Part 11
Once her eyes caught mine and calmly held them fast, and in that moment, as a child may flash a blinding ray of sunlight from a mirror into your face, there flashed into my mind these words: “Only a qualified admiration, eh? And you feel something, eh? You don’t know what? No! and you won’t know either, my dear!” and I ended the act with cheeks as hot from wounded feeling as though the words had actually been spoken to me.
I was not in the second act, neither was the “young society woman,” or at least she was on the stage for about three minutes, after which she came, swelling visibly with importance, for in very truth she had something to reveal, and first exacting, on word of honor, promise not to tell (I only do it now, when: “In Paris suddenly----”). She quickly began: “You can see she is a lady, can’t you? Born in Boston--perfectly lovely family--old--very old, you know! Was splendidly educated, and the very day of her _début_ in society--I don’t know who brought her out, her mother was dead, you know--that very day her father killed himself! Ruined--no courage and all that--she had no near relatives! Went off alone--went abroad--worked at teaching or companioning or something! Things then went wrong--troubles came, awful troubles! Oh--oh!” The speaker’s eyes looked fairly scared, her hands trembled, she drew close to me, and holding fast a fold of my dress, she with desperate haste flung out these words: “She--that American woman--that lady sitting there--she has been accused of murder! Why, she has stood trial for her life!”
I could only gaze at her in stupid silence, and after a moment she rambled on about her uncle being Madame de B----’s lawyer, and his having charge of her affairs over here, as she would not live here--would not settle anywhere in fact--just wandered from place to place, etc.
As last I broke in, with a gasp: “Murderess! She a murderess? But why--how?”
“Oh!” cried my informant: “She was innocent, of course, or I should not know her (I had not thought of that). But she had a narrow escape, and owed it to a man she had always hated; to the dead man’s valet.”
Again, and more impatiently, I broke in: “But why--how--who?”
She caught the last word, “who,” and went on: “Who was killed? Why, Count de Varney! He was a wicked, old wretch! Had a palsied arm, and was broken in health when Miriam first met him! Well, for years she bore his name, and she was the active mistress of his great, lonely home, and a most devoted nurse to him, but she was terribly alone! The servants, who disliked her because she was a foreigner, she ignored all save one, the Count’s valet--him she loathed! She tried to have him sent away and failed, and he knew she had failed. Not a pleasant situation, was it? I must tell you, that in the left wing of the great building there was a room whose windows chanced to overlook those of the private apartments of the Count and Countess, in the main building. This peculiarity was well known, too, and highly valued by the spying servants, and from that room came the evidence that so nearly ruined their hated mistress. The Count had been improving, but as his strength increased his temper roughened, and one day, through one of his bursts of rage, she learned that she had been cruelly, deliberately betrayed--tricked!--by the merest mockery of a marriage; one that, in France at least, was utterly worthless! Surprise--anguish--shame--all at last were lost in fury! A fury so wild--so filled with threats--that the Count fairly quailed before it--begged to be spared a scandal--swore he would yet marry her--nay, he would now, this moment, draw up his will and make her his heiress! Give all to her in her maiden name--so that she should be protected, should aught happen to him before he could marry her! This will he proceeded to have drawn up at once, for you see, during those past years, Miriam had learned much of his outrageous past--knew more of his secret ill-doings than he quite realized--knew, indeed, that he had placed himself within the reach of law! And now, in her otherwise helpless anger, she determined to at least punish him with a great fright. So she secretly prepared and sent an unsigned letter, of seeming friendly warning, to the Count, telling him of the very worst of his past acts. That he had been discovered at last, and that by the evening of that day the officers would arrive at the _château_ to arrest him! The letter came--Count de Varney read it! Miriam had thought to frighten him, and she succeeded so perfectly that the old man--white-lipped--rose from the table, and took his trembling way to his own room, where he hurriedly and clumsily hung himself.”
“Why,” I cried, “I thought you said he had been murdered?”
“Wait!” she said impatiently--“Wait! Over in the wing-room there was a woman, not spying on the movements of her master or mistress--she afterwards swore--but being in love with the valet, she was watching for him, and so happened to be a witness to the hanging of the old Count. No sooner--swore this woman--had her master kicked away the chair on which he had been standing, than a door opened and Madame de Varney entered. For one instant she stood apparently stunned by the sight before her--and then she laughed! She made no movement to call for help--she offered no help herself, but came closer to the writhing, horribly-struggling, hanging figure! The woman swore that once her master threw out his hand imploringly--that she thought he touched her mistress, she was so close to him--but she, the witness, turned faint just then at the awful drawing up of the hanging man’s limbs and did not see quite clearly--but another servant joined just then, and both watched--and swore that only when the master was quite still did the mistress move, and then she went first to a desk and looked at some papers, and then rushed to the door, throwing it open and calling for help! She rang the bell violently, and the valet rushed in at her call, as if he had been standing at the very door--but before he made a movement to cut down the body, he spoke fiercely and rapidly to the Countess, and turned to the swaying figure of the Count de Varney, who had died horribly of slow strangulation!
“The trial was long, for that part of the world. The scandal was great, the mock-marriage being scoffed at and Madame Miriam de B---- treated simply as an adventuress. The will in her favor told against her greatly, but, to the stupefaction of every one, the valet defended her--swearing _he_ had seen his master before his mistress had--that he was _dead before she entered the room_--that he had gone for help, not wishing to touch the body without a witness being present, etc. She swore that her husband was dead when she found him--but without the valet she would certainly have been condemned to long, long imprisonment at the very least. She lives under an assumed name now, and just wanders over the world, as houseless as----”
“Third act; everybody ready!” shouted the call-boy.
I looked about in a bewildered way for my fan and my handkerchief, and went to my place on the stage, saying to myself: “I will not look that way again to-night.”
The third act was known, in theatrical parlance, as the strong act of the play. In it I had to attempt to poison my rival, who had formerly been my beloved friend, and at the very last moment, when the poison was at her very lips, with a strong revulsion of feeling, I had to snatch it away and swallow it myself, and then proceed with the death scene, which naturally followed.
I had kept my promise; I had not looked once toward the stage-box. I had worked myself well into my character again and was doing my best to be _it_, and not myself. That night I had just reached my half unconscious victim and was cautiously raising the poisoned drink to her lips, when some absolutely _outside_ power dragged my unwilling eyes from her face and left me staring straight into the eyes of the woman “who had been tried for her life”!
The actress beside me wondered what had happened--what I had forgotten! No fly enmeshed in spider’s web was ever held more helplessly than I was held for a moment’s time by that devilish face, leaning from the shadow of the curtained box. Strained and eager, it was white as chalk. The lips were parted--the nostrils quivering--while her thunderous brows frowned fiercely above the cruel eyes that held me! And while I looked, so surely as ever Murder raised its head to look through human eyes, so surely Murder triumphant looked at me through hers!
The actress at my side made a faint movement; the spell was broken! I gave the shuddering cry that belonged to the situation, and raising the glass to my own lips, quickly swallowed the poison, and at the very moment of so doing, from the private box, low, but perfectly distinct, came the contemptuous words: “You fool! You fool!”
I went on with my scene and ended the play.
At the end no sign of approbation came from the private box. With some irritation, I asked myself if she expected me to change the action of a play to gratify her savage taste?
The box was what is called a “stage-box,” and it is generally held by the manager for his family, or for visiting artists, as it is apt to open just inside the stage door. As I approached, I saw the box door open. Two or three steps led up to it. At the foot of them stood the young lady who had told me the story, and who was the hostess of Madame de B----. She saw me and called: “Madame wishes to see you!”
Madame de B---- looked her name--Miriam--as she stood there. Her stately figure was so beautiful, her face so calm and handsome--but I shrank from her now; I could not forget the face I had seen but a few moments ago. She stood at the top of the steps; I was one step lower, while her young hostess waited at the door. She did not speak. I noted the elegance of her gown, and followed the movement of her white, ungloved hands as she raised some black lace to drape about her head and shoulders--Spanish fashion--and so I met her eyes, and instantly there was neither theatre nor hostess--there was nothing--there was no one, but just she and I. I set my teeth hard and bore her look. A hot flush swept over me, then I felt my eyebrows lifting of their own accord, a faint chill crept slowly about the roots of my hair, and presently I saw the evil, hot light glowing in her eyes again, and dreading the coming of what I had seen there before, I spoke suddenly, imploringly, and said: “O Madame, _was_ he dead, or _was_ he alive, when you found him?”
Her lips drew back in silent laughter, her eyes danced in burning triumph: “_Alive! Alive!! Poor, little fool! Alive!!_” and then she leaned over me, and gripping me hard upon the shoulders, she looked deep down into my eyes, and then she said slowly, with the devil in her face: “I--wonder--what--became--of--that--devoted--valet?”
She laughed aloud, turned suddenly to gather up her skirt, and I threw out my hand and felt my way by the wall, down the steps, and so into my own dressing room, where I burst into wild sobbing.
Two or three nights passed, and then my friend remarked that dear, handsome Madame de B---- had sailed again.
“It was funny,” she said, “the idea of asking you to come to her box, and then never opening her lips to you, wasn’t it?”
I looked stupidly at her: “Why, what do you mean?” I asked. “You stood in the door all the time--you must have heard her speaking?”
“Why, she never opened her lips--except when she laughed, as you went out!”
I was sorely puzzled--until perhaps a week after--_apropos_ of nothing, my little chatter-box remarked: “You know poor Madame de B---- was one of Count de Varney’s nurses at the very first of their acquaintance. He was a victim of insomnia. A doctor called the Count’s attention to her. She used to make him sleep, sometimes even against his will. The doctor said she had most unusual _mesmeric_ power.”
* * * * *
We never spoke again of Madame de B----, but sometimes on an autumn night, dark and chill, with the rain falling stealthily on the sodden leaves that give forth no rustle when a cautious foot presses them, I have caught myself repeating those ominous words: “I--wonder--what--became--of--that--devoted--valet?” But now to that query there can be but one answer: “In Paris suddenly, Madame de B----.”
Two Buds
Two Buds
“There is no poetry in life to-day!” We were walking down Euclid Avenue, and my friend had been expressing her hot disapproval of many things in this really excellent world of ours, ending with that youthfully positive assertion: “There is no poetry in life to-day!”
I mildly suggested that she might not recognize it as poetry, if she saw it, as poems were not always bound in white and silver nor yet in blue and gold--some, indeed, never reaching the honor (?) of binding at all.
By the fierceness of her contempt for the opinion of another, one could easily measure her utter inexperience, but she finally closed her address by haughtily informing me that she was not to be deceived by “bindings”--that all poetry was sacred to her, whether she found it in the polished, metrical form of verse, or simply expressing itself in human action--but in these days there was no poetry--conscious or unconscious--for--she got no further; my fingers were on her wrist in that unintentionally savage clutch that never fails to secure immediate attention and later remembrance--and I was whispering: “Look! Look well! at the old man approaching!”
I’m sure, though, she needed no such reminder--no one could help looking at him--and, at first glance, only his snowy hair kept the laugh from one’s lips. A well-grown boy of twelve would have been “mad as a hopper” if he had not stood, at least, even in height with this old, old man. His gait was half-trot, half-shuffling walk, and his speed remarkable--but little as he was, he leant forward in a peculiar way. His nationality, after fifty-five unbroken years in America, was stamped so clearly on face and figure that his tongue’s thick, disobedient English was not needed to proclaim him an ancient Dutchman. His garments would have wrung laughter from a telegraph pole--the saddest thing on earth. That his wife made his trousers there could be no doubt, for if you looked at _them_ only, you could never tell which way the man was going to walk. Then, short as his little legs were, his trouser-legs were still shorter, while he could have stowed away quite a nice, little outfit in that portion of them known as the “slack.” This breadth of beam and shortness of keel gave to the public gaze a generous margin of clean, white stocking. His collar, which was an integral part of his shirt--and not, to use his own words, “a flimsy-flamsy yump-a-bout-ting what wont stay hitched!”--was of immaculate whiteness, but utterly innocent of starch, and on his venerable head he wore an antique, “panama” hat. A Dutch friend, who cultivated coffee, had picked this “panama” in Java, when it was green--so to speak--and sent it here, and the older citizens had, for twenty-odd years, watched its slow ripening under the American sun--and in its wearer’s eyes it had just reached its prime. Before the quaint, little body reached us, I whispered: “It is not poverty that makes him dress like that--he owns the big ‘Buckeye Block,’ besides his dwelling-house up town,” and I saw her eye renew its slackening hold on him, so great is our unconscious deference to money that already he seemed less grotesque to her, because she saw him through the softening, yellow light his gold cast upon him--and then he dragged off his well-ripened “panama,” and stopped to tell me “youst how glad vas he to see me!”
For he had entered this country j-less, and j-less he remained, using y in place of j with such smiling confidence that it was “all right” that no one had the heart to sternly put him in the wrong by correcting him. My wise, young friend smiled quite brightly upon him, and when he had passed, demanded of me all I knew about him, “because he was such a dear--and so individual--you know!”
I assured her there was nothing to tell--that he was simply an ignorant but honest man, who by the hardest work and almost incredible economy had risen to wealth, and she surprised me by replying “that there was more than that in his face, even for her, a stranger, to see--and what was the secret of the almost child-like gentleness of his clear, blue eyes?”
Whereupon, we lunched in a quiet corner of a quiet room and over many--too many--cups of coffee, I told her that his name was Knights--Jacobus Knights--and I had made his acquaintance while I was still so young that the salient features of my own personality were the length of my braids and the whiteness of my aprons. He used to rear vegetables and then sell them from a cart, which he pushed when it was full and dragged when it was empty. Being sent after him one day by a lady, I called out lustily: “Boy--boy--you boy! Stop--stop--I say!” thus making the mistake that many an older and wiser person made daily, and one that was greatly facilitated by the tailless jacket and flat cap the little man wore. Really, it savored of the uncanny to thus address a question to the back of childhood and receive your answer from the unshaven lip of maturity. He seemed to be quite used to the error, and only laughed and said: “Dat is noddings--youst noddings at all! Whad I make mit you--onion--squash--eh, whad now?”
Two years later I came to live on S---- street, and right opposite, little Mr. Knights had his little play-house of a home, his doll of a blond baby, and his tremendous wife. No, her size was not the result of comparison, she was really a tremendously big woman, from whose deep chest and strong, column-like throat there issued the thin, little voice of a complaining, “cheeping” chick too weak to break its imprisoning shell. She was a spring of pure Dutch undefiled. Not one English sentence could she command, but she was a friendly creature, and hobnobbed deprecatingly but successfully with her neighbors through the medium of a ponderous but expressive and ever-smiling pantomime.
Never were such workers known before. I doubt if they could have recognized their own breakfast had they met it, by daylight. Certainly they had, for at least forty years, taken that meal by artificial light--candle or oil, whichever was the cheaper. Any morning between half-past four and five o’clock the neighbors could see, through the dim light, a pretty little incident. The cart, heavily laden, stood outside the gate; the small pedler with the boy-body and the man-face, with a broad, leather band or collar across his neck, hooked its ends to the shafts of the cart, thus placing on his shoulders part of the heavy weight and at the same time causing the curious forward bend of body that disfigured his walk to-day. When he was quite ready for his start, the door opened and the big woman appeared, holding in her brown arms a little, night-gowned figure, its bare, pink feet curled up in her one broad hand--baby dreams still lingering mistily in the sleepy, blue eyes, and while one wee hand pushed back impatiently the blond tangle of curls, the other one tossed uncounted kisses to the father dimly seen, while a sweet, bird-like voice cried: “Bye-bye, Papa! Bye-bye! Ick lief dy! Bye-bye!”
For this little one had the gift of tongues, and from babyhood Dutch and English were simply convertible terms with her--and the adoring father, with cap off, stood and smiled, and smiled, and waved his earth-stained, stumpy hand, and blessed her with all the tender Dutch blessings that he knew, and then put on his cap--took up his load and started on the way that would have been so hard, so ugly, but for those baby kisses that bloomed like flowers on his path and sweetened all his day. When he had gone quite out of sight the little Rosie was returned to the great, Dutch bed to complete her sleep, and in a few moments the mother was crouching between the rows of vegetables, looking like a monster toad, and was weeding--weeding--weeding, until with almost breaking back she began to carry water and sprinkle--sprinkle--sprinkle, and after that the household tasks of other women began--washing--scrubbing--ironing--baking, yet always and ever with it all, there were little, white garments for Rosie, and time to put them on, and when the child outgrew the vegetable basket she had passed a great part of her life in, playing with a few marigolds or a hollyhock flower--she could not have salable ones like mignonette or pinks--the mother feared many things--for, as “Little Knights” (that was what the neighbors called him), explained in slow, back-end-first sentences, the vegetable basket arrangement had been very satisfactory to both parties, and his wife could plant or hoe or weed without anxiety, having simply to put out her hand now and then and pull the basket after her. But now that was all past, and his wife was “full up mit dem fears,” and when questioned as to the nature of the fears that were filling her up, his blue eyes seemed both surprised and reproachful that they could not see for themselves the possible dangers in small Rosie’s path. “In place of first,” he explained, “der was de cleanness--she mighd get dirty de garden in! Den,” his eyes grew round at that, “der vas de red-peppers--she might touch dem and aftervards rup her sveet eyes!” but when at the end of a long list of possibilities, he cried out: “Unt dem pees--dem honey pees--what pite mit dere tails--suppose dey make mit dere stingers on her? Ach Gott! Ach Gott!” and, caught in a linguistic tangle, he fell into deep Dutch, from which he emerged breathless and excited. Now that is a condition no Dutchman will endure, so without apology, he trotted off home to soothe himself with the one smoke he allowed himself each day, and then to--rest? Oh, no, there was much work done in that small house by night as well as by day--and mind, there are old neighbors still to support this statement--they used actually to work in the garden by moonlight--not habitually, but often enough, Heaven knows! And what was the object of all this ceaseless labor--of their astonishing economies?
Before the coming of their baby girl, they had been little more than two patient, dumb beasts of burden. Born and bred to work--they worked--but dully--without hope or special object--but when God had sent into their lives that laughing, pretty thing, and formed her delicately that she might arouse their tenderness, they had changed. They looked at one another, and each, smiling, saw the other anew. They dreamed for her--they hoped now for her--they prayed now heavy, laborious, loving prayers for her. Truly she had been the “locust and wild honey” that fed them in their wilderness--so now it was for her they labored and were therefore never tired.
As the years passed I, who had long since ceased to live in S---- street, often went there to visit my friends who had remained, stopping with them from Saturday till Monday, and these visits kept me still in touch with “Little Knights” and his idol. It seemed strange that Rosie was quite unspoiled by so much adulation. She was a favorite with all the neighbors, was polite and obedient outside her own domain, while within it, an absolute monarch, she ruled with gentlest strength her idolatrous subjects. Derision or contempt shown to them was swiftly and sharply resented by her, while the only time she had to sternly exert her authority was when she made some demand upon the treasury that was for _their_ benefit instead of hers.