SHE.
A quiet footstep, a grave new presence on financial sidewalks, a neat
garb slightly out of date, a gently strong and kindly pensive face, a
silent bow, a new sign in the Rue Toulouse, a lone figure with a cane,
walking in meditation in the evening light under the willows of Canal
Marigny, a long-darkened window re-lighted in the Rue Conti--these were
all; a fall of dew would scarce have been more quiet than was the return
of Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle to the precincts of his birth and early
life.
But we hardly give the event its right name. It was Capitaine Lemaìtre
who had disappeared; it was Monsieur Vignevielle who had come back. The
pleasures, the haunts, the companions, that had once held out their
charms to the impetuous youth, offered no enticements to Madame
Delphine's banker. There is this to be said even for the pride his
grandfather had taught him, that it had always hald him above low
indulgences; and though he had dallied with kings, queens, and knaves
through all the mazes of Faro, Rondeau, and Craps, he had done it
loftily; but now he maintained a peaceful estrangement from all.
Evariste and Jean, themselves, found him only by seeking.
"It is the right way," he said to Père Jerome, the day we saw him there.
"Ursin Lemaìtre is dead. I have buried him. He left a will. I am his
executor."
"He is crazy," said his lawyer brother-in-law, impatiently.
"On the contr-y," replied the little priest, "'e 'as come ad hisse'f."
Evariste spoke.
"Look at his face, Jean. Men with that kind of face are the last to go
crazy."
"You have not proved that," replied Jean, with an attorney's obstinacy.
"You should have heard him talk the other day about that newspaper
paragraph I have taken Ursin Lemaitre's head; I have it with me; I
claim the reward, but I desire to commute it to citizenship.' He is
crazy."
Of course Jean Thompson did not believe what he said; but he said it,
and, in his vexation, repeated it, on the _banquettes_ and at the clubs;
and presently it took the shape of a sly rumor, that the returned rover
was a trifle snarled in his top-hamper.
This whisper was helped into circulation by many trivial eccentricities
of manner, and by the unaccountable oddness of some of his transactions
in business.
"My dear sir!" cried his astounded lawyer, one day, "you are not running
a charitable institution!"
"How do you know?" said Monsieur Vignevielle. There the conversation
ceased.
"Why do you not found hospitals and asylums at once," asked the
attorney, at another time, with a vexed laugh, "and get the credit of
it?"
"And make the end worse than the beginning,' said the banker, with a
gentle smile, turning away to a desk of books.
"Bah!" muttered Jean Thompson.
Monsieur Vignevielle betrayed one very bad symptom. Wherever he went he
seemed looking for somebody. It may have been perceptible only to those
who were sufficiently interested in him to study his movements; but
those who saw it once saw it always. He never passed an open door or
gate but he glanced in; and often, where it stood but slightly ajar, you
might see him give it a gentle push with his hand or cane It was very
singular.
He walked much alone after dark. The _gurchinangoes_ (garroters, we
might say), at those times the city's particular terror by night, never
crossed his path. He was one of those men for whom danger appears to
stand aside.
One beautiful summer night, when all nature seemed hushed in ecstasy,
the last blush gone that told of the sun's parting, Monsieur
Vignevielle, in the course of one of those contemplative, uncompanioned
walks which it was his habit to take, came slowly along the more open
portion of the Rue Royale, with a step which was soft without intention,
occasionally touching the end of his stout cane gently to the ground and
looking upward among his old acquaintances, the stars.
It was one of those southern nights under whose spell all the sterner
energies of the mind cloak themselves and lie down in bivouac, and the
fancy and the imagination, that cannot sleep, slip their fetters and
escape, beckoned away from behind every flowering bush and
sweet-smelling tree, and every stretch of lonely, half-lighted walk, by
the genius of poetry. The air stirred softly now and then, and was still
again, as if the breezes lifted their expectant pinions and lowered them
once more, awaiting the rising of the moon in a silence which fell upon
the fields, the roads, the gardens, the walls, and the suburban and
half-suburban streets, like a pause in worship. And anon she rose.
Monsieur Vignevielle's steps were bent toward the more central part of
the town, and he was presently passing along a high, close, board-fence,
on the right hand side of the way, when, just within this enclosure,
and almost overhead, in the dark boughs of a large orange-tree, a
mocking-bird began the first low flute-notes of his all-night song. It
may have been only the nearness of the songster that attracted the
passer's attention, but he paused and looked up.
And then he remarked something more,--that the air where he had stopped
was filled with the overpowering sweetness of the night-jasmine. He
looked around; it could only be inside the fence. There was a gate just
there. Would he push it, as his wont was? The grass was growing about it
in a thick turf, as though the entrance had not been used for years. An
iron staple clasped the cross-bar, and was driven deep into the
gate-post. But now an eye that had been in the blacksmithing
business--an eye which had later received high training as an eye for
fastenings--fell upon that staple, and saw at a glance that the wood had
shrunk from it, and it had sprung from its hold, though without falling
out. The strange habit asserted itself; he laid his large hand upon the
cross-bar; the turf at the base yielded, and the tall gate was drawn
partly open.
At that moment, as at the moment whenever he drew or pushed a door or
gate, or looked in at a window, he was thinking of one, the image of
whose face and form had never left his inner vision since the day it had
met him in his life's path and turned him face about from the way of
destruction.
The bird ceased. The cause of the interruption, standing within the
opening, saw before him, much obscured by its own numerous shadows, a
broad, ill-kept, many-flowered garden, among whose untrimmed rose-trees
and tangled vines, and often, also, in its old walks of pounded shell,
the coco-grass and crab-grass had spread riotously, and sturdy weeds
stood up in bloom. He stepped in and drew the gate to after him. There,
very near by, was the clump of jasmine, whose ravishing odor had tempted
him. It stood just beyond a brightly moonlit path, which turned from him
in a curve toward the residence, a little distance to the right, and
escaped the view at a point where it seemed more than likely a door of
the house might open upon it. While he still looked, there fell upon his
ear, from around that curve, a light footstep on the broken shells--one
only, and then all was for a moment still again. Had he mistaken? No.
The same soft click was repeated nearer by, a pale glimpse of robes came
through the tangle, and then, plainly to view, appeared an outline--a
presence--a form--a spirit--a girl!
From throat to instep she was as white as Cynthia. Something above the
medium height, slender, lithe, her abundant hair rolling in dark, rich
waves back from her brows and down from her crown, and falling in two
heavy plaits beyond her round, broadly girt waist and full to her knees,
a few escaping locks eddying lightly on her graceful neck and her
temples,--her arms, half hid in a snowy mist of sleeve, let down to
guide her spotless skirts free from the dewy touch of the
grass,--straight down the path she came!
Will she stop? Will she turn aside? Will she espy the dark form in the
deep shade of the orange, and, with one piercing scream, wheel and
vanish? She draws near. She approaches the jasmine; she raises her arms,
the sleeves falling like a vapor down to the shoulders; rises upon
tiptoe, and plucks a spray. O Memory! Can it be? _Can it be_? Is this
his quest, or is it lunacy? The ground seems to Monsieur Vignevielle the
unsteady sea, and he to stand once more on a deck. And she? As she is
now, if she but turn toward the orange, the whole glory of the moon will
shine upon her face. His heart stands still; he is waiting for her to do
that. She reaches up again; this time a bunch for her mother. That neck
and throat! Now she fastens a spray in her hair. The mockingbird cannot
withhold; he breaks into song--she turns--she turns her face--it is she,
it is she! Madame Delphine's daughter is the girl he met on the ship.