Part 3

The beautiful Cleopatra sat there as pale as a ghost and was afraid to go near the prostrate form of her unhappy husband, fearing that someone might lift the veil and show the audience the ugliness of her real self. A feeling of restlessness rushed upon her as if the shameful story were being written on her flushed face. She could not endure it any longer and left the dining room.

Mr. Ogden did not notice her departure, and busied himself around the dying man, asking what he could do for him. The poor man pointed to a letter in his side pocket where the addresses of his friends in Dresden were written down.

"The gnomes!... the gnomes!" he stammered once more as the shadow of death began to close in upon him. The blood streamed out incessantly, and before the aid of a doctor could be secured, he was a corpse.

XI.

Mr. Ogden, deeply moved, went to his rooms.

She, the cause of it all, sat at the window with a book in her hands without reading it. There was a look in the woman's face that amazed him, a hard, cold look, that he had never seen there before while the sunbeams fell on her bewitching features and on the green leaves still in her hair.

"I want to leave the place at once," she said without looking at him.

"That poor man's face seems to haunt you, dear tender-hearted girlie," he replied with an outburst of tenderness, taking her in his arms and kissing the handsome face he loved so dearly.

It was a fortunate thing that he was blissfully ignorant of her relation to the dead man.

Gathering up courage--seeing that no suspicion had entered his mind--she raised her beautiful eyes to his languidly.

"Yes, you are right, dear, I cannot stand such horrible things ... it shocks me," she answered with her accustomed dissimulation in tone and action.

Although she was a great adept in the art of hypocrisy and dissimulation, she could not altogether hide the uneasiness which had taken possession of her. A strange expression came into her eyes, an expression he had never seen there. He looked at her and was puzzled. What was it? What brought the change about? He could not tell.

She turned suddenly and looked out of the window with a stony face, in order to hide, to subdue,--what? Did she conjure up a sinful vision of her own life? No, she would not give in, but she was startled to perceive something within her she did not reckon with: a voice wanted to be heard, no matter how hard she tried to subdue it. It was the voice of motherhood--that feeling seemed to be not quite dead in the heart of the shameless woman. It was Nature's revenge! She had to listen to the voice of Nature, or was it conscience, slowly awakening to life?

Ah! Who would or could fathom the heart of an unscrupulous coquette?

"Had he any family?" she asked, indifferently, avoiding his inquisitive gaze.

"Yes, I think he has a child, here is the address," he replied. "I think it must be with someone he knew, poor unfortunate man. And he gave me this in order to look up his orphan child." A mournful compassion soon stole into his eyes.

"He could not speak any more, but the pitiful glance of the dying man's face told me as much, and I am going to Dresden and see whether I can do anything for his child," he added, looking deeply moved out of the window. She gazed at him with puzzled eyes. "God! if he had an inkling whose child that is!" she thought, remorsefully recoiling a step with downcast eyes and tightened lips.

Finally summoning up courage enough, she said, hesitatingly, as if fearing any comment:

"Yes, ... let us stop there on our way to Switzerland."

He wanted to stay until the funeral of the poor lecturer was over, but she would not hear of it. She looked at him with frightened eyes when he made the suggestion.

"I cannot stand such scenes," she replied with quivering lips.

"Well, well! Then we'll go, my sensitive little girlie. That accident seemed to have upset your nervous system," he said with a smile, kissing her tenderly and gazing fondly at her troubled face.

On the following morning they took their departure for Dresden, leaving some money for the funeral expenses in the hands of the hotel keeper.

Instinctively he felt like doing something for the man he had robbed of his happiness without knowing it.

But the unscrupulous coquette loved nobody but herself, knew it, felt it, though without any remorse, that she had betrayed his deep devotion and undying love so shamefully, fearing, in her deceitfulness, only one thing--detection.

The following day a simple hearse, containing the corpse of the poor humorist whose life ended so tragically, went up a lonely hill where the grave diggers had just finished their gloomy work. The coffin was lowered and the grave covered with mother earth. No mourners stood around shedding tears.

The song of a mocking-bird rang from the downy cradle of myrtle blossoms--as a funeral dirge--and a whip-poor-will answered from a cedar in the neighboring woods.

When the night train going to Dresden, rushed by, the little white cross indicating his resting place, looked like a bleached hand of a skeleton shining out with a ghostly radiance across the silent, gloomy plain.

Through the fleecy vapors floating around the lonely hill one with clairvoyant eye may see at midnights the vacillating horde of the tiny gnomes from the Traunstein with downcast torches repeating whisperingly the sad tale, and pointing at the grave, in which the body of the dead humorist, betrayed of his life's happiness, crumbles to dust.

THE ARTIST

I.

The eye of the attentive observer who wanders through Fifth Avenue, and the streets which run into it from right and left, is especially attracted by the houses, built here in the Colonial, there in the Renaissance style. Some of these imposing edifices (often the only reminder of long-vanished fortunes), with their rich facades, afford a striking criterion of the tastes of their builders and of their former inhabitants.

In one of these houses, rearing their proud height to the sky, a small lap-dog, bedecked with silken ribbons, sat in a parlor window. He stretched his snowy paws with great satisfaction on the cushioned window-seat, warming himself in the April sun. The luxurious room behind him was quite empty, and the enforced solitude was not at all to the taste of the spoiled pet. It was probably for this reason that he did not find it worth his while to bark in a superior manner at the pedestrians who appeared on the street, but a look of silent contempt told very plainly that he had made up his mind to consider as extremely unpleasing the movements of a limping street-cleaner who was at the moment just in front of the house.

In fact, the lame man did not look as if he could pretend being favored with a condescending glance by a lap-dog living amidst such sumptuous surroundings.

He looked, too, as if he had had no great practice at his wretched calling--as if he were a novice at it. Although his sickly, sunken features were surrounded by an unkempt grey beard, and his clothing hung loosely about his wasted form, he somehow gave the impression of being an intelligent man of some education, upon whom undeserved misfortune pressed heavily.

The well-fed pet in the parlor window, however, had no conception of undeserved misery, and was about casting to the winds the carefully drilled manners of an educated dog when, fortunately, a well-appointed carriage drew up just as the lame man was preparing to go on his way.

A delicate-looking lady with a kindly face alighted from the carriage, and nodded smilingly to the little dog. The lame street-cleaner had no sooner glanced at the benevolent face of the richly-dressed woman than his emaciated form began to tremble. His face, so pale before, became red, as with humiliation, and in a state of marked agitation he was on the point of dropping his broom and stealing quietly away.

The lady, Mrs. Denison, who had just come from a charitable gathering, and was still under the influence of her charitable mood, felt hurriedly in her purse for a silver-piece, which she instructed her servant to give the lame man as she ascended the broad steps and disappeared into the house.

"I am no beggar!" stammered the street-cleaner in broken English, waving off the proffered alms with a trembling hand.

Within the mansion Mr. Denison, in a faultless evening costume, turned the diamond sleeve-links in the cuffs he was adjusting as he awaited his wife.

Mrs. Denison laid aside her hat and cloak and hastened upstairs to greet him, beginning at once to give him a rather feverish account of the doings of the association of which she was president.

Presently another turn was given to the conversation by the entrance of a tall young man with light blue eyes and a rather inexpressive face.

"I am done with racing for the present!" he cried eagerly, holding out his hand.

"Thank heaven!" answered Mrs. Denison, fervently.

"Eh, for once, George," said Mr. Denison thoughtfully.

"And do you know why? My favorite won first place--only think how lucky!" The young man's excitement was perceptible in his panting breath.

"And how delighted Lucy will be! Here she comes now," said Mrs. Denison, turning to kiss the white forehead of her daughter as she entered the room.

Lucy, a pale, thoughtful girl, with large, meditative eyes shaded by gold-rimmed glasses, held out her finely-shaped hand to George Elmore with a forced smile. There was, indeed, very little of the delight of which her mother had spoken to be seen in her face, although the young man scarcely seemed to notice its absence. Various sports occupied him to such an extent that he never had time to make a study of the girl to whom he was engaged. In addition to his penchant for amusements of the most superficial kind, the gift of observation was entirely lacking in his inflated brain. It was generally supposed that he was very much in love with her, but it was a question whether his affection for his riding-horse was not of a similar nature.

Any one who did observe the pale face of the young girl more closely, however, could not have failed to notice the light quivering of her finely-chiselled nostrils, the nervous motion of her red lips.

In spite of the assumed appearance of calm, which proved the power of her will, it was possible to perceive the existence within her of some deep emotion.

She was standing by the window, the involuntary witness of the alms giving when it had occurred. The lame man in the street was no stranger to her; she knew his domestic circumstances only too well, and during his stay in the hospital had helped to support his family without confiding the circumstance to her parents. Whether she had omitted to mention it for fear of making herself ridiculous, or from some deeper motive, perhaps she, herself, could not at the present moment have determined.

Lucy breathed a sigh of relief when the dinner was announced, and her _fiance_ went away to carry his pleasant news to other friends and acquaintances.

Meanwhile the poor cripple hobbled off to his miserable dwelling. With failing breath he dragged himself over the great distance which lay between him and the lower part of the city, without once raising his eyes from the pavement, suffering and devastating mental torture showing in the feverish glow of his sunken eyes.

II.

Martin, the lame man, had been brought from Lyons by Mr. Denison, the silk manufacturer, apparently under the most favorable conditions. In the silk factory in New Jersey he had proven himself a most skillful dyer. The Denison wares came to be noted for their likeness to the Lyonese goods, and in a short time, through their similarity to the imported ones, surpassed all that had hitherto been made on this side of the ocean. For this reason the goddess, Fortune, added continually to the Denison stock of worldly treasures.

But the continued pressure of the long workdays began to call forth loud remonstrances from the workmen in the Denison factory. Martin, generally looked upon as being responsible for the improvement in the product, was, consequently, hated as being the indirect cause of that pressure.

"I'll be damned if I work a day longer for such beggarly wages!" cried a red-headed Irishman one day, bringing his fist down on the dye-tub with an angry look.

"I can't blame him; he's in the right of it!" answered a second workman.

"A twelve-hour day, and such hard work at that!" cried a third one, leaving his work-bench.

"Right you are!" exclaimed all the others, rolling up their sleeves aggressively.

"If the boss doesn't give us an eight-hour day and higher wages, we quit tomorrow, eh, boys?" cried the angry Irishman, his nose turning from red to purple in his excitement.

Martin had been endeavoring, with ever-increasing earnestness, to calm the excited minds of the workmen, but all that he had been able to say to this end had been laughed to scorn. The next morning he was the only one who appeared at the factory.

At ten o'clock came a deputation of the employees to the office of the manufacturer. Mr. Denison was perfectly willing to agree to a raise in wages, but he would hear nothing of an eight-hour workday, even at the risk of having to stop work for an indefinite period. Orders were coming in day by day. The busy season had just opened and the shutting down of the works would have meant a considerable loss to the manufacturer.

Accordingly, Martin received orders to engage new workmen at once and set them going at their different tasks. The strikers no sooner became aware of this than they began to cast angry glances at Martin.

"Our places to be taken by others?" cried the red-headed Irishman to Martin, in a voice choked with rage, as the latter, weary and worn, prepared to take his way homeward.

"The dog of a foreigner is to blame for it all!" said another with threatening gestures.

This was the beginning. The whole of the brutal crew fell upon Martin, and soon left him lying senseless on the ground. In this state he was carried home. His wife, an intelligent woman, the daughter of a doctor in Basle, and his four children, wept loudly, as the beloved father was carried unconscious into the house. The help of a physician was soon at hand and after a thorough examination a fracture was discovered in the upper part of the right thigh.

The poor wife tended her unfortunate husband with the entire self-sacrifice of a true woman, keeping up the house as long as possible with what little money she could painfully scrape together.

The eldest son, a youth of twenty-four, who, having regard to his manifest talent, had educated himself to be a painter, was unfortunately unable to find employment just at this time, in spite of his diligent and anxious search for it. To the serious financial situation was added the bitter recognition of the fact that the condition of the beloved sufferer was daily growing worse.

Despair seized the unhappy family. The head of the firm was the only person from whom they might expect help. Accordingly Mrs. Martin decided to go to him as soon as possible, since the factory was to be closed for an indefinite time.

Shyly and hesitatingly she entered the office. The thought of having to confess her dire poverty brought a flood of red to her thin face. No one was in the office but a clerk. To the question as to whether she could see Mr. Denison he answered with a contemptuous laugh that Mr. Denison had more important business on hand that day, and was visible to no one. Her urgent entreaty to be allowed to see him if only for a moment was in vain. The clerk rudely showed her the door.

During this conversation, Lucy, the recently betrothed daughter of the manufacturer, sat listening in an adjoining room. The continued disturbances at the factory had caused her so much anxiety that she had insisted upon accompanying her father to the works, which she had scarcely visited before since her return from Germany. She had studied for two years at a school in Leipzig, and through the intellectual treasures of German literature and art she had become conversant with nobler pleasures than those which proved so attractive to Mr. Elmore, her _fiance_. Her aspirations for high and beautiful ideals found rich satisfaction in the finer and more artistic pursuits.

She was sitting thoughtfully by the window, looking out at the grey clouds that chased each other across the sky like a troop of headless ghosts. Her profile was, perhaps, lacking in the classic lines which esthetic laws prescribe for beauty; but a rich spiritual life gave an indescribable charm to her pale countenance.

Her large, meditative eyes seemed shadowed today by a deep melancholy. However she tried to fix her thoughts on George Elmore, the companion of her childhood, to whom, at her parents' wish she had engaged herself, today she found it impossible. Always there arose from the depths of her memory the face of a shy, gentle youth with light, curling hair and deep searching eyes, and the vision made her tremble.

Chance had made them acquainted at the Art School. She had been trying, unsuccessfully, to reproduce the luminous expression of a saint. Her neighbor, watching her conflict with her difficult task, showed, in his shy fashion, his willingness to be of use to her. With a few strokes of his brush he succeeded in catching the desired expression, and at the same time gave her in a hesitating voice an explanation of the picture, and its purpose. He spoke of the light effects which he considered an erroneous conception on the part of the painter, while the next picture, belonging in part to the school of Rembrandt, reached a happier effect from the depths of the shadows in one place and the heightening of the light in another.

From that time on they worked for hours side by side, he explaining the lights and shadows of each picture with such fullness of comprehension, such a thorough knowledge of history, literature, and art, as to make a deep impression on her mind. Her two years' sojourn in Germany had not been able to efface these art-school recollections. She did not know his name, to say nothing of his social position and still--she could not forget--even now she thought of him--even now his picture thrust itself between her and her _fiance_.

Involuntarily she sprang to her feet to escape those torturing thoughts. Her attention was caught by the sound of low sobbing. She was able to observe through a crack in the partition the distress of poor Mrs. Martin, as the clerk refused her admittance into the manufacturer's private office.

Broken with discouragement and suffering, Mrs. Martin had scarcely closed the door behind her when Lucy entered the office.

"Who is that sobbing woman?" she asked hastily of the clerk.

"That woman? She is the wife of the former foreman, whom--the strikers--handled somewhat roughly," he answered, hesitatingly, dropping his malicious eyes.

"She wished to speak to papa, didn't she? Why didn't you let her in?" she demanded, frowning.

"Because I had strict orders not to let anyone in today," he replied shortly, suppressing his rebellious feelings.

"Then I must hurry after the poor woman and ask her if there is anything I can do for her," murmured Lucy with quick decision, taking up her hat and cape from an adjoining room.

"I suppose the distinguished Mr. Martin's last dollar's gone," sneered the clerk after her in an Irish accent.

III.

Lucy hastened after Mrs. Martin, who was still visible in the distance. As the deeply tried woman closed the door of her modest dwelling, a light step made her turn and open it again. She gazed with surprise into the face of the elegantly-gowned girl with the gold-rimmed glasses.

"Does Mr. Martin live here?" the girl inquired in a doubtful voice.

"Yes. Will you be so good as to walk in?" answered the astonished woman. And then with a glance into the room--"Eugene, a lady!" she called to her son.

An inner door opened and Eugene Martin appeared. They stood speechless, gazing in confusion at each other, while white and red chased each other over both of their faces. It was perfectly obvious that they were not strangers to each other; indeed, they had often painted side by side at the Art School. It was the same shy, gentle youth with the dark speaking eyes who had occupied more of her thoughts than would have been considered advisable for an engaged girl. Nevertheless she struggled to conceal her excitement, and to appear calmly in the character of the purpose which had brought her. But how could she offer alms to this family? No, it would no longer be possible; her sensibilities revolted at this thought, and for the moment she wished even to conceal her name from them.

"I wished to have a picture of my--" she was about to say, "of my _fiance_," without really thinking of him in the least, but a flame of red overspread her face and the word died upon her lips. "--of myself," she substituted. "And I wish it done in oils," she went on in a firmer tone.

Eugene conducted the visitor to the scrupulously clean, though modest, little parlor. In order to reach it they were obliged to pass through the room where his father lay ill, the wild fancies of fever playing antics in his brain. Lucy threw a glance of deep sympathy at the sufferer, visibly moved at the sight of his hollow, ashen face.

The great interest she displayed and the anxious inquiries she made about his father's illness, filled Eugene's heart with gratitude. He could have knelt before this being from another sphere, to whom he had scarcely dared to raise his eyes, and thank her in that humble way of his for the warm sympathy she bestowed on his sick father.

"I have seen some of your paintings, and--I am quite sure that my portrait will be a success--" began Lucy, stammering again, as she looked at the sketches displayed about the room.

"I should, of course, do my best--to--keep your good opinion of my capability," answered Eugene, with downcast eyes and a hesitating tongue.

Lucy had taken up a portfolio and was turning over its contents, simply to avoid having to meet his glances. She was afraid he might read what was passing in her mind.

"But whether I should be able to satisfy a lady who has so much artistic knowledge--I hardly know," he admitted modestly, "for of late I have not been able to do much except this landscape."

He indicated a picture which hung at the other end of the room, wondering at the flush which had overspread Lucy's face as she bent over the portfolio, her blood tingling to her finger's ends.

She put down the treacherous portfolio hastily. The exposition of the secret hidden within its covers made her tremble. One of her own drawings, which she had probably thrown away, suddenly met her eyes. It had been enriched by a border of blue forget-me-nots, and as she drew it forth from one of the side pockets she saw, underneath it, written in Eugene's hand, the single word: "Unforgetable."

Her heart beat loudly; still she retained self-command enough to ask in an indifferent tone, when he would be ready to begin the sketch for the portrait, at the same time examining the picture to which he had drawn her attention.

"I should like to know, also, what your price is to be for the execution of the picture," she said, raising her eyes timidly.

He would have been glad to avoid any mentioning of the question of money, but when she insisted, in a hesitating voice, he named a small amount.

"I believe it is customary to pay half in advance," Lucy went on with an embarrassed smile, handing a fifty-dollar note to the confused Eugene, in spite of his shy protest that he was not in the least hurry about it.