Fashion and Famine Part 60

A woman entered, with a haughty, almost rude air. Her dress was clean, but of cheap material, and put on with an effort at tidiness, as if in correction of some long-acquired habits which she had found it difficult to fling off. A black hood, lined with faded crimson silk, was thrown back from her face, revealing large Roman features, fierce dark eyes, and a mouth that, in its heavy fullness, struck the beholder more unpleasantly even than the ferocious brightness of those large eyes.

The woman looked around her as she entered the dressing-room, and a faint sneer curled her lip, while she took in, with a contemptuous glance, all the elegant luxury of that little room. Ada had not for an instant dreamed of inviting a creature so unprepossessing to sit down in the room so exquisitely fitted up for her own enjoyment; but the woman waited for no indication of the kind. She cast one keen glance on the surprised and somewhat startled face turned upon her as she entered, another around the room, which contained only two chairs beside the one occupied by its mistress, and seizing one, a frail thing of carved ebony, cushioned with the most delicate embroidery on white moire, she took possession of it.

At another time Ada would have rung the bell and ordered the woman to be put from the room; but now there was a sort of fascination in this audacious coolness that aroused a reckless feeling in her own heart. She allowed the woman to seat herself, therefore, without a word; nay, a slight smile quivered about her lip as she heard the fragile ebony crack, as if about to give way beneath the heavy burden cast so roughly upon it.

The strange being sat in silence for some moments, examining Ada with a bold, searching glance, that, spite of herself, brought the blood to that haughty woman's cheek. After her fierce black eyes had roved up and down two or three times, from the pretty lace cap to the embroidered slipper, that began to beat with impatience against the cushion which it had before so languidly pressed, the woman at last condescended to speak.

"You are rich, madam; people say so, and all this looks like it. They say, too, that you are generous, good to the poor; that you give away money by handsful. I want a little of this money!"

Ada looked hard at the woman, who returned the glance almost fiercely.

"You need not search my face so sharply," she said, "I don't want the money for myself. One gets along on a little in New York, and I can always have that little without begging of rich women. I would scrub anybody's kitchen floor from morning till night, rather than ask you or any other proud aristocrat for a red cent! It isn't for myself I've come, but for a fellow prisoner, or rather one that was a fellow-prisoner, for I'm out of the cage just now. It's for an old man I want the money, a good old man that the night-hawks have taken up for murder!"

Ada started, but the woman did not observe it, and went on with increasing warmth.

"The old fellow is a saint on earth--a holy saint, if such things ever are. I know what crime is. I can find guilt in a man's eye, let it be buried ever so deep; but this old man is not guilty; a summer morning is not more serene than his face! Men who murder from malice or accident do not sit so peacefully in their cells, with that sort of prayerful tenderness brooding over the countenance."

"Of whom are you speaking, woman? Who is this old man?" demanded Ada, sharply. "What is his innocence or his guilt to me?"

"What is his innocence or guilt to you? Are you a woman?--have you a heart and ask that question? As for me I _might_ ask it--I who know what crime is, and who should feel most for the criminal! But you, pampered in wealth, beautiful, loving, worshipped--who never had even a temptation to sin--it is for you to feel for a man unjustly accused--the innocent for the innocent, the guilty for the guilty. Sympathy should run thus, if it does not!"

"This is an outrage--mockery!" said Ada starting from her chair. "Who sent you here, woman?--how dare you talk to me of these things?--I know nothing of the old man you are raving about; wish to know less. If you want money, say so, but do not talk of him, of crime, of--of murder!"

She sunk back to her chair again, pale and breathing heavily. Her strange visitor stood up, evidently surprised by a degree of agitation that seemed to her without adequate cause.

"So the rich can feel," she said; "but this is not compa.s.sion. My presence annoys you--the close mention of sin makes you shudder. You look, yes, you do look like that angel child when I first laid my hand upon her shoulder."

"What child?--of whom do you speak?" questioned Ada, faintly, for the woman was bending over her, and she was fascinated by the power of those wild eyes.

"It is the grandchild of that old man--the old murderer they call him--the old saint _I_ call him; it is his grandchild that your look reminded me of a moment ago; it is gone, now, but I shall always like you the better for having seemed like her only for a minute!"

"Her name, what is her name?" cried Ada, impelled to the question by some intuitive impulse, that she neither comprehended nor cared to conceal. "What is the child's name, I say?"

"Julia Warren."

"A fair, gentle girl, with eyes that seems to crave affection, as violets open their leaves for the dew when they are thirsty; a frail, delicate little thing, toiling under a burden of flowers! I have seen a young creature like this more than once. She haunts me--her name itself haunts me--and why, why!--she is nothing to me--I am nothing to her?"

Ada spoke in low tones, communing with herself; and the woman looked on, wondering at the words as they dropped so unconsciously from those beautiful lips.

"It is the same girl, I am sure of it," said the woman, at last. "She had no flowers when I saw her tottering with her poor wet eyes into the prison; but her face might have been bathed in their perfume, it was so full of sweetness. It was so--so holy I was near saying, but the word is a strange one for me. Well, madam, this young girl has been in prison with me, and the like of me!"

"She must come out--she shall not remain there an hour!" said Ada, searching eagerly among the folds of her dress for a purse, which was not to be found. "It is not here, I will ring for Jacob; you want money to get this young girl out of prison; that is kind, very kind; you shall have it. Oh, heavens! the thought suffocates me--that angel child--that beautiful flower spirit in prison! Woman, why did you not come to me before?"

"I was in prison myself--the officers don't let us out so easily. We are not exactly expected to make calls; besides, how should I know anything about you, except as one of those proud women who gather up their silken garments when we come near, as if it were contagion to breathe the same atmosphere with us."

"But how is it that you have come to me at last?"

"She told me about you!"

"_She_ sent you to me then?" questioned Ada, with sparkling eyes; "bless her, she sent you!"

"No, she told me about you. I came of my own accord."

Ada's countenance fell; she was silent for a moment, subdued by a strange feeling of disappointment.

"But she is in that horrid place; no matter how you came; not another hour must she stay in prison, if money or influence can release her."

"But she is not in prison now!" said the woman.

"Not in prison!--how is this. What can you desire of me if she is not in prison?"

"But her grandfather--the good old man, he is in prison, helpless as a babe--innocent as a babe. It is the old man who is in prison."

"Why am I tormented with this old man? Do not mention him to me again--his crime is fearful; _I_ am not the one to save him, the murderer of--of----"

"He is the young girl's grandfather!"

Ada had started from her chair, and was pacing rapidly up and down the room, her arms folded tightly under the loose sleeves of her dressing-gown, and the silken ta.s.sels swaying to and fro with the impetuosity of her movements. There seemed to be a venomous fascination in that old man's name that stung her whole being into action. She had not comprehended before that it was connected with that of the flower-girl; but the words "he is the young girl's grandfather,"

arrested her like the shaft from a bow. Her lips grew white, she stood motionless gazing almost fiercely upon the woman who had uttered these words.

"That girl the grandchild of Leicester's murderer!" she exclaimed. "Why the very flowers I tread on turn to serpents beneath my feet!"

"The old man did not kill this Leicester," answered the woman, and her rude face grew white also; "or if he did, it was but as the instrument of G.o.d's vengeance on a monster--a hideous, vile monster, who crawled over everything good in his way, crushing it as he went. If he _had_ killed him--if I believed it, no Catholic saint was ever idolized as I would worship that old man!"

"Woman, what had Leicester done to you that you should thus revile him in his grave?"

A cloud of inexplicable pa.s.sion swept over the woman's face. She drew close to Ada, and as she answered, her breath, feverish with the dregs of intoxication, and laden with words that stung like reptiles, sickened the wretched woman to the heart's core. She had no strength to check the fierce torrent that rushed over her; but folded her white arms closer and closer over her heart, as if to shield it somewhat from the storm of bitter eloquence her question had provoked.

"What has Leicester done to me?" said the woman. "Look, look at me, I am his work from head to foot, body and soul, all of his fashioning!"

"How? Did _you_ love him also?"

A glow of fierce disgust broke over the woman's features, gleaming in her eye and curling her lip.

"Love him, I never sunk so low as that; he scarcely disturbed the froth upon my heart, the wine below was not for him. Had I loved him, he might have been content with my ruin only; as it was, madam, it is a short story, very short, you shall have it--but I'll have drink after."

"Compose yourself--do not be so violent," said Ada, shrinking from the storm she had raised, with that sensitiveness which makes the wounded bird shield its bosom from a threatened arrow, "I do not wish to give you pain!"

"Pain!" exclaimed the woman, with a wild sneer, "I am beyond that. No one need know pain while the drug stores are open! You ask what Leicester has ever done to me. You knew him, perhaps--no matter, you are not the first woman whose face has lost its color at the sound of his name; but he will do no more mischief, the blood is wrung from his heart now."

Ada sunk back in her chair, holding up both hands with the palms outward, as if warding off a blow. But the woman had become fierce in her pa.s.sion, and would not be checked.

"You ask if I loved him, I, who worshipped my own husband, my n.o.ble, beautiful, young husband, with a worship strong as death, holy as religion. Leicester, this fiend, who is now doing a fiend's penance in torment--this demon was my husband's friend, he was my friend too, for I loved everything that brightened the eye, or brought smiles to the lip of my husband--a husband whom I worshipped as a devotee lavishes homage on a saint--loved as a woman loves when her whole life is centered in one object. I was never good like him--but I loved him--I loved him! You look at me in astonishment--you cannot understand the love that turns to such fierce madness when it is but a past thing--that drugs itself with opium, drowns itself in brandy!"

Ada answered with a faint sob, and her eyes grew wild as the great black orbs flashing upon her. The woman saw this, and took compa.s.sion on what she believed to be purely terror at her own violence. She made a strong effort and spoke more calmly, but still with a suppressed, husky voice that was like the hush of a storm.

"We were poor, madam. I kept a little school; my husband was a clerk, at very low pay, with very hard labor. It was a toilsome life, but oh, how happy we were! I don't know where James first saw Mr. Leicester, but they came home together one evening, and I remember we had a little supper, with wine, and some game that Leicester had ordered on the way.

If you have never seen that man, nothing can convey to you the power, the fascination of his presence. Soft, persuasive, gentle as an angel in seeming; deep, crafty, cruel as a fiend in reality--if you had a foible or a weakness, he was certain to detect it with a glance, and sure to use it, though it might be to your own destruction. I was young, vain, new to the world, and not altogether without beauty. I doubt if Leicester ever saw a woman without calculating her weaknesses, and playing upon them if it were only for mere amus.e.m.e.nt, or in the wanton test of his own diabolical powers.