Infelice Part 17

Laurance just then would have given the fortune of the Rothschilds for the privilege of folding in his own the perfect hands that lay clasped on the marble slab.

While her extraordinary beauty moved his heart as no other woman had yet done, the stern bitterness of her rebuke appealed to the latent chivalry and slumbering n.o.bility of his worldly soul. Looking upon his flushed handsome face, interpreting its eloquent varying expressions by the aid of glancing lights which memory s.n.a.t.c.hed from long-gone years, she saw the struggle in his dual nature, and hurried on, warned by the powerful magnetism of his almost invincible eyes that the melting spell of the Past was twining its relaxing fingers about the barred gateway of her own throbbing heart.

"Trained in the easy school of lat.i.tudinarianism so fashionable nowaday on both sides of the Atlantic, doubtless Mr. Laurance deems his adopted countrywoman a nervous puritanical prude; and upon my primitive and wellnigh obsolete ideal of social decorum and propriety, upon my lofty standard of womanly delicacy and manly honour, I can patiently tolerate none of the encroachments with which I have recently been threatened. Just here, sir, permit a pertinent ill.u.s.tration of the impertinence that sometimes annoys me."

Lifting between the tips of her fingers the pretty peach-bloom-tinted note, whose accusing characters betrayed the hand that penned it, she continued, with an outbreak of intense and overwhelming contempt:

"Listen, if you please, to the turbid libation which some rose-lipped Paris, some silk-locked Sybarite poured out last night, after leaving the theatre. Under the pretence of adding a leaf to the chaplets, won by what he is pleased to tern 'diving dramatic genius,' this 'Jules Duval'--let me see, I would not libel an honourable name; yes, so it is signed--this Jules Duval, this brainless, heartless, soulless Narcissus, with no larger sense of honour than could find ample waltzing room on the point of a cambric needle, insolently avows his real sentiments in language that your _valet_ might address to his favourite _grisette_; and closes like some ardent accepted lover, with an audacious demand for my photograph, 'to wear for ever over his fond and loyal heart!' That is fashionable homage to my genius--it is? I call it an insult to my womanhood! Nay--I am ashamed to read it! 'Twould stain my cheeks, soil my lips, dishonour your gentlemanly ears. Mr. Laurance, if ever you should become a husband, and truly love the woman you make your wife, you will perhaps comprehend my feelings, when some gay unprincipled gallant profanes the sanct.i.ty of her retirement with such unpardonable, such unmerited insolence."

She held it up between thumb and forefinger, shaking out the pink folds till the signature in violet ink flaunted before the violet eyes of its owner, then, crushing it as if it were a cobweb, she tossed it toward the window.

Turning her head, she said in an altered and elevated tone:

"Mrs. Waul, may I disturb you for a moment?"

The quiet figure, clad in sober grey, and wearing a muslin cap whose crimped ruffle enclosed in a snowy frame the benevolent wrinkled countenance, came forward, knitting in hand, spectacles on her nose, and for the first time the visitor became aware of her presence.

"Please lower the curtain yonder beside the etagere, the sun shines hot upon Mr. Laurance's brow. Then touch the bell, and order the carriage to be ready in twenty minutes."

Humiliated as he had never been before, Mr. Laurance resolved upon one desperate attempt to regain the position his vanity had rashly forfeited. Waiting until the Quaker-like _duenna_ had retreated to her former seat, he rose and leaned across the small table, and under his rich low voice and pa.s.sionately pleading eyes the actress held her breath and clutched the locket till its sharp edge sunk into her quivering flesh.

"You dismiss me as unworthy of your presence, and, acknowledging the justice of your decree, I sincerely deplore the fatuity that prompted the offence. Your rebuke was warranted by my foolish presumption, and, confessing the error into which I was betrayed by your condescending notice last night, I humbly and sorrowfully solicit your generous forgiveness. Fervid flattering phrases sorely belie my real character if, sinking me almost beneath your contempt, you deem me devoid of a high sense of honour, or of chivalric devotion to n.o.ble womanly delicacy. Madame Orme, if your unparalleled beauty, grace, and talent bewitched me into a pa.s.sing folly and vain impertinence, for which indeed I blush, your stern reproof recalls me to my senses, to my better nature; and I beg that upon the unsullied word of an American gentleman, you will accept with my apology the earnest a.s.surance that in quitting this room I honour and revere my matchless countrywoman far more than when I entered her n.o.ble presence. Fashionable freedom may have demoralized my tongue, but by the G.o.d above us, I swear it has not blackened my heart, nor deadened my perception and appreciation of all that const.i.tutes true feminine refinement and purity. You have severely punished my presumptuous vanity, and now will you not mercifully pardon a man who, finding in you the perfect fulfilment of his prophetic dreams of lofty as well as lovely womanhood, humbly but most earnestly craves permission to reinstate himself in your regard; to attempt to win your esteem and friendship, which he will value far more highly than the adoration of any--yes, of all other women?"

He was so near her that she saw the regular quick flutter of the blue vein on his fair temples, and as the musical mastering voice so well remembered and once so fondly loved stole tenderly through the dark, lonely, dreary recesses of her desolate, aching heart, it waked for one instant a wild, maddening temptation, an intense longing to lift her arms, clasp them around his neck, lean forward upon his bosom, and be at rest.

In the weary years that followed, how bitterly she denounced and deplored the fever of implacable revenge that held her back on that memorable day! Verily for each of us a "Nemean Lion lies in wait somewhere," and a lost opportunity might have cost even Hercules that tawny skin he wore as trophy.

Mr. Laurance saw a slow dumb motion of the pale lips that breathed no sound to fill the verbal frame they mutely fashioned--"my husband;"

and then with a gradual drooping of the heavily lashed lids, the eyes closed. Only until one might have leisurely counted five was he permitted to scan the wan face in its rare beautiful repose, then again her eyes pitiless as fate met his--so eager, so wistful--and she too rose, confronting him with a cold proud smile.

"I fear Mr. Laurance unduly bemoans and magnifies a mistake, which, whatever its baleful intent, has suffered in my rude inhospitable hands an 'untimely nipping in the bud,' and most ingloriously failed of consummation. After to-day the luckless incident of our acquaintance must vanish like some farthing rushlight set upon a breezy down to mark a hidden quicksand; for in my future panorama I shall keep no niche for mortifying painful days like this--and you, sir, amid the rush and glow and glitter of this bewildering French capital, will have little leisure and less inclination to recall the unflattering failure of an attempted flirtation with a pretty but most utterly heartless actress, who wrung her hands, and did high tragedy, and stormed and wept for gold! Not for perfumed pink _billets-doux_, nor yet for adulation and vows of deathless devotion from high-born gentlemen handsome and heartless enough to serve in _Le Musee du Louvre_ as statues of Apollo, but for gold, Mr. Laurance, only for gold!"

"Do not inexorably exile me--do not refuse my prayer for the privilege of sometimes seeing you. Permit me to come here and teach you to believe in my----"

"_Le jeu n'en vaut pas la chandelle!_" she exclaimed, with a quick nervous laugh that grated grievously upon his ear.

"Madame, I implore you not to deny me the delight of an occasional interview."

A sudden pallor crept across his eager face, and he attempted to touch the fair dimpled hand which, still grasping the locket, rested upon the table.

Aware of his purpose, she haughtily shrank back, drew herself up, and folding her arms so tightly over her breast that the cameo ring pressed close upon her bounding heart, she looked down on him as from some distant height, with an intensity of quiet scorn that no language could adequately render, that bruised his heart like hail-stones.

"I deny you henceforth all opportunity of sinking yourself still deeper in my estimation, of annoying me by any future demonstrations of a style of admiration I neither desire, appreciate, nor intend to permit. If accident should ever thrust you again across my path, you will do well to forget that our minister committed the blunder of sending you here to-day. Mr. Laurance will please accept my thanks for this package of papers, which shall be returned to-morrow to the office of the American emba.s.sy. Resolved to forget the unpleasant incidents of to-day, Madame Orme is compelled to bid you good-bye."

Angry but undaunted, his eloquent eyes boldly bore up under hers, as if in mortal challenge; and he bowed, with a degree of graceful _hauteur_, fully equal to her own best efforts.

"Madame's commands shall be rigidly and literally obeyed, for Cuthbert Laurance is far too proud to obtrude his presence or his homage on any woman; but Mrs. Orme's interdict does not include that public realm, where she has repeatedly a.s.sured me that gold always secures admission to her smiles, and from which no earthly power can debar me. Watching you from the same spot, where last night you floated like an angelic dream of my boyhood, like a glorious revelation upon my vision and my heart, I shall defy the world to mar the happiness in store for me, so long as you remain in Paris. A distant but devoted worshipper, cherishing the memory of those thrilling glances with which 'Amy Robsart' favoured me, permit me to wish Madame Orme a pleasant ride, and good afternoon."

He bent his handsome head low before her, and left the room less like an exile than a conqueror, buoyed by an abiding fatalism, a fond faith in that magnetic influence and fascination he had hitherto successfully exerted over all, whom his wayward, fickle, fastidious fancy had chosen to enslave.

When the sound of his retreating footsteps was no longer audible, the slender white-robed figure moved unsteadily across the floor, entered the adjoining dressing-room, and locked the door.

The play was over at last, the long tensions of nerve, the iron strain on brain and heart, the steel manacles on memory, all snapped simultaneously; the actress was trampled out of sight, the weak, suffering, long-tortured woman bowed down in helpless and hopeless agony before her desecrated mouldering altar, was alone with the dust of her overturned and crumbling idol.

"My husband! O G.o.d! Thou knowest--not hers--not that woman's--but mine! all mine! My baby's father!--my Cuthbert--my own husband!"

"Oh past! past the sweet times that I remember well!

Alas that such a tale my heart can tell!

Ah, how I trusted him! what love was mine!

How sweet to feel his arms about me twine, And my heart beat with his! What wealth of bliss To hear his praises; all to come to this,-- That now I durst not look upon his face, Lest in my heart that other thing have place-- That which men call hate!"

CHAPTER VIII.

"Nonsense, Elise! She is but a child, and I beg you will not prematurely magnify her into a woman. There are so few unaffected, natural children in this generation, that it is as refreshing to contemplate our little girl's guileless purity and ingenuous simplicity, as to gaze upon cool green meadows on a sultry, parching August day. Keep her a child, let her alone."

Mr. Hargrove wiped his spectacles with his handkerchief, and replaced them on his Roman nose with the injured air of a man who, having been interrupted in some favourite study to take cognizance of an unexpected, unwelcome, and altogether unpleasant fact, majestically refuses to inspect, and dogmatically waves it aside, as if to ignore were to annihilate.

"Now, Peyton, for a sensible man (to say nothing of the astute philosopher and the erudite theologian), you certainly do indulge in the most remarkable spasms of wilful, obstinate, premeditated blindness. You need not stare so desperately at that page, for I intend to talk to you, and it is useless to try to snub either me or my facts. Regina is young, I know, not quite fourteen, but she is more precocious, more mature, than many girls are at sixteen; and you seem to forget that, having always a.s.sociated with grown people, she has imbibed their ideas and caught their expressions, instead of the more juvenile forms of thought and speech usual in children who live among children. She has as far outgrown jumping-ropes as you have tops and kites, and has no more relish for fairy tales than your reverence has for base-ball, or my Bishop here for marbles. Suppose last October I had sprinkled a paper of lettuce-seed in the open border of the garden, and on the same day you had sown a lot of lettuce in the hot-beds against the brick wall, where all the sunshine falls: would you refuse your crisp, tempting, forced salad, because it had reached perfection so rapidity?"

"Mother, do you intend us to understand that Regina is very tender, and very verdant?" asked Mr. Lindsay, looking up from a grammar that lay open before him.

"I intend you, sir, to study your Hindustanee, and your Tamil, while I experiment upon the value of a.n.a.logical reasoning in my discussions with your uncle. Now, Peyton, you see that child's mind has been for nearly four years in an intellectual hotbed,--sunned in the light of religion, moistened with the dew of philosophy, cultivated systematically with the p.r.o.ngs and hoes of regular study, of example, and precept; and, being a vigorous sprout when she was transplanted, she has made good use of her opportunities, and, behold! early mental salad, and very fine! You men theorize, ratiocinate, declaim, dogmatize about abstract propositions, and finally get your feet tangled and stumble over facts right under your noses, that women would never fail to pick up and put aside. The soul of Thales possesses you all, whereas we who sit at the cradle, and guide the little tottering feet, study the ground and sweep away the stumbling-blocks. Day after day you and Dougla.s.s discuss all kinds of scientific theories, and quote pagan authorities and infidel systems in the presence of Regina, who sits in her low chair over there in the corner of the fireplace as quiet as a white mouse, listening to every word, though 'Hans Christian Andersen' lies open on her lap, and scarcely winking those blue eyes of hers, that are as solemn as if they belonged to the Judges of Israel. If a child is raised in a carpenter's shop, with all manner of sharp, dangerous often two-edged tools scattered around in every direction, who wonders that the little fingers are prematurely gashed and scarred? You and Dougla.s.s imagine she is dreaming about the number of elves that dance on the greensward on moonlight nights, or the spangles on their lace wings; or that she is studying the lat.i.tude and longitude of the capital of the last territory which Congress elevated to the uncertain and tormenting dignity of nominal self-government, that once (_vide_ 'obsolete civil hallucinations') inhered in an American State; or perhaps you believe the child is longing for a pot of sugar candy?

Then rub your eyes, you ecclesiastical bats, and let me show you the 'outcome' of all this wise and learned chat, with which you edify one another. You know she beguiled me into giving her lessons on the organ, as well as the piano, and yesterday when I went over to the church at instruction hour, I was astonished at a prelude, which she had evidently improvised. Screened from her view, I listened till she finished playing. Of course I praised her (for really she has remarkable talent), and asked her when she began to compose, to improvise. Now what do you suppose she answered? A brigade of Philadelphia lawyers could never guess. She looked at me very steadily, and said as nearly as I can quote her words: 'I really don't know exactly when I began, but I suppose a long time ago, when I wore brown feathers, and went to sleep with my head under my wing, as all nightingales do.' Said I: 'What upon earth do you mean?' She replied: 'Why of course I mean when I was a nightingale, before I grew to be a human being. Didn't you hear Mr. Hargrove last week reading from that curious book, in which so many queer things were told about transmigration, and how the soul of a musical child came from the nightingale, the sweetest of singers? And don't you recollect Mr. Lindsay said that Plato believed it; and that Plotinus taught that people who lead pure lives and yet love music to excess, go into the bodies of melodious birds when they die? Just now when I played, I was wondering how a nightingale felt, swinging in a plum tree all white with fragrant bloom, and watching the cattle cropping b.u.t.tercups and dandelions in the field. Mrs. Lindsay, if my soul is not perfectly fresh and brand new, I hope it never went into a human body before mine, because I would much lather it came straight to me from a sweet innocent bird."

"Surely, Elise, you are as usual, jesting?" exclaimed her brother.

"On the contrary, I a.s.sure you I neither magnify nor embellish. I am merely stating unvarnished facts, that you may thoroughly understand into what fertile soil your scattered grains of learning fall. I promise you, with moderate cultivation it will yield an hundred-fold."

"Mother, what did you say to her, by way of a dose of orthodoxy to antidote the metempsychosis poison?" asked Mr. Lindsay, who could not forbear laughing, at the astonished expression of his uncle's countenance.

"At first I was positively dumb, and stared at the child, very much as I daresay Mahamaia did, when her boy Arddha-Chiddi stood upon his feet and spoke five minutes after his entrance into this world of woe, or when at five months of age he sat unsupported in the air.

Then I shook her, and asked if she had gone to sleep and dreamed she was a bulbul feeding on rose leaves; whereupon she looked gravely dignified, and when I proceeded to reason with her concerning the absurdity of the utterly worn-out doctrine of transmigration, how do you suppose she met me? With the information that far from being a worn-out doctrine, learned and scientific men now living were reviving it as the truth; and that whereas Christianity was only eighteen hundred years old, that metempsychosis had been believed for twenty-nine centuries, and at this day numbers more followers, by millions, than any other religion in the world. I inquired how she learned all this foolish fustian, and with an indescribable mixture of pride, pity, and triumph, as if she realized that she was throwing Mont Blanc at my head, she mentioned you two eminently evangelical guides, from whose infallible lips she had gleaned her knowledge. As for you, Dougla.s.s, I suggest you abandon Oriental studies, forego the dim hope of martyrdom in India, and begin your missionary labours at home. My dear, the Buddhist is at your own door. Now, Peyton, how do you relish the flavour of your philosophical salad?"

"I am afraid I have been culpably thoughtless in introducing to her mind various doctrines and theories which I never imagined she could comprehend, or would even ponder for a moment. Since my sight has become so impaired and feeble, I have several times called on her to read some articles which certainly are not healthful pabulum for a child, and my conversations with Dougla.s.s, relative to scientific theories, have been carried on unreservedly in her presence. I am very glad you warned me."

"And I am exceedingly sorry, if the effect of my mother's words should be to hamper and cramp the exercise of Regina's faculties.

Free discussion should be dreaded only by hypocrites and fanatics, and after all, it is the best crucible for eliminating the false from the true. Does the contemplation of physical monstrosities engender a predilection or affection for deformity? Does it not rather by contrast with symmetry and perfect proportion heighten the power and charm of the latter? The beauty of truth is never so invincible as when confronted with sophistry or falsehood; just as youth and health seem doubly fair and precious, in the presence of trembling decrepitude and revolting disease."

"Really, Bishop! I thought you had pa.s.sed the soph.o.m.oric stage, and it is a shameful waste of dialectic ammunition to throw your ant.i.thesis at me. According to your doctrine, America ought to buy up and import all the deformed unfortunates who are annually exposed in China, in order that our people should properly appreciate the superiority of sound limbs, and the value of the five senses; and healthy young people should throng the lazarettos and alms-houses to learn the nature of their own disadvantages. It is equally desirable that wise men like you and Peyton should accustom yourselves to the society of--well--I use polite diction, of imbeciles, of 'innocents,'

in order to set a true value on learning and your own astute logic?"

"My dear little mother, you chop your logic so furiously with a broad axe, that you darken the air with a hurricane of chips and splinters.

Like all ladies who attempt to argue, you rush into the _reductio ad absurdum_, and find it impossible to discriminate between----"

"Wisdom and conceit? Bless you, Bishop, observation has taught me all the shades and delicate gradations of that difference. We women no more mistake the latter for the former, than the G.o.ds who declined to turn cannibal when they went to dine with Tantalus, and were offered a frica.s.see of Pelops. Now I----