XVII
She had forgotten him before the still pure air of the sick-room had ceased to vibrate with her spoken words. She saw nothing but the patient in need of her, and had passed her arm beneath the pillow and was raising the gray head, and had reached a little vial and a measuring-glass from a stand that was beside the bed, before Dunoisse had gained the door. It might have been five minutes later, as hecontemplated a vista of grimy, leaded roofs, and cowled, smoke-vomiting chimney-pots, from the staircase-window at the passage-end, that he heard a light rustling of garments passing over the thick soft carpets, and she came to him, moving with the upright graceful carriage and the long, gliding step that had reminded him of the gait of the tall supple Arab women, whose slender, perfect proportions lend their movements such rhythmic grace. He said to her eagerly, as she stopped at a few paces from him:
“Mademoiselle, you see one who is gravely to blame for forgetfulness of your wise warning. I beg you, hide nothing from me!... Is my dear old friend in danger? Her color was that of Death itself.”
“There is always danger in cases of heart-disease.”
“Heart-disease.... She said no word to me upon the subject. But it is like her,” said Dunoisse, “to conceal her sufferings rather than distress her friends.”
“She has needed friends, and the help that prosperous friendship could have well afforded to bestow, believe me, sir, in these late years of uncomplaining want and bitter privation.”
The voice that spoke was sweet; Dunoisse had already recognized in it that quality. Barely raised above an undertone—presumably for the sake of other sufferers within the neighboring rooms that opened on the landing, from behind the shut doors of which came the murmur of voices, or the clinking of cups and saucers, or the sound of fires being poked,—this voice had in its clear distinctness the ring of crystal; and the fine edge of scorn in it cut to the sensitive quick of the listener. He started as he looked at her, meeting the calm and clear and steady regard of eyes that were blue-gray as the waters of her own English Channel, and seemed as cold....
For they condemned him and judged him, the rich man’s son, who had left the old dependent to the charity of strangers. His shamed blood tingled under his red-brown skin, as he said, with a resentful flash of his black eyes:
“That this good woman, the faithful guardian of my motherless boyhood, has suffered want, is to my bitter regret, to my abiding poignant sorrow, but not to my shame. A thousand times—no!”
He was so vivid and emphatic, as he stood speaking with his back to the window, that, with his foreign brilliancy ofcoloring, the slightness of form that masked his great muscular strength, the supple eloquence of gesture that accompanied and emphasized his clear and cultivated utterance, he seemed to glow against the background of rimy February fog, and London roofs and chimney-pots, as a flashing ruby upon gray velvet; as a South American orchid seen in relief against a neutral-tinted screen. His “No!” had a convincing ring; the lightning-flash of his black eyes was genuine fire, not theatrical; the woman who heard and saw had been born with the rare power of judging and reading men. Her broad white forehead cleared between the silken folds of her hair, pale nut-brown, with the gleam of autumn gold upon the edges of its thick waved tresses; the lowered arches of her brown eyebrows lifted and drew apart, smoothing out the fold between them; the regard of her blue-gray eyes ceased to chill; the delicate stern lines of her sensitive mouth relaxed. She knew he spoke the truth.
He saw a tall, slight, brown-haired woman in a plain and, according to the voluminous fashion of the time, rather scanty gown of Quakerish gray, protected by a bibbed white apron with pockets of accommodating size. A little cape of stuff similar to that of the gown covered her shoulders. Their beauty of line, like the beauty of the long rounded throat that rose above her collar of unadorned white cambric, the shapeliness of the arms that were covered by her plain tight sleeves, the slender rounded hips and long graceful proportions of the lower limbs, were enhanced rather than hidden by the simplicity of her dress; as the admirable shape and poise of the small rounded head was undesignedly set off by the simple, close-fitting, white muslin cap, with its double frill and broad falling lappets.
Her calmness seemed immobility, her silence indifference to Dunoisse. Her hands were folded upon her apron, her bosom rose and fell to the time of her deep even breathing, her steady eyes regarded him as he poured himself out in passionate denial, fierce repudiation of the odious stigma of ingratitude, but she gave no sign of having heard. She looked at him, and considered, that was all. He said, galled and irritated by her unresponsiveness:
“I should ask pardon of you, Mademoiselle, for my vehemence, incomprehensible to you and out of place here.What I seek is a private audience of the lady who is Directress of this charitable house. Would she favor me by granting it? I would promise not to detain her. Could you graciously, Mademoiselle——”
She said, with her intent eyes still reading him:
“I should tell you it is the rule of this house that no attendant in it should be addressed as ‘Mademoiselle,’ ‘Miss,’ or ‘Mrs.’ ... ‘Nurse’ is the name to which we all answer, and we try to deserve it well.”
Her smile wrought a radiant, lovely change in her that evoked his unwilling admiration. The pearl-white teeth it revealed shone brilliant in the light of it, and the dark blue-gray eyes flashed and gleamed like sapphires between their narrowed lids. But the next moment she stood before him as pale and grave as she had seemed to him before, with her white hands folded on her white apron.
“You do deserve that title, I am sure,” said Dunoisse, “if you minister to all your patients as kindly and as skillfully as to my poor friend there.” He added: “Forgive me, that I detain you here, when you may be needed by her bedside!”
He motioned towards the door of the room he had quitted, receiving answer:
“Do not be alarmed. Another nurse is with her. She was in the adjoining room; I called her to take charge before I came to you. And—you were desirous of an interview with our Superintendent here.... She sees few people, the nature of her responsibilities permitting little leisure.... I cannot bring you any nearer to her than you are now. But if you could trust me with the message you desire to send, or the explanation you wish to make, I will give you my promise that your exact words shall be conveyed to her. Will that do?”
Dunoisse bowed and thanked her, with some shadow of doubt upon his square forehead, a lingering hesitation in his tone.
“If you were older, Mademoiselle——” he began, forgetful of her injunction, as he hesitated before her. She looked at him, and her lips curved into their lovely smile again, and her blue-gray eyes were mirthful as she said:
“I am older than you are, M. Dunoisse. Does not that fact give you confidence?”
“It should,” returned Dunoisse, “if it were possible of credence.”
“Compliments are a currency that does not pass within these doors,” she answered, with a fine slight accent of irony and a tincture of sarcasm in her smile. “Keep yours for Society small-change in thesalonsof Paris or the drawing-rooms of Belgravia. They are wasted here.”
“I know but little,” said Dunoisse, “of thesalonsof London and Paris. Circumstances have conspired to shut the doors of Society, generally open to welcome rich men’s sons, as completely in my face as in that of any other ineligible. You will learn why, since you are so kind as to undertake to convey a message from me to the Superintendent of this house. It shall be as brief as I can make it. I would not willingly waste your time.”
She bent her head, and the high-bred grace perceptible in the slight movement appealed to him as exquisite. But he was too earnest in his desire for justification to be turned aside.
“Say to this lady whose charitable hand has lifted my dear old friend—from what depths of penury I only now begin to realize—that if she comprehends that I was a boy at a Military School, and ignorant, thoughtless, and selfish as boys are wont to be, when my good old governess was driven from the house that had been for years her home, and that her dismissal was so brought about that she seemed but to be leaving us upon a visit of condolence to a sick relative, she will judge me less harshly, regard me with less contempt than it may seem to her, now, I deserve!——”
His hearer stopped him:
“You should be told, M. Dunoisse, that all that can be said in your favor has been already said by Miss Smithwick herself. It never occurred to her to reproach you. Nor for her dismissal can you be blamed at all. But it has seemed to me that where there was ability to provide for one so tried and faithful, some effort should have been made in her behalf by you as you grew more mature, and the ample means that are placed at the disposal of a rich man’s son were yours to use. She never told you of her cruel need, I can guess that. But oh! M. Dunoisse! you might have read Hunger and Cold between the lines of the poor thing’s letters.”
There were tears in the great sorrowful blue-gray eyes. Her calm voice shook a little.
“If you had seen her as she was when I was sent to her,” she said, “you would feel as I do. True, a letter with a remittance from you came when she was nearly past needing any of the help it contained for her. But long, long before, you might have read between the lines!”
“Ah!—in the Name of Heaven, Mademoiselle, I pray you hear me!” burst out Dunoisse, catching at the carved knob of the baluster at the stair-head, and wringing it in the energy of his earnestness. “All that you suppose is true! Even before I came of age a large sum of money was placed at my disposal by my father. Over a million of our francs, forty-five thousand of your English sovereigns, lie to my credit in the bank, have so lain for years. May the hour that sees me spend asouof that accursed money be an hour of shame for me, and bitterness and humiliation! And should ever a day draw near, that is to see me trick myself in dignities and honors stolen by a charlatan’s device, and usurp a power to which I have no more moral right than the meanest peasant of the State it rules—before its dawning I pray that I may die! and that those who come seeking a clod of mud to throw in the face of a Catholic principality, may find it lying in a coffin!”
He had forgotten that he addressed himself to a stranger, so wholly had his passion carried him away. He awakened to her now, seeing her recoil from him as though repelled by his vehemence, and then conquer her impulse and turn to him again.
“Pardon!” He held up his hand to check her as she was about to speak. “I speak, in my forgetfulness, of things incomprehensible to you. I employ names that are unmeaning. These have no part in the message I entreat you of your goodness to bear to the Superintendent of this house. Could it not be made clear to this lady, without baring to the vision of a stranger the disgrace of one whom I am bound to respect, and would that it were possible! Could it not be understood that this money was gained in a discreditable, vile, and shameful way? Could it not be understood that I shall never rest until it has been returned to the original source whence it was unjustly plundered and wrung? Could it not be made clear thatwhile I was yet a boy I swore a solemn oath before Almighty God, at the instance of a friend—who afterwards cast me off and deserted me!—that this restitution should be made?... Might it not be explained that I have had nothing, since I took that oath, that was not earned by my own efforts? That I could take no holidays from the Technical School where I was a cadet, because I could not afford to buy civilian clothes, and that, until by good fortune I earned rewards and prizes and a period of free tuition at the Training Institute for Officers of the Staff—that many of my comrades deserved better, I do not doubt!—I was very, very poor, Mademoiselle! Would it not be possible?”
“Yes, yes!”—she answered him, and her pale cheeks had grown rosy as apple-blossoms, and her great gray-blue eyes were full of kindness now. “It shall all be explained. You shall be no longer blamed where you are praiseworthy, and reproached where you should be honored. And—two breaches of faith—a double perjury—are worse than one, though a lower standard of honor than yours would have taken your false friend’s desertion as a release. You have done well to keep your oath, M. Dunoisse, though he may have broken his.”
“I deserve no praise,” said Dunoisse, “and I desire none. I ask for justice—it is the right of every human soul; I beg you to repeat to this benevolent lady what I have said, and to tell her that I will be answerable for whatever charges she has been put to, for the medical attendance and support of my dear old friend, from to-day. It is a sacred duty which I will gladly take upon myself.”
“Forgive me,” said the listener, and her voice was very soft, “but would not this be a heavy tax on your resources?—a heavy drain upon your slender means?”
He listened, with his black eyes seeming to study an engraving that hung upon the staircase wall. She ended, and he looked at her again.
“It would be a tax, and a drain under ordinary circumstances, but I think I can insure a way to meet the difficulty.... Is it possible that I may be permitted to say Adieu to my old friend before I leave this house? It will be necessary—now!—that I should return to France by the packet that sails to-night.”
He was more than ever like a slender ruddy flame as he glowed there against the dull background of marble-papered wall and foggy window-panes. His virile energy, the hard clear ring of his voice, the keen flash of his black eyes won her rare approval, no less than his reticence and his delicacy. Her own eyes were more than kind, though in the respect of his seeing Miss Smithwick again that day her decision was prohibitory. He bowed to the decision.
“Then you shall sayAdieuandAu revoirto her for me,” he said, and held out his hand with a smiling look and a quick, impulsive gesture. “And for yourself, Mademoiselle, accept my thanks.”
He added, retaining the hand she had placed in his:
“You will not fail of your promise to repeat to Madame the Superintendent all that I have confided to you?”
“You have my word,” she answered him. “But of one thing I must warn you—if you send any money, she will send it back!”
“Name of Heaven!—why?” exclaimed Dunoisse.
“Because,” she said, with a slight fold between her arched brown eyebrows, “your friend has been accepted by the Committee as a permanent inmate here, and there is no lack of funds. I must really go now if you will be so good as to release me!”
Dunoisse was still jailer of the hand she had given, and his grip, unconsciously strenuous, was responsible for that fold of pain between the nurse’s eyebrows. He released the hand with penitence and distress, saying:
“I entreat you to forgive me if I have hurt this kind hand, that has alleviated so much pain, and smoothed the pillows of so many death-beds.” But his lips, only shaded by the little upward-brushed black mustache, had barely touched her fingers before she drew them gently from his, saying with a smile:
“There is no need for atonement, M. Dunoisse. As for this kiss upon my hand, I will transfer it with your message of farewell to your dear old governess. My good wishes will follow you with hers, wherever you may go!”
She was gone, moving along the passage and vanishing into a room half way down its length before a bell rang somewhere in the lower regions of the house, a voice spoke to Dunoisse, and he brought back his eyes, that had been questing in search of another, to see the capped and capedand aproned elderly woman, who had a round, brown smiling face, somewhat lined and wrinkled, smooth gray hair, and pleasant eyes of soft dark hazel, waiting to lead him downstairs as she had guided him up. To her he said, as she opened the street-door upon the foggy vista of Cavendish Street:
“Be so good, Madame, as to tell me the name of the Lady Superintendent here?”
The elderly attendant answered promptly:
“Merling, sir! Miss Ada Merling.”
Where had Dunoisse heard that name before? He racked his brain even as he said, with the smile that showed his small, square white teeth and made his black eyes gleam more brightly:
“I must be once more troublesome, if you will allow me. What is the name of the lady to whom I was talking just now?”
The elderly attendant answered, in precisely the same form of words:
“Merling, sir: Miss Ada Merling.”