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Read books online » Romance » The Dark Star by Robert W. Chambers (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📖

Book online «The Dark Star by Robert W. Chambers (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📖». Author Robert W. Chambers



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Knickerbocker, and knew nothing about the affair in question.

He also permitted a dark hint or two to escape him concerning possible suits for defamation of character against irresponsible newspapers.

The accounts in the various evening editions agreed, however, that when interviewed, Mr. Brandes was nursing a black eye and a badly swollen lip, which, according to him, he had acquired in a playful sparring 136 encounter with his business manager, Mr. Benjamin Stull.

And that was all; the big town had neither time nor inclination to notice either Brandes or Venem any further; Broadway completed the story for its own edification, and, by degrees, arrived at its own conclusions. Only nobody could discover who was the young girl concerned, or where she came from or what might be her name. And, after a few days, Broadway, also, forgot the matter amid the tarnished tinsel and raucous noises of its own mean and multifarious preoccupations.

137 CHAPTER XIII LETTERS FROM A LITTLE GIRL

Neeland had several letters from Ruhannah Carew that autumn and winter. The first one was written a few weeks after her arrival in Paris:

Dear Mr. Neeland:

Please forgive me for writing to you, but I am homesick.

I have written every week to mother and have made my letters read as though I were still married, because it would almost kill her if she knew the truth.

Some day I shall have to tell her, but not yet. Could you tell me how you think the news ought to be broken to her and father?

That man was not on the steamer. I was quite ill crossing the ocean. But the last two days I went on deck with the Princess Mistchenka and her maid, and I enjoyed the sea.

The Princess has been so friendly. I should have died, I think, without her, what with my seasickness and homesickness, and brooding over my terrible fall. I know it is immoral to say so, but I did not want to live any longer, truly I didn’t. I even asked to be taken. I am sorry now that I prayed that way.

Well, I have passed through the most awful part of my life, I think. I feel strange and different, as though I had been very sick, and had died, and as though it were another girl sitting here writing to you, and not the girl who was in your studio last August.

I had always expected happiness some day. Now I know I shall never have it. Girls dream many foolish things about the future. They have such dear, silly hopes.

All dreams are ended for me; all that remains in life 138 for me is to work very hard so that I can learn to support myself and my parents. I should like to make a great deal of money so that when I die I can leave it to charity. I desire to be remembered for my good works. But of course I shall first have to learn how to take care of myself and mother and father before I can aid the poor. I often think of becoming a nun and going out to nurse lepers. Only I don’t know where there are any. Do you?

Paris is very large and a sort of silvery grey colour, full of trees with yellowing leaves—but Oh, it is so lonely, Mr. Neeland! I am determined not to cry every day, but it is quite difficult not to. And then there are so many, many people, and they all talk French! They talk very fast, too, even the little children.

This seems such an ungrateful letter to write you, who were so good and kind to me in my dreadful hour of trial and disgrace. I am afraid you won’t understand how full of gratitude I am, to you and to the Princess Mistchenka.

I have the prettiest little bedroom in her house. There is a pink shade on my night lamp. She insisted that I go home with her, and I had to, because I didn’t know where else to go, and she wouldn’t tell me. In fact, I can’t go anywhere or find any place because I speak no French at all. It’s humiliating, isn’t it, for even the very little children speak French in Paris.

But I have begun to learn; a cheerful old lady comes for an hour every day to teach me. Only it is very hard for me, because she speaks no English and I am forbidden to utter one word of my own language. And so far I understand nothing that she says, which makes me more lonely than I ever was in all my life. But sometimes it is so absurd that we both laugh.

I am to study drawing and painting at a studio for women. The kind Princess has arranged it. I am also to study piano and voice culture. This I did not suppose would be possible with the money I have, but the Princess Mistchenka, who has asked me to let her take charge of my money and my expenses, says that I can easily afford it. She knows, of course, what things cost, and what I am able to afford; and I trust her willingly because she 139 is so dear and sweet to me, but I am a little frightened at the dresses she is having made for me. They can’t be inexpensive!—Such lovely clothes and shoes and hats—and other things about which I never even heard in Brookhollow.

I ought to be happy, Mr. Neeland, but everything is so new and strange—even Sunday is not restful; and how different is Nôtre Dame de Paris and Saint Eustache from our church at Gayfield! The high arches and jewelled windows and the candles and the dull roar of the organ drove from my mind those quiet and solemn thoughts of God which always filled my mind so naturally and peacefully in our church at home. I couldn’t think of Him; I couldn’t even try to pray; it was as though an ocean were rolling and thundering over me where I lay drowned in a most deep place.

Well, I must close, because déjeuner is ready—you see I know one French word, after all! And one other—“Bonjour, monsieur!”—which counts two, doesn’t it?—or three in all.

It has made me feel better to write to you. I hope you will not think it a presumption.

And now I shall say thank you for your great kindness to me in your studio on that most frightful night of my life. It is one of those things that a girl can never, never forget—your aid in my hour of need. Through all my shame and distress it was your help that sustained me; for I was so stunned by my disgrace that I even forgot God himself.

But I will prove that I am thankful to Him, and worthy of your goodness to me; I will profit by this dreadful humiliation and devote my life to a more worthy and lofty purpose than merely getting married just because a man asked me so persistently and I was too young and ignorant to continue saying no! Also, I did want to study art. How stupid, how immoral I was!

And now nobody would ever want to marry me again after this—and also it’s against the law, I imagine. But I don’t care; I never, never desire to marry another man. All I want is to learn how to support myself by art; and some day perhaps I shall forget what has happened 140 to me and perhaps find a little pleasure in life when I am very old.

With every wish and prayer for your happiness and success in this world of sorrow, believe me your grateful friend,

Rue Carew.

Every naïve and laboured line of the stilted letter touched and amused and also flattered Neeland; for no young man is entirely insensible to a young girl’s gratitude. An agreeable warmth suffused him; it pleased him to remember that he had been associated in the moral and social rehabilitation of Rue Carew.

He meant to write her some kind, encouraging advice; he had every intention of answering her letter. But in New York young men are very busy; or think they are. For youth days dawn and vanish in the space of a fire-fly’s lingering flash; and the moments swarm by like a flight of distracted golden butterflies; and a young man is ever at their heels in breathless chase with as much chance of catching up with the elusive moment as a squirrel has of outstripping the wheel in which he whirls.

So he neglected to reply—waited a little too long. Because, while her childish letter still remained unanswered, came a note from the Princess Mistchenka, enclosing a tremulous line from Rue:

Mon cher James:

Doubtless you have already heard of the sad death of Ruhannah’s parents—within a few hours of each other—both stricken with pneumonia within the same week. The local minister cabled her as Mrs. Brandes in my care. Then he wrote to the child; the letter has just arrived.

My poor little protégée is prostrated—talks wildly of going back at once. But to what purpose now, mon ami? Her loved ones will have been in their graves for days before Ruhannah could arrive. 141

No; I shall keep her here. She is young; she shall be kept busy every instant of the day. That is the only antidote for grief; youth and time its only cure.

Please write to the Baptist minister at Gayfield, James, and find out what is to be done; and have it done. Judge Gary, at Orangeville, had charge of the Reverend Mr. Carew’s affairs. Let him send the necessary papers to Ruhannah here. I enclose a paper which she has executed, conferring power of attorney. If a guardian is to be appointed, I shall take steps to qualify through the good offices of Lejeune Brothers, the international lawyers whom I have put into communication with Judge Gary through the New York representatives of the firm.

There are bound to be complications, I fear, in regard to this mock marriage of hers. I have consulted my attorneys here and they are not very certain that the ceremony was not genuine enough to require further legal steps to free her entirely. A suit for annulment is possible.

Please have the house at Brookhollow locked up and keep the keys in your possession for the present. Judge Gary will have the keys sent to you.

James, dear, I am very deeply indebted to you for giving to me my little friend, Ruhannah Carew. Now, I wish to make her entirely mine by law until the inevitable day arrives when some man shall take her from me.

Write to her, James; don’t be selfish.

Yours always,
NaĂŻa.

The line enclosed from Ruhannah touched him deeply:

I cannot speak of it yet. Please, when you go to Brookhollow, have flowers planted. You know where our plot is. Have it made pretty for them.

Rue.

He wrote at once exactly the sort of letter that an impulsive, warm-hearted young man might take time to write to a bereaved friend. He was genuinely 142 grieved and sorry for her, but he was glad when his letter was finished and mailed, and he could turn his thoughts into other and gayer channels.

To this letter she replied, thanking him for what he had written and for what he had done to make the plot in the local cemetery “pretty.”

She asked him to keep the keys to the house in Brookhollow. Then followed a simple report of her quiet and studious daily life in the home of the Princess Mistchenka; of her progress in her studies; of her hopes that in due time she might become sufficiently educated to take care of herself.

It was a slightly dull, laboured, almost emotionless letter. Always willing to shirk correspondence,

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