Winter Evening Tales, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [i love reading books TXT] 📗

in tastes and temperament--he became my enthusiastic admirer, and interested himself greatly to secure me a lucrative patronage.

"Yet some subtle instinct, which I cannot pretend to divine or explain, constantly warned me to beware of this man. But I was ashamed and angry at myself for linking even imaginary evil with so frank and generous a nature. I defied destiny, turned a deaf ear to the whisperings of my good genius, and continued the one-sided friendship--for I never even pretended to myself that I had any genuine liking for the man.

"One day, when we had become very familiar, he ran up to see me about something, I forget what, and not finding me in the outer apartments, penetrated to my private room. There, upon that easel, Will Lennox first saw the woman you saw with him to-night--the picture which you are now looking at--and he fell as desperately in love with it, in his way, as I had done in the Guadalupe woods with the reality. I cannot tell you how much it cost me to restrain my anger. He, however, never noticed I was angry. He had but one object now--to gain from me the name and residence of the original.

"It was no use to tell him it was a fancy picture, that he was sighing for an imagination. He never believed it for a moment. I would not sell it, I would not copy it, I would not say where I had painted it; I kept it to my most sacred privacy. He was sure that the girl existed, and that I knew where she lived. He was very rich, without an occupation or an object, and Jessy's pure, lovely face haunted him day and night, and supplied him with a purpose.

"He came to me one day and offering me a large sum of money, asked me finally to reveal at least the locality of which I had painted the picture. His free, frank unembarrassed manner compels me to believe that he had no idea of the intolerable insult he was perpetrating. He had always been accustomed to consider more or less money an equivalent for all things under the sun. But you, Jack, will easily understand that the offer was followed by some very angry words, and that his threat to hunt the world over to find my beauty was not without fear to me.

"I heard soon after that Will Lennox had gone to the South. I had neither hidden nor talked about my former life and I was ignorant of how much he knew or did not know of it. He could trace me easily to New Orleans; how much further would depend upon his tact and perseverance. Whether he reached Guadalupe or no, I am uncertain, but my heart fell with a strange presentment of sorrow when I saw his name, a few weeks afterward, among the European departures.

"The next thing I knew of Will Lennox was his marriage to some famous Scotch beauty. Jack, do you not perceive the rest? The Scotch beauty was Jessy Lorimer. I feared it at the first. I knew it this afternoon."

"Will you call there?"

"I have no power to resist it. Did you not notice how eagerly she pressed the invitation?"

"Do not accept it, Petralto."

He shook his head, and remained silent. The next afternoon I was astonished on going up to his rooms to find Will Lennox, sitting there. He was talking in that loud, happy, demonstrative way so natural to men accustomed to have the whole world minister unto them.

He did not see how nervous and angry Petralto was under his easy, boastful conversation. He did not notice the ashy face, the blazing eyes, the set lips, the trembling hands, of the passionate Spanish nature, until Petralto blazed out in a torrent of unreasonable words and taunts, and ordered Lennox out of his presence.

Even then the stupid, good-natured, purse-proud man could not see his danger. He began to apologize to me for Petralto's rudeness, and excuse "anything in a fellow whom he had cut out so badly."

"Liar!" Petralto retorted. "She loved me first; you can never have her whole heart. Begone! If I had you on the Guadalupe, where Jessy and I lived and loved, I would--"

The sentence was not finished. Lennox struck Petralto to the ground, and before I raised him, I persuaded the angry bridegroom to retire. I stayed with Petralto that night, although I was not altogether pleased with him. He was sulky and silent at first, but after a quiet rest and a few consoling Havanas he was willing to talk the affair over.

"Lennox tortured me," he said, passionately. "How could he be so unfeeling, so mad, as to suppose I should care to learn what chain of circumstances led him to find out my love and then steal her? Everything he said tortured me but one fact--Jessy was alone and thoroughly miserable. Poor little pet! She thought I had forgotten her, and so she married him--not for love; I won't believe it."

"But," I said, "Petralto, you have no right to hug such a delusion; and seeing that you had made no attempt to follow Jessy and marry her, she had every right to suppose you really had forgotten her. Besides, I think it very likely that she should love a young, rich, good-looking fellow like Will Lennox."

"In not pursuing her I was following Jessy's own request and obeying my own plighted promise. It was understood between us that I should wait patiently until Jessy was twenty-one. Even Scotch customs would then have regarded her as her own mistress and acknowledged her right to marry as she desired; and if I did not write, she has not wanted constant tokens of my remembrance. I have trusted her," he said, mournfully, "without a sign from her."

That winter the beauty of Mrs. Lennox and the devotion of her husband were on every tongue. But married is not mated, and the best part of Jessy Lorimer's beauty had never touched Will Lennox. Her pure, simple, poetic temperament he had never understood, and he felt in a dim, uncertain way that the noblest part of his wife escaped him.

He could not enter into her feelings, and her spiritual superiority unconsciously irritated him. Jessy had set her love's first music to the broad, artistic heart of Petralto; she could not, without wronging herself, decline to a lower range of feelings and a narrower heart. This reserve of herself was not a conscious one. She was not one of those self-involved women always studying their own emotions; she was simply true to the light within her. But her way was not Will Lennox's way, her finer fancies and lighter thoughts were mysteries to his grosser nature.

So the thing happened which always has and always will happen in such cases; when the magic and the enchantment of Jessy's great personal beauty had lost their first novelty and power, she gradually became to her husband--"Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse."

I did not much blame Will Lennox. It is very hard to love what we do not comprehend. A wife who could have sympathized in his pursuits, talked over the chances of his "Favorite," or gone to sea with him in his yacht, would always have found Will an indulgent and attentive husband. But fast horses did not interest Jessy, and going to sea made her ill; so gradually these two fell much further apart than they ought to have done.

Now, if Petralto had been wicked and Jessy weak, he might have revenged himself on the man and woman who had wrought him so much suffering. But he had set his love far too high to sully her white name; and Jessy, in that serenity which comes of lofty and assured principles, had no idea of the possibility of her injuring her husband by a wrong thought. Yet instinctively they both sought to keep apart; and if by chance they met, the grave courtesy of the one and the sweet dignity of the other left nothing for evil hopes or thoughts to feed upon. One morning, two years after Jessy's marriage, I received a note from Petralto, asking me to call upon him immediately. To my amazement, his rooms were dismantled, his effects packed up, and he was on the point of leaving New York.

"Whither bound?" I asked. "To Rome?"

"No; to the Guadalupe. I want to try what nature can do for me. Art, society, even friendship, fail at times to comfort me for my lost love. I will go back to nature, the great, sweet mother and lover of men."

So Petralto went out of New York; and the world that had known him forgot him--forgot even to wonder about, much less to regret, him.

I was no more faithful than others. I fell in with a wonderful German philosopher, and got into the "entities" and "non-entities," forgot Petralto in Hegel, and felt rather ashamed of the days when I lounged and trifled in the artist's pleasant rooms. I was "enamored of divine philosophy," took no more interest in polite gossip, and did not waste my time reading newspapers. In fact, with Kant and Fichte before me, I did not feel that I had the time lawfully to spare.

Therefore, anyone may imagine my astonishment when, about three years after Petralto's departure from New York, he one morning suddenly entered my study, handsome as Apollo and happy as a bridegroom. I have used the word "groom" very happily, for I found out in a few minutes that Petralto's radiant condition was, in fact, the condition of a bridegroom.

Of course, under the circumstances, I could not avoid feeling congratulatory; and my affection for the handsome, loving fellow came back so strongly that I resolved to break my late habits of seclusion, and go to the Brevoort House and see his bride.

I acknowledge that in this decision there was some curiosity. I wondered what rare woman had taken the beautiful Jessy Lorimer's place; and I rather enjoyed the prospect of twitting him with his protestations of eternal fidelity to his first love.

I did not do it. I had no opportunity. Madame Petralto Garcia was, in fact, Jessy Lorimer Lennox. Of course I understood at once that Will must be dead; but I did not learn the particulars until the next day, when Petralto dropped in for a quiet smoke and chat. Not unwillingly I shut my book and lit my cigar.

"'All's well that ends well,' my dear fellow," I said, when we had both smoked silently for a few moments; "but I never heard of Will Lennox's death. I hope he did not come to the Guadalupe and get shot."

Petralto shook his head and replied: "I was always sorry for that threat. Will never meant to injure me. No. He was drowned at sea two years ago. His yacht was caught in a storm, he ventured too near the shore, and all on board perished."

"I did not hear of it at the time."

"Nor I either. I will tell you how I heard. About a year ago I went, as was my frequent custom, to the little open glade in the forest where I had first seen Jessy. As I lay dreaming on the warm soft grass I saw a beautiful woman, clothed in black, walk slowly toward the very same jasmine vine, and standing as of old on tip-toe, pull down a loaded branch. Can you guess how my heart beat, how I leaped to my feet and cried out before I knew what