CHAPTER VIII
SHE.
A quiet footstep, a grave new presence on financial sidewalks, a neatgarb slightly out of date, a gently strong and kindly pensive face, asilent bow, a new sign in the Rue Toulouse, a lone figure with a cane,walking in meditation in the evening light under the willows of CanalMarigny, a long-darkened window re-lighted in the Rue Conti--these wereall; a fall of dew would scarce have been more quiet than was the returnof Ursin Lemaitre-Vignevielle to the precincts of his birth and earlylife.
But we hardly give the event its right name. It was Capitaine Lemaitrewho had disappeared; it was Monsieur Vignevielle who had come back. Thepleasures, the haunts, the companions, that had once held out theircharms to the impetuous youth, offered no enticements to MadameDelphine's banker. There is this to be said even for the pride hisgrandfather had taught him, that it had always hald him above lowindulgences; and though he had dallied with kings, queens, and knavesthrough all the mazes of Faro, Rondeau, and Craps, he had done itloftily; but now he maintained a peaceful estrangement from all.Evariste and Jean, themselves, found him only by seeking.
"It is the right way," he said to Pere Jerome, the day we saw him there."Ursin Lemaitre is dead. I have buried him. He left a will. I am hisexecutor."
"He is crazy," said his lawyer brother-in-law, impatiently.
"On the contr-y," replied the little priest, "'e 'as come ad hisse'f."
Evariste spoke.
"Look at his face, Jean. Men with that kind of face are the last to gocrazy."
"You have not proved that," replied Jean, with an attorney's obstinacy."You should have heard him talk the other day about that newspaperparagraph I have taken Ursin Lemaitre's head; I have it with me; Iclaim the reward, but I desire to commute it to citizenship.' He iscrazy."
Of course Jean Thompson did not believe what he said; but he said it,and, in his vexation, repeated it, on the _banquettes_ and at the clubs;and presently it took the shape of a sly rumor, that the returned roverwas a trifle snarled in his top-hamper.
This whisper was helped into circulation by many trivial eccentricitiesof manner, and by the unaccountable oddness of some of his transactionsin business.
"My dear sir!" cried his astounded lawyer, one day, "you are not runninga charitable institution!"
"How do you know?" said Monsieur Vignevielle. There the conversationceased.
"Why do you not found hospitals and asylums at once," asked theattorney, at another time, with a vexed laugh, "and get the credit ofit?"
"And make the end worse than the beginning,' said the banker, with agentle smile, turning away to a desk of books.
"Bah!" muttered Jean Thompson.
Monsieur Vignevielle betrayed one very bad symptom. Wherever he went heseemed looking for somebody. It may have been perceptible only to thosewho were sufficiently interested in him to study his movements; butthose who saw it once saw it always. He never passed an open door orgate but he glanced in; and often, where it stood but slightly ajar, youmight see him give it a gentle push with his hand or cane It was verysingular.
He walked much alone after dark. The _gurchinangoes_ (garroters, wemight say), at those times the city's particular terror by night, nevercrossed his path. He was one of those men for whom danger appears tostand aside.
One beautiful summer night, when all nature seemed hushed in ecstasy,the last blush gone that told of the sun's parting, MonsieurVignevielle, in the course of one of those contemplative, uncompanionedwalks which it was his habit to take, came slowly along the more openportion of the Rue Royale, with a step which was soft without intention,occasionally touching the end of his stout cane gently to the ground andlooking upward among his old acquaintances, the stars.
It was one of those southern nights under whose spell all the sternerenergies of the mind cloak themselves and lie down in bivouac, and thefancy and the imagination, that cannot sleep, slip their fetters andescape, beckoned away from behind every flowering bush andsweet-smelling tree, and every stretch of lonely, half-lighted walk, bythe genius of poetry. The air stirred softly now and then, and was stillagain, as if the breezes lifted their expectant pinions and lowered themonce more, awaiting the rising of the moon in a silence which fell uponthe fields, the roads, the gardens, the walls, and the suburban andhalf-suburban streets, like a pause in worship. And anon she rose.
Monsieur Vignevielle's steps were bent toward the more central part ofthe town, and he was presently passing along a high, close, board-fence,on the right hand side of the way, when, just within this enclosure,and almost overhead, in the dark boughs of a large orange-tree, amocking-bird began the first low flute-notes of his all-night song. Itmay have been only the nearness of the songster that attracted thepasser's attention, but he paused and looked up.
And then he remarked something more,--that the air where he had stoppedwas filled with the overpowering sweetness of the night-jasmine. Helooked around; it could only be inside the fence. There was a gate justthere. Would he push it, as his wont was? The grass was growing about itin a thick turf, as though the entrance had not been used for years. Aniron staple clasped the cross-bar, and was driven deep into thegate-post. But now an eye that had been in the blacksmithingbusiness--an eye which had later received high training as an eye forfastenings--fell upon that staple, and saw at a glance that the wood hadshrunk from it, and it had sprung from its hold, though without fallingout. The strange habit asserted itself; he laid his large hand upon thecross-bar; the turf at the base yielded, and the tall gate was drawnpartly open.
At that moment, as at the moment whenever he drew or pushed a door orgate, or looked in at a window, he was thinking of one, the image ofwhose face and form had never left his inner vision since the day it hadmet him in his life's path and turned him face about from the way ofdestruction.
The bird ceased. The cause of the interruption, standing within theopening, saw before him, much obscured by its own numerous shadows, abroad, ill-kept, many-flowered garden, among whose untrimmed rose-treesand tangled vines, and often, also, in its old walks of pounded shell,the coco-grass and crab-grass had spread riotously, and sturdy weedsstood up in bloom. He stepped in and drew the gate to after him. There,very near by, was the clump of jasmine, whose ravishing odor had temptedhim. It stood just beyond a brightly moonlit path, which turned from himin a curve toward the residence, a little distance to the right, andescaped the view at a point where it seemed more than likely a door ofthe house might open upon it. While he still looked, there fell upon hisear, from around that curve, a light footstep on the broken shells--oneonly, and then all was for a moment still again. Had he mistaken? No.The same soft click was repeated nearer by, a pale glimpse of robes camethrough the tangle, and then, plainly to view, appeared an outline--apresence--a form--a spirit--a girl!
From throat to instep she was as white as Cynthia. Something above themedium height, slender, lithe, her abundant hair rolling in dark, richwaves back from her brows and down from her crown, and falling in twoheavy plaits beyond her round, broadly girt waist and full to her knees,a few escaping locks eddying lightly on her graceful neck and hertemples,--her arms, half hid in a snowy mist of sleeve, let down toguide her spotless skirts free from the dewy touch of thegrass,--straight down the path she came!
Will she stop? Will she turn aside? Will she espy the dark form in thedeep shade of the orange, and, with one piercing scream, wheel andvanish? She draws near. She approaches the jasmine; she raises her arms,the sleeves falling like a vapor down to the shoulders; rises upontiptoe, and plucks a spray. O Memory! Can it be? _Can it be_? Is thishis quest, or is it lunacy? The ground seems to Monsieur Vignevielle theunsteady sea, and he to stand once more on a deck. And she? As she isnow, if she but turn toward the orange, the whole glory of the moon willshine upon her face. His heart stands still; he is waiting for her to dothat. She reaches up again; this time a bunch for her mother. That neckand throat! Now she fastens a spray in her hair. The mockingbird cannotwithhold; he breaks into song--she turn
s--she turns her face--it is she,it is she! Madame Delphine's daughter is the girl he met on the ship.