Trifles for the Christmas Holidays Part 7

"Through the influence of my friends, I entered the _ecole Polytechnique_, and, after graduating, cut the army, and cast my fate, for better or for worse, in the flowery paths of literature."

"Now, do not say it proved for worse."

"It was for worse," said Dupleisis. "My family were treated shabbily; 'the muse is a maiden of good memory,' but a _cocote_; my satiric efforts were rewarded by a _lettre de cachet_."

"What a loss to France!"

"At the accession of the Emperor, I returned, a prodigal son of Mars, and now manage to sustain myself by----"

"By writing sonnets to Brazilian hospitality," interrupted mademoiselle.

Dupleisis bowed gravely. "Anxious to do so, mademoiselle, but I have not, as yet, collected sufficient material."

The retort crimsoned the lady's face, and Dupleisis adroitly covered her confusion by asking her to sing.

"What will you say to me, when you speak of yourself as though you were a block of wood?"

"The prosy geologist talks pedantically of a granite rock, and is mute when he sees the flower that blooms above it."

"_Mon Dieu_, M. Dupleisis! I cannot sit by and hear _Chamfort_ so ruthlessly robbed."

"Mademoiselle, you are unkind. I say nothing complimentary but you cry, 'Stop thief!'"

The lady played a few sparkling bars, and sang. She had a magnificent voice, but her music, like herself, was studied, faultless, but chilling as the north wind. It swelled deep and full, in rich, flute-like tones, now ringing clear and sweet in pure, rippling notes, now quivering low in waves of enchanting melody. There were soft, gurgling sounds, that flowed wild and free as a mountain-rivulet. It was brilliant, bewildering; but the dazzle was like the frozen glitter of an icicle.

Suddenly, a look of unmitigated scorn swept across her face, and the music ceased.

She eyed Dupleisis for a moment half defiantly, and asked, "Would you really like to hear me sing?"

Dupleisis answered, earnestly, "Yes."

A plaintive prelude followed, and her voice mingled with it almost imperceptibly. It was one of those gloomy Spanish ballads, dramatic rather than harmonious, that poured forth its mournful strains in the fitful measure of an aeolian harp. There were bursts of pathos that seemed to echo from her very soul. It was fierce, mocking, pa.s.sionate; tender, wicked, terrible. It sank in sobs of melting compa.s.sion; it implored pity and sympathy in words of thrilling entreaty; and then it rose, cold and calm, in sounds of withering derision and implacable hate. It trembled, it scorned, it pleaded, it taunted, it struggled, it hoped, it despaired; and then, as if for the dead, it wailed and died in a long, helpless cry of sorrow.

Dupleisis sat listening to the dreary history entranced. There was love, and feeling, and fond womanly devotion; there was refined thought, gentle pity, and warm generous charity; and there was a neglected heart, a gloomy, embittered mind, a life lost in utter desolation. The glorious being whom G.o.d had created to cheer and encourage man was a beautiful statue.

Who would teach that heart to feel again? Who turn to quivering flesh that rigid marble? Yet the man of iron sat masking his features, controlling his emotions, with every muscle under his command. It was a flash of real feeling from a proud, sensitive woman, but it pa.s.sed lightly as a snowdrift on a frozen river.

CHAPTER IV.

"Mr. Reed, you certainly are the most old-maidish man I ever saw in my life."

The room did appear old-maidish, as Mademoiselle Milan stood looking in.

The balmy breeze fluttered pleasantly past the little French curtains, the glowing suns.h.i.+ne warmed the delicate tracery of the walls and lighted up the flowers on a huge rug spread on the bare floor. A tiny bouquet of Spanish violets, in a wonderful little vase, filled the room with a dreamy perfume, such as one sometimes imagines he would find in those far-off little islands in the South seas. There were crayon sketches hung between the windows, here and there a statuette filled a niche, and out on the gla.s.s-floored gallery was a perfect bower of flowers. There were several easy-chairs placed about in comfortable positions, as if they were all made to sit on, and a great lounge, covered with green marine, stood, like a small gra.s.s-mound, under one of the windows.

Percy Reed, seated near a table loaded with needle-books, silk-winders, and a hundred little trinkets, with a cigar in his mouth, and a sock, with a little round gourd shoved into the foot of it, in his hand, was intently occupied in darning a hole in the toe.

"There! don't throw away your cigar. _Mon Dieu!_ can a person never see you without being overpowered at your grand politeness?"

"Mademoiselle, I make no apologies. b.u.t.tons will come off, and stockings will contract holes. Washer-women are heartless. The mountain will not come to Mahomet: therefore I darn 'em myself."

"A philosopher under all circ.u.mstances. And pray what have you done with your pupil in morality and economy?"

"Oh, Dupleisis? I have started him out in a carriage to view the wonders of this 'River of January.' By-the-by, if you ever hope to attract, don't dream of mentioning figures in the presence of our mysterious Frenchman."

"Why?"

"The branch of mathematics known as simple addition seems to be the crowning glory of his intellect. He knows to a _milreis_ the value of this building, from chimney-pot to cellar."

"Blessed with curiosity," said Mademoiselle, significantly.

"Mathematics entirely. If Armand Dupleisis were entering the pearly gates of Paradise, amid the resounding hallelujahs of cherubim and seraphim, he would deliberately count the cost of the entire wardrobe, before he thought of receiving the waters of eternal life."

"Mr. Reed," said Mademoiselle, earnestly, "who _did_ you ever see of whom you _could_ not speak lightly?"

"One person in the world--my mother. Sometimes in my dreams of the 'auld lang syne' I almost see that dear little lady; she had a window just like that, with the foliage rustling over it just as this does. Never, mademoiselle, does that little morning-wrapper come up before my eyes without making me a better and a purer man."

Both were silent for some minutes after this. Mademoiselle Milan sat leaning her face against the crimson lining of her chair, apparently lost in thought.

At length she said, "Would to G.o.d that all men understood women as well as you!"

"But _your_ mother; where is she, mademoiselle?"

The lady's face turned as pale as marble, and her little white hands grasped the arms of her chair, until they seemed almost imbedded in the ebony. She attempted an utterance, but her voice failed her, and there was a dead silence.

Reed was a man of feeling. He did not talk, nor persuade her to talk. He did not even sit doing nothing. He went out on the balcony to examine the flowers. He climbed noiselessly up the lattice-work for jasmines fluttering in the evening breeze. Finally, he took up a violin and played.

He always played well, but now the music was low and soft,--old Scotch ballads, wild and mournful, touching little German songs, plaintive romances full of subdued pa.s.sion. Mademoiselle Milan did not notice him; but in her heart she felt grateful for his consideration. Gradually the color returned to her face, and, soothed by the sad, sweet strains, she sunk into dreamy reverie.

"When we have reached another sphere, where emotion governs instead of thought, I think that man will speak in splendid music."

Reed looked at her earnestly for a moment, and then said, "Mademoiselle, why did you never write?"

"The public treats authors very much as drill-sergeants do recruits,--drunk the first day, and beaten the rest of their lives."

"Great minds _rule_ the public."

"And yet I fear your courage would ooze away when you came to lay a lance at rest against such a windmill as the common sense of the nineteenth century, whirling its rotary sails under the steady breeze of ridicule. I am a woman, and know a woman's place. I have had dreams in my time,--'dreams like that flower that blooms in a single night, and dies at dawn;' but they are pa.s.sed. You see, I carry the glare of the foot-lights even here." And a bitter smile curled from her lip.

"Mademoiselle," said Percy, solemnly, "the foot-lights enable you to move man to a hundred pa.s.sions."

"Yes; it reduces me to the level of a harlequin, to be laughed with, and laughed _at_. Who are _my_ friends? Are they the idle boys who send me bouquets and never mention my name without looking unutterable things?

Have I no tastes, no likings, no feelings, no emotions? In the name of G.o.d, was I created only to memorize so many lines of Racine, Corneille, or Voltaire per diem?"

It was a tone of almost ferocity with which she spoke, and the trembling lip, the flas.h.i.+ng eye, and the swollen veins on her temple betrayed the self-scorn racking her heart within her.

A bang at the hall-door, and heavy footsteps on the marble pavement, forced her to composure.

"Old-maidish to the last!" (the lady commenced picking the dead leaves off a geranium). "This geranium looks as if you had watched it a year; and this old gray hat, I suppose, you have hung above it for good luck."