Hortense was very ill and Madame de Beaumont very disconsolate, when I
reached them. The lively, sparkling look was all gone from the pretty
face I had learned to love so dearly, only a wasted remnant of her
former beauty remained. Who could detect the change more keenly than
I? I, who had feasted upon every line and curve that constituted her
physical perfection, whose memory had been fed upon the recollection
of their rare loveliness, and whose hope had lived upon this
expectation of seeing her soon again.
When I arrived she was sleeping, the still quiet sleep of an infant,
her breast scarcely heaving as the feeble breath came and went. Her
mother was standing by the open doorway in an adjoining room looking
in upon the peaceful invalid with tearful eyes. She advanced on
tip-toe to meet me, and twining her arms around me led me away down a
dimly-lit corridor into a cosy sitting-room at the end, where a
cheerful gas-light greeted us. Our noiseless entrance disturbed the
solitary occupant, who, as we crossed the threshold, rose up abruptly
from where he sat by a small table near the window, and gathering up
the books which he had been reading, strode eagerly towards a
curtained doorway opposite, and vanished behind the waving drapery,
just as we passed into the room.
There was an uneasy look in Madame de Beaumont's eyes for a second or
two as they followed the receding figure. Then with an affectation of
ordinary solicitude she turned and said to me,
"I did not know that anyone was here. We disturbed Bayard at his
studies I am afraid."
"Let us go somewhere else," I suggested a little eagerly.
"Oh," she answered, shaking her head significantly, "that would not
bring him back I assure you, we may as well be comfortable here as
elsewhere, now. He is such a queer boy."
She was evidently under the impression that I knew something definite
about this person who, in spite of his suggestive name, seemed timid
and strange as a fawn, but as I had a burning desire to know
everything about Hortense's illness I was not tempted to indulge this
secondary curiosity, so his name was summarily abandoned for the dear
invalid's.
Madame de Beaumont could not account in any definite or satisfactory
manner for her daughter's present condition. It was the result, she
said, of a growing indisposition that had stolen over her lately, and
this was why her fears had such little hope lest her complaint should
prove a constitutional decline that would baffle all the skilful
efforts of her physicians.
"She began," the mother said in a voice of sobs, "by renouncing all
her pleasures. She did not care for one thing and was too tired for
another. She took no interest in anything that had distracted her
before; she would only read, and write letters to you and in the end
she renounced even these relaxations. The doctors suspect that some
mental strain may have been worrying her, but I can think of none. All
that we could do to make her happy and comfortable we did, and I have
never heard her complain, or wish for anything that she had not
already. What will I do if I lose her?" Madame de Beaumont suddenly
cried, burying her face in her hands and weeping bitterly. "Her
father, you know, died of consumption," she added in a hopeless
whisper, raising her head and looking at me sorrowfully.
It was a sad scene and one that I was not prepared to meet. I had
assured myself that Madame de Beaumont's letter was exaggerated, and
now it seemed not to have conveyed to me half vividly enough the
actual state of the unfortunate circumstances.
We had some slight refreshment served on the little table before us,
but neither of us could partake of it heartily. I swallowed some
mouthfuls of food more out of duty than anything else, and indulged
myself with a cup of strong tea, my favorite beverage, after which we
repaired quietly to the sick-room to have a look at Hortense before
retiring.
Faint glimmers of light, leaping from the night lamp that burned dimly
on a table by the bedside, danced in flickering shadows every now and
then upon her pallid cheeks, but still she slept quietly and
peacefully. One would think it was the sleep that knows no earthly
waking were it not for the warm look of her paleness, and the feeble
throbbing of something in her thin white neck.
"She will spend the whole night like this," her mother whispered,
drawing me away. "The nurse watches her steadily and Bayard occupies
the next room, but they are never disturbed. She dozes quietly the
whole night long. To-morrow she will know you and talk to you. You
must go to your room now, my dear, for you are tired and travel-worn.
Come, I will show you the way," she added, putting her arm around my
waist and leading me out of the room.
When we reached the door we were met by the timid hero of the
sitting-room, who now found himself almost in our arms. He was making
a stealthy entrance, and we a stealthy exit, and we came upon one
another so suddenly that we all three stood motionless and silent for
an awkward second or so.
Madame de Beaumont relieved the stupid situation by saying, "Miss
Hampden, this is my son, I suppose you know him already by name."
I was too surprised to say or do anything appropriate. I merely raised
my eyes and inclined my head a little, and worked my way through the
door with an impatience almost equal to that with which he had flown
from the room which we had invaded an hour or so before.
In a few minutes more I was safe and secure in my own apartment, free
to sit down quietly and make out a calm realization of the whole state
of affairs for my own private benefit. The figure I had just left
standing in the opposite doorway came back to me now, more
clearly-defined in memory than he was to my corporal eyes as they
rested on him. He was a handsome fellow, very handsome, but how
strange looking, with his rich embroidered gown falling about him in
heavy folds, and his cap shoved back off his brow, throwing his marked
features into exquisite relief, this was Hortense's brother of whom
she had never spoken to me, whose name I had never heard until
to-night! This was Bayard de Beaumont!
I stood up and began to unfasten my trinkets, and my eyes were
instinctively raised to a picture which hung over the mirror beside
me. It consisted of two photographs in a pretty delicate frame, one
was Bayard's, the other was a woman's, not his mother's, nor his
sister's. It was of some one I had never seen. I raised the lamp above
my head and scrutinized it. It was a beautiful face, but one of cold,
passive loveliness. There was something in the handsome mouth which
made me wince as I looked upon it, and those large speaking eyes. What
a depth theirs was, too deep, I thought, too alluring, might not one
get lost in such labyrinths as these?
I gazed upon the picture until my hand, exhausted, trembled with the
lighted lamp it held, and even then I had not seen it half enough but
I turned away and went on in moody thoughtfulness with my final
preparations for retiring.
I knelt and said my evening prayers, with many a struggle against
teasing distractions, I must admit.
Such a queer nature was mine! I do not know whether others resemble me
or not in this respect, but from my young girlhood, I have always been
led away by those faces, books, sounds or pictures, that are
suggestive of any kind of deep or pent up emotion. I know not exactly
whether it be that I look upon them as associated in some dim distant
way with my own uneventful life, yet how could that be? What have
vagrant strains of unfamiliar music conceived by unknown minds, and
played by unseen hands to do with the mechanism of one undreamt of
human soul? What can those heart-moving pages of the authors I love,
have to do with the issue of an existence of which they have never
heard nor thought? What part could these fascinating faces have played
in the personal drama of my life, when they have never been called
upon to bestow even the tame smile of conventional greeting upon me?
What bearing could those speaking pictures have upon the story of my
individual experience when they are often the only reflection of days
long past and forgotten, children of some pensive artist's fancy that
never had another life outside of his conception, than that infused by
brush or chisel? Yet it always seems to me that as I look into those
books and faces, or as I lend my ear to those engaging sounds, some
chord vibrates within me that makes me feel as if my memory were
struggling to awake from some lethargy: scenes and sorrows of my
yesterdays come back for a short moment to my vivid recollection, and
seem to hang around these powerful incentives in a misty halo. It may
be the caprice of an extravagant imagination, it may be the freak of a
foolish fancy, an empty day-dream, an idle reverie, but to me while it
lasts, it is sweeter than any reality.
Thus was it with this picture that hung upon my bedroom wall that
night. I could not take my eyes from it. There I lay, tired and
travel-worn, on an easy bed; but the light burned beside me and I
could not sleep. Something held my gaze fixed upon the opposite wall.
I could but stare and wonder at the curious loveliness of that woman's
face, and ask myself doubtfully over and over again whether such
beauty always engenders proportionate happiness for its possessor.
"And Bayard loved her," I went on in mental soliloquy. "This strange,
handsome fellow with the sad face and solemn air." Did he still love
her, I wondered, or was she called away in her youthful grace and
loveliness to where he could only see her with the eyes of faith? Did
he now live upon her cherished memory, isolated from all the profane
distractions of social life? Where was she, or who was she, and why
had Hortense never spoken of her in all her intimate conversations
with me? Was she his wife? May not this picture have got there in some
accidental way? She might be a relative. It might have happened that
they were just the same size and style of portrait, and were put
together on that account. But no! something in the faces of both
insinuated a close relationship. They were more to one another, I felt
sure, than friend or relative. There was love, quiet, steady,
absorbing love in his great dark eyes, as if in resting upon the
beauty of that other face they had found happiness and repose forever.
They even suggested something of a reproachful love, as if they found
those attractions too winning, and not human enough. I almost coveted
the respectfully devouring glance of those contemplative brown eyes,
for we women with faces of very ordinary fabric cannot believe that
men love us altogether as they would if our cheeks were like damask
roses and our eyes like dew-kissed violets. Nor do we blame them. Yet
how often does it come to pass that a woman's beauty is the
stumbling-block to her earthly happiness? With only a face for her
fortune, many a bright-eyed, laughing belle has gone out to seek
sorrow and misery. The world is full of them, they are rolling in easy
carriages up and down the thoroughfares of life, each a pampered and
dearly bought idol of some powerful old Croesus, whom to love would be
to outrage every principle of nature and worthy sentiment, and,
therefore, to live upon milk and honey and be clad in the finest of
purple, beauty will sanction her own destruction, living a loveless
life, ever haunted by a memory of something brighter and happier that
might have been. And all for this, that others may look with
admiration, and possibly with envy upon her glittering wealth, or that
she may reflect some of the social power and prestige of the man who
marries her. She may escape destitute gentility; she may pass into the
higher walks of refined society, may be waited upon by many servants,
and be the cynosure of eyes that under other circumstances had never
deigned to favor her with a casual notice. What of that? She may, at
last, recline in an expensive casket, and rich exotics may lie in
splendid profusion about her, there may be tolling of many bells and
sighing of many friends, but after that? Does the grave show any more
respect to these remnants of dainty humanity stowed away in the
stillness of an artistic vault, than to the handful of pauper human
bones that crumble to their final dust under the unmarked, unnoticed
sod?
With such reflections as these, and while my eyes were still fixed
upon the fascinating photograph I fell into a deep sleep.
I dreamed strange things that night. Phantom forms with a dark mystic
beauty about them glided round me. I saw a woman with long raven
tresses and tear-dimmed eyes shrouded in flowing draperies, leaning
over a narrow rustic bridge under which dark and muddy water ran in a
gurgling stream. Her elbow leaned upon the railing, and her pensive
face lay half-buried in one slender hand. She was looking into the
depths below, and a great misery was written upon her handsome
features. I dreamed that I was hurrying by the spot where she was
standing, eager to reach the other side unobserved by her. As I stole
with noiseless tread behind her, I heard her talking to the waters in
a slow and humdrum monotone:
"Even if I did it," she was saying "he wouldn't care now. No! Bayard
wouldn't care, no one would care. Would you care?" She screamed,
turning suddenly around and clutching me tightly with both trembling
hands. My blood ran cold, my very hair stood up on end, as I saw the
wild glitter in her dark, lustrous eyes, and the hopeless frenzy in
her harsh and hollow laugh. I wrestled once, with all the strength I
could command, and with a piercing scream I awoke! Cold clammy drops
lay on my face and hands. My heart was throbbing wildly against my
breast. I lay prostrate, paralyzed with fear, staring into the outer
gloom. It was just at the turn of the darkness when things are
outlined though still colorless and shadowy, and I could see the
delicate frame opposite me suspended by invisible cords from an
invisible nail--that cursed thing that had haunted me in my sleep and
reduced me to this painful condition.
There was a flicker of light through the keyhole and crevices of my
bed-room door at this crisis. Someone turned the handle cautiously and
finding the bolt drawn from the inside, whispered huskily.
"What is the matter?"
I could not recognize the voice, but sitting up in my bed, I answered
faintly:
"Oh! it is nothing. I have had a dreadful nightmare, that is all."
The light flickered again and the cautious footsteps retreated,
leaving me alone with the dusk and my fears. I fell back upon my
pillow and crept under the warm coverings. I was weak and shivering,
and a violent pain darted through my head. In a few moments that
seemed like hours to me, I fell asleep again. This time it was a
quiet, dreamless slumber, which restored me greatly, and refreshed my
looks and my humor for breakfast.
When I awoke a second time, a bright morning sunshine flooded the
room. The birds sang lustily outside my window, carts and carriages
rumbled along the road; bells were ringing and all the voices of
industry and activity were united in a great chorus which proclaimed
the advent of another day.
No one spoke of my tragic experience when I appeared at the breakfast
table. Madame de Beaumont and her son were already in the dining-room
when I went down, and we took our seats almost immediately. Hortense
was still sleeping, they said, and looked quite refreshed after the
night.
"I hope I did not disturb her when I screamed?" I ventured to remark.
"When you screamed!" Madame de Beaumont exclaimed in bewilderment.
"Yes! did you not hear me?" I asked, just as astonished.
"No indeed," she answered, "did you Bayard?" turning towards her son
who sat at the upper end of the table.
"Miss Hampden had supper too late last night," he said, evading a
direct reply, "and that with traveling, and the excitement of seeing
Hortense so very ill, would disturb any one's slumber."
I thought he intended that the subject of my nightmare, should be
summarily dismissed with this explanation, and feeling a little
unkindness in the arbitrary way in which he expressed himself, I
turned to Madame de Beaumont and with a self-justifying tone remarked:
"It is the first time in my life I have ever had a nightmare, and I
cannot account for it. I had been looking at a picture that hangs over
the looking-glass in the room you gave me, and do you know it
suggested such a queer train of thought, that immediately on falling
asleep I dreamed of it, and such a dream! It would have frightened any
one."
Madame de Beaumout busied herself among the tea-things while I spoke,
and never raised her eyes, but Bayard, laying down his knife and fork,
turned his gaze full upon me. There was a covert sneer, I thought, in
the look which he directed at me so steadily, and feeling painfully
mystified and uncomfortable under the whole situation, I bent my head
over my chocolate and sipped it slowly for need of a better
distraction. After a moment or so of unflinching staring, the
courteous Bayard resumed his breakfast with double the appetite, it
seemed to me, with which he began it. This was my uncongenial
initiation into my friend's home.