A Singer from the Sea Part 26

"Did he live in London, sir?"

"He did."

"He was Lord Mayor in the year 18--?"

"He was. Did you know him?"

"I am his son. I remember you very well. You went with me and my father to buy my first pony."

"I did indeed. Mr. Tresham, sit down, sir. You are very welcome. I am grateful for your visit. And how is my old acquaintance? I have not heard of him for many years. We are both Cornishmen, and you know the Cornish motto is 'One and all.'"

"My father is dead. He had great financial misfortunes. He did not survive them long. I came to America hoping to find a better opening, but nothing has gone well with me. This morning I saw your advertis.e.m.e.nt. I think I can do all you require, and I shall be very glad indeed of the position."

"How long have you been in America, Mr. Tresham?"

"More than a year. I went West at once, spent my money, and failed in every effort."

"To be sure. The West is for physical and financial energies. I think if a young man is to rely on his mental qualities he had better remain East. I am glad you have called upon me. The duties I wish attended to are very simple. You will have to read my mail every morning and answer it as I verbally direct. With the help of printed plates you will arrange my coins and seals and such matters. I wish you also to read the newspapers to me. In a day or two you will find out which articles to read and which to omit. I want a companion for my drives.

I want some one to chat with me on my various hobbies--a young man, because young men have such positive opinions, and therefore we shall be likely to come to pleasant disputing. You will have a handsome room, a seat at my table, a place among my guests, and one hundred dollars a month."

"I am very grateful to you, sir."

"And I am very grateful to the kind fate which sent you to me. I owe your father for many a delightful day. I am glad to pay my debt to his son. When can you come here?"

"This afternoon, sir."

"I like that. We dine at seven. I will expect you to dinner. Do you--ahem!--excuse me, Mr. Tresham, perhaps you may require a little money in advance. I shall be pleased to accommodate you."

"You offer is gracious and considerate, sir. I am glad you made it, although I do not fortunately need to accept it."

They clasped hands and parted with smiles. Mr. Lanhearne was quite excited over the adventure. He longed for his daughter to come home, that he might tell her what a romantic answer had come to his prosaic advertis.e.m.e.nt. And Roland was still more excited. The air of the house, its peace, refinement, and luxury appealed irresistibly to him.

It was his native air. He wondered how he had endured the vulgarity and penury of his surroundings for so long; how indeed he had borne with Denasia's shortcomings at all. That refined old gentleman, that quiet, elegant woman whom he had had a glimpse of--these people were like himself, of his own order--he would never weary of them. The cla.s.s he had voluntarily chosen, the people with whom poverty had compelled him to consort, they affected him now as the memory of a debauch affects a man when it is over.

"I had no business out of my proper sphere," he said sadly. "Elizabeth was right--right even about Denasia."

He sat down in Union Square to consider his position, and he came to a very rapid and positive conclusion. He declared to himself: "I will no longer waste my life. Denasia and I have made a great mistake.

Together, we shall be poor and miserable. Apart, we shall be happy. I no longer love her. I do not believe she loves me. All the love she can spare from her bl.u.s.tering father and mother she wastes on that miserable sickly babe, who would be a thousand times better dead than alive. If I leave her she will go back to St. Penfer. I have a hundred dollars; I will give her fifty of them. She can pay a steerage pa.s.sage out of it or go in a sailing-vessel, or if she does not like that way she has things she can sell. If I give her half of what I have I do very well indeed."

He went rapidly to his home, or room. He knew that Denasia had an engagement to keep, and he hoped that he might be fortunate enough to find her out. It was as he wished: Denasia had gone out and the landlady was sitting beside the baby's cradle. Roland dismissed her with that manner all women declared to be charming, and then he sat down and wrote a letter to his wife. It did not occupy him ten minutes. Some of his clothing was yet very good and fas.h.i.+onable; he packed it in the leather trap which had gone with him to college, and then he sent a little girl for a cab. Without word and without observation he drove away from the scene of so much vexation and disappointment.

The whole life and vicinity had suddenly become horrible to him--Denasia, his child, the shabby landlady, the shabby house, the dirty little grocery at the corner where he had bought his cigars and their small household supplies, the meals cooked there and eaten there, Denasia's attempts at housekeeping--the whole series of memories made him wince and s.h.i.+ver with shame and annoyance. "Thank G.o.d it is over!" he said fervently. And he never once thought what an insult he was offering to eternal mercy and justice, in supposing G.o.d had anything whatever to do with his flagrant desertion of duty, his shameful abrogation of all the consequences of his own wilful selfishness, and his cruel farewell to the wife and son he was bound to nourish and cherish and defend.

He thought of none of these things. He thought only of the comfort and elegance; the peace, the delicate living, the delicate clothing, the congenial companions.h.i.+p he was going to. He was determined to have a luxurious bath, to be shaved and perfumed, to leave behind him the very dust of his past life. He resolved not to allow himself to remember Denasia. She was to be as if she never had been. He would blot out of his memory all the years she had brightened and darkened.

And if any excuse can be found for him, it must be in his supposition that Denasia felt just as he did. She would be grateful to him for taking the initiative--glad to get back to her home and her people, glad to escape a life for which she must have discovered she had neither strength nor vocation.

So he thought, in spite of his resolve not to think. But a man must be even more selfish and reckless than Roland was to take years of his past life and plunge them into oblivion as he would plunge a stone into mid-ocean. In spite of the novelty of his situation, of his delight with his quiet, handsome room, the thought of Denasia would enter where it was forbidden to enter, and he could not help wondering how she would receive his letter, and what steps she would take in consequence of it.

Denasia came home weary and disappointed. She had had a long, silent wait for the person she expected to see, and finally been compelled to accept the fact that he was not coming into town. She was heart-sick, and the paltry loss of the car fare was an addition to her anxiety.

That the room was empty and the baby crying did not in any way astonish her. She understood from it that Roland had come home and dismissed the landlady, and then wearied of his watch and gone out again, leaving the child to sleep or to weep as it felt inclined to do. Her first action was to lift it from its bed, nurse and comfort it, and rock it to sleep on her breast.

Then her eyes wandered from her child to a letter lying on the table.

The circ.u.mstance roused no interest in her mind. She knew from its general appearance that it had been put there by Roland, and it was by no means the first time he had left the child with a letter containing some excuse which he thought valid enough to satisfy Denasia. She looked at it with a little contempt. She expected to find it a.s.sert that some one had called for him or had sent him a message involving a possible engagement, and she knew the whole affair would resolve itself into some plausible story, which she would either have to accept or else deny, with the certain addition of a coolness or a quarrel.

So the letter lay until she had put off and away her street costume.

Then she took it in her hand and sat down by the open window to read the contents. They were short and very much to the point:

"DENASIA, MY DEAR:--You have ceased to love me and I have ceased to love you. You are miserable and I am miserable. We have made a great mistake, and we must do all we can to correct it. When you read this I shall be on my way to England. I advise you to go back to your parents for a year. You may in that time recover your beauty and your voice. It may be well then to go to Italy and give yourself an opportunity to obtain the education I see now you ought to have had at the first. But until that is practicable we are better apart. You will find fifty dollars in the white gloves lying on the dressing-case. I advise you to take a sailing-vessel; a long voyage will do you good and will be much cheaper. It is what I have done. Farewell.

"ROLAND."

She read every word and then glanced at the cradle. The child moved.

With the letter in her hand she soothed it and then sat down again.

She was overwhelmed with the shameful wrong. But to cry out and wring her hands and call in the neighbours to see and hear what things she suffered was not her way. Often she had seen her mother sitting speechless and motionless for hours while her father hung between life and death; it was natural for Denasia to take unavoidable sorrow with the same dumb patience.

Then she began to a.n.a.lyse the specious sentences and to deny the things a.s.serted. "I have not ceased to love. Every hour of the day my life has been a witness to my love. I never said I was miserable.

Nothing had power to make me quite miserable if Roland was kind to me.

He is on his way to England. Of course he has gone to his sister. What did her sweet complaints and regrets at not having his help and company mean but 'Come to me, Roland'? She has lost her own husband and now she must have mine. She has always been my evil angel. When she was kindest to me it was only a different way of serving herself.

My soul warned me; my father warned me. She is one of those human vampires who suck love, luck, life itself from all near them, and who slay, and rob, and smile, and caress while they do it. And I am to go home for a year and get back my beauty and my voice. I am sorry I ever was beautiful. If I can help it I will never sing another song. Go home and shame my good father and mother for his sake? Go home and be lectured and advised and reproved by every woman in the village? Go home a deserted wife, a failure in everything? No; I will not go home.

Nor will I go to Italy. I have had more than enough of singing for my living and his living, too. I will sew, I will wash, I will go to service, I will do anything with my hands I can do; but I will not sing. And I will bring up my boy to work at real work, if it is but to make a horseshoe out of a lump of iron! G.o.d! what a foolish woman I have been! What a silly, vain, loving woman! My heart will break! My heart will break! Alone, alone! Sick, helpless, ignorant, alone!"

She closed her eyes and hid her face, and in that darkness gathered together her soul-strength. But she shed no tears. Pale as death, weak and trembling with suppressed emotion, she went softly about the little room putting things in order--doing she scarcely knew what, yet feeling the necessity to be doing something. Thus she came across the white gloves, and she feared to look in them. Her knowledge of Roland led her to think he would not leave fifty dollars behind him. He would take the credit of the gift and leave her to suppose herself robbed by some intruder or visitor.

So she looked suspiciously at the bit of white kid and undid it without hope. The money was there. After all, Roland had some pity for her. The sight of the bills subdued her proud restraint. One great pressure was lifted. No one could now interfere if she sent for a doctor for her sick baby. She could at least buy it the medicine that would ease its sufferings. And so far out was the tide of her happiness that from this reflection alone she drew a kind of consolation.

CHAPTER XIII.

DEATH IS DAWN.

"In the pettiest character there are unfathomable depths."

"Only one Judge is just, for only one Knoweth the hearts of men."

Sayeth the book: "There pa.s.seth no man's soul Except by G.o.d's permission, and the speech Writ in the scroll determining the whole, The times of all men, and the times for each."

--KORAN, 3d CHAP.

The Lanhearnes by an old-fas.h.i.+oned standard were a very wealthy family. They were also a large family, though the sons had been scattered by their business exigencies and the eldest daughters by marriage. Only Ada, the youngest child of the house, remained with her father; for the mother had been dead many years, and the preservation of the idea of home was felt by all the Lanhearne children to be in Ada's hands. If she married and went away, who then would keep open the dear old house and give a bright welcome to their yearly visits?

Ada, however, was not inclined to marriage. She was a grave, quiet woman of twenty-two years of age, whose instincts were decidedly spiritual and whose hopes and pleasures had little to do with this world. She was interested in all church duties and in all charitable enterprises. Mission schools and chapels filled her heart, and she paid out of her private purse a good-hearted little missionary to find out for her cases of deserving poverty which it was her delight to relieve.

Roland had never before come in contact with such a woman, and at a distance he gave her a kind of adoration. Young, beautiful, rich, and yet keeping herself unspotted from the world or going into it only to relieve suffering, to dry the tears of childhood, and strengthen the failing hearts of unhappy women. Once while walking with Mr. Lanhearne the old gentleman said: "This is Ada's church. As the door is open let us enter and wait for prayers." So out of the rush and crush of Broadway the old and the young man turned into the peace of the temple. And as they entered Ada rose up from before the altar, and with a pale, rapt face glided into the solitude of her own pew.

Neither spoke of the circ.u.mstance, but on Roland's mind it made a deep impression. At that hour he realised how beautiful a thing is true religion and how holy a thing is a woman pure of heart, calmly radiant from the very presence of G.o.d.

In spite of the unhappy memories of the past, in spite of the worrying thoughts which would intrude concerning Denasia, he was not at this time very happy. Certainly not happy enough to contemplate a long continuance of the life he was leading, but well satisfied to pa.s.s the winter in its refined and easy seclusion. He knew that Elizabeth would be in London until June, and he resolved to remain in New York until she left for Switzerland. He would then join her at Paris and spend the summer and autumn in her company; beyond that he did not much trouble himself.

He had, indeed, a vague dream of then quietly visiting Denasia and determining whether it would be worth while to educate her for grand opera. For the idea had taken such deep root in his mind that he could not teach himself to regard the future without it, and now that Elizabeth had full control of her riches, he did not contemplate any difficulty about money matters. He still believed in Denasia's voice, and he had seen that her dramatic talents were above the average; so even in the charmed atmosphere of the Lanhearne home, he could still think with pleasure of being the husband of a famous prima donna.