Rose Clark Part 25

Did she think that a rejected lover could not be a trustworthy, firm, and untiring friend?

Did she think that, like other men, he would mete out his attendance, only so far as it met with an equivalent?

Dear Rose!

How often he had longed, as he had followed her at a distance through the crowded streets, and seen her slight form bend under Charley's burden, to offer her his protecting arm. How he had longed, when the day's fruitless tramp was over, to go to her in the little parlor, and bid her lay her weary head, fearlessly, as if on a brother's breast, and now, when the heart's tonic;--hope--had been suddenly withdrawn, would the drooping spirit sink? Medicine, he knew, could do little for the soul's malady, but what it could do, she should be benefited by.

The old colored nurse Chloe drew aside the bed-curtains to look at her charge. How still she lay--how white and wan. "Berry sick," she muttered, with a shake of her turbaned head, "missis berry sick," and she moved gently a long tress of hair which lay across Rose's forehead.

"Missis berry young," she muttered, "no wrinkles dere; missis' heart is wrinkled, pr'aps; young face an' ole heart; some trouble been dere," and the old negress touched the little snow-flake of a hand which lay upon the coverlid. "Most see trough it," she muttered, following the tracery of the blue veins. "No ring on de wedding-finger; ah! pr'aps dat's it,"

said the old negress, "den she'd better nebber wake up again. Black skins and white skins, de Lord sends 'em both trouble to make it all even. Some one ting, some anodder. My ole missis Vincent berry rich, but had berry bad son; handsome, but berry bad; lub n.o.body but himself; die like a dog wid all his money. De Lord he makes it all even, dis n.i.g.g.e.r knows dat; ole missis Vincent good to gib ole Chloe her freedom, but missis' son berry bad. De Lord sends some one ting, some anodder," and Chloe folded her arms philosophically, and leaned back in her chair.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

The door of Gertrude's studio was ajar, for the day was warm, and the lady had sat persistently at her easel, as was her wont (when the glow was on), since early day-light.

Pictures and picture frames, canvas and brushes, sketches in oils, engravings and crayons, were scattered round, with as little regard to housewife-ly order, as if the apartment had been tenanted by one of the disorderly s.e.x; the light was fine, and that was the most Gertrude cared about.

She was a picture herself as she sat there, and though a woman, was not aware of it. The loose, white wrapper she wore had become unfastened at the throat, and fallen partially off one shoulder, revealing as perfect a bust as ever set a sculptor or lover dreaming. No prettier ornament could have been found to keep back her light brown tresses than her tiny white ears. And as the light fell upon the arm and hand which held her palette, one ceased marveling, with such a model before her, at her successful reproductions of it in the female pictures.

There are some kinds of hair which always look poetical, whether arranged or disarranged; their glossy waves changing in the sun's rays like the arched neck of the peerless golden pheasant; now brown, now golden, beautiful whether in light or shade. This was one of Gertrude's greatest charms. And yet Gertrude was no beauty; but somehow there was a witchery about her which made you think so. It might have been the play of expression on the flexible lips, the warming up of the complexion, the sudden kindling of the eye with smiles, to be as suddenly quenched by tears; the rapid transitions from pensive sadness to mischievous mirth. When she spoke, you thought the charm in her musical voice, when she moved, in the symmetry of her form; every dress she wore you wished she would always wear, every thing she did struck you as being most perfectly and gracefully done; every thing she said was pertinent and piquant; she had thought much, and read little, hence she was always fresh and original; she was an independent thinker, and though strong-minded and clear-headed, was strictly feminine. You looked your watch in the face incredulously when you left her, as if _it_, not _she_, were at fault.

"I really do not think I can do better than that," she soliloquized, laying down her brushes, and stepping back to look at her picture, "that is a success; I feel it."

"Saints and angels!" she exclaimed as the door creaked slightly on its hinges; "where did you come from, you delicious little cherub?"

Well might she exclaim. There was Charley, the little truant, just as he had crept out of bed, looking (as a babe always does when it first wakes) like a delicate morning-glory, whose dewy beauty the first sun's ray will exhale. His little white night-robe hung loosely about him; his large l.u.s.trous eyes were full of childish wonder, his dark hair curled in moist rings round his white temples, and his cheek was yet warm with the flush of sleep.

"Where did you come from, you beautiful creature?" said Gertrude, s.n.a.t.c.hing him up, and kissing first his cherry lips, then his bare, dimpled foot, with its pink-tipped toes, then his ivory shoulders; "I never saw any thing half so beautiful--who _are_ you, you little dumb angel?"

Charley only replied by cuddling his little curly head on Gertrude's shoulder, for even infancy's ear may be won by the musical sweetness of a voice, and Gertrude's tones were heart-tones.

"You trusting little innocent," said Gertrude, as her eye moistened, "you are sweet and holy enough for an Infant Saviour. There, sit there now, darling," said she, placing him on the middle of the floor, and scattering a bunch of flowers about him by way of bribe, "sit there now, while I sketch you for one," and she flew to her easel.

"Yah--yah," said a voice at the door, as another model presented itself, in the picturesque turbaned head of Chloe, "yah--yah--you cheat ole nurse dis time, Ma.s.sa Charley--"

"Oh, don't take him away," said Gertrude; "lend him to me a little while--whose child is it? I almost hoped he belonged to n.o.body."

"Missis, down stairs," answered Chloe; "I don't know her name; she berry sick, I only came las' night to nurse her, and while I busy here and dere, Ma.s.sa Charley take hisself off."

"Your mistress is sick?" said Gertrude; "then of course she does not want this little piece of quicksilver squirming round her; I want to make a picture of him like those that you see," said Gertrude, pointing to her sketches about the room;--"he is as handsome as an angel; leave him with me, never fear, I can charm babies like a rattlesnake, and bite them too," she added, touching her lips to Charley's tempting shoulders.

"But my missis--" remonstrated Chloe.

"Oh, never mind," said Gertrude, with her usual independence; "no mother ever was angry yet because her child was admired. I will bring him down to your door when he gets weary--there, do go away--he grows more lovely every minute, and I am losing time."

It was not strange that Gertrude should have been unaware of the presence of the new lodger, rarely leaving her studio and the little room adjoining, where she had her meals served, except in the evening, when Rose was shut up in her own apartment, a prey to sorrowful thoughts.

Gertrude was as unlike other women in her dislike of gossip as in various other items we might name. Provided she were not interfered with, it mattered nothing to her who occupied the rooms about her. It is only the empty-minded who, having no resources of their own, busy themselves with the affairs of their neighbors. It was unaccountable to her how the number of another woman's dresses, or bonnets, the hours and the places in which she promenaded, the visitors she had, or refused to have, her hours for rising, eating, and retiring, or the exact state of her finances, could be matters of such momentous interest. Living contentedly in a world of her own, she had neither time nor inclination for such petty researches.

A month had elapsed since Rose's sickness; she was now convalescent, and able to part with the faithful Chloe, who claimed the privilege of calling in occasionally to see Ma.s.sa Charley. Rose was again alone--no, not quite alone, for Gertrude had made her acquaintance, to explain her capture of Charley, and ask the loan of him till the picture should be finished.

Gertrude was at a loss to comprehend Rose's manner: at one moment frank and sisterly, at the next cold, silent, and repellant. Rose was struggling with two contending feelings; her straightforward ingenuousness made her shrink from the idea of concealing from one of her own s.e.x, who thus sought her acquaintance, her real history. She shrank from a friendship based on deception.

Simple, straightforward Rose! as if half the friendships in the world would not snap in twain, placed on any other basis! If each heart, with its disingenuous trickeries, its selfish purposes and aims, were laid bare to its neighbor, if the real motives for seeming kindness, the inner life, whose pure outward seeming is often in direct inversion to the hidden corruption were as transparent to the human as to the Omniscient eye, who could stand the test?

A few interviews with Gertrude served to dispel, in a great measure, these feelings. Her ready tact, and quick, womanly sympathies, served to bridge over the chasm to Rose's naturally trusting heart.

Oh, that parting with the life-boat of faith--that unsettled, drifting, sinking, weary feeling--that turning away even from the substance, for fear of the mocking shadow--that heart-isolation which makes a desert of the green earth, with all its fragrance, and music, and sunshine--who that has known misfortune has not deplored it? Who has not striven in vain to get anch.o.r.ed back again where never a ripple of distrust might disturb his peace.

"Tell me how you like it," said Gertrude, placing Charley's finished picture in the most favorable light. "Now don't say you are no connoisseur, that is only a polite way of declining to give an unfavorable opinion. Find all the fault you can with it; you at least should know if it is true to life."

"It is perfect," said Rose, delightedly; "it is Charley's own self; he _is_ a pretty boy," said the proud mother, looking alternately from him to the picture.

"You must remember," said Gertrude, "that of all the different expressions of a loved face, which the heart has daguerreotyped, the artist can catch but one, and that one may not always be to friends the favorite expression; hence you see, with all our good intentions, the craft sometimes labor to disadvantage. However, I seldom paint portraits; my forte is 'still life;' so, of course," she added, laughing; "your mercurial little _Charley_ was quite out of my orbit, but thanks to flowers and lump-sugar, I think I may say there is his double."

"A mother's eye sees no flaw in it," said Rose.

"Thank you," said Gertrude, with a gratified smile. "It has already found a purchaser. A gentleman who was in my studio this morning thought it a fancy sketch, and would not believe me when I told him that there was a beautiful living type; he offered me a sum for it that would at one time have made my heart leap; I can afford to refuse it now."

"How early did your artistic talent develop itself?" asked Rose.

"I was always fond of pictures," replied Gertrude; "but the 'talent'

which prosperity 'folded in a napkin,' the rough hand of adversity shook out."

"Adversity?" repeated the astonished Rose, looking at Gertrude's sunny face.

"You are skeptical," said Gertrude. "I forgive you, but I have learned not to wear my heart dangling like a lady's chatelaine at my girdle, to be plucked at by every idle, curious, or malicious hand.

"Listen!" And she drew her chair nearer to Rose.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX.

GERTRUDE'S STORY.

"When I was about fifteen, I lost both my parents with an epidemic, which raged in the neighborhood. Up to that time, I had known poverty and sorrow only through an occasional novel, which fell in my way. My dear father, whose silver head I never can think of without involuntarily and reverentially bowing my own, had made my child-life one dream of delight. I felt free to think aloud in his presence. I feared no monastic severity at my childish blunders, or indiscretions; he was my friend, my play-fellow, as well as my teacher and guardian.

"I had an only brother, who had imbibed an unconquerable pa.s.sion for travel and adventure, and the only mistake my father ever made educationally, was shutting him off from any mention of the subject. He thought himself right in this, and meant it kindly; but it resulted in my brother's secretly leaving home in disguise for a foreign port; he has never since been heard from, and was probably lost at sea.

"Upon the death of my parents there was found nothing left for my support, and I was left to the care of a distant relative. It was an unexpected and unwelcome legacy, for Mrs. Bluff had five children of her own, and though in comfortable circ.u.mstances, desired no addition to her family. The knowledge of this added poignancy to the grief which already burdened my heart. Upon entering this new life, I made many awkward attempts, with my city-bred fingers, to propitiate Mrs. Bluff on such occasions as baking-days, cleaning-days, washing-days, and ironing-days.

Mrs. Bluff's daughters were as round as pumpkins, and as flaunting as sun-flowers; could spin and weave, and quilt, and bake, and brew, and had the reputation of driving the best bargain at the village store, of any customer for miles round; they pushed me this way and that, laughed at my small, baby hands and pale face, wondered where I had been brought up that I never saw a churn; 'swapped off' my dear books, my only comforts, unknown to me, to a traveling peddler for some bright-red ribbon, and voted me on all occasions a most useless piece of furniture.