scarce turning on their couches of down, or realising that
another day had begun for them, another day opened out full of sublime
opportunities for good or evil. With the passing of another hour they
would perforce be roused from their dreams by the inevitable early cup
of tea, without which species of dram-drinking no woman of fashion can
support the fatigues of her toilette, or the embarrassments of the
morning post. But that is sixty minutes off yet--sixty long
minutes--three thousand, six hundred seconds--and in the meantime,
before the inevitable overtakes us, let us follow the preacher's advice
and make the most of it. "Yet a little more sleep, and a little more
slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep."
Time enough to take up the burden of living when that burden is
ruthlessly thrust upon us, and we bow our shoulders with accustomed
habit to receive its weight.
But little Marianne entertained no such pessimistic views; to her the
joy of life was simply in the act of living, and its triumph in escaping
from the tyranny of Sarah, and being absolutely free to tear her frock
or rumple her golden hair without the visible personality of that
Nemesis. Presently Trim, her beloved Skye terrier, came leaping out to
her as fast as his very short legs and corpulent body would allow him to
travel; and then began a series of romps in which it was difficult to
say which took the most satisfaction--the dog or the child. Trim,
however, was the first to give up and retire on his laurels, selecting a
particularly green spot of turf beneath a lilac-tree in full bloom, and
after solemnly turning round and round in an unsuccessful race with his
own tail, settled himself comfortably thereon, and with the tip of his
red tongue showing between his teeth, watched the child with a benign
and patronising expression. Marianne, thus deserted, returned to her
flower-gathering, apostrophising Trim as she did so.
"You are a lazy dog, Trim. I'm 'shamed of you! It's perfectly redic'lous
your pretending to be tired; you can't be; it's only putting on shapes,
just as Miss Dick says, and shapes isn't very nice manners in such a wee
little doggie as you!"
Trim snapped at an intruding fly, and yawned for answer, then settled
his nose on his paws and went to sleep, and Marianne, thus left
companionless, grew a little weary of solitude.
"I guess I've got enough flowers now for Popsey's buffday," she said,
regarding critically the glowing mass of blossoms held very tightly in
her hot little hand. "I guess I'll go in and put 'em on his
dressing-table, and cry 'boo' very loud in his ear. Then he'll have to
get up!"
And fired with this most laudable device, Mimi trotted away very fast,
without so much as a backward look at the recreant Trim. Little recked
George Newbold of the awful fate in store for him at the hands, or
rather in the shrill voice of his small daughter! But surely, could he
have foreseen her advent in the character of a red Indian, he would
have devoutly thanked chance for his timely delivery.
As Marianne tripped along, a dark shadow fell suddenly across her path
and stopped her further advance. Pushing back the fringe of golden hair,
that fell almost into her sapphire blue eyes, the child halted and
looked up a little bewildered.
It was Vladimir Mellikoff who stood before her, looking very tall and
dark against the brilliant green of the sun-swept lawn behind him. The
child gazed up at him gravely and without speaking. This was not a
familiar figure in her little world; she would have greeted Jack Howard,
or Freddy Wylde, or even old Sir Piers Tracey with her accustomed quaint
mingling of condescension and intimacy; but this tall, dark stranger,
with his sombre face and deep black eyes, was unknown to her, and
because unknown was not to be put on the same footing with her old
companions.
However, Esther Newbold's small daughter was sufficiently a little
worldling in training to recognise in this stranger one of "papa's men,"
as she called them, classifying all unknown masculine visitors under one
head; she did not, therefore, run away, but stood quietly silent, her
eyes raised frankly to his, and the sunlight turning to living gold each
tendril of her fair hair.
Vladimir Mellikoff could be very gentle and winning to children; they
touched that inner chord of tenderness that vibrated so passionately to
Olga Naundorff's lightest word, and something in the fair child's face,
with its deep blue eyes, recalled to him that other proud Russian face,
with the violet eyes and scornful, curved lips. He bent down and spoke
to Mimi in his softest voice.
"You are little Marianne, are you not?" he said.
"I am Marianne Newbold," replied the child, with grave directness.
"I wonder if you could say my name," continued Mellikoff, persuasively.
"It is not so pretty as yours, but then I am a man, you see."
"Men's is never so pitty," remarked the child, didactically. "What is
your name?"
"Vladimir," replied Count Mellikoff, gravely, and repeating each
syllable distinctly: "Vla--di--mir. Do you think you can say it? Try."
But Marianne shook her golden mane in positive negation.
"I couldn't," she said, "not possibly. But I'll call you Mr. Val, if you
like; it's pittier than your real name."
"Very well, then, Mr. Val it shall be," answered the Count, smiling
broadly at the very English sobriquet bestowed upon him. "Who have you
been gathering all those flowers for?"
"They's for my Popsey; it's his buffday. Do you know how old he is, Mr.
Val? I guess he must be most a hundred."
To which Mr. Val replied with a laugh; but Marianne was no whit
abashed.
"I think so," she went on, seating herself on a low garden bench that
stood under a spreading ash-tree, and beginning to sort out the flowers
as they lay upon her lap. "I think so, 'cause he's got so many grey
hairs, more than I can count. When I was a _little_ girl"--with great
disdain--"I used to pull 'em out, till Sarah said ten new ones came to
each old one's funeral. Then I asked Lammy the other day if she thought
Popsey was nearly a hundred; but she only laughed. Does you know Lammy,
Mr. Val?" she queried, abruptly.
"Oh, but that isn't a real name, you know," protested Vladimir,
diplomatically; "that might be any creature's name--a dog's, or a
cat's."
"Oh, no, it couldn't," cried the child, eagerly, "'cause it's a
person's--a grown up's, you see. It isn't her very own, own name; but
that's too long, so I just calls her Lammy."
"And what is her very own own name?" asked Mellikoff, idly, taking up a
large white marguerite from Mimi's store, and carelessly stripping off
its petals, his mind unconsciously repeating the old formula, "she loves
me--she loves me not." The child's voice fell with startling
distinctness across the morning stillness, and shattered Vladimir's
sentiment with a straight, keen blow.
"Her very own name," said Marianne, slowly, and taking great pains with
her syllables, "is Mademoiselle Lamien--Mademoiselle Adèle Lamien."
The stripped daisy-head fell from Count Mellikoff's fingers, and lay at
his feet amidst its snow-flake petals unheeded. He started violently at
this positive answer to his negligent question, and the blood rushed for
one moment to his face. He, who was never known to show emotion even
when confronting death, trembled now before the unconscious words of a
little child. His dark eyes seemed to grow larger in their hollow
settings, the fine veins about his temples throbbed visibly.
Mimi, however, was ignorant of the agitation she had awakened; her
golden head was bent over her flowers, while with one little foot she
kept off the repentant Trim, who, having awakened from his slumbers, was
endeavouring with slavish abjection to reinstate himself in his little
mistress's favour.
When Count Mellikoff next spoke, any one save a child would have noticed
the forced lightness of his voice; as it was, even Mimi looked up
surprised by the change in it.
"And is it, then, Mademoiselle Lamien--Adèle Lamien--that you call by
the _petit-nom_ of Lammy?" he asked.
"Yes," replied the child, a little startled and impressed by his manner.
"Mumsey calls her Mam'zelle Lamien; but I don't--not always--I call her
Lammy. Is you sorry? Why does your eyes look so black?"
"Do they look black, Marianne?" Mellikoff asked, stupidly; then
recovering himself with a laugh, and returning to his old manner: "No,
I am not sorry. Why should I be? I've never seen your Mademoiselle
Lamien."
"She's gone away," answered the child, quickly. "She had to; she said
she must, 'cause she and Miss Hildreth couldn't possibly be here
together.' But when I asked Mumsey about it, she only said: 'Nonsense,
and don't bother.'"
"And has she been a long time with you?" asked Vladimir, putting the
question indifferently.
Mimi shook all her golden curls. "Not _very_ long; she came on Sarah's
buffday, and that isn't very long ago."
"But _how_ long?" queried Mellikoff. "A month, a year, a week? Try and
think, Mimi; was it one Sunday ago, or two, or three? You know when
Sunday comes, don't you?"
"Yes," replied the child, "it's the day after Saturday, and I always
have my best pudding for dinner. What's your best pudding, Mr. Val?"
But Mr. Val was spared answering this embarrassing question by the
advent of Sarah, who bore down upon them, her cap-strings flying, and
whisked Marianne off, in a whirlwind of yellow hair and white
petticoats, before he could even protest. She waved one little hand to
him as she tripped away, holding on to her flowers with the other, and
Trim barking at her heels; then the terrace door closed upon them, and
Vladimir was left alone.
Mechanically he stooped and picked up one of the stray blossoms that had
fallen from Mimi's lap; he turned it idly in his fingers, looking at it
with unseeing eyes, while his busy brain went on thinking, planning,
scheming.
Was he wrong after all? Had she escaped him; nay, had she ever been here
at all? Why had she gone away? When would she come back? How could he
piece out his welcome a little longer at the Folly? Was he altogether
wrong in his suspicions? Had the woman tricked him again; fighting him
with his own weapons, had she out-matched him and escaped?
And thus, as he stood lost in his self-questionings--a sombre, dark
figure in the glowing beauty and sunlight of the fair May morning,
twisting the drooping flower round and round in his fingers, and the
song of the birds echoing ceaselessly in his ears--a sudden light broke
over the gloom of his countenance, a half-formed exclamation rose to his
lips; he dropped the flower suddenly, and took a step forward.
"No, I am not wrong," he said, in answer to himself. "Let Adèle Lamien
beware, or I may turn her own arms against her." Then he turned abruptly
and walked towards the house; and only the sunshine, and the birds, and
Mimi's faded blossoms remained.