Fashion and Famine Part 6

The lady looked around as she entered the room, and her face expressed some new and strong emotion; but she had evidently schooled her feelings, and a strong will was there to second every mental effort.

After one quick survey her eyes fell upon the carpet. It was an humble fabric, such as the New England housewives manufacture with their own looms and spinning wheels; stripes of hard, positive colors contrasted harshly together, and even time had failed to mellow them into harmony; though faded and dim, they still spread away from the feet harsh and disagreeable. No indifferent person would have looked upon that cheerless object twice; but it seemed to fascinate the gaze of the singular woman, as no artistic combination of colors could have done.

Her eyes grew dim as she gazed; her step faltered as she moved across the faded stripes; and reaching a chair near the bed, she sunk upon it pale and trembling. The tremor went off after a few minutes, but her face retained its painful whiteness, and she fell into thought so deep that her att.i.tude took the repose of a statue.

Thus an hour went by. The storm had increased, and through the window which opened upon a garden, might be seen the dark sway of branches tossed by the roaring wind, and blackened with the gathering night. The rain poured down in sheets, and beat upon the s.p.a.cious roof like the rattle of artillery. Gloom and commotion reigned around. The very elements seemed vexed with new troubles as that beautiful woman entered the room whose humble simplicity seemed so unsuited to her.

Ada saw nothing of the storm, or if she did, the wildness and gloom seemed but a portion of the tumult in her own heart. Yet how still and calm she was--that strange being! At length the chain of iron thought seemed broken; she turned toward the bed, laid her hand gently down upon the quilt, and gazed at the faded colors till some string in her proud heart gave way, and sinking down with her face buried in the scant pillows, she wept like a child. Every limb in her body began to tremble.

The bed shook under her, and notwithstanding the stormy elements, the noise of her bitter sobs filled the room. The voice of her grief was soon broken by another sound--the sound of pa.s.sionate kisses lavished upon the pillows, the quilt, and the homespun linen upon the bed. She looked at them through her tears; she smoothed them out with her trembling hands; she laid her cheek against them lovingly, as a punished child will sometimes caress the very garments of a mother whose forgiveness it craves; yet in all this you saw that this strange, almost insane excitement was not usual to the woman--that she was not one to yield her strength to a light pa.s.sion; and this made her grief the more touching. You felt that if such storms often swept across her track of life, she did not bow herself to them without a fierce struggle.

She lay upon the bed weeping and faint with exhausted emotion, when the sound of a closing door rang through the building. This was followed by stumbling footsteps so heavy that even the turf-like carpets could not m.u.f.fle them. The lady started up, listened an instant, and then hurried from the room, closing the door carefully after her. It was now almost dark, and but for the angular figure and ungainly att.i.tude of the person she found in her boudoir, she might not have recognized her own servant, who stood waiting her approach.

"Jacob, you have come--well!" said the lady in a low voice.

"Yes, and a pretty time I have had of it," said the man, drawing back from the hand which she had almost placed upon his arm, and shaking himself with much of the surliness, and all the indifference of a mastiff, till the rain fell in showers from his coat. "I am soaking wet, ma'm, and dangerous to come near--it might give you a cold."

"It is raining then?" said the lady, subduing her impatience.

"Raining! I should think it was, and blowing too. Why, don't you hear the wind yelling and tusseling with the trees back of the house?"

"I have not noticed," answered the lady, mournfully; "I was thinking of other things."

"Of _him_, I suppose!" There was something husky in the man's voice as he spoke, the more remarkable that his strong Down East p.r.o.nunciation was usually prompt, and clear from any signs of feeling.

"Yes, of him and of them! Jacob, this has been a terrible day to me."

"And to me, gracious knows!" muttered the man, giving his coat another rough shake.

"Yes, you have been upon your feet all day--you are wet through, my kind friend, and all to serve me--I know that it is hard!"

"Nothing of the sort!--nothing of the sort! Who on earth complained, I should like to know? A little rain, poh!" exclaimed the man, evidently annoyed that his vexation, uttered in an under tone, should have reached the lady's ear.

"No, you never do complain, Jacob; and yet you have often found me an exacting mistress--or friend, I should rather say--for it is long since I have considered you as anything else. I have often taxed your strength and patience too far!"

"There it is again!" answered the man, with a sort of rough impatience, which, however, had nothing unkind or disrespectful in it--"jist as if I was complaining or discontented--jist as if I wasn't your hired man--no, servant, that is the word--to serve, wait, tend on you; and hadn't been ever since the day--but no matter about that--jist now I've been down town as you ordered."

"Well!"

Oh! how much of exquisite self-control was betrayed by the low, steady tone in which that little word was uttered.

"Of course," said the man, "I could do nothing without help. The little girl's story was enough to prove that--that he was in town, but it only went so far. She neither knew which way he drove, or how the coach was numbered; so it seemed very much like searching for a needle in a hay-mow. But you wanted to know where he was, and I determined to find out. Wal, this morning, as we left the steamer, I saw a man in the crowd with a great, gilt star on his breast, and as the thing looked rather odd for a republican, I asked what it meant. It was a policeman; they have got up a new system here in the city, it seems, and from what was said on the wharf, I thought it no bad idea to get some of these men to help me to search for Mr. Leicester."

"Hush, hush; don't speak so loud," said the lady, starting as a name her lips had not uttered for years was thus suddenly p.r.o.nounced.

"I inquired the way, and went to the police office at once: it is in the Park, ma'm, under the City Hall. Wal, there I found the chief, a smart, active fellow as I ever set eyes on; I told him what brought me there, and who I wanted to find. He called a young man from the out room; wrote on a slip of paper; gave it to the man, and asked me to sit down. Wal, I sat down, and we began to talk about my travels, and things in gineral, like old acquaintances, till by-and-bye in came the very policeman that I had seen on the wharf.

"'Mr. Johnson,' says the chief, 'a Southern vessel arrived to-day at the same wharf where the steamer lies. Did you observe a tall gentlemen with a young lady on his arm, leave that vessel?'

"'Dark hair; large eyes; a black coat?' says the man, looking at me.

"'Exactly,' says I.

"'The lady beautiful; eyes you could hardly tell the color of; lashes always down; black silk dress; cashmere scarf; cottage-bonnet!' says he, again.

"'Jist so!' says I.

"'Yes,' says he to the chief, 'I saw them.'

"'Where did they go?' questions the chief.

"'Hack No. 117 took three fares from the vessel and steamer, one to the City Hall, one to the New York, one to the Astor. This was the second, he went to the Astor.'"

"And the young girl--did she go with him?" cried the lady, striving in vain to conceal the keen interest which prompted the question.

"That was just what the chief asked," was the reply.

"And the answer--was she with him?"

"Wal, the chief put that question, only a little steadier; and the man answered that the young lady----"

"Well."

"That the coachman first took the young lady to a house in--I believe it was Ninth street, or Tenth, or----"

"No matter, so she was not with him," answered the lady, drawing a deep breath, while an expression of exquisite relief, came to her features; "and he is there alone at the Astor House. And I in the same city! Does nothing tell him?--has his heart no voice that clamors as mine does? The Astor House! Jacob, how far is the Astor House from this?"

"More than a mile--two miles. I don't exactly know how far it is."

"A mile, perhaps two, and that is all that divides us. Oh! G.o.d, would that it were all!" she cried, suddenly clasping her hands with a burst of wild agony.

The servant man recoiled as he witnessed this burst of pa.s.sion, wherefore it were difficult to say; for he remained silent, and the twilight had gathered fast and deep in the room. For several minutes no word was spoken between the two persons so unlike in looks, in mind, in station, and yet linked together by a bond of sympathy strong enough to sweep off these inequalities into the dust. At length the lady lifted her head, and looked at the man almost beseechingly through the twilight.

The storm was still fierce. The wind shook and tore through the foliage of the trees; and the rain swept by in sheets, now and then torn with lightning, and shaken with loud bursts of thunder.

"The weather is terrible!" said the lady, with a sad, winning smile, and with her beautiful eyes bent upon the man.

He thought that she was terrified by the lightning, and this brought his kind nature back again.

"This--oh! this is nothing, madam. Think of the storms we used to have in the Alps, and at sea."

A beautiful brilliancy came into the lady's eyes.

"True, this is nothing compared to them: and the evening, it is not yet entirely dark!"

"The storm makes it dark--that is all. It isn't far off from sun-down by the time!" answered Jacob, taking out an old silver watch, and examining it by the window.

"Jacob, are you very tired?"

"Tired, ma'm! What on earth should make me tired? One would think I had been hoeing all day, to hear such questions!"