Before the week was out, Hortense, to the surprise and delight of us
all, was able to move about from one room to another. She looked white
and wasted still, but her old manner had returned to her in a great
measure, and she laughed and chatted eagerly with us, one after
another, thus giving strong confirmation to the hopes expressed by her
medical adviser, who now predicted a rapid convalescence.
The sun was warm and invigorating, and nature at the very climax of
her summer beauty, the leaves green and plentiful, and the breeze
gentle and refreshing. Everything in the external world tempted one to
"fling dull care away" and be happy while these propitious moments
lingered with time.
Madame de Beaumont and her son were so hopeful now of Hortense's
complete recovery that they ventured to leave home for a week or ten
days to attend to some family business that had been delayed on
account of her serious illness, but it was with many a parting
injunction, regarding the care and attention that should be
unceasingly bestowed upon her darling during her enforced absence,
that the solicitous mother left me in charge. Anxious to fulfil my
pledge to the very letter. I gave myself up to the exclusive
companionship of my little friend from that moment. It was indeed a
pleasure and a recreation for me, now that she was able to laugh and
talk as before.
Two weeks had elapsed since my arrival in Toronto and many strange
conjectures had held possession of my mind during this comparatively
short interval. I had seen nothing, I may say, of the quiet hero of
the household. His time was spent either in the solemn seclusion of
his own apartments or out of doors. Occasionally we met going out of,
or coming into, a room, going up or down stairs or passing along some
corridor. We nearly always had meals together, and on a few occasions
he even sat with us for an hour after dinner, but of what good was
that? The conversation was tame and impersonal when we were all
together, and when we two met by accident there was a quiet mutual
greeting which began and ended on the spot.
I was still of the opinion that he was a handsome man and a fine
fellow altogether, but the suspicion that he was shrouded in mystery
repelled me, despite my best intentions and desires. I have never
taken to those deep natures that talk in discreet monosyllables and
cling to the sheltering refuge of such safe subjects as are the
substance of everybody's and anybody's chit-chat. Maybe I judge them
harshly when I persuade myself that the records of their past could
not stand the open daylight of a free-and-easy discussion. This
verdict is, however, the suggestion of my instinct, and need not carry
weight with anyone but myself.
Lest any of the ardent believers in the pre-eminent curiosity of
womankind be wondering how I could have restrained my burning desires
to ferret out the secrets of this man's life for so long, I must
hasten to inform them that conjointly with this feminine weakness I
had a most unyielding pride, a pride that absorbed _even_ my
curiosity. Though I pined to know the wonderful story of his past,
this prevailing vice forbade me to quench my devouring thirst at the
fountainhead of satisfaction.
Hortense had not volunteered to open the subject with me, neither had
her mother, though both must have known full well that my suspicions
were aroused. I did not therefore intend to ask a confidence which
could not be given willingly and freely. It was virtually nothing to
me what this man did or did not, and as his experience had probably a
painful halo about it, I was not eager to refer to it in the remotest
possible way.
Before he left with Madame de Beaumont he came into the sitting-room
where I was standing, looking out of the window, to bid me good-bye.
He wore a traveling costume of a becoming gray color, and held his hat
in one gloved hand. I heard him come in, but purposely did not look
around. As he was generally engaged with business of his own when he
went in or out of a room, I was not supposed to know that, on this
particular occasion, he was making a flattering exception for me. I
went on biting my lips abstractedly, with my head leaning against the
casement. He cleared his throat emphatically, but what was that to me?
"Ahem" was not enough like either of my names, to justify my looking
around.
He walked to the mantel-piece and inspected its familiar furnishings
for a moment, making what seemed to me unnecessary noise and fuss as
he did so. I would have given worlds for a pair of keen eyes at the
back of my head during this artful performance, but as no such
abnormal desire could be favored, I had to be satisfied with my
conjectures and suppositions about his motives, and the various
expressions that were chasing one another over his face as he went
through this programme of failures.
At last, having spent his every indirect effort to attract my absorbed
attention, he took a book from the table, and placing it deliberately
under his arm, as if it were one of the many things that brought him
into the room, he strode quietly towards me, saying in a very
non-committal and yet courteous tone.
"I shall say goodbye, Miss Hampden, I hope you will take every care,
of yourselves, and that we shall find you well on our return."
"Thank you," I answered, very politely, "there will be no fear of me.
Good bye."
He took the tips of my three longest fingers, my thumb and little
finger not having been ordained by nature to meet the cordial grasp of
men of this stamp, and having repeated his good-bye, he stalked out of
the room in conscious dignity and grandeur.
I made a mocking face, I know I did, when his back was turned. I hated
him for not taking more notice of me than this. I did not want any
violent attentions or silly love-making from him. He need not think I
was a frivolous heart-hunter, for I was not. If I had been a man, he
would have discussed politics or science or newspaper topics with me
long before this. How did he know I could not match him in these being
a woman? He was one of those wonderful erudites, I supposed, who think
that a girl's conversational power lies rigidly between dry goods and
sentiment. Poor things! What a heresy they foster? But what need I
care? He was a glum, unsociable recluse anyway, may be at a loss for a
second idea to keep his mind busy. He was certainly not worth worrying
about, so I gathered up my needle-work that rested on the window-sill,
and with a deliberate sullenness went in search of Hortense.
She had fallen asleep on the lounge in her bedroom, and the old nurse,
having closed the shutters and drawn the curtains to keep out the
afternoon light, was seated in the adjoining room, busily knitting a
stocking.
Free, therefore, to dispose of myself as I wished for the next hour, I
put on my things and went to stroll about the busy streets of the
city.
Avoiding the fine, open thoroughfares, where business and pleasure
were airing themselves, I leisurely turned down a gloomy by-way which
was lined on either side by the massive walls and rear wings of huge,
dismal, commercial establishments. Not a soul was visible anywhere, it
was long and narrow and dirty, with deep ruts in the mud that lay in a
thick covering over the road. It was intercepted, some distance down,
by another street much worse to look at, and a little farther on, the
woeful panorama became still more awful and repulsive. A little
passage which seemed to have strayed away from all connection with
human decency or sympathy ran to the left. It was so very narrow that
though the surrounding buildings straggled up to only an ordinary
height, the daylight scarcely penetrated it. And indeed it is to be
wondered whether a bright sunlight would not but bring out more
clearly than ever the appalling features of the place. Could gold and
silver sunbeams hope to beautify the heaps of refuse and rubbish that
were piled up here and there at intervals against some staggering
fence? Could a flood of sunlight improve the dingy house-fronts that
looked drearily out upon this cheerless prospect, or lend a charm to
the hardened faces of those that peered through dirty window-panes, or
who stood idly in some rickety doorway?
The spectacle was indeed heart-stirring.
"Why shines the sun except that he Makes gloomy nooks for grief to
hide? And pensive shades for melancholy When all the earth is bright
beside?"
The words seemed written on the dingy house-tops before me, and borne
on the gusty breeze that wafted noxious odors far and wide. My heart
turned sick, and yet this was what I had come out to see. I could not
have gone away from a lively city like this, where towers and steeples
of lofty and majestic buildings reared themselves in proud beauty
towards heaven, without having also looked on the picture's gloomy
side. Where so much wealth and fashion and finery dazzled the casual
eye, there must, said I, be also 'poverty, hunger and dirt,' and were
my words not fully verified now?
I have been warned more than once of the danger of going unattended
along these haunts of misery and vice, but whether or not it is
because my motive is one of pure philanthropy, and my sentiments
exclusively sympathetic I do not know, I have, however, escaped up to
this without interference from the lowly inhabitants of these obscure
corners, and can vouch for the latent gallantry of many a ragged hero,
who restored a fallen umbrella or parcel with as much courtesy as his
brother clad in broadcloth ever showed me.
That human mind which feasts exclusively upon the dainty morsels of
life is only half educated, though there are grand fragments of
knowledge and experience to be gathered among the haunts of high art,
and where stand the immortal monuments of power and fame, though the
heart may swell with a just enthusiasm at sight of the marvels which
have risen out of gold piles, the coffers of nations or individuals, I
hold that all the majesty of the best-spent wealth has not power to
awaken such a depth of feeling in the human breast as one of these
tottering huts with its mouldy walls and mud-spattered window-panes,
the "Home Sweet Home" of flesh and blood as real and as sensitive as
our pampered own.
To think that in the world's great capitals there is squalor which
could never compare with what my eyes then beheld! Think of Murray
Hill and the Alaska District, Fell's Point, or the Basin, and what a
sea of human wrecks we contemplate in a fraction of America's
continent alone. And again, think of the waste of wealth the wide
world over. Think how vice is wined and dined, and clad in the finest
of fabrics, while honest humanity, in helpless hunger, cries out to
ears that are deaf and hearts that have turned to stone. Oh, well may
it be said that the rich man's chances of heaven are as those of the
camel going through the eye of a needle, if the recording angel
pencils down the use and abuse of every dangerous penny that might
have been well spent, and was not.
With such reflections as these I turned my steps slowly back through
the dingy by-ways.
The afternoon was waning, and the hour was near when daily toil would
be suspended, and the workers would repair to these their miserable
homes. I had met a few already with their picks and shovels on their
ragged shoulders, and had stood to see them vanish under these crooked
doorways where little children lingered waiting and watching for their
cheerless coming. I saw some others lay down the instruments of their
honest labor outside the corner entrance of a large but smoky row of
wooden tenements that skirted one gloomy street. A doorway cut through
the sharp angles of the corner of the building, allowed a small canopy
to project in a triangular peak over two dirty battered steps that led
into a dimly-lit room on the ground floor. Suspended from the point of
the canopy was a lamp of a dull red color, which with rain spatterings
and droppings, and a long-standing accumulation of cobwebs and dust
had grown barely translucent, and must have emitted but a sickly light
at night-fall. A worn and ragged rope-mat lay on the second step, and
across the upper half of the dilapidated door (which was of glass) a
faded screen was drawn that kept the inner room secure from the
curious gaze of passers-by.
Those who had been born and brought up under the shadow of this
ominous establishment, must have known many a tale of sorrow and woe
that owed its origin to that vile ground-floor.
I discovered, on closer scrutiny, that some faded letters across the
dirty lamp, intimated to the general public that this was the "Ace of
Spades." And in the money-till of the Ace of Spades, doubtless was the
price of many a poor man's toil, the bread and meat of his hungry
children squandered and sacrificed with a fiendish recklessness.
Within the dingy walls of the Ace of Spades was bartered the domestic
happiness of many a home that had been cheerless enough, God knows,
without this extra curse.
I shivered as I passed it by, to think that amid such haunts of misery
and starvation, a place like this could flourish, growing fat upon the
life-blood of famishing humanity, and a pity that is akin to a most
contemptuous hatred swelled my breast, when I asked myself: What sort
of being presides over this soul-trap? Can it be rational? Can it have
a soul? Can it ever understand what even animal sympathy is?
The gold that is stolen from the rich man's coffers has some claim to
respectability, over these ill-gotten coins that are so many mouthfuls
of bread snatched from the jaws of perishing hunger.
I turned away feeling sick at heart, and directed my vagrant steps
towards home. All the pomp and glory of the world's wealth were dimmed
and darkened before my eyes by this huge black shadow of penury and
suffering, that had darted across my way at that moment. If such
thoughts as these could be ever with us, if such vivid reminders of
the shallowness and vanity of earth's transient splendors would abide
with us constantly, how paltry would our idolized and coveted honors
appear, and how much more profitable would our wasted energies become!
But our minds are frivolous, and easily distracted from great pursuits
by petty, external circumstances. We become too readily absorbed in
the study of our own selves, and those elements of experience that may
yield us pleasure or pain during our sojourn among mortal men. Very
often our own instability of purpose annoys and discourages us. Our
spirit has desired the accomplishment of one thing, but our contrary
flesh has silenced these better demands in gratifying its own caprice.
It takes us a very long time to learn the danger of trusting our
fallible natures too far. The man who goes forward to defy temptation,
telling himself he will not fall, is running down towards a steep
precipice, and has not the power of self-control when he reaches the
critical point.
I was faithful to my wholesome meditation while I sauntered back alone
through the busy streets. When I raised my eyes to look upon
glittering carriages, bearing beauty and ease and comfort along the
highway, I said to myself in all sincerity, What will it avail them in
the end?
But, gentle reader, if I have found fault with the weakness of human
nature, and censured its infidelity to noble purposes, it is because I
have taught myself the realization. Think you, I have stood where my
brothers and sisters have fallen? or have been much the better for
knowing so well where the straight path of duty lies?
When I entered the house of my friend I left the best part of my new
convictions upon the threshold, and bounded up the stairway with as
light a step as if life's darkest phases were unheard of mysteries to
me.
Hortense was still lying on the lounge, and the curtains were still
drawn, but her eyes were wide open, and the rosy warmth of a recent
happy slumber lay on each delicate cheek.
I crept softly towards her, lest perhaps I should find her dozing, but
her sleep had not left a languid trace behind. She looked up at me
with a bright smile, saying,
"Oh, you naughty truant, where have you been?"
"I went for a little walk," I answered, stooping over her and kissing
her brow. "I saw you were sleeping, and having nothing to do, I took a
fancy to explore the town. Have you been awake long?"
"Oh, yes! for hours!" she said playfully. "I have counted my fingers
about a dozen times. I have discovered that that picture between the
windows hangs to one side, and the table-cover is longer at the back
than in the front. That bottle casts a shadow just like a man's face
and--"
"Oh, come!" I broke in, "you are improvising as you go along. You
would not look so rosy and good-humored if you had been lying awake
all that time. You will not make me believe such ponderous fibs," I
added, throwing my hat and parasol wearily on the bed.
"You are quite too cute, Amey," she answered, rising slowly and taking
my arm affectionately, "in fact you are a genius my dear," she added
in a pompous tone.
"So they all tell me," I retorted quietly, "and yet I feel very much
like other people."
"Well, you are not like other people, indeed you are not!" she
exclaimed earnestly. "If you were I would never have liked you."
"Don't you like 'other people'?"
"Not generally, some other people I do, but not all _Mon Dieu! non pas
tous!_" she added, shaking her head emphatically and looking
abstractedly before her.
The current of her thought must have changed suddenly, for she raised
her face with a bright expression upon it now and said
"Let us do something--something to keep us alive--What shall it be?"
"We might drink your cod liver oil," I suggested; "it is recommended
for that purpose, is it not?"
"How smart you are Miss Hampden!" she exclaimed. "Well, I will leave
all that sport to yourself, it has no charm for me, I know," she then
cried, interrupting herself, "let us go to your room, and you will
show me all your pretty things. I have not seen anything since you
came, such a prisoner as I have been."
"I hope you will feel repaid," I said, putting one arm tenderly around
her frail waist, and leading her out, "but I have not much to show
you, Hortense."
We repaired to my room at the other end of the corridor, and Hortense,
seating herself on a pile of pillows on the floor, insisted on being
shown all the new jewellery and trinkets that had been bestowed on me
when I "came out."
This trivial circumstance is, I am fully conscious, quite enough to
provoke the blandest of smiles from masculine lips.
"Such a paltry distraction for sensible people!" I hear them utter. So
be it; we will not dispute the point in our own favor, but we will
confess that whether it reflect or not upon the tone and dignity of
our leading tastes, there is an undeniable gratification for every
woman in the contemplation of another's wardrobe or jewel-box. It is a
rest for our eyes that are wearied of gazing upon our own familiar
belongings, to search among the novel trinkets of a friend. We like to
touch them, to hold them, to try them in our ears, or on our fingers,
or to twine them around our wrists, not that we covet them either, for
a moment's inspection gratifies us, and we tire of them quickly.
It is an inherent peculiarity I dare say, and most certainly a
harmless one. We all have it to some extent. I will admit that it has
its abuses like all other innocent things, that it is often a powerful
channel for individual venom and an incentive to the emptiest vanity.
There are women I know, who buy bonnets on purpose to vex Mrs. Jones,
their rival neighbor, and I have seen Mrs. Parvenue, time and again,
indulging a magnificent caprice with some rare luxury, upon which
straitened aristocracy was bestowing covetous and admiring glances.
Our daily observations confirm the fact that feather brained
_protegees_ of fortune, expend much wealth, and flaunt much finery for
the passive pleasure of being looked at with wonder by a struggling
gentility; and the essence of their gratification, virtually lies in
the consciousness that they are provoking a scrutiny, at least, from
better-bred people not in possession of such solid wealth as affords
them these material comforts.
All this however is an abuse, the offspring of most sordid and
contemptible motives. It is the unmistakable brand of the plebeian,
and compromises the one who favors it, beyond amendment. It is well to
mention it, however, for there are persons of limited observation, and
there must needs be persons of a limited experience at all times who,
for want of knowing the whole truth, will be tempted to pass a
comprehensive general verdict where a particular one only is deserved.
It is the misfortune of good to be counterfeited by a simpering evil
which works its wonders among the uninitiated, and for this reason, it
is not injudicious to openly discuss both sides of a question before
adopting a partiality for either one.
When however as in our case, the pleasure is equally divided between
the owner of the fine things and the one who appreciates them, there
is a possibility of spending a very happy hour in their inspection.
When one is free, as I was, to take up each pretty trinket separately
and tell its little story to an attentive ear and a sympathetic heart,
the circumstance becomes quite propitious for an interchange of
friendly confidences, as we shall see.
I had opened and closed more than a dozen jewel-cases. I had revealed
to my friend's devouring gaze, my newest acquisitions in silver and
gold, and how earnestly she had admired them all. It was refreshing to
me to watch her as she clasped my bracelets on her slender wrists, and
hung my ear rings from her delicate little ears; now exclaiming over
the novelty of one, now listening eagerly to the whispered account
about another. At last we had emptied out the great box that held all
these little cases of morocco and plush, and putting them back one by
one, I turned the tiny key in its tiny lock, and opening my trunk
lodged it safely inside. Hortense was sitting beside me still, pouring
out a volley of impulsive praise upon what I had just shown her, and
as I raised the lid of my trunk, with the privilege of an intimate
friend she leaned over and peeped curiously in.
"What is in that red case there Amey?" she asked half timidly, then
looking apologetically into my face added: "You see my curiosity is
not satisfied yet."
"That is my ivory-covered prayer-book I told you of," said I, drawing
it from its seclusion and laying it in her lap. "I seldom use it, it
is too showy."
"It is very handsome" she muttered under her breath. "From your
father," she continued, speaking to herself, "a Christmas gift. How
lovely!"
She put it gently back in its padded holder, and returned it to me.
Then peeping into the open trunk once more she said
"Don't be cross, old woman, I want to know all your things, so that I
could recognize them any where again. I like them, chiefly because
they belong to you. What is in that Japanese box over there?"
"Oh, that is not worth showing you," I said, with a smile of ridicule.
"I keep all my odds and ends there, broken and old-fashioned trinkets.
It is a very uninteresting heap, I assure you."
"I don't care," she persisted obstinately. "You must let me see them.
I like old broken stuff, it will be a change from all the finery I
have been feasting on."
"Well, if you will, you will I suppose, you tantalising child!" I
exclaimed in mock resignation, dragging out the shabby receptacle upon
which lingered the faint outlines of Japanese ladies in brilliant
costumes.
"I hope you will like the contents," I remarked derisively, handing
her the box. "While you are improving your mind studying them, I shall
just restore some order to these dilapidated quarters," I said, as I
turned around towards my neglected dressing table that was reduced to
a most confusing state of chaos.
The fragments rattled and clinked awhile between her busy fingers, and
then were silent. I was so occupied with my new purpose that I did not
notice the stillness at first, but suddenly I looked around in
questioning scrutiny. The box lay on the floor beside her, unheeded.
Between her fingers was some small, shining thing, upon which her eyes
were fastened greedily. While I stood watching her, she turned her
head slowly round and in a quiet, almost supplicating, tone said,
"Amey, come here."
I went and knelt beside her, laying one arm fondly around her neck.
"What do you want?" I asked, hardly noticing what she held in one
slender palm.
"Where did you get this Amey? Do you mind telling me?"
She looked up into my face as she spoke, with such pleading sorrowful
eyes, that I snatched the trinket impulsively from her and turned it
over in my own hand.
It was the forgotten locket I had found in the library on that March
afternoon before the Merivales' musical. A change passed over my own
face at sight of it, and it was with some agitation I answered
Hortense's timid question:
"It is a strange thing how you came by this. I have never seen it but
once, the night I found it, until now."
"You found it then," she murmured slowly with her eyes still buried in
my face. "Have you ever opened it?"
I laughed dryly and said, "It is a queer thing, isn't it, but I never
have."
"Open it now," she interrupted seriously. I took it between my fingers
and after repeated efforts managed to open it. There were two small
photographs inside. One was Ernest Dalton's--and the other was mine!
A crimson flush deluged my face and neck, my hand trembled and the
locket fell into Hortense's lap. She raised her solemn eyes now grown
sadder and more solemn than ever, and said in a voice more plaintive
and pleading than any voice I ever heard before,
"Then you know him?"
I was mystified. I could hardly remember afterwards what I had
answered to her strange question. I think I said in a seemingly
indifferent voice,
"Is it Mr. Dalton?"
But I know she looked at me with an expression of infinite reproachful
longing and asked,
"Have you a doubt of it?"
"But I never gave him a picture of mine," I argued, "and moreover, I
never had pictures taken like this one. If it is he, where did he get
this, and why did he put it here?"
She shot a wincing, suspicious glance at me from under her white lids
and repeated huskily,
"You never gave him this picture?"
"On my word, I did not Hortense," I answered. "How could I? It never
belonged to me. I never saw it in my life until this moment. We cannot
be sure that it is my portrait."
"Look at those eyes and that mouth, and the hair waving over that
brow," she muttered, half in soliloquy, with her gaze still bent upon
the mysterious locket. "Of course it is you, Amey Hampden, and no one
else."
"Well, it is a dark puzzle to me," I said, "and I wish I could explain
it."
Then suddenly remembering the other strange feature of the
circumstance, I turned impulsively to Hortense and observed:
"I did not know that you and Mr. Dalton were friends. I never heard
him mention your name."
"Nor did I know that you and he were friends," she interrupted, a
little incisively, I thought. "I never heard him mention _your_ name."
"That is strange" said I, "for he has known me from my infancy. I have
sat upon Mr. Dalton's knee time and again, listening to his thrilling
anecdotes and telling him my petty confidences."
"Have you?" very indifferently.
"Yes, and that is why I am morally certain this picture can in no way
be associated with me, for there is no reason why Mr. Dalton should
have one and keep it secret. Besides, I ought to know" I argued
warmly, "whether I had ever had such pictures taken, and whether he
had been given one or not."
"Well it is very like you, Amey," Hortense resumed in a more calm and
friendly tone "So much so, that when I saw you for the first time at
Notre Dame Abbey, I recognized you from this."
"Oh then you have seen this before," I exclaimed.
A deep, red shadow flitted across her face for one moment and she
answered timidly.
"Yes, he showed it to me, but when I met you I could not remember
where it was I had seen your face before. It troubled me then, and it
has often puzzled me since. Now, the whole mystery is solved" she
said, rising from her lowly seat, and going towards the window. She
still held the locket in one open palm, and I know she muttered, half
audibly, as she turned away
"Who else could it be?"
From that moment Hortense was not the same. She tried hard to appear
her old self. She even laughed and chatted more merrily than ever, but
I felt rather than saw the difference. There was some undertone of
mystery about this affair, that she was striving to hide from me, and
that conviction built up an ugly barrier between our hitherto
unswerving loves. I had never broached any subject to her that
required to be spoken of reservedly or discreetly. I would not have
had her know that secrets should exist between us, and therefore I
could not help feeling the sting of these unfortunate circumstances
that had been so strongly evolved out of chance.
Of one thing I was certain that Hortense did not look upon Earnest
Dalton as an ordinary friend or acquaintance. Ordinary friends have
not the same influence over us as he seemed to exercise over her. We
do not blush at the mention of their names, nor are we agitated by
every little reminder of their lives or persons. We can think of them
without a far-away look in our eyes, and can speak of them without a
tremor in our voice or a sudden change of expression in our
countenance.
"If she loves him" said I, in my reverie, that night, and why should
she not, it is no wonder that this strange likeness should be
disagreeable to her. It has given me some pleasure to see this thing
that only looks like me so carefully stowed away in his locket. There
is every reason why the same discovery should grieve her--if she cares
for him.
I then went back in memory to that dull March afternoon, I had passed
in quiet reflection before the library fire. How vividly it all rose
up before me. My sudden awakening from a stupid slumber, my firm
conviction that some one else was in the room, my timid whispering
question, the tinkling sound of something falling upon the floor, and
my subsequent surprise on finding this queer, unfamiliar trinket lying
at my feet. Now that it was proven to be Ernest Dalton's, the mystery
was thicker than ever. How had it come there? I asked myself this
perplexing question over and over again. Perhaps it had been lying in
the folds of the upholstering for days or months, and that by chance I
had disturbed it when I threw myself wearily upon the sofa. Mr. Dalton
often came to sit and talk with my father of an evening when we were
out. In fact we were never surprised to see him drop in at any moment,
and it was quite likely, I concluded, that he had lost the little
ornament without knowing it, and as no one of the household had made
mention of it to him, as they would have done had it been found, he
evidently thought it useless to speak about it under the
circumstances, and out of his silence and mine grew this new aspect of
affairs.
Satisfied with the probability of this solution, I dismissed the first
view of the subject and gave my thought and attention to that other
more interesting one, which compromised, to all appearances, my little
friend's affections. There was no doubting her sentiment. All the
artful veneering she could ever put upon her words or actions had no
power to deceive me. There was no indifference in her indifferent
attitudes, none at least that was real. Who could tell better than I,
who had myself gone through the ordeal? I knew too well what the
nature of such a conflict was, not to have detected its workings when
they were going on under my very eyes. Besides, was there not some
strange new feeling awakened within my own breast, by this unexpected
turn of the tide; and was I not striving to guard it and hide it,
maybe as vainly as my friend, for all I knew.
I had been making vague conjectures about Ernest Dalton for some time,
wooing the possibility if not the probability of being more closely
associated with his life some day, than I was at this period. His
words had always an underlying signification for me apart from that
which any casual listener would detect, and I had studied him so!
Every outline of his face and figure was engraven upon my memory, the
very curves of his ears, the shape of his figure, the form of his
eye-brows, the fit of his collar, the pattern of his neck-ties, all
were quite familiar to me. I had taken a pleasure in noticing them,
and a still greater pleasure in telling them to myself over and over
again. Surely then, he was more to me than all those other people who
came and went and left not a trace of their personality inscribed upon
my mind or heart. In spite of my wilful protestations, and avowals of
indifference, I must have been living all along in the fetters of
happy slavery, else, why so many fond recollections of a past that
was, after all, but the interesting progress of a prosy human life?
It takes very little to settle our doubts sometimes, and rudely awaken
us from dreams and fancies that have colored our idle hours with a
tinge of exquisite gladness. The best of us are jealous in the
abstract, though even in words and deeds we are above the paltry
passion; and the fear that, while we are holding our idol at a
distance the better to feast our eyes upon the beauty of its form,
intruders are creeping dangerously near to it is enough to stimulate
us to prompt action.
We make a rush forward to seize our treasure and bear it triumphantly
away where no one dares to trespass. But Mr. Dalton had not sanctioned
nor encouraged such a regard for me, and I was proud, more than
anything else, more proud than loving, more proud than persevering.
For my own peace of mind I would not stop to analyse my real feeling
towards him. A passive friendship seemed to satisfy him, why should it
not also satisfy me? He saw that Arthur Campbell showed a preference
for me and might seriously engage my affections at any moment. But he
did not care evidently. Perhaps he thought he was too old; maybe he
was poor, maybe he was not sure of a return of love from me? Did this
uncertainty justify him? Not in my eyes. Faint heart never won fair
lady. A man who "never tells his love" cannot be judged by the same
standard as the pensive maid who lets
"Concealment like a worm i' the bud
Feed on her damask cheek."
If I were a man, I would win the object of my love in spite of destiny
herself, and therefore have I little faith in timid hearts that shrink
from such impediments as inevitably obstruct that course that never
does run smooth.
The man who loves a woman as a true woman deserves to be loved, will
never give her a second place in his regard before the world. We have
nothing to be ashamed of in our honest loves and therein lies a rigid
test. It is true that in our day it makes a great difference to us
whether certain persons attract the potent attention of fashion's
votaries or not. A plain face, or an awkward gait, or an eccentric
manner, can turn the tide of a whole human life; for such superficial
irregularities have proved many a time to be a stumbling block to our
most willing affections, when we could have loved and cherished a soul
were it not for these accidents of the flesh: an uncouth demeanor, an
unpolished exterior, an old fashioned accent, or something just as
trifling which our modern propriety ridicules. It has come to this, I
know, in our times, that the world expects an explanation or an
apology of some kind, when people of social standing allow themselves
to be wooed and won by persons whose lives are not regulated according
to the popular taste. Men marry beauty and talent and accomplishments
as though any of these things were solid enough to maintain their
prospective fortunes and women betroth themselves to men and manners,
and are satisfied that if they have nothing to eat, they will always
have something to look at. The great majority of rejected men in the
higher walks of civilization, as the word is used in our day, are
whole-souled fellows, whose clothes have the misfortune to fit awry,
whose shoes are clumsy, and whose ways are natural. It omens ill for
the human race that in spite of its much vaunted development and
progress, there should be such a mental poverty and moral weakness
prevailing among the representative classes. It is nothing else than a
serious reflection upon this self-glorifying century of ours, to note
how subservient our people are to harmful, social regulation, and how
indifferent they have become to those moral restrictions that encroach
upon the liberty of these questionable conventionalities.
These, however, are not the people that are ever associated with the
mention of the nobler and grander phases of human life. We pity them
for sacrificing their better selves to so thankless and perishable a
cause, and we would redeem them by gentle persuasion if they were
willing, but there are aspects of the situation upon which our eager
solicitude may not trespass, and having reached this limit we must
turn away with a shrug of the shoulders and leave them to their own
hazardous guidance.
Ernest Dalton was not one of these, although he happened to be
markedly favored by persons of every distinction and rank. He was
received with a smile and a pleasant greeting wherever he went. He had
won the goodwill of social, political and scientific magnates, and yet
it could not be said of him, as of many another such luminary, that he
paid too dear for his whistle. He had not purchased his popularity
with servile adulation and at a sacrifice of his own personal dignity.
The smiles of the world are too transient and uncertain to repay one
for such a compromising tribute, especially when we can provoke them
in a worthier and more respectful manner. I doubt, however, if ever a
laurel-crown were worn more comfortably than Ernest Dalton could have
worn his.
And yet he was a very plain man, who spoke with an ordinary accent,
who wore unfashionable clothes, who never boasted of pedigree, but who
earned a distinct individuality about with him though he never
intruded it upon others. He was affable and agreeable without that
exaggeration of either quality which spends itself in profuse
laudation of social comets. He was a favorite but not a parasite, and
could lay his hand sincerely upon the clumsy waistcoat that sheltered
his sterling heart and say to that world of artifice and cunning. _Non
serviam._
Surely if it is possible to extract any sweetness from a world-given
fame or distinction, it is when that world has thrust it on us, and
not when we have begged and striven and pined for it, and bribed
hidden forces to unite in supporting and advocating our cause. There
is no flavor to the cup of fortune when we have used our
fellow-mortals as stepping-stones to the rank or wealth which brings
us within reach of it.
It may seem that I had an exaggerated view of Mr. Dalton's standing in
society, but it was the popular view that every one fostered, and
could not, therefore, be magnified by my personal appreciation of his
true worth. I had always admired him, even before I began to think of
him in any particular way, the thought that he had been one of the few
kind patrons of my neglected youth, seemed to bring him yet nearer to
my deepest regard as I grew older.
But he had changed with my life. He was not now what he had been in my
younger days. No one would have thought, to watch us together or
listen to our aimless conversation, that we had ever been more than
ordinary acquaintances. This vexed me. I wanted him to show me more
attention on account of our long-standing relationship. I thought he
could have presumed upon our early friendship to call me by name
before strangers, or in some way insinuate that I was more to him than
all that motley crowd of fashionable humanity that flitted and buzzed
around us.
Ah! there are many such petty needs as this gnawing at our poor,
dissatisfied hearts. Things are going wrong on all sides of us, and
the beautiful harmonious mechanism of life that enthusiasts sing
about, seems nothing but a helpless repetition of jarring discords for
some of us. The circumstances of our varied experience do not fit into
the places allotted them, and we find ourselves often in false and
painful positions, with no alternative but to endure patiently or
peevishly what men call the inevitable.
If only we did not wish so ardently for those things that may not be!
Why does not the human heart control itself with some philosophy that
can despoil forbidden fruit of all its tempting qualities? Why need we
covet probabilities that may never be nearer to realization than they
are now?
This sort of reasoning had helped me in some measure to combat the
worrying dissatisfaction that threatened to preside over what should
be the happiest epoch my life. I drifted into a voluntary
forgetfulness of old associations. I stifled the suggestive voice of
memory, and since this is the way of the world, thought I, let me
subscribe to its profane regulations as well as the rest. I will be
the plaything of chance, and risk my lot for better or worse.
But here was an impediment, already, which awakened the long dormant
memories of my past. Here was something that needed investigation, and
might possibly in its issue, interfere with my worldly-wise policy. I
could not tell yet, but the time must come now when these vagaries
would end in one thing or another.
With these conflicting reflections storming my pillow, I fell asleep.
My mind was tired, and I slept the heavy, dreamless slumber of
exhaustion. When I awoke again it was morning, although it seemed to
me, I had but a moment before turned over and closed my drooping eyes.
I arose and dressed abstractedly and went in search of Hortense. We
were to have breakfast in her room, she informed me, as she was
feeling unusually lazy. I looked at her curiously and saw less color
and freshness in her cheeks, less sparkle and vigor in her eyes.
"You are sure it is laziness, Hortense?" I asked leaning over her, and
touching my lips to hers.
"Why, of course it is," she answered, stretching her arms drowsily
over her head and laughing lazily. "You have all been so good to me,
that I feel quite spoiled," she added, rising slowly and coming
towards the dainty, impromptu breakfast-table which had been set for
us, near the open window. Our meal proceeded in subdued gaiety. We
talked and laughed about many things, as if neither heart was busy
with other and deeper reflections, and we did not fail to do justice
to the tempting provisions before us.
When the meal was over Hortense said
"I do not like the way you have dressed your hair this morning Amey,
you do not look like yourself at all."
I laughed and answered indifferently
"Oh! it will do well enough. What difference does it make?"
"Well, it does make a difference, Miss!" she broke in with playful
emphasis. "It makes the difference that I am going to do it over. Come
into the dressing-room and I will make a perfect beauty of you. You
shall see."
I arose and followed her into the adjoining room, where she placed two
seats before a long mirror that reached nearly to the floor. Mine was
a low footstool, and hers a padded chair. I threw myself down at her
feet, and drawing out my hairpins gave myself up entirely to the
gratification of her latest caprice.
Very soon her old humor broke out in merry little peals of laughter,
as she turned me into a Japanese or Feejee Islander, by appropriate
arrangements of my plentiful hair; or her old partiality asserted
itself as she praised my flowing tresses and made me assume attitudes
that were peculiar to the representation of Faith or Undine.
"Oh! now you look like pictures of Mary Magdalene!" she exclaimed
suddenly, as I stooped to pick something off the floor. "Stay that way
just for a moment. I hear _la bonne_ coming and I want her to see you.
Here she is." There was a hurried tap at the door and _la bonne_ came
in, with a face so full of purpose that we forgot our fanciful
amusement. She advanced towards me with a little folded paper which
she held out saying
"Mademoiselle, c'est un telegram!"
It was probably from Mde de Beaumont, I thought, announcing her
return, and quietly signing the necessary paper, I tore open the
sealed message and read it.
The room began to turn about me. The words grew blurred before my eyes
I raised my hands in distraction to my head and fell sobbing on
Hortense's knees.
"Amey, dear Amey, what is the matter?" She cried, eagerly bending over
me with quick starting tears of sympathy in her eyes.
"My father!" I moaned, "my poor father!"
"Is he ill or what? Do tell me what ails him Amey?"
"Worse than that, he is dying," I sobbed out convulsively. "He will be
dead before I get back. Oh! What will I do!"
"Do not cry so, Amey dear," Hortense interrupted faintly. "It may not
be so bad as you think; These telegrams always sound so blunt and
dreadful. While there's life, there's hope, you know. Come and get
ready immediately, time is your best friend now."
I took her arm and went passively with her to my own room. Her
fortitude sustained me greatly. I rolled my flowing hair up again
carelessly enough, God knows, this time, and began my preparations for
my sorrowful journey home.
Hortense talked to me all the time and kept my own maddening thoughts
at bay. I gathered together only those things I would urgently
require, and gave her my keys to attend to all the rest when I was
gone.
In an hour from the time I had received the dreadful intelligence of
my father's sudden and serious illness, I was taking leave of
Hortense, with a bitter sorrow and fear within my heart.
"Good-bye Amey, and may God bless and comfort you!" she said
reverently, with both hands clasped about my neck, "and remember," she
added, kissing away my fast falling tears, "if ever you have need of a
friend to love you, or serve you, or comfort you, you must come to me,
will you not Amey? tell me you will."
"You are very kind Hortense," I answered in a broken sob, "some day I
may have cause to remember these words."
"And you will act upon them, Amey? Will you not?" she put in eagerly.
"Can you doubt that my heart will ever be a refuge for you? If you
think anything of me you will make me this promise before we part."
I looked steadily at her through all my blinding tears, and saw the
hallowed light of the noblest and most generous human sympathy
reflected on her wasted countenance. I could never doubt her again, no
matter what strange or suspicious things came to pass. I took her
thin, warm hands in mine and answered firmly:
"I promise you, Hortense, when I need the love and devotion of
sustaining friendship, I shall come to you. Good-bye!"
And then we parted.
I stopped on my way to the depot to send a telegram to Mde. de
Beaumont, apprising her of the cause of my enforced departure, and
entreating her to come home as soon as possible lest Hortense should
have another attack of illness. Having discharged this duty, I gave
myself up entirely to my own sad thoughts.