Winter Evening Tales Part 30

Petralto's rooms were a little astonishment to me. They were luxurious in the extreme, with just that excess of ornament which suggests under-civilization; and yet I found him smoking in a studio dest.i.tute of everything but a sleepy-looking sofa, two or three capacious lounging chairs, and the ordinary furniture of an artist's atelier. There was a bright fire in the grate, a flood of light from the numerous gas jets, and an atmosphere heavy with the seductive, fragrant vapor of Havana.

I lit my own cigar, made myself comfortable, and waited until it was Petralto's pleasure to begin. After a while he said, "Jack, turn that easel so that you can see the picture on it."

I did so.

"Now, look at it well, and tell me what you see; first, the locality--describe it."

"A dim old wood, with sunlight sifting through thick foliage, and long streamers of weird grey moss. The ground is covered with soft short gra.s.s of an intense green, and there are wonderful flowers of wonderful colors."

"Right. It is an opening in the forest of the Upper Guadalupe. Now, what else do you see?"

"A small pony, saddled and bridled, feeding quietly, and a young girl standing on tip-toe, pulling down a vine loaded with golden-colored flowers."

"Describe the girl to me."

I turned and looked at my querist. He was smoking, with shut eyes, and waiting calmly for my answer. "Well, she has--Petralto, what makes you ask me? You might paint, but it is impossible to describe _light_; and the girl is nothing else. If I had met her in such a wood, I should have thought she was an angel, and been afraid of her."

"No angel, Jack, but a most exquisite, perfect flower of maidenhood.

When I first saw her, she stood just so, with her open palms full of yellow jasmine. I laid my heart into them, too, my whole heart, my whole life, and every joy and hope it contained."

"What were you doing in Texas?"

"What are you doing in New York? I was born in Texas. My family, an old Spanish one, have been settled there since they helped to build San Antonio in 1730. I grew up pretty much as Texan youths do--half my time in the saddle, familiar with the worst side of life and the best side of nature. I should have been a thorough Ishmaelite if I had not been an artist; but the artistic instinct conquered the nomadic and in my twentieth year I went to Rome to study.

"I can pa.s.s the next five years. I do not pretend to regret them, though, perhaps, you would say I simply wasted time and opportunity. I enjoyed them, and it seems to me I was the person most concerned in the matter. I had a fresh, full capacity then for enjoyment of every kind. I loved nature and I loved art. I warmed both hands at the glowing fire of life. Time may do his worst. I have been happy, and I can throw those five careless, jovial years, in his face to my last hour.

"But one must awake out of every pleasant dream, and one day I got a letter urging my immediate return home. My father had got himself involved in a lawsuit, and was failing rapidly in health. My younger brother was away with a ranger company, and the affairs of the ranch needed authoritative overlooking. I was never so fond of art as to be indifferent to our family prosperity, and I lost no time in hurrying West.

"Still, when I arrived at home, there was no one to welcome me! The n.o.ble, gracious Garcia slept with his ancestors in the old Alamo Church; somewhere on the llano my brother was ranging, still with his wild, company; and the house, in spite of the family servants and Mexican peons, was sufficiently lonely. Yet I was astonished, to find how easily I went back to my old life, and spent whole days in the saddle investigating the affairs of the Garcia ranch.

"I had been riding one day for ten hours, and was so fatigued that I determined to spend the night with one of my herdsmen. He had a little shelter under some fine pecan trees on the Guadalupe, and after a cup of coffee and a meal of dried beef, I sauntered with my cigar down the river bank. Then the cool, dusky shadows of the wood tempted me. I entered it. It was an enchanted wood, for there stood Jessy Lorimer, just as I had painted her.

"I did not move nor speak. I watched her, spell-bound. I had not even the power, when she had mounted her pony and was coming toward me, to a.s.sume another att.i.tude. She saw that I had been watching her, and a look, half reproachful and half angry, came for a moment into her face.

But she inclined her head to me as she pa.s.sed, and then went off at a rapid gallop before I could collect my senses.

"Some people, Jack, walk into love with their eyes open, calculating every step. I tumbled in over head, lost my feet, lost my senses, narrowed in one moment the whole world down to one bewitching woman. I did not know her, of course; but I soon should. I was well aware she could not live very far away, and that my herd must be able to give me some information. I was so deeply in love that this poor ignorant fellow, knowing something about this girl, seemed to me to be a person to be respected, and even envied.

"I gave him immediately a plentiful supply of cigars, and sitting down beside him opened the conversation with horses, but drifted speedily into the subject of new settlers.

"'Were there any since I had left?'

"'Two or three, no 'count travelers, one likely family.'

"'Much of a family?'

"'You may bet on that, sir.'

"'Any pleasant young men?'

"'Reckon so. Mighty likely young gal.'

"So, bit by bit, I found that Mr. Lorimer, my beauty's father, was a Scotchman, who had bought the ranch which had formerly belonged to the old Spanish family of the Yturris. Then I remembered pretty Inez and Dolores Yturri, with their black eyes, olive skins and soft, lazy _embonpoint_; and thought of golden-haired Jessy Lorimer in their dark, latticed rooms.

"Jack, turn the picture to me. Beautiful Jessy! How I loved her in those happy days that followed. How I humored her grave, stern father and courted her brothers for her sake! I was a slave to the whole family, so that I might gain an hour with or a smile from Jessy. Do I regret it now? Not one moment. Such delicious hours as we had together were worth any price. I would throw all my future to old Time, Jack, only to live them over again."

"That is a great deal to say, Petralto."

"Perhaps; and yet I will not recall it. In those few months everything that was good in me prospered and grew. Jessy brought out nothing but the best part of my character. I was always at my best with her. No thought of selfish pleasure mingled in my love for her. If it delighted me to touch her hand, to feel her soft hair against my cheek, to meet her earnest, subduing gaze, it also made me careful by no word or look to soil the dainty purity of my white lily.

"I feared to tell her that I loved her. But I did do it, I scarcely know how. The softest whisper seemed too loud against her glowing cheek. She trembled from head to foot. I was faint and silent with rapture when she first put her little hand in mine, and suffered me to draw her to my heart. Ah! I am sick with joy yet when I think of it. I--I first, I alone, woke that sweet young heart to life. She is lost, lost to me, but no one else can ever be to her what I have been."

And here Petralto, giving full sway to his impa.s.sioned Southern nature, covered his face with his hands and wept hot, regretful tears.

Tears come like blood from men of cold, strong temperaments, but they were the natural relief of Petralto's. I let him weep. In a few minutes he leaped up, and began pacing the room rapidly as he went on:

"Mr. Lorimer received my proposal with a dour, stiff refusal that left me no hope of any relenting. 'He had reasons, more than one,' he said; 'he was not saying anything against either my Spanish blood or my religion; but it was no fault in a Scotsman to mate his daughter with people of her own kith.'

"There was no quarrel, and no discourtesy; but I saw I could bend an iron bar with my pleadings just as soon as his determination. Jessy received orders not to meet me or speak to me alone; and the possibility of disobeying her father's command never suggested itself to her. Even I struggled long with my misery before I dared to ask her to practice her first deceit.

"She would not meet me alone, but she persuaded her mother to come once with her to our usual tryst in the wood. Mrs. Lorimer spoke kindly but hopelessly, and covered her own face to weep while Jessy and I took of each other a pa.s.sionate farewell. I promised her then never to marry anyone else; and she!--I thought her heart would break as I laid her almost fainting in her mother's arms.

"Yet I did not know how much Jessy really was to me until I suddenly found out that her father had sent her back to Scotland, under the pretence of finis.h.i.+ng her education. I had been so honorably considerate of Jessy's Puritan principles that I felt this hasty, secret movement exceedingly unkind and unjust. Guadalupe became hateful to me, the duties of the ranch distracting; and my brother Felix returning about this time, we made a division of the estate. He remained at the Garcia mansion, I rented out my possessions, and went, first to New Orleans, and afterward to New York.

"In New York I opened a studio, and one day a young gentleman called and asked me to draw a picture from some crude, imperfect sketch which a friend had made. During the progress of the picture he frequently called in. For some reason or other--probably because we were each other's antipodes in tastes and temperament--he became my enthusiastic admirer, and interested himself greatly to secure me a lucrative patronage.

"Yet some subtle instinct, which I cannot pretend to divine or explain, constantly warned me to beware of this man. But I was ashamed and angry at myself for linking even imaginary evil with so frank and generous a nature. I defied destiny, turned a deaf ear to the whisperings of my good genius, and continued the one-sided friends.h.i.+p--for I never even pretended to myself that I had any genuine liking for the man.

"One day, when we had become very familiar, he ran up to see me about something, I forget what, and not finding me in the outer apartments, penetrated to my private room. There, upon that easel, Will Lennox first saw the woman you saw with him to-night--the picture which you are now looking at--and he fell as desperately in love with it, in his way, as I had done in the Guadalupe woods with the reality. I cannot tell you how much it cost me to restrain my anger. He, however, never noticed I was angry. He had but one object now--to gain from me the name and residence of the original.

"It was no use to tell him it was a fancy picture, that he was sighing for an imagination. He never believed it for a moment. I would not sell it, I would not copy it, I would not say where I had painted it; I kept it to my most sacred privacy. He was sure that the girl existed, and that I knew where she lived. He was very rich, without an occupation or an object, and Jessy's pure, lovely face haunted him day and night, and supplied him with a purpose.

"He came to me one day and offering me a large sum of money, asked me finally to reveal at least the locality of which I had painted the picture. His free, frank unembarra.s.sed manner compels me to believe that he had no idea of the intolerable insult he was perpetrating. He had always been accustomed to consider more or less money an equivalent for all things under the sun. But you, Jack, will easily understand that the offer was followed by some very angry words, and that his threat to hunt the world over to find my beauty was not without fear to me.

"I heard soon after that Will Lennox had gone to the South. I had neither hidden nor talked about my former life and I was ignorant of how much he knew or did not know of it. He could trace me easily to New Orleans; how much further would depend upon his tact and perseverance.

Whether he reached Guadalupe or no, I am uncertain, but my heart fell with a strange presentment of sorrow when I saw his name, a few weeks afterward, among the European departures.

"The next thing I knew of Will Lennox was his marriage to some famous Scotch beauty. Jack, do you not perceive the rest? The Scotch beauty was Jessy Lorimer. I feared it at the first. I knew it this afternoon."

"Will you call there?"

"I have no power to resist it. Did you not notice how eagerly she pressed the invitation?"

"Do not accept it, Petralto."

He shook his head, and remained silent. The next afternoon I was astonished on going up to his rooms to find Will Lennox, sitting there.

He was talking in that loud, happy, demonstrative way so natural to men accustomed to have the whole world minister unto them.

He did not see how nervous and angry Petralto was under his easy, boastful conversation. He did not notice the ashy face, the blazing eyes, the set lips, the trembling hands, of the pa.s.sionate Spanish nature, until Petralto blazed out in a torrent of unreasonable words and taunts, and ordered Lennox out of his presence.