Tales of Trail and Town

“But—you are going to say that you don’t love him and have never thought of him as a husband,” interrupted the duchess; “I read it in your face,—and it’s a very proper thing to say.”

“It is so unexpected,” urged Helen.

“Everything is unexpected from a man in these matters,” said the duchess. “We women are the only ones that are prepared.”

“But,” persisted Helen, “if I don’t want to marry at all?”

“I should say, then, that it is a sign that you ought; if you were eager, my dear, I should certainly dissuade you.” She paused, and then drawing Helen closer to her, said, with a certain masculine tenderness, “As 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.”

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,—a tall, well-preserved man of middle age, with the unmistakable bearing of long years of recognized and unchallenged position,—however, 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 owner’s ancestors; there were the ancestors themselves,—wigged, 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 Ostrander’s 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.

“I am glad you like it. I have only just put it up.”

It was the voice of Sir James—a voice that had regained a little of its naturalness—a calm, even lazy English voice—confident 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.

“Do you mean you have just bought it?” asked Helen. “It’s not English?”

“No,” said Sir James, gratified with his companion’s interest. “I bought it in Paris just after the Commune.”

“From the artist?” continued Helen, in a slightly constrained voice.

“No,” said Sir James, “although 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.”

“In hospital?” repeated Helen dazedly.

“Yes,” said Sir James. “The fact is it was the ending of the usual Bohemian artist’s life. Though in this case the man was a real artist,—and I believe, by the way, was a countryman of yours.”

“In hospital?” again repeated Helen. “Then he was poor?”

“Reckless, 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 affair—the 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.”

“And now?” said Helen in the same unmoved voice.

Sir James shrugged his shoulders. “He disappeared. Probably he’ll turn up some day on the London pavement—with chalks. That sketch, by the way, was one that had always attracted me to his studio—though he never would part with it. I rather fancy, don’t you know, that the girl had something to do with it. It’s a wonderfully realistic sketch, don’t you see; and I shouldn’t wonder if it was the girl herself who lived behind one of those queer little windows in the roof there.”

“She did live there,” 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.

“I mean,” said Helen, in a perfectly clear voice, “that 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.” She hesitated, not from any sense of her indiscretion, but to recover from a momentary doubt if the girl were really her own self—but only for a moment.

“Then you knew the painter, as I did?” he said in astonishment.

“Not as YOU did,” responded Helen. She drew nearer the picture, and, pointing a slim finger to the canvas, said:—

“Do you see that small window with the mignonette?”

“Perfectly.”

“That 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.”

“But what were you doing there? Surely you are joking?” said Sir James, with a forced smile.

“I was a poor pupil at the Conservatoire, and lived where I could afford to live.”

“Alone?”

“Alone.”

“And the man was”—

“Major Ostrander was my friend. I even think I have a better right to call him that than you had.”

Sir James coughed slightly and grasped the lapel of his coat. “Of course; I dare say; I had no idea of this, don’t you know, when I spoke.” He looked around him as if to evade a scene. “Ah! suppose we ask the duchess to look at the sketch; I don’t think she’s seen it.” He began to move in the direction of the library.

“She had better wait,” said Helen quietly.

“For what?”

“Until”—hesitated Helen smilingly.

“Until? I am afraid I don’t understand,” said Sir James stiffly, coloring with a slight suspicion.

“Until you have APOLOGIZED.”

“Of course,” said Sir James, with a half-hysteric laugh. “I 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, I’m sure. I er—er—in fact,” he added suddenly, the embarrassed smile fading from his face as he looked at her fixedly, “I 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.”

“I left Paris with the duchess,” said Helen quietly, “before the war.”

“Of course. And she knows all about your friendship with this man.”

“I don’t think she does. I haven’t told her. Why should I?” returned Helen, raising her clear eyes to his.

“Really, I don’t know,” stammered Sir James. “But here she is. Of course if you prefer it, I won’t say anything of this to her.”

Helen gave him her first glance of genuine emotion; it happened, however, to be scorn.

“How odd!” she said, as the duchess leisurely approached them, her glass still in her eye. “Sir James, quite unconsciously, has just been showing me a sketch of my dear old mansarde in Paris. Look! That little window was my room. And, only think of it, Sir James bought it of an old friend of mine, who painted it from the opposite attic, where he lived. And quite unconsciously, too.”

“How very singular!” said the duchess; “indeed, quite romantic!”

“Very!” said Sir James.

“Very!” said Helen.

The tone of their voices was so different that the duchess looked from one to the other.