9 Which Records A Tragedy

“JEMIMA ANN!” says Mlle. Mimi. She is lying in her customary afternoon lounging attitude upon the parlor sofa, occupied in her usual afternoon fashion in smoking cigarettes, and teaching her little girl a new ballet step, “Jemima Ann, are you happy?”

“Lor!” says Jemima Ann.

“Yes, I know—that is your favorite expletive. You say it when you step on and scrunch a black beetle; you would say it if the whole six-and-twenty were blown up in their boiler-shop, foundry—shop whatever it is, tomorrow. I swear myself sometimes when things go wrong, but not in such mild fashion. ‘Lor’ is no answer, Jemima Ann, are—you—happy!”

“Well—railly “—begins Miss Hopkins, modestly, but Mimi waves her white hand, and cuts her short.

“Oh, if it requires reflection, say no more, you’re not. Neither am I, Jemima—I never was. No, never,” says Mimi, biting her cigarette through with her little sharp, white teeth, “not even when I was first married, and I suppose most girls who marry for love are happy then for a month or so, at least! Did I marry for love, I wonder—did I ever care for him, or any one else, really—really, in my whole life?”

Mimi is evidently retrospective. She rolls a fresh cigarette between her deft fingers, and looks with somber blue eyes at the graceful capers of Mademoiselle Snowball.

“I like Petite, there—she amuses me; but so would the gambols of a little white kitten. She is pretty, and I like to dress her prettily, but I would tie ribbons round the kitten’s neck, and trick her out, just the same. Is that love? If she died I would be sorry—I expect her to be a comfort and companion to me by and by. I quarrel with most people—I have no friends, and I am lonely sometimes, Jemima Ann. But—is that love? And her father——”

The darkest, most vindictive look Jemima Ann has ever seen there, sweeps like a cloud over the blonde face.

“I hated her father,” she says between her teeth. “I hate him still.”

“Do tell!” exclaims shocked Jemima Ann.

Mimi laughs—her transitions are like lightning, her volatile nature flashes to and fro, as a comet. Miss Hopkins’ round-eyed simplicity amuses her always.

“Listen here, Jim,” she says, “your aunt calls you ‘Jim’ sometimes, doesn’t she? What would you say of a poor girl; a grisette of New York, born in poverty, bred in poverty, in vice, in ignorance, with only her face for her fortune, what would you say of such a one when a gentleman, young, handsome as one of the heroes of your novels—tall, dark-eyed, finely educated; and the heir of millions, falls in love with her; runs away from home and friends for her; marries her. What would you say?”

“That she was the very luckiest and happiest creeter on airth,”responds, promptly, Jemima Ann. “But was the love all on his side? Didn’t she love him too?”

“Ah!” says Mimi, “that is what I have never been able to find out. I—don’t—know. She didn’t act as if she did; it was more like hate sometimes, but she never could bear him to look at any one else. She drove him to his death, anyway. The love-story ended in a tragedy: Snowball, you have got that pas all wrong. Look here, little dunce!”

She rises lazily, draws her skirts up a little to display two trim feet, and executes the step to which Snowball aspires, makes her little daughter repeat the performance until she has it quite correctly. Then she flings herself again on the lounge. Jemima Ann looks on in perplexity—this erratically acting and talking Mimi has been her puzzle from the first—puzzles her more than ever to-day; in one ‘breath’ talking of the tragical death of the young husband, who left all for her, and with the words still on her lips, absorbed in teaching Snowball a ballet step! ‘The simple soul of Jemima Ann is upset.

“No,” says Mimi, going back to the starting point, “no one is happy. Even animals are wretched. Look at a horse—beaten, loaded, worn out—look at a cow, what melancholy meditation meets you in her big, pathetic eyes. A pig is the only contented-looking beast I know of; a pig wallowing in mud, surrounded by ten or so dirty little piglings, is a picture of perfect earthly felicity! If, in the transmigration of souls—if that is the correct big word—mine is permitted to return and have its choice of a future dwelling, I think we will be a fat little white porker and be happy! Oh! here is Lacy, and I am not dressed. Take away Snowball, Jemima, like a good girl. I’m due at a dinner to-day. Mr. Lacy gives it at the hotel, and here he comes after me.”

She springs to her feet and runs up-stairs.

“Tell him to-wait, Jim,” she calls; “I will be ready in half an hour.”

Miss Hopkins delivers the message, and bears Snowball to the regions below. Mr. Lacy takes a seat at the parlor window, calling familiarly to Mlle. Trillon, up-stairs to tittivate and be quick about it, for the rest are waiting and the banquet is ordered for five, sharp.

***

It is late when Vane Valentine reaches the circus. He has dined leisurely and well, as it is in his nature to do all things, and the brass band is banging away inside the monster tent when he reaches it, and the first of the performance is over. Still he is not the only late arrival—a few others are still straggling in, and one man leans with his back against a dead wall, his hands in his coat pockets, waiting at his ease for,his turn. Something familiar in the look of this man, even in the dim light, arrests Vane Valentine’s attention; he looks again, looks still again, comes forward, with a sudden lifting of his dark face, and lays his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Farrar!” he exclaims. “My dear fellow, is it you, or your wraith?”

The man looks up, regards the speaker a moment after a cool fashion, and holds out his hand.

“How are you, Valentine? Yes, it is I. You wouldn’t have thought it, would you? But the world is not such a big place as we are apt to think it, and Fayal, though some distance off, is not absolutely out of the universe.”

“Well, I’m uncommonly glad to see you, old boy,” says Vane Valentine, and really looks it. “Have you come all the way from the Azores to go to the circus?”

“What would you say if I should say yes?”

“Regret to find you falling into your second childhood at five-and-twenty, but no end glad to see you again, all the same.”

“I should think, after a very few weeks of this place, you might be no end glad to see almost any one,” says Mr. Farrar. “Fayal may be dull, but at least it has beauty to recommend it. But this beast of a town——”

“It is a beastly place,” assents Vane Valentine, “but I am not staying in the town itself. We live in the suburbs, my aunt and I—not a bad spot in the month of September. We go to Philadelphia next week. Madam Valentine has a house there that she likes rather, and where she stays until she goes south for the winter.

“She is well, I trust?”

“She is always well. She is a wonderful old lady in that way—no headaches or hysterics, or feminine nonsense of any kind about her. But are you really going to the circus, you know?” inquires Mr. Valentine, smiling.

“Most undoubtedly. Behold the open sesame,” showing his ticket. “And you—it is about the last place of all places I should expect to find the fastidious Vane Valentine.”

Vane Valentine shrugs his shoulders, but looks rather ashamed of himself, too.

“I don’t come to see the thing, don’t you know; I come on—business. I want particularly to see one of the performers.”

“Ah!” remarks, in deep bass, Mr. Farrar.

“Pshaw! my dear fellow, nothing of the sort. You might know me better. I have never set eyes on one of these women yet.”

“Austere young aristocrat, I ask pardon! If we are going to see anything of it at all, we had better not linger longer here, for the raree-show is half over by this time.”

“Where are you stopping?” young Valentine asks, as they turn to go in.

“They put me up at the Washington—not a bad sort of hostelry. Have I ever spoken to you of my friend, Dr. Macdonald, of Isle Perdrix? I am on my way to give him a week or two of my delectable society.”

“Somewhere in Canada, among the French, isn’t it? Yes, I remember. Stay over to-morrow, though, won’t you, and come and dine with me? I haven’t seen a soul to speak to for three weeks! A civilized face is a god send here among the sooty aborigines of Clangville.”

“You are a supercilious lot, upon my word, Valentine,” observes Mr. Farrar. “You always were. Here we are at last, in the thick of the tumblers and merry-go rounds. I feel like a boy again. I have not been inside a circus tent for fifteen years. They were the joy of my existence then.”

They take their seats, and become for the space of five seconds the focus of several hundred pairs of examining eyes. Madame Olympe is cavorting round the ring on four bare-backed chargers at once, “hi-ing,” leaping, jumping through lighted hoops, startling the nervous systems of everybody, and the several hundred eyes return to the sawdust circle. The two new-comers look sufficiently unlike the generality of the crowd around them, to attract considerable attention, if it could be spared from the performance.

Vane Valentine, dressed to perfection, with just a suspicion of dandyism, very erect, very stiff, and contemptuous of manner, glancing, with a sneer he takes no trouble to conceal, at the simple souls around him, all agape at the amazing doings of the magnificent Olympe. Mr. Farrar, tall, broad-shouldered, with a look of great latent strength, that lends a grace of its own to his well-knit figure, a silky brown-black beard and moustache, hair close-cropped and still darker, straight heavy eye brows, and a pair of brilliant brown eyes. He is a man of commanding presence, looking far more thoroughbred than his companion, distinctly a handsome man—a man at whom most women look twice, and look with interest. He laughs, and strokes his brown beard, as he watches the astonishing evolutions of Olympe.”

Is it she?” he says; “if you want to take lessons in rough-riding you could hardly have a more accomplished teacher. A handsome animal too.”

“Which?”, asks Vane Valentine, “the woman or the horse?”

“Both. How does she call herself? Ah, Olympe, the Daughter of the Desert. Which desert?—this is vague. Whew—that was a leap—what superb muscles the creature must have. Now she has gone. What have we next?”

“Mlle. Mimi on the tight-rope,” reads Vane Valentine.” Astonishing feats on the wire—sixty feet in the air! Oh, here she is!”

He looks up with vivid interest, and levels his glass. Far above, a shining small figure is seen, all white gauze, spangles, gilded hair, balancing pole. A shout of applause greets her. Mimi has become a favorite with the circus-going public, in the last two or three days. Vane Valentine looks long and intently—his glass is powerful, and brings out every feature distinctly. He lowers it at last, and draws a deep breath.

“Take a look,” he says to his companion, “and tell me what you think of her.”

Mr. Farrar obeys. He, too, looks long and steadily at the fair Mimi, balancing far up in that dizzy line—going through a performance that makes more than one nervous head swim to look at. He also drops the glass after that prolonged stare, in silence.

“Do you think her pretty?” Valentine asks.

“There can be no two opinions about that, I should think. She is exceedingly pretty.”

Vane Valentine shrugs his shoulders.

“Who knows? These people owe so much to paint and powder, and padding and wigs, and so on. In this case, too, distance lends enchantment to the view. I dare say nearer, with her face washed, and half those blonde tresses on her dressing-table, we should find our fair one a blowsy beauty, with a greasy skin and a pasty complexion. She does her tight-rope business well, though. By Jove, it looks dangerous!”

“It is dangerous,” the other, answers,” and—I may be mistaken but there is something the matter. She nearly lost her balance a moment ago. Good! good! there! she nearly lost it again!

The words have scarcely passed his lips when a hoarse, terrible cry arises simultaneously from a hundred throats. There is a sudden upheaval of the whole multitude to their feet. Over all, piercing, frightful, never to be forgotten, a woman’s shriek rings—then a silence, a pause so awful that every heart stands still. Then—a dull, dreadful, sickening thud, something white and glittering has whirled like a leaf through the air, and lies now, crushed, bleeding, broken, senseless—a tumbled heap of gauze, and ribbons, and tinsel, and shining hair, and shattered flesh and blood.

And now there rises a chorus of screams, a stampede of feet, confusion, up roar, chaos. Above it sounds the voice of the manager, imploring them to be orderly, to be silent, to disperse. Mlle. Mimi is seriously hurt. Her only chance is for the audience to go, and leave her to the care of her friends. Hers, in any case, was to have been the close of the performance.

The audience are sorry and horrified, and obey, but slowly, and with much talk and confusion. They pour out into the bright, chilly night, and that crushed and bleeding heap is lifted somehow, and laid on a stretcher, and the company crowd around. Some one has already gone for a doctor, when Vane Valentine, who, with Mr. Farrar, has already pushed his way into their midst, speaks:

“This gentleman, although not a practicing physician, has studied medicine, and is skillful. Farrar, look at the poor creature, and see if anything can be done.”

Mr. Farrar is already bending over her, and Vane Valentine, who has a horror of the sight of blood and wounds, turns away, feeling quite sick and giddy. But it is his stomach that is tender, not his heart. In this moment his first thought is, “If she is dead, what a lot of trouble, and what a pot of money it will save, to be sure!”

There is profound silence; even Olympe looks pale and panic-stricken in this first moment, in the face of this direful tragedy. Mr. Farrar is quite pale with the pity of it, when he looks up at last. A moment ago, so fair, so full of life and youth; now, this mangled, dully moaning mass. For it moan’s feebly at times, and the sound thrills through every heart.

“She is insensible, in spite of that,” he says; “she is terribly, frightfully injured. It is utterly impossible for her to recover. With all these compound fractures, there is concussion of the brain. She will probably never recover consciousness, even for a moment. She will die.”

He pronounces the dread fiat, pale and grave. He stands with folded arms, and looks down at the motionless form on the stretcher. Olympe—a judge of a fine man—glances at him, even in this tragic moment, with an approving eye. Time and opportunity favoring, she would like to cultivate Monsieur le Medicin’s acquaintance, she thinks.

“Can she be moved?” the manager asks. “Poor little Mimi! poor little soul! I’m sorry for this. I’ve known her for years, and in spite of her little failings, I always liked her. Poor little soul!”

The manager is a personage of very few words. He rarely commits himself to a speech as long as this. He looks sorry as he says it.

“Poor little Mimi!” he repeats; “poor little woman! poor little soul!”

“Where does she live?” Mr. Farrar asks. “Yes, she can be removed—she feels nothing; and it had better be done at once. I will go with you until the doctor comes, but neither of us will be of any use. I will remain if there is anything that can be done,” he says to the manager, “as long as you like.”

“Thank you! I shall take it as a favor. You see, I have known her so long; and, poor little thing, hers might have been such a different fate if she had chose. It has been a strange life and death. Poor, poor little Mimi!”

“How long do you give her to hold out, you know?” Vane Valentine asks his friend, in a subdued tone, as he too turns to follow.

Something in his voice, a latent eagerness, a sort of hope, makes Farrar look at him suddenly. The brown eyes are keen and quick to catch and read.

“She will hardly live—hold out, as you call it—until morning,” he answers, coldly. “Why?”

“Nothing, except that I too would like to wait for—the end. It is all very sudden and shocking.”

Mr. Farrar says nothing. The sympathy sounds forced and unmeant.

Vane Valentine is neither—sorry nor shocked; he thinks, indeed, it is a very fit and natural ending for such a life, altogether to have been expected. And what an easy solution of the problem of the day! No fear of exposure or blackmail now.

“Will she ever speak again?” he asks, thinking his own thoughts, as they slowly follow the sad cortege that bears poor Mimi home.

“Have I not said she would not? She will never recover consciousness. She will lie moaning like that for a little, and then life will go out.”

There is silence. It has chanced to Mr. Farrar to see a good deal of death and the darker sides of life, but habit has not hardened him. There is that in his face which tells Vane Valentine he is in no mood to answer idle questions. So he discreetly holds his tongue, and follows through the starry darkness to Mrs. Hopkins’ home.

Jemima Ann and Aunt Samantha are waiting up as usual, sewing in silence, a kerosene lamp between them.

Snowball has not been taken to the circus this evening, but as she has a profound disbelief, in her small way, of the early-to-bed system, she is still up, singing gleefully, and playing with a couple of kittens in front of the stove. Her song, sung at the full pitch of her powerful little lungs, is her favorite ballad of the “Ten Little lnjun Boys.”

The door-bell is rung by the messenger, who runs on ahead; the direful news is broken, and in a moment all is confusion.

Mrs. Hopkins is acid of temper, but pitiful of heart. A great remorse and compassion seizes her. She has spent the evening in wordy abuse of her boarder—her smoking, her drinking, her flirting, her generally shameful goings on; and now—a bleeding and mangled creature is borne in to die in her house.

“I wouldn’t a said a word if I’d a thought,” she says, crying, to Jemima Ann. “I kinder feel as if she’d oughter haunt me for all the things I’ve up and said of her. Poor little creetur! she was only young and flighty, and knowed no better, likely, when all is said and done.”

Jemima is crying too, very sincere tears. She has learned to “like, has always liked, the light, insouciant, devil-may-care little trapezist. But then Jemima Ann would have cried for any one in pain or trouble as freely as she weeps over her heroines in weekly installments.

She prepares the bed, and sees Mimi laid upon it, still faintly moaning, and assists in removing as much as can be removed of the flimsy, tinseled drapery. The beautiful fair hair, all clotted and sticky with blood, is gathered up in a great knot. The face seems the only part of her uninjured—it is drawn into a strange, dreadful expression of fear and pain—the look that froze upon it in the instant of her fall. The features are not marred, but the face is ghastly—the blue eyes seem half open, a little stream of blood and foam trickles from the lips. Jemima Ann wipes it, and her own tears, away, as she stands looking down.

Down in the parlor is Mr. Lacy, like a man distraught. He has been in love with Mimi, off and on, since he saw her first; he has followed her about from place to place: like her shadow; he has offered her marriage again and again—and he is rich. That she has not married him has surprised everybody; but Mlle. Trillon has always been erratic, has liked her freedom and her wandering life, has persistently laughed at him, and taken his presents with two greedy little hands, and eaten his dinners, and drank his wines, and smoked his cigarettes, and driven behind his high-steppers, and said No.

“I’ve had enough of marriage, Lacy,” she has said, in her reckless fashion; “it’s no end of a humbug. I wouldn’t marry the Prince of Wales if he came over and asked me.”

“Which it would, be bigamy if you did,” says Mr. Lacy ; “but you might marry me, Mimi—I’ve not got a Princess Alexandra at home. You could leave off the flying trapeze, and have a good time as Mrs. Augustus Lacy.”

“I have a better time as Mlle. Mimi Trillon. Thanks, old fellow, very much, but not any!” laughs Mimi.

And she has adhered to it. No later than this very day, after dinner, a-flush with champagne and turkey, Mr. Lacy has renewed his honorable proposals, and for the twenty-fifth time been refused. Mimi, too, is elate with the fizzing beverage, which she is but too fond of, and it is this thought that adds the sting of poignant self-reproach to Mr. Lacy’s grief. She had taken too much wine, she was in no condition to mount that fatal wire when she left his hotel, and he should have told the manager so. But how could he tell?—and she would never have forgiven him if he had, and now——He lays his head on the table, and cries, in the deepest depths of misery, and remorse, and despair. So Mr. Farrar finds him later, and stands looking at him, with that grave, thoughtful face of his, in silent wonder.

“I was so fond of her,” the poor young man says, wiping his eyes; “I was awfully fond of her always. I would have married her if she’d have had me. But she wouldn’t. And now to think of her lying up there, all crushed and disfigured. It’s too horrid. And it’s dused hard on me, by George! Ain’t there no hope, doctor? You are the doctor, ain’t you?”

“I am not a doctor,” Mr. Farrar answers, “but the doctor is with her. No—there is no hope.”

He does not look contemptuous by these womanish tears, and this foolish little speech. A sort of compassion is in the glance that rests so gravely on poor love stricken, grief-stricken Mr. Lacy.

“How—how long will she—”

Mr. Lacy applies his handkerchief to his eyes, and walks away abruptly to one of the windows.

“She may last the night out. She will not know you or any one—she is past all that. She will never speak again.”

He pauses.

A little child comes in, a fairy in a blue dress the color of its eyes, with fluffy, flaxen hair, falling to its waist, and a lovely rosebud face.

“Seben ‘ittle lnjuns nebba heard ob hebben,” sings the fairy, looking about her with wide open, fearless eyes.

She espies Mr. Lacy, and peers up at him curiously.

“What you cryin’ for, Lacy?” she asks. “Want your supper?”

Mr. Lacy is too far gone to reply.

“Want go to bed?” persists inquisitive Snowball, the two sole wants she is ever conscious of uppermost in her mind.

“Oh! Snowball, Snowball!” says poor Mr. Lacy. “Little Snowball, if you only knew!”

“Where Mimy Ann?” Snowball demands, unmoved by this apostrophe. “‘Noball wants her Mimy Ann. Want go to bed.”

“It is her child,” Mr. Lacy explains to the silent Farrar. “She was a widow, you know. l haven’t an idea what will become of this little mite now. And she is very like her. It’s dused hard, by George!”

He is overcome again.

Mr. Farrar holds out his hand to the child.

“Come here, little Snowball,” he says.

She looks at him after her fashion for a moment, then still quite fearlessly goes over, climbs upon his knee, and kisses his bearded lips.

“You is a pritty man,” she says. ” ‘Noball likes pritty men. Does you know where is my Mimy Ann?”

“She will be here presently. She is busy up-stairs.

He puts the flaxen hair back from the baby face, and gazes long and earnestly.

“Yes, you are like her,” he says, “you are very like her, my poor little Snowball.”

Snowball is sleepy, and says as much; she cuddles closer, lays her fair baby head confidingly against his breast, closes the blue eyes, and instantly drops asleep. He sits and holds her, lifting lightly the long pretty hair, until Jemima, coming down in search of her, bears her off to her cot.

It is a night never to be forgotten in the Hotel Hopkins. No one goes to bed. Even the six-and-twenty hands stray afield until abnormal hours, and meander in and out, unrebuked.

Mrs. Hopkins retires, it is true, to freshen herself for the labors of the dawning new day, which promises to be one of the busiest of her busy life. Jemima Ann retires not. She is up-stairs, and down-stairs, and on her feet the weary night through. Mr. Lacy cannot tear himself away. Mr. Vane Valentine sends a message to the cottage, and he, too, lingers to see how the poor creature fares, and wins golden opinions from hero-worshiping Miss Hopkins. So much goodness of heart, so much condescension in so great a personage, she wouldn’t a thought it, railly. She falls partly in love with him in deed, in the brief intervals she has for that soft emotion, during her rapid skirmishing up and down stairs—would do so wholly but that her admiration is about equally divided between him and his friend Mr. Farrar.

This latter gentleman. remains without offering any particular reasons, but in a general way, in case he can be of any further assistance.

For Mimi, she lies prone, not opening her eyes, not stirring, only still moaning feebly at intervals. Up in her cot, in Jemima’s room, little Snowball sleeps, her pretty cheeks flushed, her pretty hair tossed, and dreams not that the fair frail young mother is drifting out further and further from this world, with each of those dark, sad, early hours.

The night-light burns low, the sick-room is very still, the street outside is dead quiet; Jemima Ann sits on one side of the bed, her numberless errands over for the present, dozing in the stillness, spent with fatigue; Mr. Farrar paces the corridor without, coming to the bed at intervals to feel the flickering pulse, and see if life yet lingers. Mr. Lacy slumbers in a chair in the parlor, and Mr. Valentine has stretched his slender limbs on the sofa, where poor Mimi was wont in after-dinner mood to recline, and smoke, and chaff Jemima. The belated six and-twenty have clambered up to their cots at last; only the black beetles, the mice, and Mr. Paul Farrar are thoroughly awake in the whole crowded household.

Four strikes with a metallic clang from the big wooden clock in the hall, and is taken up by a time piece of feebler tone, far down in the underground kitchen. He pauses in his restless walk, enters the sick room, glances at the quiet figure on the bed, walks to one of the windows, draws the curtain and looks out. The moon has set, the morning is very dark, a wild wind shudders down the deserted street with a whistling sound, inexpressibly dreary.

He remembers suddenly it is the first of November, the eve of All Souls’ Day; the moaning of the sweeping blast sounds to him like the wordless cry of some of these disembodied souls, wandering up and down forlornly, the places that knew them once. Another soul will go to join that “silent majority” before the new day dawns. The thought makes him drop the curtain, and sends him back to the bedside.

The change has come. A gray shadow, not there a moment since, lies on the white face, a clammy dew wets it, the fluttering of the heart can hardly be detected now, as he bends his ear to listen.

Jemima Ann, waking from some uncomfortable dream, starts up.

He lifts one warning hand, and still bends his ear downward, his fingers on the flickering pulse.

“Oh! what is it?” Jemima says, in a terrified whisper; “is she worse?”

“Hush—she is dying. No!” he cries out. “She is dead!”

The shock of sudden emotion is in his tone. He drops the wrist and stands quite white, looking down upon the marble face. A shudder has passed through the shattered limbs, through the crushed, frail, pretty little body; then, with a faint, fluttering sigh, she is gone.

“Dead!” says Jemima Ann.

She drops on her knees with a sobbing cry, and looks piteously at the rigid face.

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! oh, dear!” she sobs, under her breath; “dead! and only this afternoon, only this very afternoon, she lay on the sofa down-stairs talkin’ to me, and laughin’, so full of life, and health, and strength, and everything; so pretty, so pretty, so young! Oh, dear! oh, dear! and now she is dead—and such a death! She was talkin’ of years ago, and of her husband—poor, poor thing!” says Jemima Ann, rocking to and fro, through her raining tears, “tellin’ me how handsome he was, and how he loved her, and how he run away with her from, his home, and riches, and all. And now, and now, she is there—and dead—and never, never, never, will I hear her pretty voice again!”

Mr. Farrar lifts his eyes from the dead woman, and looks across at the homely, tear-wet, honest countenance of Mrs. Hopkins’ niece, and thinks that beauty is not the only thing that makes a woman’s face lovely.

“You are a good girl,” he says. “You are sorry for this poor creature. You do well. Yours will be the only tears shed over her—poor unfortunate little soul!”

“Did you know her, sir?” asks Jemima.

“I know of her. Hers has been a pathetic life and death—the saddest that can be conceived. Poor pretty little Mimi! And she talked to you of her early life and her husband? What of him?”

“Oh, he is dead—drounded—so she said. But I guess he treated her bad—at least I think it was that, I ain’t sure. Mr. Lacy wanted to marry her, but she wouldn’t. Ah! poor little dear. She’d had a dose already, I reckon, What’s to be done next, sir?”

There is so much to be done next, it seems, that Jemima Ann is forced to call up her aunt. Monsieurs Lacy and Valentine, aroused from their matutinal nap, are informed, and start up to hear the details.

“Gone, is she?” says Mr. Lacy, the first sharp edge of his affliction a trifle blunted by slumber. “It’s—it’s dused hard on me, by George! I’ll never be so fond of any one again as long as I live.”

“Did she speak at all?” inquires Valentine, with interest.

“No, she has not spoken.”

Mr. Farrar turns abruptly away as he answers, but looks over his shoulder to speak again as he goes.

“I see no reason why you should linger longer,” he says, roughly, to the heir of many Valentines. “She is dead. There is nothing you can do.”

“Are you sure—nothing?”

“Nothing. You had better go. I suppose they will lay her out in this room. She will be buried, I infer, from this house.”

Mr. Vane Valentine is not used to being thus summarily dismissed, but he wants to go, and does not resent it. But why Mr. Paul Farrar should speak and act as one having authority is not so clear, except that his masterful character is rather apt to assert itself wherever he goes.

“And you,” he says; “I must see you again, Farrar you know, before you leave.”

“I shall not leave for a day or two, I shall wait until after the funeral. I am in no particular hurry.”

“At the Washington you put up? Very well, I will go now, and look in on you later. You ought to turn in for an hour or two—you look quite fagged with your night’s watch. Good-morning.”

Through the bleak chill darkness of the dawning day, Vane Valentine hurries home, full of his news. It is a very bleak and nipping morning, it tweaks Mr. Valentine’s thin aquiline nose rosy red, and powders his weak young mustache with white rime. The blast he faces seems to cut him in two, a sleety rain begins to pelt frequently, and he has no umbrella. He cannot but think that it is rather hard he should have to undergo all this, for a trapeze performer, and the consummate foolery of his cousin George seven long years ago. But he has slept well, and is a good pedestrian, and gets over the ground with rapid strides, not willing to admit even to himself how thoroughly well satisfied he is with the way in which fate has cut for him his Gordian knot. It has all been very shocking and tragical, and of course it is all very sad, poor creature, but then—but then, on the whole, perhaps it is as well, and it simplifies matters exceedingly. Here is the child, of course, but the child will be easily disposed of. With Mimi has died probably all trace of that one blot on the spotless Valentine shield. Yes, on die whole it is as well.

He lies down for an hour when he gets home; then rises, has his bath, his morning coffee and chop, and then sends word to his aunt that he will like to see her at her earliest convenience. Her earliest convenience is close upon noon, for she is not an early riser.

He finds her in the sitting-room of last evening, seated in front of the fire, wrapped in a fluffy white shawl, and with the remains of a breakfast of chocolate and dry toast at her side.

She glances indifferently up at him, murmurs a slight greeting, and returns to the fire.

“Good-morning, my dear aunt!” Mr. Vane Valentine says, with unusual briskness of manner.

He looks altogether brighter and crispier than is his high-bred wont.

“I trust you slept well. I hope the—aw—unpleasant little rencontre of yesterday, did not disturb you at all?”

“You have something to say to me,” she responds, ‘abruptly. “Have you seen that woman?”

“I have seen her. That woman will never trouble you or me any more.”

She looks up at him again, quickly. Something in his look and tone tell her a surprise is coming.

“What do you mean?” sharply and imperiously; “speak out!”

“She is dead!”

There is a pause. Even Madam Valentine, cold, impenetrable, hard, is dumb for a moment. Dead! and only yesterday so full of strong, young, insolent life! She catches her breath, and looks at him with eyes that dilate.

“Dead!” she repeats, incredulously.

“Dead; and after a very sudden and dreadful manner; and yet, after a manner that might easily have been expected.”

And then he begins, and in his slow, formal way, but with a quickened interest he cannot wholly suppress, tells the story of the tragedy at the circus.

“And so it ends,” he concludes; “and with it all trouble for us as well.”

And so it ends! Ay, as troubles of life and the glory thereof shall one day end, even for you, Mr. Vane Valentine—for us all, O my brothers—in the solemn wonder of the winding-sheet.

In the warmth and glow of the fire he sees his aunt shiver, and draw her white fleecy shawl close.

And so it ends—in another tragedy! George lying beneath the bleak, sandy hillocks, in his wind-swept, sea-side grave—his wife lying with life mangled and beaten out of her, about to be laid by strangers, far from him, in death as in life. So it ends, the pretty love idyl, as so many other love idyls of a summer day have ended—in ruin, and disaster, and death.

“It is very sad—it is terrible,” she says, a sudden huskiness in her voice—all the womanhood in her astir. “Poor creature—she had a beautiful face.”

There is pity, very real, very womanly, in her tone.

“And George loved her,” she thinks. “Oh! my son! my son!”

“Yes, it is sad,” breaks in the hard metallic tones of Mr. Vane Valentine; “but not surprising. She will be buried from the house where she was boarding—a wretched place filled with grimy working men. My friend Farrar was with her at the last.” She looks up once more. It is so very unusual to hear the young man apply the term friend to any human being, but a faint, angry, incredulous smile crosses her face.

“Who is your friend Farrar?”

“Oh! no one you know. Man I met in Fayal last year—manager of an immense place there, very good sort of fellow, a Bohemian rather, but a thorough gentle man. Stopping here for a couple of days on his way to Canada. Capital company, Farrar—no end a fine fellow, but not distinguished in any way.”

“Except by the notice of Vane Valentine. And the child,” after a pause, “what of it?”

“Oh—aw—the child. Exactly. What I was about to ask. But need we trouble?” hesitatingly. “No one knows anything—aw—at least, I infer not.”

Her eyes blaze out on him for a moment, a flash of black lightning.

“She is my son’s child—my grandchild. Do you wish her sent to the workhouse, Mr. Vane Valentine?”

“My dear aunt——”

The flash is but momentary. She sinks back wearily in her chair, and draws her shawl still closer around her.

“It is a very cold morning, I think—I cannot get warm. Throw on another log, Vane. Something must be done about the child—she must be provided for.”

Vane Valentine turns pale under his swarthy skin. He bends over the fire and arranges it with some precipitation.

“What do you wish?” he asks, and in his voice there is ever so slight a touch of sullenness.

“Nothing that can affect you—do not fear it,” she retorts, scornfully. “I have no desire that the world should know that this child of an unfortunate tight-rope dancer, is anything to me—has any claim upon the name of Valentine. At the same time she must be provided for. I do not ask how, or where, but you must see that she is suitably cared for, and educated, and wants for nothing. Have you tact enough to manage this, without exciting—suspicion?”

“I hope so,” Mr. Valentine responds, rather stiffly. “It seems a simple matter enough. You are a rich lady; as an act of pure benevolence you compassionate the forlorn condition—aw—of this little child, and offer to provide for her in that—aw—state of life in which it has pleased Providence to place her. No one else has any claim that I hear of. I will go and see about it at once.”

“Whom will you see?”

Mr. Valentine strokes his youthful mustache, and looks thoughtful.

“The manager, I infer; it doesn’t seem quite clear to whom the little one belongs now. I can find out, however. Farrar will help me. He is a wonderfully shrewd fellow and that.”

“Very well, go.”

Mr. Vane Valentine goes, and tries his hand at diplomacy.

Mr. Farrar looks a little surprised when his young friend’s mission is made known to him, but is ready with any assistance that may be needed. They see the manager, and find that that gentleman has no claim on the little Trillon, nor, so far as he knows, has any one else.

“The little one is totally unprovided for,” he says, “I know that. If nothing better offered I would keep her myself for her poor mother’s sake, and get one of our women to take charge of her. But this is better. Ours is but a vagabond life for a child. It is very good of your aunt, sir. She’s a pretty little thing, this Snowball, and will grow up a charming girl. Is it Madam Valentine’s intention to adopt her, or anything of that sort, Mr. Valentine?”

“If my aunt takes her she will be suitably provided for,” says, in his stiff way, Mr. Vane Valentine.

“No doubt, sir. Well, I see no reason why your aunt shouldn’t. Little un’s father is dead; her mother had no relatives that I ever heard of; she is as much alone in the world, poor little thing, as any waif and stray can well be. Still she should never have wanted. But this is better. Best leave her where she is until after the funeral, the girl at that boarding-house is good to her, and then take her away.”

“When is the funeral?”

“To-morrow. No time for delay. We are off Monday morning. I look after the burying myself; all expenses, and so on. She got her death in my service. Hope you will attend the funeral, gentlemen, both.”

They promise, and go, both very thoughtful and rather silent.

Mr. Farrar is the first to speak.

“This is very good of your aunt,” he says; “it speaks well for her kindness and gentleness of heart.”

“Well,” Vane Valentine replies, dryly, “kindness and gentleness, in a general way, are not Madam Valentine’s chief characteristics, but as you say, this is good of her—the more so as she is not fond of children—or poodles, or cats, or birds, or things of that kind. She is what is called strong-minded. The little one has fallen on her feet, though; all the same. Best thing that could have happened to her; that trapeze woman was not fit to bring up a child.”

“Don’t agree with you,” says Mr. Farrar, shortly. “It is never best for a child to lose its mother, unless she is a monster. There are exceptional cases, I grant you, but I don’t call this one. I hope the poor baby will be happy, whatever comes.”

“Come home and dine with me,” says Vane Valentine, who is in good spirits. He does not much fear the child, and a large sum of money has been saved. “You will not see my aunt, very likely, but I shall be dusedly glad of your company—and that. After the first flush of partridge shooting, it’s confoundedly slow down here, let me tell you.”

“So I should infer. But you must excuse me to-day, and to-morrow you must dine with me instead, at the hotel.”

“But why? You don’t pretend to say you have such a thing as an engagement in Clangville,” incredulously.

“No. Still you will be good enough to excuse me. You will think it queer, I suppose, and squeamish, but the death-bed scene of this morning has upset me. It would be unfair to you to inflict myself upon you. So good-day, my dear boy—here is Mrs. Hopkins’. I shall drop in for a moment. Will you come?”

“Not for the world,” says young Valentine, with a glance of strong repulsion. “It upsets me to look at dead people, and—that sort of thing. Until to-morrow, then, au revoir.”

The two men part, and unconscious little Snowball’s fate is thus summarily settled, and Vane Valentine goes home through the melancholy autumn afternoon to tell his aunt.