Kitabı oku: «An Old Man's Darling», sayfa 5

CHAPTER XI

 
"'Italia, oh, Italia, thou who hast
The fatal gift of beauty: which became
A funeral dower of present woes and past,'"
 

repeated the voice of a young man leaning from an upper window, and looking down upon the antique streets of famous Rome.

"I think you have more taste for poetry than painting, Carl," said a second voice.

The scene is an artist's studio, up four flights of stairs, and very near the sky. A large skylight gives admission to the clear and radiant light, and the windows are open for the soft breeze to enter the room, though it is the month of December in that fair Italian clime, where it is always summer. Pictures and palettes, statuettes and bronzes adorn the walls, and somewhat litter the room, and its only two occupants wear artists' blouses, though one of the wearers sits idly at the window gazing down into the street. He is blonde and stout, with gay blue eyes, and is unmistakably German, while his darker companion, who is busily painting away at a picture, is just as certainly an American. They both bear their nationalities plainly in their faces.

"Poetry and painting are sister arts, I think," said Carl Muller, laughing. "The poets paint with words as we do with colors. They have the advantage of us poor devils, for their word-paintings remain beautiful forever, while our ochres crack and our crimsons fade."

"You should turn poet, then, Carl."

"I had some thought of it once," said the mercurial Carl, laughing, "but upon making trial of my powers, I found that I lacked the divine afflatus."

"Say rather that you lacked the more prosaic attribute that you lack in painting—industry," said the American.

"Whatever failing I may have in this respect is fully atoned for by you, Leslie. Never saw I a poor dauber so deeply wedded to his art. Your perseverance is simply marvelous."

"It is the only way to conquer fame, Carl. There is no royal road to success," said the artist, painting busily away as he talked.

Carl yawned lazily and repeated Beattie's well-known lines:

 
"'Ah! who can tell how hard it is to climb
The steep where Fame's proud temple shines afar;
Ah! who can tell how many a soul sublime,
Has felt the influence of malignant star,
And waged with fortune an eternal war!'"
 

"The 'malignant star' in your case means idleness, Carl. You have talent enough if you would but apply yourself. Up, up, man, and get to your work."

"It is impossible to conquer my constitutional inertia this evening, Leslie. To-morrow I will vie with you in perseverance and labor like a galley-slave," laughed the German, stretching his lazy length out of the window.

There was silence a few moments. Carl was absorbed in something going on in the street below—perhaps a street fight between two fiery Italians, or perhaps the more interesting sight of some pretty woman going to mass or confession—while Leslie Dane's brush moved on unweariedly over his task. Evidently it was a labor of love.

"I should like to know where you get your models, Leslie," said Carl Muller, looking back into the room. "You do not have the Italian type of women in your faces. What do you copy from?"

"Memory," said the artist, laconically.

"Do you mean to say that you know a woman anywhere half as beautiful as the women you put on your canvas?"

"I know one so transcendently lovely that the half of her beauty can never be transferred to canvas," said Leslie Dane, while a flush of pride rose over his features.

"In America?" asked Carl.

"In America," answered Leslie.

"Whew!" said the German, comprehensively. "I thought you did not care for women, Mr. Dane."

"I never said so, Carl," said Leslie Dane, smiling.

"I know—but actions speak louder than words. You avoid them, you decline invitations where you are likely to meet them, and the handsome models vote you a perfect bear."

"Because there is but one woman in the whole world to me," answered Leslie Dane, and he paused a moment in his painting, and looked away with a world of tenderness in his large, dark eyes.

Carl Muller began to look interested.

"Ah! now I see why you work so hard," he said. "There is a woman at the bottom of it. There is always a woman at the bottom of everything that goes on in this world whether it be good or evil."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Leslie, resuming his work with a sigh to the memory of the absent girl he loved.

 
"Love rules the court, the camp, the grove,
For love is heaven, and heaven is love,"
 

hummed Carl in his rich tenor voice.

"Leslie, you will accompany me to the fete to-night?" said he, presently.

"Thank you. I do not care to go," said Leslie.

"Heavens, what a selfish fellow!" said Carl, turning back to the window.

Silence fell between them again. The soft breeze came sighing in at the window ruffling Carl's sunny curls and caressing Leslie Dane's cheek with viewless fingers.

A pot of violets on the window ledge filled the air with delicate perfume. After that evening the scent of violets always came to Leslie Dane wedded to a painful memory.

There was a heavy step at the door. Their portly landlady pushed her head into the room.

"Letters, gentlemen," she said.

Carl Muller sprang up with alacrity.

"All for me, of course," he said. "Nobody ever writes to Dane."

He took the packet and went back to his seat, while his companion, with a smothered sigh, went on with his work. It was quite true that no one ever wrote to him, yet he still kept waiting and hoping for one dear letter that never—never came.

"Ah, by Jove! but I was mistaken," Carl broke out suddenly. "Hurrah, Leslie, here's a love letter from the girl you left behind you."

He held up a little creamy-hued envelope, smooth and thick as satin, addressed in a lady's elegant hand, and Leslie Dane caught it almost rudely from him. Carl gave a significant whistle and returned to his own correspondence.

Leslie Dane tore open the letter so long waited and hoped for, and devoured its contents with passionate impatience. It was very brief. Let us glance over his shoulder and read what was written there:

"Leslie," she wrote, "your letters have kept coming and coming, and every one has been like a stab to my heart. I pray you never to write to me again, for I have repented in bitterness of spirit the blind folly into which you led me that night. Oh, how could you do it? I was but a child. I did not know what love meant, and I was bewildered and carried away by your handsome face, and the romance of that moonlight flitting. It was wicked, it was cruel, Leslie, to bind me so, for, oh, God, I love another now, and I never can be his! But at least I will never be yours. I have burned your letters, and I shall hate your memory as long I live for the cruel wrong you did me. God forgive you, for I never can!

"Bonnibel."

Leslie Dane threw that dreadful letter down and ground it beneath his heel as though it had been a deadly serpent. It was, for it had stung him to the heart.

Carl Muller looked up at the strange sound of that grinding boot-heel, and saw his friend standing fixedly staring, into vacancy, his dark eyes blazing like coals of fire, his handsome face pallid as death, and set in a tense look of awful despair and bitterness terrible to behold.

Carl Muller sprang up and shook him violently by the arm.

"My God! Leslie," he cried, "what is it? What has happened to move you so? Is there anyone dead?"

The handsome artist did not seem to hear him. He stood immovable save for the horrid crunching of his boot-heel as it ground that fatal letter into fragments.

"Leslie," exclaimed Carl, "speak, for mercy's sake! You cannot imagine how horrible you look!"

Thus adjured Leslie Dane shook off his friend's clasp roughly, and strode across the room to a recess where a veiled picture hung against the wall.

He had always refused to show it to his brother artist, but now he pushed the covering aside, disclosing a female head surrounded by silvery clouds like that of an angel. The face, framed in waving masses of golden hair, was lighted by eyes of tender violet, and radiantly beautiful.

"Look Carl," said the artist in a changed and hollow voice, "is not that the face of an angel?"

Carl Muller looked at the lovely face in wonder and delight.

"Beautiful, beautiful!" he exclaimed, "it is the face of a seraph!"

"Yes, it is the face of a seraph," repeated Leslie Dane. "The face of a seraph, but oh, God, she is fickle, faithless, false!"

He stood still a moment looking at the fair young face smiling on him in its radiant beauty, then caught up his brush and swept it across the canvas.

One touch, the tender blue eyes were obliterated, another, and the curved red lips were gone with their loving smile, another and another, and the whole angelic vision was blotted from the canvas forever.

CHAPTER XII

"No, don't attempt to excuse yourself, mother! If you had taken my advice, and turned your wax doll out upon the world to look out for herself, this would never have happened! But no, you must saddle yourself with the charge of her, and pamper her as foolishly as her uncle did! And now you see the result of your blind folly. It needed but one sight of her baby-face by that old dotard to ruin my prospects for life. I hope you are satisfied with your work!"

It was ten o'clock at night, and Felise Herbert had come into her mother's room in her dressing-gown, with her dark hair hanging over her shoulders, and her eyes flashing angrily, to upbraid her mother for her weakness in the matter of Bonnibel Vere.

"You should have turned her adrift upon the world," she repeated, stamping her slippered foot angrily. "She might have starved to death for all I cared! After all I did for you, I think you could have done that much to please me!"

"But, Felise, you know it was quite impossible to take such extreme measures without incurring the censure of the world, and perhaps its suspicion!" said Mrs. Arnold, deprecatingly.

"Who cares for suspicion—they could not prove anything!" said Felise, snapping her fingers.

"No, perhaps not," Mrs. Arnold answered, "but all the same, I should not like to run the risk. You are blinded by anger, Felise; or you would reason more clearly. You know I did not want to keep the girl here. I hate her as much as you do. I have hated her ever since she was born, but you know I dare not turn her off. Society would taboo us if we dared hint such a thing. Turn a girl of her aristocratic antecedents out upon the world to earn her living, while I am rolling in wealth! A girl who knows no more of the world than a baby! The daughter of General Vere, the niece of my dead husband! Felise, you must see that it would never do!"

"It would if I had been suffered to have my way," answered the girl, marching angrily up and down the floor. "To be thwarted this way in my prospect of making the most brilliant match of the season is too bad! It is shameful! For her to step into my place this way makes me hate her worse than ever!"

"But, Felise, she cannot step into your place, my dear. Did you not tell me you had learned from Leslie Dane's intercepted letters that the girl was secretly married to him? Why did you meddle with their correspondence, anyway? Why not have let him come back in time to claim her? She would then have been out of your way!"

"Mother, you talk like a fool!" exclaimed the daughter, angrily. "You know I dare not let Leslie Dane return here! I am compelled to keep him out of the country for the sake of my own safety. I am compelled to separate the two because he must not hear of the charge of murder that we made against him. If she should hear it, as she is likely to do at any time, and should communicate it to him, what would be the consequence? He would return here and disprove the charge at once. Bonnibel was with him that night. They went to Brandon and were married while your husband was being mur– put out of the way. He could prove an alibi at once. You talk of suspicion—where would suspicion fall then?"

"Surely not on us, Felise!" said Mrs. Arnold, fearfully.

"And why not?" sneered the girl. "If the now quiescent subject were agitated again what absurd theories might not be propounded by the suspicious world? Who can tell whether Wild Madge could keep the secret? I tell you I have only consulted our vital interests in separating Leslie Dane and Bonnibel Vere, though to do so I have had to destroy my every prospect of becoming the millionaire's wife. I am compelled to keep that beggarly artist out of the country at any cost."

"But, my dear, there is no chance of Bonnibel marrying Colonel Carlyle even though she should be separated forever from her artist-husband, for she is a married woman anyhow. One hint of this to Colonel Carlyle would make your affair all right with him again!"

"It would not," answered Felise, passionately. "He is madly in love with her. Have I not seen it in these few weeks since she has been well enough to come down-stairs? Has not the old fool hung over her as dotingly as any boy-lover could do? Suppose I told him the truth? Do you think he would return to me? No, he would only hate me because I had shattered his brilliant air castle!"

"I am surprised that Bonnibel tolerates his attentions as she does," said Mrs. Arnold, stirring up the fire that was beginning to burn low in the grate.

"She does not suspect what the old fox is after; I will do her that much justice," said Felise, bitterly. "He is very cautious. He has a thousand tales of her father's prowess with which to pave his way and awaken her interest. She makes an idol of her wretched father who squandered every penny of her mother's fortune, and only redeemed himself by dying recklessly in some foolish charge on the battle-field!"

She resumed her walk up and down the floor which she had temporarily ceased during the last outburst. She was furiously angry.

Her eyes blazed luridly, her lips were curled back from her glittering teeth, her step seemed to spurn the floor. Her mother watched her uneasily.

"Felise, do you not fret yourself, my dear. I am persuaded that everything will come right soon. Suppose Colonel Carlyle is in love with Bonnibel. If he proposes to her she is compelled to refuse his offer. What more natural than that he should return to you then, and make you his wife. Hearts are often caught on the rebound, you know."

"Mother, hush! You talk like a simpleton as you are!" was the fierce retort.

Mrs. Arnold was stung to anger by the unprovoked insolence of her daughter. She rose and looked at her in dignified displeasure.

"Felise," she said, threateningly, "you are my daughter, but you must not suppose that I will tamely bear the continued disrespect and contumely I have lately been forced to receive at your hands. In your rage at losing Colonel Carlyle you seem to forget that it is in my power to make you almost as wealthy as he could do. Remember, I am a very rich woman, and I can leave my wealth to whom I please."

"And who placed you in that position?" sneered Felise. "How much would you have been worth but for my constant care of your interests? A third of your husband's property, which was all you could legally claim! That was what he said to his big wax-doll. The balance of his money was for her, to make her a queen and win the homage of the world for her. Perhaps you will leave her the money I have risked so much to gain for you?"

"Felise, this is but idle recrimination. You know I would not leave Bonnibel Vere a penny to save her soul from perdition, and you know I have been scheming all my life to get that money for you, and that I will certainly give it to you. But I do not understand your mood to-night. What is it that you wish me to do?"

"Nothing, nothing! Months ago I begged you to send the girl away and you refused me. You knew I hated her, and you knew I spared nothing that came in my way. She has come between me and my dearest ambition. Now let her look to herself. I tell you, mother, I will take a terrible revenge on Bonnibel Vere for what I have lost. I have sworn it, and I will surely keep my vow!"

She stood still a moment with upraised hands, looking fixedly at her mother, then she turned and went swiftly from the room.

Mrs. Arnold stared after her blankly. She was a cruel and wicked woman, but she would not have dared to go such lengths as her daughter. She was afraid of her daughter, and frightened at the terrible intent expressed in her tone and manner.

"My God!" she murmured, with a shiver, "what rash act is she about to commit?"

CHAPTER XIII

Colonel Carlyle was as deeply infatuated with Bonnibel Vere as the jealous Felise had declared him to be; but, as she had always asserted, he was very wily and cautious in his advances. He was afraid of frightening the pretty bird he wished to ensnare. He, therefore, adopted a deportment of almost fatherly tenderness toward her that was very pleasant to the lonely girl, who missed her uncle's protecting care so much, and who also began to perceive in Mrs. Arnold and her daughter a changed manner, which, while it could scarcely be colder than usual, was tinged with an indefinable shade of insolence.

Poor, pretty Bonnibel! she had fallen upon dark days. She had been deceived by Mrs. Arnold's protestations at first, but by degrees a new light began to break upon her. Mrs. Arnold began to practice a degree of parsimony toward her that was bewildering to the girl. She withdrew Bonnibel's allowance of money, and at last the girl found her dainty little purse quite empty, and likely to remain so—a thing that had never happened to her before in the course of her life, for her uncle had been lavishly generous to her in respect to pin-money. Her supply of mourning was extremely limited, and but for her quiet mode of life would have been quite inadequate to her needs.

But if Mrs. Arnold had wished to diminish Bonnibel's beauty by giving it so meager a setting she failed in the endeavor. The jewel was too bright to miss extraneous adornment.

The somber black dresses could not dim the gleam of her golden hair, the sparkle of her sea-blue eyes. Her white brow and throat were like the petals of a lily, and with returning health a lovely rose-tint began to flush her cheeks.

Her beauty was a royal dower of which no spite or malignity could deprive her. Clothed upon with sackcloth she would still have remained,

 
"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair."
 

Bonnibel knew that she was beautiful. She had heard it remarked so often that she could not be ignorant of the fact.

In those past happy days that now seemed so far away she had taken a childish, innocent pride in the knowledge. But now in her trouble and loneliness she had forgotten it, or cared for it no more. So it never occurred to her to ascribe the painful change in her aunt and Felise to the fact that was quite obvious to others—the very plain fact that she had unconsciously rivaled Felise with Colonel Carlyle and that he only waited a proper season to declare himself.

There was none of the dawdling and hesitation now that had marked his courtship of Felise and prevented him from making the important declaration she had schemed and toiled for. He had virtually jilted Felise, for he had done everything but speak the important words, but the proud girl bore his desertion in ominous silence that boded no good to the man who had thus wronged her.

Lucy and Janet, the respective maids of the two young ladies, held many a whispered colloquy over Colonel Carlyle's defection. Janet indeed was an object of sympathy in those days, for she had to bear the brunt of Felise's anger, which was no slight thing to endure. Indeed, it is probable that the much-enduring maid would have given warning on the spot had it not been for an affaire du cœur which she was carrying out with the footman.

Rather than be separated from this object of her fond affections Janet remained in Felise's service and endured her caprices and ill-treatment with that heroic fortitude with which women from time immemorial have borne slight and wrong for love's sake.

"Will Miss Bonnibel marry him, do you think, Lucy?" asked Janet at one of their solemn conclaves.

"I don't know," Lucy answered. "Seems to me the child don't have the least idea of what is going on right afore her eyes. I don't believe she knows that the colonel is a courtin' her! She thinks he is a friend, like, and because he knew her father in the army and talks a good deal about his bravery, she listens to him and never dreams that she has cut Miss Felise out right afore her face."

"And serves her right, too," said Janet, heartily, taking a malicious pleasure in the defeat of her over-bearing mistress; "I, for one, am downright glad that she has cut my lady out of her rich beau! It would be a fine match for Miss Bonnibel since her uncle has left her without a cent."

"I hope she will marry him," said Lucy. "Things isn't going at all to my notion in this house, Janet. Sour looks and impident words is flung around altogether too free in my young lady's hearing. And she getting that shabby that she have got but one decent mourning gown to her back, and I hear nothing said of a new one! As for money I don't believe Mrs. Arnold has given her a single penny since her uncle died; I've seen her little purse and it's quite empty. I'd have put a few of my own savings into it, only I was afraid she might be angry."

"I hope she'll marry Carlyle and queen it over them both," said Janet. "I tell you, Lucy, it was very strange that Mr. Arnold's will wasn't found. I am quite sure he made one—he wouldn't have slighted your young lady intentionally. He loved that pretty little blue-eyed girl as the apple of his eye, and there was small love lost between him and t'other one. 'Twas mysterious the way things turned out at his death, Lucy."

"Aye, it were," assented Lucy; "I heard Miss Bonnibel, myself, tell Mrs. Arnold down at Sea View when she were sick, that her uncle told her he had made a will and provided liberally for her. And Mrs. Arnold laughed at her and pretended that the fever hadn't got out of her head yet. She didn't want to believe there was a will, Janet, she didn't! Now I ask you, Janet, what has become of that there will?"

Janet laughed scornfully and significantly.

"Ah! it's gone where Miss Bonnibel's blue eyes will never shine on it," said she. "It'll never see the light of day again. All that she can do is to marry Colonel Carlyle and get even with them all."

"I wish she would," sighed Lucy; "but I don't believe she will. They said she was in love with a young artist last summer, and that her uncle drove him away—the same young man they laid the murder on, you know."

"Do you believe he did it, Lucy?"

"Not I," said Lucy, with a scornful sniff. "I'd sooner believe they did it between themselves! I've seen the young man when he used to come visiting the master at Sea View. A handsome young man he was, and that soft-spoken he would not hurt a fly, I know. But he was poor and made his living by drawing pictures, and since Miss Bonnibel is poor, too, now, I'd rather she'd marry that rich old man, for, poor dear, what good could she do as a poor man's wife!"

"Has she forgotten the young feller, do you think?" inquired Janet, thinking of her own "young feller" below stairs with a thrill of romantic sympathy for Miss Vere's love affair.

"Oh, dear, no, and never will," said Lucy, confidently. "She never names him; but I know she's been grieved and unhappy over and above what natural grief for Mr. Arnold could amount to. But I doubt it's all over between them. He's been in hiding, of course, somewhere, ever since they accused him of the murder, and I doubt if Miss Bonnibel ever sets her sweet blue eyes on his handsome face again."

"If he's not guilty why don't he come out and prove his innocence?" exclaimed the romantic Janet. "What a fine scene there would be—Miss Bonnibel all in smiles and tears of joy, and t'other ones scowling and angry at them two lovers."

"Ah! I can't tell you why he doesn't do so," answered Lucy, sighing; "but there must be some good reason for't. No one could get me to believe that Mr. Dane did that wicked and cruel murder! My young mistress, so innocent as she is herself, could never have loved a man that was mean enough to do that deed!"

The loud peal of Miss Herbert's dressing-room bell resounding through the house broke up the conference between the maids, and Janet went away to answer it, muttering, angrily:

"Lucy, I do wish we could change mistresses for awhile. I'm that tired with tramping up and down to wait on that ill-natered upstart that all my bones are sore."

So Bonnibel's circumstances and prospects were discussed in high life up-stairs, and by servantdom down-stairs, while she herself, the most interested party, was ignorant of it all.

How could she, whose torn heart was filled with one single aching memory, take note of all that went on about her?

She was still living in the past, and took small heed of the present. She thought Colonel Carlyle was still fond of Felise, and that his little kindnesses and attention to her were offered to her for her father's sake. She felt grateful to him, but that was all. She was not pleased when he came, nor sorry when he went. So, when the long, cold days of winter wore away and nature began to smile with the coming of a genial spring, and Colonel Carlyle could restrain his impatient ardor no longer, his proposal of marriage, worded with all the passion of a younger lover, came upon her with the suddenness of a thunderbolt from a clear sky.

"Surely, Mr. Carlyle, I have misunderstood your meaning," she said, looking up at him when he ceased to speak, with terror and fright in her large eyes. "You asked me to—to–"

"To marry me," said the colonel. "You have not misunderstood me, Bonnibel. I love you, my darling, as passionately as any young man could do. I ask you to give yourself to me for my cherished wife. It would be the sole aim of my life to make you happy. Will you be my wife, little darling?"

"Why, you—you are engaged to Miss Herbert," said Bonnibel, in surprise and reproach.

"I beg your pardon, my dear. I am not. I admire and esteem Miss Herbert very much, but I have never addressed a word of love to her. It is you whom I love—you whom I wish to make my wife," exclaimed the ardent colonel.

"I certainly understood that you would marry Felise," answered Bonnibel, gravely.

"It was a very serious error on your part, my dear little girl, for I have been trying all the winter to make you see that I loved no one but you."

"I never dreamed of such a thing," exclaimed the girl, in a tone of genuine distress.

"Then you are the only one who did not suspect it," said he, in a mortified tone. "The fact was very patent to all others."

Bonnibel looked down at the shimmering opal on her finger, and a blush of shame rose over her delicate features. She thought to herself, impulsively:

"This is dreadful for me—a wedded wife—to sit here and listen to such words without the power of protesting against them."

"Perhaps you think I am too old for you, my angel," said the colonel, breaking the silence; "but my heart and my feelings are much younger than my years. I could not have loved you more ardently thirty years ago. But if age is a fault in your eyes, my darling, I will atone for it by every indulgence on earth, and by a deathless devotion."

"Oh, pray, do not say another word, Colonel Carlyle. It can never be, sir. I can never be your wife!" exclaimed the girl, in deep agitation.

"But why not, my dearest girl?"

"I do not love you, sir," said the girl, cresting her graceful head half-haughtily upon her slender throat.

"I will teach you to love me, darling. Come, say that you will let me take you away from this house, where I can see that they hate you, and make your life more happy. I will do anything to further your happiness, Bonnibel," urged the colonel.

"What you wish is quite impossible, sir. I beg that you will dismiss the subject, my dear, kind friend, and forget it," repeated Bonnibel, earnestly.

"I will not take no for an answer," replied the colonel, obdurately. "I have taken you by surprise, and you do not know your own mind, my dear little girl. I will give you a week to decide in. Think of all the advantages I can offer you, Bonnibel, and of my devoted love, and say yes when I come back for your answer."

So saying he abruptly took his leave.