Part 8

'She sat in the chair opposite me. As for me, I gazed and gazed. Modestly inviting questions, she looked me frankly in the eyes; and then, as in wonder that I did not speak, threw her head backward, and perused my face curiously. This posture elevated her chin. I was about to say something, but just then _I saw under that chin another crimson mark, the slenderest of slender lines, as if the finest knife-point dipped in blood had been drawn clear across the throat by a nervous hand_. I durst not say to myself what I was reminded of by _that_. Not even to think of it at all. I half-feared that I had become insane, rubbed my forehead, and kept repeating: 'Oh! it is only her bonnet-strings tied too tightly, that is all!'

'I would not trust myself with questioning her then. Not a word of any kind did I speak to her, except to say gently, that she might consider herself my apprentice in the art of bird-stuffing; and that all her necessities should be provided for.

'I had a little bed made for her in the room of the old Yorkshire woman, who minded my solitary establishment for me. She was an orphan, so she said afterward; and had walked all the way from the Stafford Potteries, where her only relative, an aunt, was just dead: hoping to find work in London, that might keep her from the street. She was eighteen years of age, and had never known father or mother.

'Once more I had a living creature to feel an interest in, to become attached to. Whatever was mysterious in her arrival, her appearance, or her voice, I dismissed from my mind as mere curious coincidences, at once too frivolous, too perplexing to be followed up. There was the real substantial fact: a girl without home or friends. Now what was to be done with her?

'I settled that question gradually day by day. I taught her, in the daytime, to help me at my specimen-table; in the evening, to read and write. The rapidity with which she caught by the right end, and made her own every new process, either of brain or fingers, was astonishing. She was my constant wonder and delight. So imitative yet so original; so talented but so modest withal; so bright and sportive, so docile and grateful; she soon became my right hand and right eye in all I had to do.

'As soon as I had dressed her presentably, the clerks saw her superiority as they could not through old clothes, and did it unquestioning reverence. But for this _reverence_ I verily believe they would have come in a body, and thrown themselves at her feet, entreating her to take her pick within the first month after she was domesticated with me. For they were all desperately in love with her: devouring her with their eyes as she went in and out among them so modestly and yet so loftily, like a queen in disguise.

'Well, I did not wonder; I could forgive them. For, six months after she had entered my shop-door, the homeless wayfarer, I awoke to the fact that I was in love with her myself. For the first time in all the days of my manhood, did I know what it was to feel a woman wrought into the texture of my life, so that pulling her away seemed an endless pain to look forward to; and before I knew that it had happened. And that combination of circumstances only, as I view it, is adequate to constitute _love_, on which marriage may be honorably founded.

As soon as I knew that I loved Bessie Cartwright--that was her name--I began to torture myself with the question whether I ought to tell her of it _yet_. Whether, if I did so, her simple heart, out of mere gratefulness, would not instantly give itself up as a matter of debt and honor to the man whom she regarded only in the light of a benefactor. And I had rather have any thing happen than this, my own loneliness till I died even, than this, so galling to me if I discovered it when it was too late, so ruinous to every thing that was best in her young growing womanhood.

'As in the old days, it was my custom still to look at the memorials of my lost friends, when times went hard with me, and my spirits fell. So, one evening, after I had been musing painfully in my room for a couple of hours, I took from my battered old trunk Miss Brentnall's portrait, the Flicker, and the Marmoset, which I had embalmed after his death in the harbor of Genoa.

'I ranged them on my table, and with a feeling of mournful pleasure gazed from one to the other, dwelling upon all the past which they recalled.

'As I sat thus employed, I heard Bessie's tap at the door; I called, 'Come in!' and she entered, with her reading-book for the evening's lesson. Seeing the unusual array upon my table, she asked me: 'What! working still?'

''No; not working, Bessie,' I replied; 'thinking.'

''May I see who that is?' said she artlessly, pointing to the daguerreotype.

''Oh! certainly. Though you must not laugh at it. It is a very homely lady, but a very good one; and, while she lived, my dearest friend.' So I handed it to her.

'She bent her brown head down to the shaded drop-light on my table, and held the portrait close to it. I watched her to see the effect of that strange world-wronged face on the beautiful, Heaven-favored one.

'I saw Bessie Cartwright grow pale as death! Her eyes became fixed like a cataleptic person's. But her head moved, from the portrait to the Flicker, from the Flicker to the Marmoset. The portrait fell from her hand, she grasped hurriedly at the table, and then fell to the floor.

''Dead: dead like the rest!' said I, with a fierce coldness; 'and because I have loved her.'

'I pulled the shade from the drop-light, and drew it to the edge of the table, so that the light fell full on the prostrate girl. I called her by name, and got no answer. I loosened her dress, and in doing so pushed the heavy knot of her brown hair away from her neck. That scarlet crescent glowed there in the midst of the marble whiteness, like a flame!

'I turned her upon her back, and beneath her chin saw the slender crimson line, burning also brighter than ever, while all the throat was deadly pale. 'Bessie! Bessie! speak to me once, only once more.' I spoke passionately at her ear.

'Still no answer. I looked in agony at the dead things which had once been mine; saw plainest of all the Flicker; and again that strange suspicion which I had felt the first day I ever saw the girl, awoke in my brain.

'I bent my mouth to her ear, and softly said: 'Brenta!' At that instant her great dark eyes opened, she read my face wistfully, and then her lips murmured:

''Orloff, dear Orloff! I told you I would meet you again; I have kept my word.'

'It was the voice that became silent ten years before in the sick-room next my own!

''Miss Brentnall!' I exclaimed, not knowing what I said.

''Orloff, dear Orloff!' replied _the voice_, once more from the lips of Bessie Cartwright.

'And then the blood came rushing back to the young girl's face. Timidly she sat up, passed her hand across her eyes, and said faintly:

''Oh! I have had _such_ a dream!'

''What was it, dear child?' I asked.

''I thought that picture you showed me was I. Then I felt myself dying. You were by me till all the room grew dark. I hardly remember what came then; but I have had, oh! so many strange thoughts, and been in so many strange places! I thought I was killed with a little knife: I was on the sea; I was close by a great town that rose from the water's side; I was drowning: then I was myself again in the old dress I wore when I came to you; then I seemed to be all things at once, and you called me a name I had heard before, when I lay in the bed dying; and oh! forgive me, Sir, I called you by your Christian name, Orloff, _dear_ Orloff! I said, do forgive me: I will never do it again.'

''You must do something else than that,' said I, no longer awe-stricken and trembling, for in a moment the mystery of my life had parted like a fog, and I saw its meaning beyond in the clearest of heaven's twilight. 'Something else than that, Bessie. You must never call me by any other name than _dear_ Orloff! Can you call me that? For _I love you_: GOD only knows how I love you. Can you?'

'The girl looked at me with parted lips; caught her breath quickly; hid her face in my bosom; and once more after all those years the beloved voice, knowing what it said, replied:

''Orloff, _dear_ Orloff.'

'Bessie Cartwright is my wife. Not until years afterward did I tell her the meaning of her dream; nor how through lives and deaths she had followed me to save and claim her own. She knows it now; we both keep it for the grateful wonder of our prayers; a mystery like all mysteries had we but the key, with its grand, beneficent meaning, unmeaning, contemptible only to those who read it wrong or not at all.'

'And you do mean to tell to me zat ze beautiful lady you have now espouse, be vonce in ze body of ze vare ugly woman, ze red-head bird vat you call him, and ze marmosette; you mean to say to me zat?'

'I'd like to ask that question too,' said John Tryon.

'I mean to tell you both,' answered Orloff Ruricson, 'that you can put _your own interpretation_ on _my facts_. Also, that if you ever break our confidence in telling my history with its proper names, then good-by to your friendship with Orloff Ruricson.'

I have been permitted to state the facts without the names. Let me also be permitted to state them without my interpretation.

THE LITTLE PEASANT.

A STATUE BY PALMER, OF ALBANY.

BY R. S. CHILTON.

UNSTRUNG by her heart's first sorrow, In the dawn of her life she stands, With listless fingers holding A vacant nest in her hands.

The grass at her feet no longer Is bright with the light of the skies, As downward she looks through the tear-drops That stand in her heaven-blue eyes.

For the nest, so cold and forsaken, Has taught her the lesson to-day, That the dearest of earthly treasures Have wings, and can fly away.

Yet she clings to the empty casket, And sighs that no more is left, As a mother clings to the cradle Of its dimpled treasure bereft.

Alas! for the early shadows That fall about our way, When the beautiful light has vanished, And the hill-tops are cold and gray.

FAUNTLEROY VERRIAN'S FATE.

BY HARRIET E. PRESCOTT.

I.

"SWEET music has been heard In many places; some has been upstirred From out its crystal dwelling in a lake, By a swan's ebon bill; from a thick brake, Nested and quiet in a valley mild, Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild About the earth."

IN an old sea-board town, once famous from its commerce and fisheries, lived a boy, who, as his mother told her gossip, had a good talent for music. Over his adopted place the salt winds blew; beside it, a river rolled its murmurous, mountain-born waters; behind it, green woods forever rustled. A poet still blows his bugle-notes across the three streams that braid its garment in silver; a painter has left there the shadow of cherubs cleaving the clouds; but till Fauntleroy Verrian came, music had owned there no apostle.

The name that he wore had been his father's, and seemed sufficient, in itself, to prove him of gentle blood--the father, of whom no one knew much, who had married his mother against the wish of her friends, and who one day went out, having kissed his young wife, and never returned. She hoped, at last, that he was dead; but something in her heart assured her that he would one day meet the son whom he had never seen. And later, as that son matured, she remembered strange stories once read by her, where demon or Afrite, in the guise and mask of most dark and fascinating manhood, has espoused such lady as he chose; and she trembled with half a fear lest the father of Fauntleroy might be such an one, and traced with terror the growing likeness there, remembering her brief period of passion and delight. But name and face were not the only gifts that the child inherited from his father.

For a time the mother remained in the town where her husband had left her, lest some day he might come to find her, and fail; but the impression of the past, instead of wearing off, daily cut deeper into her soul, and at length the perpetual remembrance grew too painful. Thus, although in this place she procured sufficiently genial occupation in teaching, exertion being necessary, since part of her little store had been deposited in some unknown quarter, she nevertheless chose to remove to another spot; and now all alone in the world, but for her child, she labored fitfully at her needle. So she lived in the small house by the water-side, owning it herself, and renting the larger half.

All things were auspicious to the youth of this boy, though nothing seemed so. His mother was, it appeared, a widow, and therefore he encountered few but the gentle influences of feminine culture. She was poor, and poverty is a discipline. She had received, of course, an education beyond her present station, and poured it lavishly into his thirsty mind. When he numbered fourteen years, she died, and a loneliness befell him which is the crown of genius, and out of which marvellous jewels may be plucked.--Very early in his life, he had manifested an ardent love of the art to which subsequently he devoted himself. Before he spoke, he sang his own lullabies; when he first went alone, his mother lost him all one summer's day, and he was found only at moon-rise, fast asleep beside a fence, whither, bare-footed, bare-headed, and all day without food, he had followed the band of a street company, still repeating in his pretty sleep parts of the tunes they had lent him. He was scarcely older, when two tickets for a rare concert (in a day when concerts were like rain in the desert) were given to his mother, and the poor seamstress, who could neither leave her child nor resign the pleasure, took him with her as a protector. The gay lights, the brilliant toilettes and bouquets, the chandelier swinging all its waxen flames in the glitter of ormulu and prismatic pendents, the laughing and commotion previous to the opening, these filled the child with strange exhilaration, so that he danced upon the seat, repeatedly embraced his mother, and sung to her once or twice, in a low caressing voice, a few notes of his choicest remembrance. But when the musicians had spread their magical pages before them, and, out of a wilderness of sweet sounds, his childish ear drew the measure and melody of one air, his transport knew no bounds. The music was not of a difficult order, nor did it require a great effort of comprehension; yet, while one child, who had been taken that the effect upon him might be observed, whispered dismally, 'What a yacket!' Fauntleroy stood with his clasped hands hanging before him, his head bent forward, and his little face bathed in tears. The last piece was a fantasia upon several of the exquisite waltzes of Beethoven: during the performance one of the sheets fluttered from the stage to the floor, and lay there unnoticed; at the conclusion, as they stepped into the aisle, it caught the child's eye, and, springing forward, he seized it. The strange characters enchanted him, he followed them along with his finger; of their meaning he was, of course, ignorant; but they had some connection with the passing splendor, they were akin to the music that had brimmed his childish soul, they were precious to those gods upon the stage, and so he made a theft of them; or rather, one should say, bore them off calmly, as if by his own right and possession.

His letters he found it difficult to conquer, but day after day he sat in the sun, poring over the stolen sheet, singing the air as he recalled it, dividing it first into parts, and then into distinct sounds, until, if he had been conscious of the fact, he had almost literally deciphered the meaning of those quaint emblems. Hornbook and catechism retired before them, for to those worthies he had given but an inconsiderable portion of his acquaintance.

At the completion of his sixth year, there came a memorable day to Fauntleroy Verrian. He was no longer to remain with the other lodger during Sabbath mornings of perfect calm, that breathed of woods and brooks and dewy winds, and brought to him vague sensations of distant and unknown delights; but jacket and trowsers lay, one sunrise, by his bedside, and he was promoted, not only to the dignity of breeches, but to that other goal of his desires, to see clouds of music, laden with all gorgeous imaginings, blown from the great golden organ-pipes; to go, morning and afternoon, to church. Through the quiet prime, he discoursed of this anticipation to his mother, and she, with maternal wont, did her best to check it, telling him, not the choir, but the preacher, and the sweet voice of the prayers, should draw him there, where she took him not to delight his ear but to save his soul. Fauntleroy had thought his soul safe enough, if he took it round with him, and did not understand his mother's dogmas. 'I know,' he answered, when she tried to elicit his ideas of immortal things, 'that GOD holds me in my sleep, and makes the ocean cry so in the night, and all the winds whistle and clap their wings when the dark comes, because you told me, and I always thank HIM in my prayers, mother. I wish, sometimes, HE had made a field for me, with flowers in it; but I suppose there is one growing against I am a man.'

'But, in all this,' said his mother, 'you think too much of yourself, and very little of GOD.'

'Mother, I love GOD with all my heart,' he replied; 'but when I say it, somehow I feel like a bird, and sing it.'

His mother's seat at church commanded a view of the choir, and here, regardless of every thing else, Fauntleroy remained, his eyes fixed on the loft, and his ears expectant of the moment when the great crypt of silent sound should open its gates, and send forth its winged worshipping ghosts. At last, through the vestry-door, stole the white-robed priest, and a hush reigned in the assembled congregation. As the first hum stole over their heads, like the breath of a wandering wind, slowly flanking itself with allies of massive chords, and winding into vast volumes of involved harmonies, the boy sat rapt in a seraphic trance. No motion marred the marble-like repose, his shadow never quivered, and, but for the blood that bounded up and down the cheek, one could have dreamed him transmuted into some delicate sculpture. At length, the little statue gave a sigh, the lashes fell and hid the starry eyes, and he covered his face with his hands. In the confession, a slight motion did not disturb his mother, but when, on rising, he was not to be seen in the pew, she knew he had gone to seek an ascent to the idol, where she soon caught sight of the dark little head, as its owner sat perched on a stool beside the organist. The service over, the mother remains in the pew, with a mouthful of reproofs for the truant; but he still lingers in the loft.

'Well, what is it?' asks the organist, amused at the unceremonious freedom of the visitor.

'Would you be so kind,' asks the latter, with much sweetness, but no fear, 'as to let me put my fingers on the music?'

'On the keys? With pleasure.'

The child extends his hands, and lays them on the polished ice, although extracting no murmur.

'Well, what do they say to you, the sirens? What do they tell you?'

'O Sir! all sweet things!'

'Do they, little enthusiast? And, if they say so much without sound, what do they say when their lips move?'

The child lifts his hands from the keys, crosses them behind him, and says imperiously: 'Play!'

The man obeys, and evolves a slow movement from Cherubini. If the composer's soul never mirrored the extremest depths of Nature, or if the present performer has in his own soul no complete expression for the strain, there is yet enough. The child's eyes sparkle over cheeks whiter than snow, his quivering lips part, he shivers at each roll of harmony, he stands with self-forgetful, outstretched hands, and, as it closes, every pulse thrills beneath the surge of the silver thunders. He had found that day a new revelation, and unconsciously to himself had learned that in the organ--'great omnipotence of sound'--was slumbering all the delight and purpose of his life.

His mother had often taken him with her, when calling on an elderly lady who lived a few streets higher than herself, the town sloping up from the river; and during these visits he had amused himself with an old English piano that stood, neglected and forlorn, on very slender legs, in a corner of the room. Round the edges, ivory had once been damaskeened in the notes of an air in vogue at the time of its construction; but they, together with the harp of St. Cecilia, elaborately let into the centre of the lid, had long been yellow as gold. Opened, it displayed the delightful mysteries of the black and white key-board. But alas! what different sounds issued thence; what tormented sprites shrieked in short pain from the shrunken wires, and how many others refused to answer his summons at all. Just over it was a small window, which Fauntleroy incidentally noticed to be destitute of fastening. A few weeks after his first attendance at church, he learned from his mother that this neighbor was dead, and that the house would be closed until her heirs, who were foreign, should send an agent from Europe, preparatory to the settlement of her affairs, and the sale of household stuff. During these weeks, his mother had been greatly harassed by her son's evident propensity to music, for though he now learned and digested whatever was set before him, all his avidity was manifested in the former direction. In despair of his ever becoming a useful member of society, she took from him the precious sheet of Beethoven, forbade him to speak on the subject of his predilection, broke in pieces and consumed the violin left behind by his father, and, above all, commanded him never to approach the piano at the old lady's house, and, finally, since she saw the restless longings of the little face at every visit, ceased to go there at all herself. At last, when Fauntleroy heard the announcement, he resolved to attain the mastery of that valueless old piano, and revolved a thousand schemes by which his object could be effected. Music drew him as a magnet draws a needle; resistance never occurred to him, but concealment was absolutely necessary. The more his mother opposed, the more she pushed him forward: with a pertinacity equal to her own, Fauntleroy followed his bent. On his way home from school, he passed the deserted house, even opened the little gate, and took a quick but satisfactory survey of the premises, and as hasty a resolution.