Chapter V: Part 5

Mrs. Worden, meeting my request with, “You girl! When are you going to learn not to prance when you are pleased? Can’t you keep your joy out of your legs?” went, all the same, to the other table for scissors to cut the cord and seals at once; for she really enjoyed showing me her precious charges; and I eagerly watched her every movement. The note enclosed she laid aside with a scornful, “Humph! as if I didn’t know what to do without their telling me.”

Then she unrolled the inner tissue-paper. There were two pieces of lace within. One delicate, oh! as cobweb, I thought, as it lay there in its folds. The other heavier, and a mere scrap.

“Why,” said she, taking it up first, “why, this must be, is a bit of old Flanders cut-work, but what a scrap! Oh, yes! I see now, it belongs to some collector; it is simply an example of the brave, old work, and I see, girl Clara, it needs two, yes, three, little brides or braces--see where they are broken? I’ll have a time, now, to wait for thread to darken to anything like that tone.”

And she talked earnestly, almost happily on, about her little tricks and devices for staining threads, etc. Then she laid her hands upon the folded lace: “Ah, I think you’re going to have a treat now, this is--” the words died on her lips. From her throat came a sound, strange, startling, neither sob nor groan, and yet like unto both! She held a length of lace between her hands; she swayed slightly back and forth, and turning my frightened eyes upon her face, I thought: “Behold! a miracle!”

From somewhere, somehow, the weary, old heart had forced through her shrunken veins one wave of blood strong enough to mount to her face, where the pained color slowly grew until it burned into two bright spots high upon her cheeks. Those two fierce spots, glowing in the awful pallor of her face, to me were terrible. I ran to her and, throwing my arm about her, lowered her light body into the chair close to the table. Her haughty, old head was bent; one hand still clutched the lace. I did not know what to do, but it hurt me to the heart to see her bow her head. Timidly I laid my hand upon her shoulder. She looked up at me, and in a husky voice she said, with a glance at the lace: “I owned it once, yes, it was mine! I wore it while I was yet a happy bride!”

I shivered and turned away, while I mutely prayed that torturing color might fade from her face before I looked again. I pressed my forehead to the window, I could see nothing; no tree, no building loomed darkly through the fog; I could not even see the pavement below me. So far as sight went, there were but two living creatures in the world, and one of _them_ longed to leave it!

I was so lonely and so sad, I turned back again. She sat there still, one hand moving back and forth over the lace. The spots were yet on her cheeks, but they were not so fiercely bright. I did not know her like that. I wish she would accuse me of “prancing,” or tell me I “sat down too quickly,” or “jumped up” when I rose. I wished she would snap at me--that her dear, old head would lift itself imperiously again. I had not spoken one word since she told me the lace had been hers, and so, still silent, I crossed back to her and sat down at her feet and, hesitatingly, I asked: “Dear Mrs. Worden, is the lace much injured?”

The words acted like magic upon her. In one moment she had the length of lace passing swiftly between her inquiring fingers, and an instant later she gave a cry of anger: “Oh! shame! just look at this--the cruel hurt! and the soil! Why, some vulgar, new, rich, money-flaunting creature owns this dear lace now! She is ignorant and coarse! Oh, I know, girl! Don’t you see? She has dragged this delicate web about on the _bottom_ of her gown! Its beauty was lost in such a position. It was simply done to show the owner’s utter indifference to expense. I’d wager something that it has been sent, now, by some maid or companion to be repaired. Ah! I should have recognized it any way--but look you, here is the proof that it is mine!”

She held out to me a fold of the lace, and careful examination showed where a former tear had been exquisitely repaired. I nodded my head and she went on, her eyes fixed upon the old scar: “As if I could forget! He did that, my fair-haired giant--man without soul--therefore, husband without honor! But, truly, he was good to look upon!”

I moved restlessly; she took no notice; evidently I had ceased to exist for her: “Fickle, changeable as a child, unstable as water! But, he loved me for a little while. He loved me _then_, the night I wore this lace to the _rout_. It was falling full and deep about my bare shoulders, as they rose from the golden yellow of my gown that was brocaded with a scarlet flower. I wore some diamonds and stood with others in my hands, hesitating, when he came in--my Philip--and looked at me reflected in the glass, and, standing behind me, he said, in the great voice I loved: ‘Burn my body, but you are a handsome woman, Myra!’ and he kissed me on the shoulder. ’Twas like wine taken on a cold day; I felt it mounting to my brain! We were at Christmas-tide, and a bough of holly was hanging above the dressing table. He broke a bunch of its scarlet berries and dark, bright leaves, and, with a great jewel, fastened it here, in the lace at my bosom. His fingers were clumsy and the leaves were sharp as needles, and so my lace was torn--but what cared I? The sharp leaf-points wounded my neck, too, and drew more than one drop of blood, but had they come straight from the heart, I would still have worn the ornament his hand had placed. My Philip! so much I loved him--loved him! Bibber of wine and companion of harlots; fair, like a God, yet without soul; so, being soulless, why should he be cursed for riotously living in the sunlight, and for following in the train of the scarlet woman--with the laughter of fools ringing in his ears! The lace is here, the smooth, white shoulders are shrivelled and bent, the black crown of hair he loved is gone, he is gone, only the lace and my memory are left!”

I drew softly away from her. I felt as guilty in listening to her self-communing as I could have felt had I opened and read one of her letters. I took my cloak, and as I drew it on, I heard her low voice saying: “You said my tongue was not sharp enough, Philip; that was because I loved you! _Her_ tongue was sharp, she cursed and flouted you, and stung and maddened, and tossed you a favor as a bone is tossed to a dog! She was not even beautiful, your frail one, but she knew well the ways that lead down to darkness and to death! She led, steeped in vice and reeling with wine, and you followed because you were without soul, my Philip!”

I crept out of the door and left the bowed, weary, old woman patiently examining the torn meshes of two webs. One her web of lace, the other her web of life. And as I stole through the chilly, gaunt, old house not one of its faint voices--and it had many--whispered to me: “It is nearly over--a little while and you will come no more! A little while and she will have gone, and there will be no one, and nothing here only the old, old house, and we, its voices!”

Some very busy days followed--long rehearsals every morning, and a new part, of greater or lesser length, every night; and it must have been a fortnight later when, being out of the bill, I put a bit of work in my pocket, took a book in my hand, and thus prepared for finding my old friend either in or out, started to make her a visit.

As I approached her door, I heard her talking, and said to myself, she must be over by the fire-place, her voice is so indistinct.

I tapped, but received no answer. Just then there came a pause in the talk within, and I tapped again; this time more loudly, but, to my surprise, I received no invitation to enter, though the talking was resumed in another moment.

I felt somewhat hurt, and turned to go away, but something restrained me, and I thought I would first make _quite sure_ that she knew of my presence, I would knock loudly. As I raised my hand to do so, I heard a groan. That was enough for me; I waited no longer for permission, but opened the door and stepped in, and there amazement held me motionless; I no not know how long, for this room, whose orderliness had always been of that precise and rigid kind suggesting daily measurements with a foot-rule, was now in complete confusion. Chairs out of place, garments here and there, and the usually spotless hearth a mass of gray ashes and fallen black cinders.

And that small, rumpled heap of clothing at the foot of the bed, with white hair tossed and tangled--was that--could that be my Mrs. Worden?--she whose habits of neatness and purity were carried to the extremities; she who on a bitter winter morning, as on every other morning, sought such cramped privacy as her gaunt, old screen could secure for her, in the farthest, bleakest corner of her room, and there, with unskimped thoroughness, went through with the same process of grooming she had indulged in sixty years before, when she had had her maids to help her, after which she put herself into a sort of bolster case, with a hole in the far end for the passage of her head--and in this blue linen bag she became her own housemaid, and when the toilet of the room was finished to the points of its very fingers she again retired to the privacy of her screen and finally emerged “clothed and in her right mind,” as she used to say, when she appeared in her worn, old black gown, her black silk apron, her snow-white collar and small cuffs, and her bit of white tulle, by way of cap, upon her satin-smooth hair--and was this she, was this her room?

Suddenly Mrs. Worden drew down the arm which had been resting across her face, and, looking at me, exclaimed: “Oh, Betty, you are so late! Is breakfast ready now? My head aches, Betty; you never kept me waiting so long before!”

She rolled her head from side to side, and moaned a little, and while I threw off my wraps I recalled, with a heavy heart, the words of Mrs. Bulkley: “She’s breakin’ up; old Myra Worden is breakin’ fast.”

I hastened to reduce the room to something like order, to mend the fire and prepare some tea and rather doubtful toast, and when I had placed her in her chair and her eyes took in the familiar picture of the lake, they cleared perceptibly. She nodded her head and murmured: “Yes, my dearies, yes! I’m waiting for the sign, you won’t be long now! no, not long, not long!”

I came to her, then, with the tea and the toast, and was delighted when she called me “you girl” again, and hoped she would scold me about the fire I had made, but she scolded me no more forever.

She had asked so many times for breakfast, yet now she could not eat one morsel, but she drank her tea like one famishing. While I arranged her bed, she babbled on, and most of the time she talked to her children. Once, however, she declared that if Sally stole another cracker she would throw her from the window, and vowed no one in town would be fool enough to pick her and her vocabulary up.

When I was smoothing her white hair into something like its usual order, one lock escaped my fingers and fell forward on her chest. She saw it and cried out: “They have cut it off, oh, curse them! curse them! Betty, do you see? It’s gone, and--” she paused, looking curiously at the thin, glittering strand of hair--“and, Betty, either I’ve gone mad or it’s quite white! Oh, Betty, I _can’t_ understand!”

And so, as Betty--some long-dead Betty from her past--I put the suffering woman back into her great skeleton of a bed, and smoothed her brow and wet her lips times uncountable, wondering at the heat in her dry, parchment-like skin, while I tried to decide what ought to be done in this emergency.

I felt that a doctor should be summoned, but I stood in absolute awe of her will, her commands, and I knew her fixed determination never to have a physician’s care. She held “she _could_ not die, no matter what her ailments, until she had ‘the sign,’ and that when ‘the sign’ had once been given no power on earth could keep her here.”

So I dared not summon proper help; my next thought had been, naturally enough, of Mrs. Bulkley, the only friend of the old days left to her, but as fate would have it, Mrs. Bulkley was absent from the city on business that would detain her two or three days. Had I not heard my friend Mary rejoicing the night before over the very “high Jinks” the boarders were hoping to enjoy during that absence?

Then indeed my spirits sank, and I could only sit there and watch over her until she became calmer, and then I thought I would slip out and tell my landlady and get her to advise me what to do. And so the hours passed slowly by, and I looked them in the face with young, impatient eyes, and never noted their dread solemnity. For all my anxiety for the woman who was “breakin’ fast,” I had no faintest suspicion that she was _already broken_--that each time the clock struck off the afternoon hours--the four, or five, or six--it was, for the ancient woman in her gaunt, old bed, the _last time_.

To know that we are doing a thing for the _last_ time lends a touching grace to even the commonest act; but I was blind with that black density of blindness that can come only upon the very young, and therefore the very ignorant, and I only waited for the chance to slip away and ask for help for her.

She had been quiet for some time, and I softly rose and tried to leave the room, but she stopped me. “Do not go, girl Clara,” she calmly said, and I, rejoiced, went back to her. She was quite reasonable again, expressed a small want or two, wished to be lifted higher that she might see the lake better; and when all had been accomplished, she asked me if I would stay the night with her. Then, with great diffidence, I told her I thought she should have a doctor first; she raised her hand and looked at me with such imperious fire in her black, old eyes that I silenced myself and stood quite meekly before her, while in a few sharp words she disposed of the “doctor” question.

“Pray, what was wrong any way? She supposed she had wandered a little in her speech. Well, what of it? All Cleveland called her mad. I must have heard that often enough? Why, then, a doctor to-day in special? As for Mrs. Bulkley, if she or anyone else entered this room, she would find strength to put her on the proper side of the door. Ah! she would, she was not so helpless, etc.”

In terror, lest she should again bring on her fever, I yielded to every demand, and so peace came again.

In the long silence that followed, I noticed that the wind was rising fast, that each blast was stronger and longer than the one preceding it, and that the old house trembled ominously under each fierce gust. The shadows, that earlier in the day had been content to linger in the corners, had with stealthy boldness advanced till they had filled the room with darkness, through which I heard the faint, fluttering breathing of the sick woman in her great bed, and the shrill scream of the wind as it swept across the lake to hurl itself upon the challenging city.

I rose at last to light the lamp, and lifting it, was about to place it back of the tall head-board of the bed, that its direct rays might not disturb the possible sleeper, when by chance the light fell full upon the painted face of the laughing, little Phil. The effect was wonderful; it seemed a face alive. The roguish eyes, the merry smile betraying the whitely even teeth, the little brown hand holding back the panting dog. He was joyous life personified, and I stood there wondering where the laughing child had found the courage to meet death so bravely; and, as if in answer to my thought, the faint voice of his mother came from the old bed, saying: “Yes, he was very brave, my man-child Philip, brave, brave! You know I saw it all. Aye, it was a good glass, a strong glass, and I saw. She was afraid, though she was the older, and her poor, blue eyes were strained and wild, and her quivering lips were white like her cheeks. But my Philip held her hand and stood still, while many raced madly to and fro. At one great, approaching wave I saw his lips move and I felt he cried, ‘Mammy!’ I, too, thought it was the end, but as it broke and surged away they were still standing hand in hand, and I knew Eternity in the moment I stood waiting there, waiting for that which came! There were cries and groans about me. The mighty wave seemed for one second to stand quite still, then with blinding, crushing force it struck its awful blow! It was enough; the solid deck sank swiftly from beneath their feet, the water rushed between their frightened, little lips into their laboring lungs, and it was over! With uplifted faces, and hands tight-clasped together, they went down before my tortured eyes! Ah, God! ’twas hard; in one hour my life made desolate! Yet will I worship Thee, forever! Hast Thou not said, ‘the sea shall give up its dead’? Aye, and for that great promise I worship and bow down! By the word of the Lord were the heavens made. The word of the Lord is true!”

The thin, curiously faint voice sank into silence for a few moments. I placed the lamp as I had intended, and seated myself by her bedside again. She faced the lake--the curtains drawn entirely away from the window. I faced her, leaning slightly against the bed. Her eyes were nearly closed, but her lips were moving, and presently she said, as if continuing a conversation: “No, you do not care for her. No! because her golden head is high, and she holds the broken necklace in her hand. Why broken? Did he have second sight, that artist? Did he know, and was the broken necklace in her hand meant as a warning to me? You care for my man-child, because he laughs. You do not care for my ‘gift-of-God,’ because of an air, a manner; you are wrong. ’Tis but a way, a trick of movement. On my breast, with love-tightened, little arms about my neck, she was as sweetly lovable as the meekest little maiden in the land. And when they knelt in prayer, with folded hands, her head was bowed as humbly! Oh!” she suddenly cried, “Oh! not to have their sweet bodies to love and caress and care for, not to have their eager minds to guard, to direct, to develop!”

She moaned piteously, and then, giving a great sigh, she added: “But His word is true, and there is the sign to wait for”--and so sank into a long silence.

I was watching her closely, and suddenly she seemed to cease to breathe. I rubbed her hands; I called her loudly. She feebly opened her eyes and turned them toward the cupboard in the corner. I flew to it, and searching eagerly, I found two or three bottles there, one marked cordial. I administered some as quickly as I could, and saw her revive, but from that moment I was frightened, and I noted every word she spoke and every movement that she made. Her first words made me shiver. She said: “I am not afraid, girl Clara, but I must have the sign. I cannot go without it.”

After a pause, while I resumed my seat facing her, she said: “It’s very good of you to stay with me. Strange, after so many years alone, to have companionship at the last. Old Myra Worden watched over by an actress! Verily, the world does move!” A pause, and then she babbled on: “Ever since the night you came to me out of the storm and tried to be kind to me, I have known you were some way connected with the sign. You admired my treasures there, you loved my old laces, and sometimes I thought--I almost thought that you liked me.”

“Dear Mrs. Worden,” I cried, “I love you very much!” and I lifted the hand I was holding to my lips and kissed it. I felt her start, her black, old eyes flashed wide open, she gave me a piercing glance and exclaimed: “What?--what’s that you say--you say--you----?”

I repeated with tears in my eyes: “I say, I love you very much,” and again I pressed my lips upon her cold and trembling hand. She closed her eyes; she pressed her thin lips close, but could not hide their quivering, and presently, in almost a whisper, she murmured: “Fifty and odd years since those words were used to me. ’Tis almost like a foreign tongue. But, oh, my girl, my girl! it’s mighty pleasant hearing. You--You--”

“I love you--I love you very much,” I slowly and lowly repeated, and she nodded her head at each word, and, smiling faintly, sank into quietude. The time was long, the clock struck more than once, and she had not moved. My hand was holding hers. I feared to release it lest I might disturb her. The fire was long out, and I was cold. I wondered if she was asleep. I had twice been deceived on that subject, and dare not venture an opinion. I longed for dawn. Leaning on the bed, holding her hand closely in mine, I raised my tired eyes and began dully following the involved design carved upon the high head-board. I do not know just when I lost the design, but I felt no shock when I realized that I was looking at the lake, though I had not turned round. I wondered faintly how it could be, but I went on gazing quietly across the heaving, tossing, gray, repellant waste, and in the changes that followed I heard certain words, but whether those words were spoken by myself or fell from the lips of the ancient woman at my side, I shall never know. I only know I heard--I saw.

At first the sky was dull and gray and heavy, like the lake; but as I looked far, far off, where the sky and water met, there came a whiteness of the purity of snow, and it grew and spread and filled up all the sky so far as eye could reach, and then I heard a voice say, faint and low: “Can it be mist?”

And at the words the whiteness became lambent with living fire. As sheet-lightning plays across the summer sky, so this soft fire flashed on, in, through, up, down and across the milky wonder, while the lake--oh, marvelous! The heavy gray was gone, the water clear, pure, brilliant, vast--lay like a mighty crystal, and the voice murmured: “As a sea of glass!”

Presently this lambent whiteness began to throb and thrill with color; streams of pink and rose, of amber, blue or violet, played up and down the sky--a green so vivid, so acutely pure, that the voice, speaking from the great book, said: “A rainbow like unto an emerald.”

Between me and that great background of living, opulent color I dimly saw a movement in the air, and then it thickened with crowding, opaque, white shapes, even as one has seen the air thicken with the white movement of the snow-flakes--so now, from horizon to zenith and to horizon again, all the air was filled with the swift-moving, never-resting, great, white-winged host, and ere the cry in my throat could escape my lips, these unnumbered ones fell apart into two vast bodies, while between them there lay straight across the bosom of the crystal waters a broad path of glittering light.

My heart was plunging wildly against my ribs when I heard the voice, so low, saying: “The sea knew Him--knew His voice--His touch! How the waves must have rushed upon the sand to kiss the precious foot-prints His sacred feet had made!” And while these words were uttered, out, far out, upon the glittering path arose a radiance, even then intense, almost beyond the power of mortal eye to bear; my swift lids fell to shield my dazzled sight. Yet one moment more I gazed and saw--I say I _saw_ that supernatural radiance taking form and substance and assuming the attitude of most majestic humanity.

I could bear no more; I threw the sick woman’s hand from me to clutch at my own strangling throat, and all was gone! I saw the carved head-board--nothing more!

Shaking like a leaf, I turned my head toward Mrs. Worden’s face, and dimly I understood that, by some route of nerves, _her_ vision had been conveyed to my brain. She sat there against her pillows gasping, her nostrils quivering, her black eyes fairly blazing. She passed her tongue across her parched lips, and I heard the low voice say: “It cannot be--no, it cannot! for He has said no man shall look upon His face! But it might be, perhaps, that! Oh! I can raise my eyes no higher--the light is blinding--and yet, and yet--oh! ’tis He! It is the Master!”

Her hands were clasped upon her breast, her body shaken by her laboring heart--while in terror of that recognition--her soft, white hair crisped itself, and moved upon her brow and hollow temples, while in a husky whisper she repeated: “’Tis _He_!--the All-Beautiful! Do I not see His sacred feet, beneath the falling robe press the gently yielding, watery path? Can He have come in fulfillment of the great promise?”

Then, with a piercing cry, she stretched out her arms pleadingly, saying: “Master! Master! I may not look upon the glory of Thy face, but Thou wilt hear me! Oh! Thou lover of little children--pause--pause! They lie so near Thee, but one step away! Thou wilt not pass them by! Summon them, Son of Mary! always pitiful to mothers, pity me! and summon them! Ah! the Hand is raised--the Blessed Hand, irradiating Light--is raised, and there--there--Oh King of Kings!--they are there! Hand clasped in hand--at the Beloved Master’s knee--they smile at me! they raise their little hands, and, Power Supreme! _they make the sign!_”

The room rang with her wild, triumphant cry of joy! She flung her frail arms wide, and repeated: “The sign! The sign!” then, “Yes, my dearies, mother’s coming! We will fall down and worship, and then we will all go on together!”

Her arms dropped suddenly--her black eyes closed--and she fell sidewise into my arms; and even in the very moment of placing her upon her pillow I cast one glance through the uncovered window and saw but the sullen sky bending low over the still more sullen lake.

She never opened her eyes again, and as she lay there so still, so white, I could not but notice how gentle her face had grown, and bending down for the first and last time, I kissed her tenderly. A slow smile came about her lips, and she spoke for the last time, when she said softly, happily: “The sign! _It is_ the sign!”

A moment later there was a long sigh, broken by a shiver, and then stillness, perfect stillness, and I whispered: “They have all gone on together!”

“In Paris Suddenly----”

“In Paris Suddenly----”

I saw it in the _Herald_ this morning: “In Paris suddenly, Madame de B----.” Nothing remarkable about that announcement. Nothing to affect the general reader, but to me the letters were luminous.

“In Paris suddenly, Madame Miriam de B----.” The creep is in my blood yet, for you see, I met Madame Miriam de B---- once, and if I were to live in this world even unto a hundred years, I should not forget that brief meeting.

The house was crowded; we were yet in the first act of the running play, one night, when a companion, a young society woman (who was trying to unlearn in a theatre all she had been taught as an amateur) edged close to me and whispered: “Look at the woman in the box; is she not beautiful?”

I looked and answered quickly: “She is handsome, not beautiful.”

“I can’t see any difference between the meaning of the words,” she pouted, “but look well at her, I have something to tell you when----.”

Here the action of the play parted us, but brought me close to the box. I had needed no urging to look well at its occupant. I could scarcely take my eyes from her, there was something so strange, so odd about her. She was not young. She was most stately in air and figure. Her head was most beautifully shaped, her features regular, her chin firm and deeply cleft, and her eyes--not black, not brown--yet dark, radiantly dark. Their soft shining seeming to contradict the cold strength of her face. Her brows--ah, at last, here was the bizarre touch! Her eyebrows formed one straight line. I don’t mean that they nearly met or were thinly joined; they were thickly and darkly united, in one threatening sweep, above her glowing eyes, giving that hint of tragedy to her face that so surely accompanies united brows on either man or woman.

Once her eyes caught mine and calmly held them fast, and in that moment, as a child may flash a blinding ray of sunlight from a mirror into your face, there flashed into my mind these words: “Only a qualified admiration, eh? And you feel something, eh? You don’t know what? No! and you won’t know either, my dear!” and I ended the act with cheeks as hot from wounded feeling as though the words had actually been spoken to me.

I was not in the second act, neither was the “young society woman,” or at least she was on the stage for about three minutes, after which she came, swelling visibly with importance, for in very truth she had something to reveal, and first exacting, on word of honor, promise not to tell (I only do it now, when: “In Paris suddenly----”). She quickly began: “You can see she is a lady, can’t you? Born in Boston--perfectly lovely family--old--very old, you know! Was splendidly educated, and the very day of her _début_ in society--I don’t know who brought her out, her mother was dead, you know--that very day her father killed himself! Ruined--no courage and all that--she had no near relatives! Went off alone--went abroad--worked at teaching or companioning or something! Things then went wrong--troubles came, awful troubles! Oh--oh!” The speaker’s eyes looked fairly scared, her hands trembled, she drew close to me, and holding fast a fold of my dress, she with desperate haste flung out these words: “She--that American woman--that lady sitting there--she has been accused of murder! Why, she has stood trial for her life!”

I could only gaze at her in stupid silence, and after a moment she rambled on about her uncle being Madame de B----’s lawyer, and his having charge of her affairs over here, as she would not live here--would not settle anywhere in fact--just wandered from place to place, etc.

As last I broke in, with a gasp: “Murderess! She a murderess? But why--how?”

“Oh!” cried my informant: “She was innocent, of course, or I should not know her (I had not thought of that). But she had a narrow escape, and owed it to a man she had always hated; to the dead man’s valet.”

Again, and more impatiently, I broke in: “But why--how--who?”

She caught the last word, “who,” and went on: “Who was killed? Why, Count de Varney! He was a wicked, old wretch! Had a palsied arm, and was broken in health when Miriam first met him! Well, for years she bore his name, and she was the active mistress of his great, lonely home, and a most devoted nurse to him, but she was terribly alone! The servants, who disliked her because she was a foreigner, she ignored all save one, the Count’s valet--him she loathed! She tried to have him sent away and failed, and he knew she had failed. Not a pleasant situation, was it? I must tell you, that in the left wing of the great building there was a room whose windows chanced to overlook those of the private apartments of the Count and Countess, in the main building. This peculiarity was well known, too, and highly valued by the spying servants, and from that room came the evidence that so nearly ruined their hated mistress. The Count had been improving, but as his strength increased his temper roughened, and one day, through one of his bursts of rage, she learned that she had been cruelly, deliberately betrayed--tricked!--by the merest mockery of a marriage; one that, in France at least, was utterly worthless! Surprise--anguish--shame--all at last were lost in fury! A fury so wild--so filled with threats--that the Count fairly quailed before it--begged to be spared a scandal--swore he would yet marry her--nay, he would now, this moment, draw up his will and make her his heiress! Give all to her in her maiden name--so that she should be protected, should aught happen to him before he could marry her! This will he proceeded to have drawn up at once, for you see, during those past years, Miriam had learned much of his outrageous past--knew more of his secret ill-doings than he quite realized--knew, indeed, that he had placed himself within the reach of law! And now, in her otherwise helpless anger, she determined to at least punish him with a great fright. So she secretly prepared and sent an unsigned letter, of seeming friendly warning, to the Count, telling him of the very worst of his past acts. That he had been discovered at last, and that by the evening of that day the officers would arrive at the _château_ to arrest him! The letter came--Count de Varney read it! Miriam had thought to frighten him, and she succeeded so perfectly that the old man--white-lipped--rose from the table, and took his trembling way to his own room, where he hurriedly and clumsily hung himself.”

“Why,” I cried, “I thought you said he had been murdered?”

“Wait!” she said impatiently--“Wait! Over in the wing-room there was a woman, not spying on the movements of her master or mistress--she afterwards swore--but being in love with the valet, she was watching for him, and so happened to be a witness to the hanging of the old Count. No sooner--swore this woman--had her master kicked away the chair on which he had been standing, than a door opened and Madame de Varney entered. For one instant she stood apparently stunned by the sight before her--and then she laughed! She made no movement to call for help--she offered no help herself, but came closer to the writhing, horribly-struggling, hanging figure! The woman swore that once her master threw out his hand imploringly--that she thought he touched her mistress, she was so close to him--but she, the witness, turned faint just then at the awful drawing up of the hanging man’s limbs and did not see quite clearly--but another servant joined just then, and both watched--and swore that only when the master was quite still did the mistress move, and then she went first to a desk and looked at some papers, and then rushed to the door, throwing it open and calling for help! She rang the bell violently, and the valet rushed in at her call, as if he had been standing at the very door--but before he made a movement to cut down the body, he spoke fiercely and rapidly to the Countess, and turned to the swaying figure of the Count de Varney, who had died horribly of slow strangulation!

“The trial was long, for that part of the world. The scandal was great, the mock-marriage being scoffed at and Madame Miriam de B---- treated simply as an adventuress. The will in her favor told against her greatly, but, to the stupefaction of every one, the valet defended her--swearing _he_ had seen his master before his mistress had--that he was _dead before she entered the room_--that he had gone for help, not wishing to touch the body without a witness being present, etc. She swore that her husband was dead when she found him--but without the valet she would certainly have been condemned to long, long imprisonment at the very least. She lives under an assumed name now, and just wanders over the world, as houseless as----”

“Third act; everybody ready!” shouted the call-boy.

I looked about in a bewildered way for my fan and my handkerchief, and went to my place on the stage, saying to myself: “I will not look that way again to-night.”

The third act was known, in theatrical parlance, as the strong act of the play. In it I had to attempt to poison my rival, who had formerly been my beloved friend, and at the very last moment, when the poison was at her very lips, with a strong revulsion of feeling, I had to snatch it away and swallow it myself, and then proceed with the death scene, which naturally followed.

I had kept my promise; I had not looked once toward the stage-box. I had worked myself well into my character again and was doing my best to be _it_, and not myself. That night I had just reached my half unconscious victim and was cautiously raising the poisoned drink to her lips, when some absolutely _outside_ power dragged my unwilling eyes from her face and left me staring straight into the eyes of the woman “who had been tried for her life”!

The actress beside me wondered what had happened--what I had forgotten! No fly enmeshed in spider’s web was ever held more helplessly than I was held for a moment’s time by that devilish face, leaning from the shadow of the curtained box. Strained and eager, it was white as chalk. The lips were parted--the nostrils quivering--while her thunderous brows frowned fiercely above the cruel eyes that held me! And while I looked, so surely as ever Murder raised its head to look through human eyes, so surely Murder triumphant looked at me through hers!

The actress at my side made a faint movement; the spell was broken! I gave the shuddering cry that belonged to the situation, and raising the glass to my own lips, quickly swallowed the poison, and at the very moment of so doing, from the private box, low, but perfectly distinct, came the contemptuous words: “You fool! You fool!”

I went on with my scene and ended the play.

At the end no sign of approbation came from the private box. With some irritation, I asked myself if she expected me to change the action of a play to gratify her savage taste?

The box was what is called a “stage-box,” and it is generally held by the manager for his family, or for visiting artists, as it is apt to open just inside the stage door. As I approached, I saw the box door open. Two or three steps led up to it. At the foot of them stood the young lady who had told me the story, and who was the hostess of Madame de B----. She saw me and called: “Madame wishes to see you!”

Madame de B---- looked her name--Miriam--as she stood there. Her stately figure was so beautiful, her face so calm and handsome--but I shrank from her now; I could not forget the face I had seen but a few moments ago. She stood at the top of the steps; I was one step lower, while her young hostess waited at the door. She did not speak. I noted the elegance of her gown, and followed the movement of her white, ungloved hands as she raised some black lace to drape about her head and shoulders--Spanish fashion--and so I met her eyes, and instantly there was neither theatre nor hostess--there was nothing--there was no one, but just she and I. I set my teeth hard and bore her look. A hot flush swept over me, then I felt my eyebrows lifting of their own accord, a faint chill crept slowly about the roots of my hair, and presently I saw the evil, hot light glowing in her eyes again, and dreading the coming of what I had seen there before, I spoke suddenly, imploringly, and said: “O Madame, _was_ he dead, or _was_ he alive, when you found him?”

Her lips drew back in silent laughter, her eyes danced in burning triumph: “_Alive! Alive!! Poor, little fool! Alive!!_” and then she leaned over me, and gripping me hard upon the shoulders, she looked deep down into my eyes, and then she said slowly, with the devil in her face: “I--wonder--what--became--of--that--devoted--valet?”

She laughed aloud, turned suddenly to gather up her skirt, and I threw out my hand and felt my way by the wall, down the steps, and so into my own dressing room, where I burst into wild sobbing.

Two or three nights passed, and then my friend remarked that dear, handsome Madame de B---- had sailed again.

“It was funny,” she said, “the idea of asking you to come to her box, and then never opening her lips to you, wasn’t it?”

I looked stupidly at her: “Why, what do you mean?” I asked. “You stood in the door all the time--you must have heard her speaking?”

“Why, she never opened her lips--except when she laughed, as you went out!”

I was sorely puzzled--until perhaps a week after--_apropos_ of nothing, my little chatter-box remarked: “You know poor Madame de B---- was one of Count de Varney’s nurses at the very first of their acquaintance. He was a victim of insomnia. A doctor called the Count’s attention to her. She used to make him sleep, sometimes even against his will. The doctor said she had most unusual _mesmeric_ power.”

* * * * *

We never spoke again of Madame de B----, but sometimes on an autumn night, dark and chill, with the rain falling stealthily on the sodden leaves that give forth no rustle when a cautious foot presses them, I have caught myself repeating those ominous words: “I--wonder--what--became--of--that--devoted--valet?” But now to that query there can be but one answer: “In Paris suddenly, Madame de B----.”

Two Buds

Two Buds

“There is no poetry in life to-day!” We were walking down Euclid Avenue, and my friend had been expressing her hot disapproval of many things in this really excellent world of ours, ending with that youthfully positive assertion: “There is no poetry in life to-day!”

I mildly suggested that she might not recognize it as poetry, if she saw it, as poems were not always bound in white and silver nor yet in blue and gold--some, indeed, never reaching the honor (?) of binding at all.

By the fierceness of her contempt for the opinion of another, one could easily measure her utter inexperience, but she finally closed her address by haughtily informing me that she was not to be deceived by “bindings”--that all poetry was sacred to her, whether she found it in the polished, metrical form of verse, or simply expressing itself in human action--but in these days there was no poetry--conscious or unconscious--for--she got no further; my fingers were on her wrist in that unintentionally savage clutch that never fails to secure immediate attention and later remembrance--and I was whispering: “Look! Look well! at the old man approaching!”

I’m sure, though, she needed no such reminder--no one could help looking at him--and, at first glance, only his snowy hair kept the laugh from one’s lips. A well-grown boy of twelve would have been “mad as a hopper” if he had not stood, at least, even in height with this old, old man. His gait was half-trot, half-shuffling walk, and his speed remarkable--but little as he was, he leant forward in a peculiar way. His nationality, after fifty-five unbroken years in America, was stamped so clearly on face and figure that his tongue’s thick, disobedient English was not needed to proclaim him an ancient Dutchman. His garments would have wrung laughter from a telegraph pole--the saddest thing on earth. That his wife made his trousers there could be no doubt, for if you looked at _them_ only, you could never tell which way the man was going to walk. Then, short as his little legs were, his trouser-legs were still shorter, while he could have stowed away quite a nice, little outfit in that portion of them known as the “slack.” This breadth of beam and shortness of keel gave to the public gaze a generous margin of clean, white stocking. His collar, which was an integral part of his shirt--and not, to use his own words, “a flimsy-flamsy yump-a-bout-ting what wont stay hitched!”--was of immaculate whiteness, but utterly innocent of starch, and on his venerable head he wore an antique, “panama” hat. A Dutch friend, who cultivated coffee, had picked this “panama” in Java, when it was green--so to speak--and sent it here, and the older citizens had, for twenty-odd years, watched its slow ripening under the American sun--and in its wearer’s eyes it had just reached its prime. Before the quaint, little body reached us, I whispered: “It is not poverty that makes him dress like that--he owns the big ‘Buckeye Block,’ besides his dwelling-house up town,” and I saw her eye renew its slackening hold on him, so great is our unconscious deference to money that already he seemed less grotesque to her, because she saw him through the softening, yellow light his gold cast upon him--and then he dragged off his well-ripened “panama,” and stopped to tell me “youst how glad vas he to see me!”

For he had entered this country j-less, and j-less he remained, using y in place of j with such smiling confidence that it was “all right” that no one had the heart to sternly put him in the wrong by correcting him. My wise, young friend smiled quite brightly upon him, and when he had passed, demanded of me all I knew about him, “because he was such a dear--and so individual--you know!”

I assured her there was nothing to tell--that he was simply an ignorant but honest man, who by the hardest work and almost incredible economy had risen to wealth, and she surprised me by replying “that there was more than that in his face, even for her, a stranger, to see--and what was the secret of the almost child-like gentleness of his clear, blue eyes?”

Whereupon, we lunched in a quiet corner of a quiet room and over many--too many--cups of coffee, I told her that his name was Knights--Jacobus Knights--and I had made his acquaintance while I was still so young that the salient features of my own personality were the length of my braids and the whiteness of my aprons. He used to rear vegetables and then sell them from a cart, which he pushed when it was full and dragged when it was empty. Being sent after him one day by a lady, I called out lustily: “Boy--boy--you boy! Stop--stop--I say!” thus making the mistake that many an older and wiser person made daily, and one that was greatly facilitated by the tailless jacket and flat cap the little man wore. Really, it savored of the uncanny to thus address a question to the back of childhood and receive your answer from the unshaven lip of maturity. He seemed to be quite used to the error, and only laughed and said: “Dat is noddings--youst noddings at all! Whad I make mit you--onion--squash--eh, whad now?”

Two years later I came to live on S---- street, and right opposite, little Mr. Knights had his little play-house of a home, his doll of a blond baby, and his tremendous wife. No, her size was not the result of comparison, she was really a tremendously big woman, from whose deep chest and strong, column-like throat there issued the thin, little voice of a complaining, “cheeping” chick too weak to break its imprisoning shell. She was a spring of pure Dutch undefiled. Not one English sentence could she command, but she was a friendly creature, and hobnobbed deprecatingly but successfully with her neighbors through the medium of a ponderous but expressive and ever-smiling pantomime.

Never were such workers known before. I doubt if they could have recognized their own breakfast had they met it, by daylight. Certainly they had, for at least forty years, taken that meal by artificial light--candle or oil, whichever was the cheaper. Any morning between half-past four and five o’clock the neighbors could see, through the dim light, a pretty little incident. The cart, heavily laden, stood outside the gate; the small pedler with the boy-body and the man-face, with a broad, leather band or collar across his neck, hooked its ends to the shafts of the cart, thus placing on his shoulders part of the heavy weight and at the same time causing the curious forward bend of body that disfigured his walk to-day. When he was quite ready for his start, the door opened and the big woman appeared, holding in her brown arms a little, night-gowned figure, its bare, pink feet curled up in her one broad hand--baby dreams still lingering mistily in the sleepy, blue eyes, and while one wee hand pushed back impatiently the blond tangle of curls, the other one tossed uncounted kisses to the father dimly seen, while a sweet, bird-like voice cried: “Bye-bye, Papa! Bye-bye! Ick lief dy! Bye-bye!”