Chapter 2

Her condition was pitiable. While all this was torture to her inexperience and timidity, her fear of her mother rendered her wholly submissive. Each day brought with it some new trial. She was admired for many reasons,--by some for her wealth, of which all had heard rumors; by others for her freshness and beauty. The silence and sensitiveness which arose from shyness, and her ignorance of all social rules, were called _naïveté_ and modesty, and people who abhorred her mother, not unfrequently were charmed with her, and consequently Madame found her also an instrument of some consequence.

In her determination to overcome all obstacles, Madame even condescended to apply to my wife, whose influence over Mademoiselle she was clever enough not to undervalue.

“I want you to talk to Mademoiselle,” she said. “She thinks a great deal of you, and I want you to give her some good advice. You know what society is, and you know that she ought to be proud of her advantages, and not make a fool of herself. Many a girl would be glad enough of what she has before her. She's got money, and she's got chances, and I don't begrudge her anything. She can spend all she likes on clothes and things, and I'll take her anywhere if she'll behave herself. They wear me out--her and her father. It's her father that's ruined her, and her living as she's done. Her father never knew anything, and he's made a pet of her, and got her into his way of thinking. It's ridiculous how little ambition they have, and she might marry as well as any girl. There's a marquis that's quite in love with her at this moment, and she's as afraid of him as death, and cries if I even mention him, though he's a nice enough man, if he is a bit elderly. Now, I want you to reason with her.”

This Clélie told me afterward.

“And upon going away,” she ended, “she turned round toward me, setting her face into an indescribable expression of hardness and obstinacy. 'I want her to understand,' she said, 'that she's cut off forever from anything that's happened before. There's the Atlantic Ocean and many a mile of land between her and North Carolina, and so she may as well give that up.'”

Two or three days after this Mademoiselle came to our apartment in great grief. She had left Madame in a violent ill-temper. They had received invitations to a ball at which they were to meet the marquis. Madame had been elated, and the discovery of Mademoiselle's misery and trepidation had roused her indignation. There had been a painful scene, and Mademoiselle had been overwhelmed as usual.

She knelt before the fire and wept despairingly.

“I'd rather die than go,” she said. “I can't stand it. I can't get used to it. The light, and the noise, and the talk, hurts me, and I don't know what I am doing. And people stare at me, and I make mistakes, and I'm not fit for it--and--and--I'd rather be dead fifty thousand times than let that man come near me. I hate him, and I'm afraid of him, and I wish I was dead.”

At this juncture came the timid summons upon the door, and the father entered with a disturbed and subdued air. He did not conceal his hat, but held it in his hands, and turned it round and round in an agitated manner as he seated himself beside his daughter.

“Esmeraldy,” he said, “don't you take it so hard; honey. Mother, she's kinder outed, and she's not at herself rightly. Don't you never mind. Mother she means well, but--but she's got a sorter curious way of showin' it. She's got a high sperrit, an' we'd ought to 'low fur it, and not take it so much to heart. Mis' Dimar here knows how high-sperrited people is sometimes, I dessay,--an' mother she's got a powerful high sperrit.”

But the poor child only wept more hopelessly. It was not only the cruelty of her mother which oppressed her, it was the wound she bore in her heart.

Clélie's eyes filled with tears as she regarded her.

The father was also more broken in spirit than he wished it to appear. His weather-beaten face assumed an expression of deep melancholy which at last betrayed itself in an evidently inadvertent speech.

“I wish--I wish,” he faltered. “Lord! I'd give a heap to see Wash now. I'd give a heap to see him, Esmeraldy.”

It was as if the words were the last straw. The girl turned toward him and flung herself upon his breast with a passionate cry.

“Oh, father!” she sobbed, “we sha'n't never see him again--never--never! nor the mountains, nor the people that cared for us. We've lost it all, and we can't get it back,--and we haven't a soul that's near to us,--and we're all alone,--you and me, father, and Wash--Wash, he thinks we don't care.”

I must confess to a momentary spasm of alarm, her grief was so wild and overwhelming. One hand was flung about her father's neck, and the other pressed itself against her side, as if her heart was breaking.

Clélie bent down and lifted her up, consoling her tenderly.

“Mademoiselle,” she said, “do not despair. _Le Bon Dieu_ will surely have pity.”

The father drew forth the large linen handkerchief, and unfolding it slowly, applied it to his eyes.

“Yes, Esmeraldy,” he said; “don't let us give out,--at least don't you give out. It doesn't matter fur me, Esmeraldy, because, you see, I must hold on to mother, as I swore not to go back on; but you're young an' likely, Esmeraldy, an' don't you give out yet, fur the Lord's sake.”

But she did not cease weeping until she had wholly fatigued herself, and by this time there arrived a message from Madame, who required her presence down-stairs. Monsieur was somewhat alarmed, and rose precipitately, but Mademoiselle was too full of despair to admit of fear.

“It's only the dress-maker,” she said. “You can stay where you are, father, and she won't guess we've been together, and it'll be better for us both.”

And accordingly she obeyed the summons alone.

Great were the preparations made by Madame for the entertainment. My wife, to whom she displayed the costumes and jewels she had purchased, was aroused to an admiration truly feminine.

She had the discretion to trust to the taste of the _artistes_, and had restrained them in nothing. Consequently, all that was to be desired in the appearance of Mademoiselle Esmeralda upon the eventful evening was happiness. With her mother's permission, she came to our room to display herself, Monsieur following her with an air of awe and admiration commingled. Her costume was rich and exquisite, and her beauty beyond criticism; but as she stood in the centre of our little _salon_ to be looked at, she presented an appearance to move one's heart. The pretty young face which had by this time lost its slight traces of the sun had also lost some of its bloom; the slight figure was not so round nor so erect as it had been, and moved with less of spirit and girlishness.

It appeared that Monsieur observed this also, for he stood apart regarding her with evident depression, and occasionally used his handkerchief with a violence that was evidently meant to conceal some secret emotion.

“You're not so peart as you was, Esmeraldy,” he remarked, tremulously; “not as peart by a light smart, and what with that, and what with your fixin's, Wash--I mean the home-folks,”--hastily--“they'd hardly know ye.”

He followed her down-stairs mournfully when she took her departure, and Clélie and myself being left alone interested ourselves in various speculations concerning them, as was our habit.

“This Monsieur Wash,” remarked Clélie, “is clearly the lover. Poor child! how passionately she regrets him,--and thousands of miles lie between them--thousands of miles!”

It was not long after this that, on my way downstairs to make a trifling purchase, I met with something approaching an adventure. It so chanced that, as I descended the staircase of the second floor, the door of the first floor apartment was thrown open, and from it issued Mademoiselle Esmeralda and her mother on their way to their waiting carriage. My interest in the appearance of Mademoiselle in her white robes and sparkling jewels so absorbed me that I inadvertently brushed against a figure which stood in the shadow regarding them also. Turning at once to apologize, I found myself confronting a young man,--tall, powerful, but with a sad and haggard face, and attired in a strange and homely dress which had a foreign look.

“Monsieur!” I exclaimed, “a thousand pardons. I was so unlucky as not to see you.”

But he did not seem to hear. He remained silent, gazing fixedly at the ladies until they had disappeared, and then, on my addressing him again he awakened, as it were, with a start.

“It doesn't matter,” he answered, in a heavy bewildered voice and in English, and turning back made his way slowly up the stairs.

But even the utterance of this brief sentence had betrayed to my practiced ear a peculiar accent--an accent which, strange to say, bore a likeness to that of our friends downstairs, and which caused me to stop a moment at the lodge of the concierge, and ask her a question or so.

“Have we a new occupant upon the fifth floor?” I inquired. “A person who speaks English?”

She answered me with a dubious expression.

“You must mean the strange young man upon the sixth,” she said. “He is a new one and speaks English. Indeed, he does not speak anything else, or even understand a word. _Mon Dieu!_ the trials one encounters with such persons,--endeavoring to comprehend, poor creatures, and failing always,--and this one is worse than the rest and looks more wretched--as if he had not a friend in the world.”

“What is his name?” I asked.

“How can one remember their names?--it is worse than impossible. This one is frightful. But he has no letters, thank Heaven. If there should arrive one with an impossible name upon it, I should take it to him and run the risk.”

Naturally, Clélie, to whom I related the incident, was much interested. But it was some time before either of us saw the hero of it again, though both of us confessed to having been upon the watch for him. The _concierge_ could only tell us that he lived a secluded life--rarely leaving his room in he daytime, and seeming to be very poor.

“He does not work and eats next to nothing,” she said. “Late at night he occasionally carries up a loaf, and once he treated himself to a cup of _bouillon_ from the restaurant at the corner--but it was only once, poor young man. He is at least very gentle and well-conducted.”

So it was not to be wondered at that we did not see him. Clélie mentioned him to her young friend, but Mademoiselle's interest in him was only faint and ephemeral. She had not the spirit to rouse herself to any strong emotion.

“I dare say he's an American,” she said. “There are plenty of Americans in Paris, but none of them seem a bit nearer to me than if they were French. They are all rich and fine, and they all like the life here better than the life at home. This is the first poor one I have heard of.”

Each day brought fresh unhappiness to her. Madame was inexorable. She spent a fortune upon _toilette_ for her, and insisted upon dragging her from place to place, and wearying her with gayeties from which her sad young heart shrank. Each afternoon their equipage was to be seen upon the Champs Elysées, and each evening it stood before the door waiting to bear them to some place of festivity.

Mademoiselle's _bête noir_, the marquis, who was a debilitated _roue_ in search of a fortune, attached himself to them upon all occasions.

“Bah!” said Clélie with contempt, “she amazes one by her imbecility--this woman. Truly, one would imagine that her vulgar sharpness would teach her that his object is to use her as a tool, and that having gained Mademoiselle's fortune, he will treat them with brutality and derision.”

But she did not seem to see--possibly she fancied that having obtained him for a son-in-law, she would be bold and clever enough to outwit and control him. Consequently, he was encouraged and fawned upon, and Mademoiselle grew thin and pale and large-eyed, and wore continually an expression of secret terror.

Only in her visits to our fifth floor did she dare to give way to her grief, and truly at such times both my Clélie and I were greatly affected. Upon one occasion indeed she filled us both with alarm.

“Do you know what I shall do?” she said, stopping suddenly in the midst of her weeping. “I'll bear it as long as I can, and then I'll put an end to it. There's--there's always the Seine left, and I've laid awake and thought of it many a night. Father and me saw a man taken out of it one day, and the people said he was a Tyrolean, and drowned himself because he was so poor and lonely--and--and so far from home.”

Upon the very morning she made this speech I saw again our friend of the sixth floor. In going down-stairs I came upon him, sitting upon one of the steps as if exhausted, and when he turned his face upward, its pallor and haggardness startled me. His tall form was wasted, his eyes were hollow, the peculiarities I had before observed were doubly marked--he was even emaciated.

“Monsieur,” I said in English, “you appear indisposed. You have been ill. Allow me to assist you to your room.”

“No, thank you,” he answered. “It's only weakness. I--I sorter give out. Don't trouble yourself. I shall get over it directly.”

Something in his face, which was a very young and well-looking one, forced me to leave him in silence, merely bowing as I did so. I felt instinctively that to remain would be to give him additional pain.

As I passed the room of the _concierge_, however, the excellent woman beckoned to me to approach her.

“Did you see the young man?” she inquired rather anxiously. “He has shown himself this morning for the first time in three days. There is something wrong. It is my impression that he suffers want--that he is starving himself to death!”

Her rosy countenance absolutely paled as she uttered these last words, retreating a pace from me and touching my arm with her fore-finger.

“He has carried up even less bread than usual during the last few weeks,” she added, “and there has been no _bouillon_ whatever. A young man cannot live only on dry bread, and too little of that. He will perish; and apart from the inhumanity of the thing, it will be unpleasant for the other _locataires_.”

I wasted no time in returning to Clélie, having indeed some hope that I might find the poor fellow still occupying his former position upon the staircase. But in this I met with disappointment: he was gone and I could only relate to my wife what I had heard, and trust to her discretion. As I had expected, she was deeply moved.

“It is terrible,” she said. “And it is also a delicate and difficult matter to manage. But what can one do? There is only one thing--I who am a woman, and have suffered privation myself, may venture.”

Accordingly, she took her departure for the floor above. I heard her light summons upon the door of one of the rooms, but heard no reply. At last, however, the door was opened gently, and with a hesitance that led me to imagine that it was Clélie herself who had pushed it open, and immediately afterward I was sure that she had uttered an alarmed exclamation. I stepped out upon the landing and called to her in a subdued tone,--

“Clélie,” I said, “did I hear you speak?”

“Yes,” she returned from within the room. “Come at once, and bring with you some brandy.”

In the shortest possible time I had joined her in the room, which was bare, cold, and unfurnished--a mere garret, in fact, containing nothing but a miserable bedstead. Upon the floor, near the window, knelt Clélie, supporting with her knee and arm the figure of the young man she had come to visit.

“Quick with the brandy,” she exclaimed. “This may be a faint, but it looks like death.” She had found the door partially open, and receiving no answer to her knock, had pushed it farther ajar, and caught a glimpse of the fallen figure, and hurried to its assistance.

To be as brief as possible, we both remained at the young man's side during the whole of the night. As the _concierge_ had said, he was perishing from inanition, and the physician we called in assured us that only the most constant attention would save his life.

“Monsieur,” Clélie explained to him upon the first occasion upon which he opened his eyes, “you are ill and alone, and we wish to befriend you.” And he was too weak to require from her anything more definite.

Physically he was a person to admire. In health his muscular power must have been immense. He possessed the frame of a young giant, and yet there was in his face a look of innocence and inexperience amazing even when one recollected his youth.

“It is the look,” said Clélie, regarding him attentively,--“the look one sees in the faces of Monsieur and his daughter down-stairs; the look of a person who has lived a simple life, and who knows absolutely nothing of the world.”

It is possible that this may have prepared the reader for the _dénoûment_ which followed; but singular as it may appear, it did not prepare either Clélie or myself--perhaps because we _had_ seen the world, and having learned to view it in a practical light, were not prepared to encounter suddenly a romance almost unparalleled.

The next morning I was compelled to go out to give my lessons as usual, and left Clélie with our patient. On my return, my wife, hearing my footsteps, came out and met me upon the landing. She was moved by the strongest emotion and much excited; her cheeks were pale and her eyes shone.

“Do not go in yet,” she said, “I have something to tell you. It is almost incredible; but--but it is--the lover!”

For a moment we remained silent--standing looking at each other. To me it seemed incredible indeed.

“He could not give her up,” Clélie went on, “until he was sure she wished to discard him. The mother had employed all her ingenuity to force him to believe that such was the case, but he could not rest until he had seen his betrothed face to face. So he followed her,--poor, inexperienced, and miserable,--and when at last he saw her at a distance, the luxury with which she was surrounded caused his heart to fail him, and he gave way to despair.”

I accompanied her into the room, and heard the rest from his own lips. He gathered together all his small savings, and made his journey in the cheapest possible way,--in the steerage of the vessel, and in third-class carriages,--so that he might have some trifle left to subsist upon.

“I've a little farm,” he said, “and there's a house on it, but I wouldn't sell that. If she cared to go, it was all I had to take her to, an' I'd worked hard to buy it. I'd worked hard, early and late, always thinking that some day we'd begin life there together--Esmeraldy and me.”

“Since neither sea, nor land, nor cruelty, could separate them,” said Clélie to me during the day, “it is not I who will help to hold them apart.”

So when Mademoiselle came for her lesson that afternoon, it was Clélie's task to break the news to her,--to tell her that neither sea nor land lay between herself and her lover, and that he was faithful still.

She received the information as she might have received a blow,--staggering backward, and whitening, and losing her breath; but almost immediately afterward she uttered a sad cry of disbelief and anguish.

“No, no,” she said, “it--it isn't true! I won't believe it--I mustn't. There's half the world between us. Oh, don't try to make me believe it,--when it can't be true!”

“Come with me,” replied Clélie.

Never--never in my life has it been my fate to see, before or since, a sight so touching as the meeting of these two young hearts. When the door of the cold, bare room opened, and Mademoiselle Esmeralda entered, the lover held out his weak arms with a sob,--a sob of rapture, and yet terrible to hear.

“I thought you'd gone back on me, Esmeraldy,” he cried. “I thought you'd gone back on me.”

Clélie and I turned away and left them as the girl fell upon her knees at his side.

The effect produced upon the father--who had followed Mademoiselle as usual, and whom we found patiently seated upon the bottom step of the flight of stairs, awaiting our arrival--was almost indescribable.

He sank back upon his seat with a gasp, clutching at his hat with both hands. He also disbelieved.

“Wash!” he exclaimed weakly. “Lord, no! Lord, no! Not Wash! Wash, he's in North Cal-lina. Lord, no!”

“He is up-stairs,” returned Clélie, “and Mademoiselle is with him.”

During the recovery of Monsieur Wash, though but little was said upon the subject, it is my opinion that the minds of each of our number pointed only toward one course in the future.

In Mademoiselle's demeanor there appeared a certain air of new courage and determination, though she was still pallid and anxious. It was as if she had passed a climax and had gained strength. Monsieur, the father, was alternately nervous and dejected, or in feverishly high spirits. Occasionally he sat for some time without speaking, merely gazing into the fire with a hand upon each knee; and it was one evening, after a more than usually prolonged silence of this description, that he finally took upon himself the burden which lay upon us unitedly.

“Esmeraldy,” he remarked, tremulously, and with manifest trepidation,--“Esmeraldy, I've been thinkin'--it's time--we broke it to mother.”

The girl lost color, but she lifted her head steadily.

“Yes, father,” she answered, “it's time.”

“Yes,” he echoed, rubbing his knees slowly, “it's time; an', Esmeraldy, it's a thing to--to sorter set a man back.”

“Yes, father,” she answered again.

“Yes,” as before, though his voice broke somewhat; “an' I dessay you know how it'll be, Esmeraldy,--that you'll have to choose betwixt mother and Wash.”

She sat by her lover, and for answer she dropped her face upon his hand with a sob.

“An'--an' you've chose Wash, Esmeraldy?”

“Yes, father.”

He hesitated a moment, and then took his hat from its place of concealment and rose.

“It's nat'ral,” he said, “an' it's right. I wouldn't want it no other way. An' you mustn't mind, Esmeraldy, it's bein' kinder rough on me, as can't go back on mother, havin' swore to cherish her till death do us part You've allus been a good gal to me, an' we've thought a heap on each other, an' I reckon it can allers be the same way, even though we're sep'rated, fur it's nat'ral you should have chose Wash, an'--an' I wouldn't have it no other way, Esmeraldy. Now I'll go an' have it out with mother.”

We were all sufficiently unprepared for the announcement to be startled by it Mademoiselle Esmeralda, who was weeping bitterly, half sprang to her feet.

“To-night!” she said. “Oh, father!”

“Yes,” he replied; “I've been thinking over it, an' I don't see no other way, an' it may as well be to-night as any other time.”

After leaving us he was absent for about an hour. When he returned, there were traces in his appearance of the storm through which he had passed. His hands trembled with agitation; he even looked weakened as he sank into his chair. We regarded him with commiseration.

“It's over,” he half whispered, “an' it was even rougher than I thought it would be. She was terrible outed, was mother. I reckon I never see her so outed before. She jest raged and tore. It was most more than I could stand, Esmeraldy,” and he dropped his head upon his hands for support. “Seemed like it was the Markis as laid heaviest upon her,” he proceeded. “She was terrible sot on the Markis, an' every time she think of him, she'd just rear--. she'd just rear. I never stood up agen mother afore, an' I hope I shan't never have it to do again in my time. I'm kinder wore out.”

Little by little we learned much of what had passed, though he evidently withheld the most for the sake of Mademoiselle, and it was some time before he broke the news to her that her mother's doors were closed against her.