26 Fire That Is Closest Kept, Burns Most of All

MADAME’S treasure, “At the Shrine,” comes home duly, and Miss Valentine goes no more to the studio. Whether la contessa has dropped a hint, whether madame herself suddenly awakens to a sense of latent danger, whether Sir Vane has sneered audibly in spite of himself, who knows? Miss Valentine goes no more to the studio, and by grandmamma’s express desire. She looks rather keenly at the young lady, and madame’s looks at all times are exceedingly keen, piercing, sidelong–none may hope to escape them–as she speaks, but she sees little. The girl is very pale, she looks a trifle fagged and weary, and out of sorts, but it is oppressive spring weather, and what is to be expected in these sultry weeks? She says nothing–nothing at all, except in a spiritless voice, strangely unlike the clear, ringing, joyous tones of Dolores. “Very well, grandmamma,” and so turns and walks slowly and listlessly up to her room.

Grandmamma decides she is not in love with the dark and picturesque M. Rene, the fortuneless sculptor with the Vandyke face, and grave brown eyes, but all the same the child needs change, needs it badly, and must have it at once. So they prepare to go. On the day but one before their departure for fresher fields, and breezes new and cool, a surprise comes to good Mrs. Tinker. She accompanies the family of course. Madame goes nowhere without her, and she is busy in the midst of much packing, when she is summoned to her own particular sitting-room, to see a visitor. Going in haste, and rather breathless, she finds awaiting her a young woman, whose face and dress proclaim her nationality before she speaks a word. That first word puts it beyond doubt. “I guess you’ve forgot me likely, Mis’ Tinker,” says this young woman, in a nervous tone, rising as she speaks. “It’s a pretty considerable spell sence we met afore–nigh onto fifteen years, I reckon.”

“Why, lord bless me!” exclaims Mrs. Tinker, adjusting her spectacles in direst amazement. “I do declare if it isn’t Jemima Ann!”

“Yes, Mis’ Tinker; I’m awful glad you ain’t forgot me. I’m over here with a family; Bosting folks they be, and now, the lady, she up and died. She was sort o’ peaky and pinin’ like all the passage. An so I’m out o’ place, and hearing you was here, Mis’ Tinker, I thought, for old time’s sake, and poor Aunt Samanthy—-” Here Jemima Ann puts her handkerchief to her eyes, and Mrs. Tinker sighs responsively. Aunt Samantha has gone the way all landladies, even the best, must go some time–the way of all flesh.

At this moment the door opens suddenly, and a young lady–an apparition, it seems to Jemima Ann–in gray silk and amber ringlets, comes in, and pauses at sight of the stranger. “Oh, come in, my dearie!” says Mrs. Tinker. “I was just going to you to ask your advice. You’ve often heard me speak of Jemima Ann, who was so good to you when you stopped for a week at her aunt’s, and who waited on”–lowering her voice-“your poor ma? Well, this is Jemima Ann, Miss Dolores, my lovey, and she is out of place, and–”

But the young lady waits for no more. Her fair face flushes up, she crosses the room, and holds out both hands. “And you are Jemima Ann! Oh! I have heard all that–of your goodness and affection–all that you did for me, for my poor mother, in the past. I was a baby then, too young to know or thank you, or feel grateful; but I feel all now. I thank you with my whole heart. If there is anything we can do for you anything–you may be sure it shall be done.”

Jemima Ann gasps, stands, stares. “You!–you! why, Lor’! You never air little Snowball, grown up like this!”

“Little Snowball–no one else–to whom you were so very, very good. Not so little now though, you see. And what are you doing in Rome, of all places, Jemima Ann?”

Jemima Ann explains, with considerable confusion, caused by the shock of finding little Snowball in this graceful young lady. Aunt Samanthy died, the boarders dispersed, Jemima Ann went down to Bosting (strong nasal twang on the first syllable), took service there with a lady out of health. Be’n livin’ with that lady right along sence. Lady ordered to Europe by doctors for change of air. Took Jemima Ann with her as kind o’ nurse-tender. Up and died, here in Rome; a week ago, after all her trouble crossin’ over. And Jemima Ann finds herself a stranger in a strange land. By chance she had heard the Valentine family were here, and allowed Mis’ Tinker might be still with them. On that chance has come, and–is here.

“And here you shall stay!” cries impetuous Miss Valentine. “Why should you think of going back all that way, and friends who owe you so much, here? Some day I will go back myself, if I can,”–a wistful, longing, homesick look comes into the blue eyes–” and I will take you. Meantime,”–gayly–” consider yourself my maid.”

“And that is little Snowball!–little Snowball! So peart, and chipper, and sassy, and cunnin’–like, as she used to be! Little Snowball growed up into such a beautiful and elegant young lady as that!” says Jemima Ann, still dazed. She accepts the offer, of course, “right glad to get it,” as she says, and is especially detailed off into Miss Valentine’s particular service.

Sir Vane puts up his glass, and stares at her, the first time they chance to meet, as though she were a monster of the antediluvian world come to light here in this Roman household. Certainly she is as unlike as possible their Italian servants. He has forgotten, of course, the slipshod handmaid of the Clangville boarding-house, but Miss Hopkins has not forgotten him.

“Oh! you may stare,” she remarks, mentally; “you ain’t so much to look at yourself, when all’s said and done. You never were a beauty the best o’ times, and fifteen years standing to sour ain’t improved you much. I’m awful sorry to hear my Miss Snowball is going to throw herself away on you. Don’t know what she sees in you, I’m sure. I wouldn’t hev you if you was hung with diamonds–though you mayn’t think so.”

Madame lifts her eyebrows over this latest whim of Dolores, but laughs and makes no objection. She will be an unique maid certainly, but if it is the child’s fancy–and a servant more or less in an establishment like this matters little. She is an American, friendless in a foreign land; it is like the dear girl’s gentle, generous heart to compassionate and care for all such. But if madame knew–knew that this stolid, homely, rather clumsy Yankee woman had closed the dying eyes of Mlle. Mimi Trillon, had ministered to her for days before, knew the whole well-hidden secret of the trapezist’s life and death–be very sure the massive portone of the old Roman house would never have seen her pass in, and many leagues of blue water intervened between her and the fair, stately daughter of the house. But grandmammas are not to know everything; the long, long conferences of the past are held with closed doors, in the dim, fragrant dusk of mademoiselle’s boudoir. Lying back, her slim figure draped in those pale lustrous silks and fine laces madame loves to deck her darling in, her fingers laced behind her golden head, Miss Valentine nestles in the blue satin depths of her low chair, and listens by the hour to Jemima Ann Hopkins telling of that time so long ago, when little Snowball Trillon came suddenly into her life to brighten its dull drab, and of the beauty and brightness, and tragic death of the young mother. Of the belated suppers, of the many lovers, of the hilarious state in which poor Mimi sometimes came home, she discreetly says nothing. Jemima Ann has a delicacy and tact of her own, under her ginger-colored complexion and down-East drawl.

“At the Shrine” comes home, and is placed in madame’s most private and particular sitting-room, with a pink silk curtain so draped as to throw a perpetual rosy glow over it, and friends come and gaze, and admire, and other orders flow in upon the talented young artist. Only the young lady herself says nothing–she stands and looks at it, with loosely clasped hands, and a misty far-away look that madame has an especial objection to in her great star-like eyes.

“Well, Dolores,” she says, sharply, “are you asleep–in a dream–that you stand there, and say nothing? Do you not admire this exquisite gem?”

“It is very pretty, grandmamma.”

“Very pretty, grandmamma!” mimicking the listless tone, “and that is all you find to say. I must tell this to my clever Mr. Rene, that you are the only one who has not seen his statue and not been charmed. I say he has caught your very expression–it is the most perfect thing of its kind I ever saw. It will be a great–the greatest comfort to me, when I–when you are gone.”

“Dearest grandmamma!” The girl comes and puts her arms about her, as she sits, and the fair head droops in her lap. “You are too good to me. You love me too much. No one will ever care for me again like that. It is not well to be spoiled. Grandmamma, I wish I were not going away.”

“Nonsense, my dear. An old grandmother, however fond, cannot expect to keep her little one to herself always. And what do you mean by no one loving you again? Sir Vane—-”

“Ah!” says Dolores, and something in the sound of the little word makes madame pause a moment.

“You doubt it? You need not, my dear. He is fond of you–very fond of you, believe me. He is reticent reserved by nature–it is not his way to show it, and he is older than you–it is the one thing I object to in this union, but, for all that, my dearest, I am confident he loves you with all his heart.”

“Ah!” repeats Miss Valentine, and laughs, “has he told you so, grandmamma? It is more than he has ventured to tell me. With the best inclinations in the world to be credulous in such a point, I fear the effort would be too great. But what does it matter after all,” a sigh here, that is half a sob, “it will be all the same fifty years hence.”

“My darling, that is a dreary philosophy from youthful lips. Why are you so sad–so listless, of late, so weary of all that used to set you wild with delight? Is it that you are out of health–that this heat—-”

“Oh, yes, grandmamma!” rather eagerly; “that is it–this heat. Any one would wilt, with the thermometer up among the nineties. And the spring is so long, so long. I grow tired of this perpetual staring sunshine, and the smell of the roses and orange trees. I would give a year of my life for one day of poor old Isle Perdrix, and its sea fogs, and bleak whistling winds.” And then, to madame’s infinite dismay and distress, all in a moment, the fair head is buried low, and the slender form is rent and shaken with a very tempest of sobs.

“My child! my child!” is all madame can say in her deep consternation. “Oh! my little one, what is this?”

But with a great effort, the summer tempest ends as quickly as it began; a few hysteric sobs hurriedly suppressed, and then a great calm. “Forgive me, grandmamma–dear, dearest, best grandmamma that ever was in the world–forgive me for this! I did not mean only I am so tired, so tired out with it all. If I were away, I would be better. Take me away from Rome, grandmamma.”

“Is there anything in it?” thinks madame, in dire dismay, a little later, and alone. “Did she go too much to that studio? He is very handsome, and she knew him always. How foolish, how extremely foolish and rash, I have been!”

But it is not too late yet–at least madame thinks so; one may always hope so much for young persons under twenty, and time and distance are such capital cures. They depart at once, with their maid-servants and their man-servants, and the house in Rome is shut up for the present. Madame proposes, drearily enough, to occupy it with her faithful Tinker this winter alone.

*          *          *          *          *          *          *

Rene Macdonald, among his clay casts, and plaster figures, and brown dark-eyed Roman models of saints and brigands, works away alone these sultry May days. He does not mind the heat, he likes it; he is absorbed his work, feverishly so, indeed. He grows thin in these long, lonely, hard-working hours; his brown eyes— “eyes like golden Genoa velvet,” la contessa has once said—take a deeper, darker orbit; his olive cheek grows hollow. So la contessa, who flits in and out at times, like the bird of Paradise she is, tells him gayly. But he grows no less handsome, she thinks—pining, pouf! for la bambinella. Pretty? Yes; la Contessa could make a prettier face in pink and white wax any day And it is for her this Signore Rene, who looks like one of his own gods, and carries himself like a king; who has the face of a Raphael, and the genius too—grows thin, and silent, and stern, and shuts himself up like a hermit in his cell. La contessa does il Signore Sculptore the honor to be deeply interested in his case, introduces him to half his patrons, lavishes invitations upon him, and meets with the usual reward of goodness in this world—indifference, ingratitude. M. Rene wishes, irritably enough sometimes, this flirting little painted butterfly would spread her gorgeous wings, and fly off to other victims and leave him alone. But la contessa thinks otherwise—she can plant her sting like a wasp, butterfly though she be. If this artist—marble like his own creation—will not fall down and admire, she will at least awake within him some other feeling. He must be human at least in some things human enough to feel pain. All she can inflict he shall have as his punishment. She flutters in to tell him in her vivacious way when the Valentines leave Rome; she flutters in to tell him one sparkling October day, just five months later, of a fashionable marriage at Nice.

He has spent these months in the solitude of his workshop, and sculpture, at its best, is not a sociable art . He has been working hard, commissions have been plentiful enough, and a fair guerdon of both fame and gold has been won. He might have won friends, too, friends well worth the winning, had he so chosen. But he is unsocial in these days; even among his brothers of the chisel he cares to cultivate few friendships. But he is in fairly good spirits on this particular day, for the early post has brought him a letter from a friend, long living in Russia, but now en route for Rome.

Paul Farrar is on his way to Italy, and it is to Paul Farrar Rene owes everything, the recognition and cultivation of his talent—his studio in Rome, his first success. In a couple of weeks at most Paul Farrar will be here.

So Rene is whistling cheerily as he chips, and for once the haunting ghost that seldom leaves him is laid—a ghost in “sheen of satin and shimmer of pearls” with bright hair and blue-bell eyes. Then, like a scented, silk-draped apparition, the Contessa Paladino is before him.

She is not alone—a Neapolitan marchese and a British attache form her body-guard. She has been absent from Rome nearly all summer, and is full of sparkling chatter and silvery small talk as usual.

“And the wedding is over—milordo’s—but you have heard that, of course, signore mio?” she says, gayly, apropos of nothing that has gone before.

“I hear nothing, madame. News from the great world never pierces the walls of my workshop, except what you are good enough to tell me.”

The little touch of sarcasm in the last words are not lost on la Contessa. Neither is the quick contraction of eyebrows and lips, and a perceptible paling of the dark face. “Che! Che! then it is for me to give you the good news. But I surely thought—such friends as you seemed—that she would have done it herself. And it is all quite two weeks old, and you have not heard. She has her victim, as naturalists impale beetles, on a pin, and watches with dancing, malicious eyes the effect of her words. But he works on, and gives no sign.

“La Signorina looked lovely, exquisite—every one said so; and Dio mia! how she was dressed! It was the wedding-robe and jewelry of a princess. The bride maids—eight of them—were all English; four in pink, and four in blue. Milordo was solemn, and stiff, and black as usual—blacker than usual, I think. They are to travel until spring, and then return to their native fogs. Bonne-mamma comes here, you know. Of your charity, go to see and console her, Signore Rene; the poor grandmamma! She is desole sconsolato.”

He says something; it is brief, and sounds indifferent, and stiIl works on.

“I saw Sir Vane and Lady Valentine,” says the Englishman, who is examining the figure called “Waiting” through his glass.” She is very beautiful, quite the most beautiful person I have—” he checks himself just in time, for la contessa’s eyes are already looking daggers—”this face resembles her, I think. Is it a portrait?”

And Rene works on, only conscious of one thing—an unuttered wish that they would go. But they do not. They linger, and look, and admire, and criticise, until he feels as if the sound of their voices were driving him mad. La contessa remains until she is absolutely forced to depart, and goes with a petulant sense of disappointment under her gay “Addio, signore.” She really cannot tell whether this exasperating young sculptor, as cold, as hard, as any of his own blocks of marble, cares or not.

Cold, hard! If she could only but have seen him, when, the atelier doors closed, locked, he stands there alone with his love, his loss, his despair! Married, and to Sir Vane Valentine! Ah! la contessa, even your outraged vanity, from feminine spite—the hardest thing under heaven to satisfy—might have had its fill and to spare, could you have looked through those locked doors and seen.