Tales of Trail and Town by Bret Harte (ebook offline reader TXT) đ
- Author: Bret Harte
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Helen went to the luncheon, but was unaccompanied. She had a long talk with the dowager. âI am not rich, my dear, like your friends, and cannot afford to pay ten napoleons for a song. Like you I have seen âbetter days.â But this is no place for you, child, and if you can bear with an old womanâs company for a while I think I can find you something to do.â That evening Helen left for England with the duchess, a piece of âingratitude, indelicacy, and shameless snobbery,â which Miss de Laine was never weary of dilating upon. âAnd to think I introduced her, though she was a professional!â
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It was three years after. Paris, reviving under the republic, had forgotten Helen and the American colony; and the American colony, emigrating to more congenial courts, had forgotten Paris.
It was a bleak day of English summer when Helen, standing by the window of the breakfast-room at Hamley Court, and looking over the wonderful lawn, kept perennially green by humid English skies, heard the practical, masculine voice of the duchess in her ear at the same moment that she felt the gentle womanly touch of her hand on her shoulder.
âWe are going to luncheon at Moreland Hall to-day, my dear.â
âWhy, we were there only last week!â said Helen.
âUndoubtedly,â returned the duchess dryly, âand we may luncheon there next week and the next following. And,â she added, looking into her companionâs gray eyes, âit rests with YOU to stay there if you choose.â
Helen stared at her protector.
âMy dear,â continued the duchess, slipping her arm around Helenâs waist, âSir James has honored MEâas became my relations to YOUâ with his confidences. As you havenât given me YOURS I suppose you have none, and that I am telling you news when I say that Sir James wishes to marry you.â
The unmistakable astonishment in the girlâs eye satisfied the duchess even before her voice.
âBut he scarcely knows me or anything of me!â said the young girl quickly.
âOn the contrary, my dear, he knows EVERYTHING about you. I have been particular in telling him all I knowâand some things even YOU donât know and couldnât tell him. For instance, that you are a very nice person. Come, my dear, donât look so stupefied, or I shall really think thereâs something in it that I donât know. Itâs not a laughing nor a crying matter yetâat present itâs only luncheon again with a civil man who has three daughters and a place in the county. Donât make the mistake, however, of refusing him before he offersâwhatever you do afterwards.â
âButââstammered Helen.
âButâyou are going to say that you donât love him and have never thought of him as a husband,â interrupted the duchess; âI read it in your face,âand itâs a very proper thing to say.â
âIt is so unexpected,â urged Helen.
âEverything is unexpected from a man in these matters,â said the duchess. âWe women are the only ones that are prepared.â
âBut,â persisted Helen, âif I donât want to marry at all?â
âI should say, then, that it is a sign that you ought; if you were eager, my dear, I should certainly dissuade you.â She paused, and then drawing Helen closer to her, said, with a certain masculine tenderness, âAs long as I live, dear, you know that you have a home here. But I am an old woman living on the smallest of settlements. Death is as inevitable to me as marriage should be to you.â
Nevertheless, they did not renew the conversation, and later received the greetings of their host at Moreland Hall with a simplicity and frankness that were, however, perfectly natural and unaffected in both women. Sir James,âa tall, well-preserved man of middle age, with the unmistakable bearing of long years of recognized and unchallenged position,âhowever, exhibited on this occasion that slight consciousness of weakness and susceptibility to ridicule which is apt to indicate the invasion of the tender passion in the heart of the average Briton. His duty as host towards the elder woman of superior rank, however, covered his embarrassment, and for a moment left Helen quite undisturbed to gaze again upon the treasures of the long drawing-room of Moreland Hall with which she was already familiar. There were the half-dozen old masters, whose respectability had been as recognized through centuries as their ownerâs ancestors; there were the ancestors themselves,âwigged, ruffled, and white-handed, by Vandyke, Lely, Romney, and Gainsborough; there were the uniform, expressionless ancestresses in stiff brocade or short-waisted, clinging draperies, but all possessing that brilliant coloring which the gray skies outside lacked, and which seemed to have departed from the dresses of their descendants. The American girl had sometimes speculated upon what might have been the appearance of the lime-tree walk, dotted with these gayly plumaged folk, and wondered if the tyranny of environment had at last subdued their brilliant colors. And a new feeling touched her. Like most of her countrywomen, she was strongly affected by the furniture of life; the thought that all that she saw there MIGHT BE HERS; that she might yet stand in succession to these strange courtiers and stranger shepherdesses, and, like them, look down from the canvas upon the intruding foreigner, thrilled her for a moment with a half-proud, half-passive sense of yielding to what seemed to be her fate. A narrow-eyed, stiff-haired Dutch maid of honor before whom she was standing gazed at her with staring vacancy. Suddenly she started. Before the portrait upon a fanciful easel stood a small elaborately framed sketch in oils. It was evidently some recently imported treasure. She had not seen it before. As she moved quickly forward, she recognized at a glance that it was Ostranderâs sketch from the Paris grenier.
The wall, the room, the park beyond, even the gray sky, seemed to fade away before her. She was standing once more at her attic window looking across the roofs and chimney stacks upward to the blue sky of Paris. Through a gap in the roofs she could see the chestnut-trees trilling in the little square; she could hear the swallows twittering in the leaden troughs of the gutter before her; the call of the chocolate vender or the cry of a gamin floated up to her from the street below, or the latest song of the cafe chantant was whistled by the blue-bloused workman on the scaffolding hard by. The breath of Paris, of youth, of blended work and play, of ambition, of joyous freedom, again filled her and mingled with the scent of the mignonette that used to stand on the old window-ledge.
âI am glad you like it. I have only just put it up.â
It was the voice of Sir Jamesâa voice that had regained a little of its naturalnessâa calm, even lazy English voiceâconfident from the experience of years of respectful listeners. Yet it somehow jarred upon her nerves with its complacency and its utter incongruousness to her feelings. Nevertheless, the impulse to know more about the sketch was the stronger.
âDo you mean you have just bought it?â asked Helen. âItâs not English?â
âNo,â said Sir James, gratified with his companionâs interest. âI bought it in Paris just after the Commune.â
âFrom the artist?â continued Helen, in a slightly constrained voice.
âNo,â said Sir James, âalthough I knew the poor chap well enough. You can easily see that he was once a painter of great promise. I rather think it was stolen from him while he was in hospital by those incendiary wretches. I recognized it, however, and bought for a few francs from them what I would have paid HIM a thousand for.â
âIn hospital?â repeated Helen dazedly.
âYes,â said Sir James. âThe fact is it was the ending of the usual Bohemian artistâs life. Though in this case the man was a real artist,âand I believe, by the way, was a countryman of yours.â
âIn hospital?â again repeated Helen. âThen he was poor?â
âReckless, I should rather say; he threw himself into the fighting before Paris and was badly wounded. But it was all the result of the usual love affairâthe girl, they say, ran off with the usual richer man. At all events, it ruined him for painting; he never did anything worth having afterwards.â
âAnd now?â said Helen in the same unmoved voice.
Sir James shrugged his shoulders. âHe disappeared. Probably heâll turn up some day on the London pavementâwith chalks. That sketch, by the way, was one that had always attracted me to his studioâ though he never would part with it. I rather fancy, donât you know, that the girl had something to do with it. Itâs a wonderfully realistic sketch, donât you see; and I shouldnât wonder if it was the girl herself who lived behind one of those queer little windows in the roof there.â
âShe did live there,â said Helen in a low voice.
Sir James uttered a vague laugh. Helen looked around her. The duchess had quietly and unostentatiously passed into the library, and in full view, though out of hearing, was examining, with her glass to her eye, some books upon the shelves.
âI mean,â said Helen, in a perfectly clear voice, âthat the young girl did NOT run away from the painter, and that he had neither the right nor the cause to believe her faithless or attribute his misfortunes to her.â She hesitated, not from any sense of her indiscretion, but to recover from a momentary doubt if the girl were really her own selfâbut only for a moment.
âThen you knew the painter, as I did?â he said in astonishment.
âNot as YOU did,â responded Helen. She drew nearer the picture, and, pointing a slim finger to the canvas, said:â
âDo you see that small window with the mignonette?â
âPerfectly.â
âThat was MY room. His was opposite. He told me so when I first saw the sketch. I am the girl you speak of, for he knew no other, and I believe him to have been a truthful, honorable man.â
âBut what were you doing there? Surely you are joking?â said Sir James, with a forced smile.
âI was a poor pupil at the Conservatoire, and lived where I could afford to live.â
âAlone?â
âAlone.â
âAnd the man wasââ
âMajor Ostrander was my friend. I even think I have a better right to call him that than you had.â
Sir James coughed slightly and grasped the lapel of his coat. âOf course; I dare say; I had no idea of this, donât you know, when I spoke.â He looked around him as if to evade a scene. âAh! suppose we ask the duchess to look at the sketch; I donât think sheâs seen it.â He began to move in the direction of the library.
âShe had better wait,â said Helen quietly.
âFor what?â
âUntilââhesitated Helen smilingly.
âUntil? I am afraid I donât understand,â said Sir James stiffly, coloring with a slight suspicion.
âUntil you have APOLOGIZED.â
âOf course,â said Sir James, with a half-hysteric laugh. âI do. You understand I only repeated a story that was told me, and had no idea of connecting YOU with it. I beg your pardon, Iâm sure. I erâerâin fact,â he added suddenly, the embarrassed smile fading from his face as he looked at her fixedly, âI remember now it must have been the concierge of the house, or the opposite one, who told me. He said it was a Russian who carried off that young girl. Of course it was some made-up story.â
âI left Paris with the duchess,â said Helen quietly, âbefore the war.â
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