Old Valentines Part 1

Old Valentines.

by Munson Aldrich Havens.

I

You might enter this story by the stage door. You remember beautiful Valentine Germain--the actress? She married Robert Oglebay, the painter, brother of Sir Peter Oglebay, the great engineer. Their baby Phyllis--

But, after all, the main entrance is more dignified.

Sir Peter Oglebay's pa.s.sion is for Construction: to watch ma.s.sive machinery slowly hoisting materials more ma.s.sive into positions of incredible height with calculated accuracy. Wherever construction is in progress you are likely to see him, standing at a little distance, holding his silk hat on his white head with one hand as he looks upward, and leaning, a little heavily, on his stick with the other. And whenever or wherever you see him, you will see an English gentleman.

His portrait, in the lobby of the Engineering Society, is by Sargent.

His erect bearing, white mustache, and something about the cut of his clothes suggest the soldier. But he is one of the great engineers; his father and grandfather were engineers. You observe the red ribbon in his lapel; France honors him.

Sir Peter's big house is in Armytage Street, near the park. You may remember the house by its walled garden and the imposing wrought-iron grille through which one has access to the flagged walk, the wide steps, and the great doorway.

In his house, the library defines his chief interest in life. The shelves are filled with somber sets of the "Transactions" and "Proceedings" of several learned societies. Sir Peter is himself a Fellow of these societies Mr. Rowlandson, his bookseller, has a standing advertis.e.m.e.nt in "The Athenaeum" for certain missing volumes. One in particular, the "Proceedings of the British Engineering Society for the year 1848," he would tell you, was the very devil to find; it seems there was a fire at the printer's. Sir Peter's monograph on the "Egyptian Pyramids Considered in their Relation to Modern Engineering"

was dedicated to this society. He presided over its grave deliberations for several years. "With dignity and impartiality," said his successor, when Sir Peter surrendered the gavel.

He serves on boards of directors. His name is seen on subscription lists headed by the Right People. Late afternoon should find him at the Carlton Club.

Many years ago, Sir Peter brought together a number of fine pictures.

They hang in the drawing-room, but the collection is not a notable one in these days. Each year, however, the Oglebay Prize speeds some talented English lad to Paris. But that endowment was his brother Robert's suggestion. Sir Peter's calls at the Christie Galleries ceased when Robert married beautiful Valentine Germain, the actress. Perhaps half of the cruel things Sir Peter said of her were true. But the quarrel was irreparable; the brothers never met afterward.

Robert Oglebay was a painter of distinction, if not of genius. His few finished pictures enriched the world. His impulses were n.o.ble, but they were impulses only; the will to complete the undertaken task was lacking. For patient work he subst.i.tuted high talk of Art in the studios of his friends. The gay little suppers in their own rooms were famous; nine at table, mostly men, entranced by Valentine's beauty and her wit.

Charming were their afternoons among the curio shops, and their return, laden with loot too precious to wait over night for delivery. Glorious were their holidays in Paris and Vienna; wonderful nights in Venice!

Always together! To their sudden migration to Egypt, whence he returned with a portfolio of exciting promise. Alas, the slender fulfilment! for then was the time for work,--the sobering thought of Baby Phyllis.

But to Valentine and Robert Oglebay, Baby Phyllis soon meant a new frolic. Nurse Farquharson's were the competent hands. Their life went on unchanged.

At five, Baby Phyllis, in her white nightie, her blue eyes s.h.i.+ning, and her curls crowned with roses, danced among the wine-gla.s.ses at her mother's birthday party, and enraptured the guests by singing, in various keys, the song with which beautiful Valentine herself had captivated London,--"If I could wear trousers, I know what I should do."

If you knew your way about town in the early eighties, you may remember the song. The encore was uproarious: three times Baby Phyllis had to lift her little leg and strike the match on her nightie. They drank her health standing, as she disappeared, smiling at them over Nurse Farquharson's shoulder.

Upstairs, having cuddled Phyllis in bed, Valentine caught the expression on the nurse's face. She put her arms around Farquharson appealingly.

"Don't be cross with me on my birthday," she pleaded.

Farquharson patted the pretty upraised hands, glittering with diamonds.

"You mustn't look cross at my mamma, Farkson," cooed Baby Phyllis.

Careless, happy days and sparkling nights! Robert and Valentine were always together, their honeymoon endless; in Paris, in Buda-Pesth, in Rome, in Constantinople, in Holland. You should have seen Valentine in the Dutch costume she brought home. Each of the inseparable trio of artists, Mr. Singleton, Mr. Leonard, and Mr. Knowles, painted her portrait, and made love to her, and was laughed at and scolded. It is little enough to say of her that she idolized Robert.

When they returned from their first trip to Norway, in 1897, Robert Oglebay, now forty and growing stout, told his friends he had found what he was looking for at last. The strong, deep sentiment of the North had clutched at him and held him fast. And indeed those s.h.i.+mmering, moonlit studies of the little fis.h.i.+ng village, where they spent that summer and autumn, are his best.

Early in the following summer they flitted northward again, with joyful eagerness. They took nine-year-old Phyllis with them.

While her father painted, and her mother read, Phyllis explored crannies in which the receding tide had left tiny, helpless creatures which she examined curiously, and then carried tenderly to the water, lest they perish before the friendly waves came again to cover them.

Their boatman sang songs to her,--strange songs that thrilled her, though she did not understand the words.

At night, in the best room of the little inn, by a bright fire, her father told tales of the vikings; of their high-prowed s.h.i.+ps, and the long-haired sailors, with fierce eyes; of their adventurous voyages over unknown seas. The stories ended when the golden head drooped, drowsily.

The portfolio of sketches grew steadily during the weeks that followed.

"Your best work, Robert," said Valentine

"I have found what I have been seeking," was his answer.

They were happy days. Robert painted, early and late, in all weathers.

Valentine's joy was in him. Phyllis found hers in a closer companions.h.i.+p with them than she had ever known.

Remembering their eager joy, how tragic the end! Drowned, under the sail of an overturned boat,--together.

Their little Phyllis, saved by the boatman recovered from the shock of icy water and horrible fright before her clothing was dry. She was spared immediate knowledge of her loss. The rough, weatherworn faces she saw in the firelight of the fisherman's cottage, to which she had been carried, were kindly and compa.s.sionate. The gloom of early evening, the glow of the firelight, the smell of the sea, the full-rigged s.h.i.+p on a rude wall-bracket, and the moaning wind outside were memories of after years. At the moment, wrapped in a blanket, Phyllis was conscious only of security and warmth. She smiled up at the big fisherman who had rescued her, and made friendly advances to the cl.u.s.ter of ragged little ones who gathered around her, with scared faces and brown, bare legs and feet. When the fisherman's wife tucked her into a warm bed, she inquired sleepily for her mamma. A rea.s.suring caress was the response: the language of motherhood is universal, and requires no words.

The patrol of the rocky inlet ended at dawn. When the burdened groups of booted men tramped past the cottage on their way to the inn, the fisherman's wife, peering through the window in the gray morning light, muttered to herself that both had been found.

Some hours afterward came the innkeeper and the postmaster, the one proud of his English, the other of his responsibilities as first citizen of the village. A large-eyed, terror-stricken Phyllis learned of her loneliness and sobbed on the good woman's broad bosom. The innkeeper and the postmaster smoked their pipes outside until the first outburst of childish grief had spent itself.

It appeared then that the little Miss must tell them to whom they should send a telegram. How painful and new to be obliged to think; how choking were the vague thoughts. But at last a ray of comfort; they should telegraph Farquharson, her dear, dear nurse. The name was slowly spelled. And the address? Perfectly, Phyllis knew the street and number of that fascinating home of hers, but she now remembered that Farquharson would not be there; that Farquharson had gone to visit her brother in a little town in the south of England; a little town of which Phyllis had heard the most wonderful, true stories; but she did not know its name. "Couldn't the telegraph find out?" she asked; and then, overcome with rus.h.i.+ng thoughts, abandoned herself again to grief.

"There are Mr. Knowles, Mr. Leonard, and Mr. Singleton," she bethought her. "But they are painting in Algiers."

There was a lady her mamma called Molly, too, whom Phyllis liked very much, who came often to tea, accompanied by a tiny brown dog; but the patient innkeeper could learn no more of her than that mamma always called her Molly; the tiny brown dog's name, Phyllis remembered, was Tip.

How might this poor innkeeper's meager vocabulary convey the idea of relatives to Phyllis's mind? But somehow, at last, it was done.

"Yes," said Phyllis, struck suddenly with the thought. "There is Uncle Peter. But my papa and mamma never went to see him, and he never came to see them." A half-forgotten word occurred to her,--"They were es-tranged."

The innkeeper eyed her doubtfully; but Uncle Peter's last name she knew, of course; was it not her own? And his t.i.tle, too. The innkeeper, impressed, communicated his intelligence to the postmaster; they made their good-byes awkwardly and left the room.

Two days must elapse before the steamer arrived; ample time for composition. It grieved the innkeeper that another name than the author's must be signed to his telegram; but intellect yielded to rank; the postmaster signed alone.

And so, on a day when the dreary churchyard on a bleak hillside, near the little fis.h.i.+ng village, received the poor remains of Robert Oglebay and Valentine, his wife, Sir Peter, in the paneled library of his great London house, read these words:--

VALFJELDET, NORWAY, August 18th, 1898.

Your niece, Phyllis Oglebay, robbed of her parents by the remorseless sea, awaits the directions of her uncle.

OLAF ULVESAKKER, _Postmaster_.

Ten days later, Sir Peter Oglebay, with a drawn face, rode homeward through fog-enveloped streets, with a small girl in his arms. One of Phyllis's hands held Sir Peter's tightly, and her tired, little head rested upon his shoulder.

There was a sale, of course, of the thousand luxurious trifles with which improvident Robert Oglebay and his beautiful, spirited, improvident wife had surrounded themselves; trifles which had helped to create the artistic atmosphere that was the breath of life to them. Half a hundred creditors divided the proceeds.

When Sir Peter asked Phyllis what he should save from the wreck for her (not in those words, however) she asked him to send for all the valentines her papa had given her mamma.