Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

before, she became absolutely attenuated. Soon all her beauty would be gone.

"Do you know," said Mrs. Trent to her husband, "I have found out that she always carries that letter in her breast? I see her put her hand to it in the strangest way a dozen times a day."

One night, awakening from a long sleep to a clearer mental consciousness than usual, M. Villefort found his apparition standing over him.

She stood with one hand clinched upon her breast, and she spoke to him. "Arthur!" she said,-" Arthur, do you know me?"

He answered her, "Yes."

She slipped down upon her knees, and held up in her hand a letter crushed and broken. "Try to keep your mind clear while you listen to me," she implored. "Try-try! I must tell you, or I shall die. I am not the bad woman you think me. I never had read it-I had not seen it. I think he must have been mad. Once I loved him, but he killed my love himself. I could not have been bad like that. Jenny!-mother!— Arthur! believe me! believe me!"

In this supreme moment of her anguish and shame she forgot all else. She stretched forth her hands, panting.

"Believe me! It is true! Try to understand! Some one is coming! word before it is too late!"

Say one

"I understand," he whispered, "and I believe." He made a weak effort to touch her hand, but failed. He thought that perhaps it was the chill and numbness of death which stole over him and held him bound. When the nurse, whose footsteps they had heard, entered, she found him lying with glazed eyes, and Madame Villefort fallen in a swoon at the bedside.

And yet, from this time forward the outside world began to hear that his case was not so hopeless after all.

"Villefort will possibly recover," it was said at first; then, "Villefort improves, it seems;" and, at last, "Villefort is out of danger. Who would have thought it?"

When

Nobody, however, could say that Madame had kept pace with her husband. Monsieur was sufficiently strong to travel, and was advised to do so, there were grave doubts as to the propriety of his wife's accompanying him.

But she would not listen to those doubts. "I will not stay in Paris," she said to her mother. "I want to be free from it, and Jenny has promised to go with us."

[ocr errors]

They were to go into Normandy, and the day before their departure Ralph Edmondstone came to bid them good-bye.

Of the three he was by far the most haggard figure, and when Bertha came down to meet him in the empty drawing-room, he became a wretched figure with a broken, hopeless air. For a few seconds Bertha did not speak, but stood a pace or two away looking at him. It seemed, in truth, as she waited there in her dark nun-like dress, that nearly all her beauty had left her. There remained only her large sad eyes and pretty hair, and the touching look of extreme youth. In her hand she held the crushed letter.

"See!" she said at last, holding this out to him, "I am not so bad-so bad as that." He caught it from her hand and tore it into fragments. He was stabbed through and through with shame and remorse. After all, his love had been strong enough here, and his comprehension keen enough to have made him repent in the dust of the earth, in his first calm hour, the insult he had put upon her.

"Forgive me!" he cried; "oh, forgive

me!"

The few steps between them might have been a myriad miles.

"I did love you-long ago," she said; "but you never thought of me. You did not understand me then-nor afterward. All this winter my love has been dying a hard death. You tried to keep it alive, but

you did not understand. You only humiliated and tortured me. And I knew that if I had loved you more, you would have loved me less. See!" holding up her thin hand, "I have been worn out in the struggle between my unhappiness and remorse and you."

"You do not know what love is!" he burst forth, stung into swift resentment. A quick sob broke from her.

"Yes, I do," she answered. “I—I have seen it."

"You mean M. Villefort!" he cried in desperate jealous misery. "You think that he

[ocr errors]

She pointed to the scattered fragments of the letter.

"He had that in his pocket when he fell," she said. "He thought that I had read it. If I had been your wife, and you had thought so, would you have thought that I was worth trying to save-as he tried to save me?"

"What?" he exclaimed, shamefacedly. "Has he seen it ?"

[ocr errors]

"Yes," she answered, with another sob, | Villefort approached her hurriedly. which might have been an echo of the first. "And that is the worst of all."

There was a pause, during which he looked down at the floor, and even trembled a little.

"I have done you more wrong than I thought," he said.

"Yes," she replied; more."

66

a thousand-fold

It seemed as if there might have been more to say, but it was not said.

In a little while he roused himself with an effort.

"I am not a villain," he said. "I can do one thing. I can go to Villefort-if you care."

She did not speak. So he moved slowly away until he reached the door. With his hand upon the handle he turned and looked back at her.

"Oh! it is good-bye-good-bye!" he almost groaned.

"Yes."

He could not help it-few men could have done so. His expression was almost fierce as he spoke his next words.

"And you will love him-yes, you will love him."

"No," she answered, with bitter pain. "I am not worthy."

It was a year or more before the Villeforts were seen in Paris again, and Jenny enjoyed her wanderings with them wondrously. In fact, she was the leading member of the party. She took them where she chose,-to queer places, to ugly places, to impossible places, but never from first to last to any place where there were not, or at least had not been, Americans as absurdly erratic as themselves.

The winter before their return they were at Genoa among other places; and it was at Genoa that one morning, on opening a drawer, Bertha came upon an oblong box, the sight of which made her start backward and put her hand to her beating side. M.

An

instant later, however, he started also and shut the drawer.

"Come away," he said, taking her hand gently. "Do not remain here."

But he was pale, too, and his hand was unsteady. He led her to the window and made her sit down.

"Pardon me,” he said. “I should not have left them there."

"You did not send them to your friend," she faltered.

"No."

He stood for a moment or so, and looked out of the window at the blue sea which melted into the blue sky, at the blue sky which beat itself into the blue sea, at the white sails flecking the deep azure, at the waves hurrying in to break upon the sand.

"That-" he said at length, tremulously, and with pale lips, "that was false." "Was false !" she echoed.

"Yes," hoarsely, "it was false. There was no such friend. It was a lie-they were meant only for myself."

She uttered a low cry of anguish and dread.

"Ah, mon Dieu !" he said. "You could not know. I understood all, and had been silent. I was nothing—a jest― le monsieur de la petite dame,' as they said,-only that. I swore that I would save you. When I bade you adieu that night, I thought it was my last farewell. There was no accident. Yes-there was one. I did not die, as I had intended. My hand was not steady enough. And since then-"

She rose up, crying out to him as she had done on that terrible night.

"Arthur!" Arthur!"
He came closer to her.

"Is it true," he said,-" is it true that my prayers have not been in vain? Is it true that at last-at last, you have learned -have learned

She stretched forth her arms to him. "It is true!" she cried. 66 Yes, it is true! -it is true!"

WITH

I'd rather walk through shower with thee,
Than with another when the air
Is soft with summer, and as fair
The heavens above us as a sea

Of dim, unfathomed sapphire, where,
Slow drifting on a liquid sky,

The white-sailed ships of God float by.

THEE.

Sweeter in storm to be with thee,

Dark waters 'round us, and the roar
Of breakers on an unseen shore
Resounding louder on the lee,-

Than with another, sailing o'er
A rippling lake, where angry gale
May never rend the silken sail.

TRADITIONAL MUSIC OF THE SPANISH PYRENEES.

THE summer of 1871 saw me in St. Jean de Luz, with my household. Here we came directly into the Basque provinces, of which there are six, and heard a language quite impossible for a stranger to learn. Indeed, the Basquèze are so proud of the difficult character of their tongue, that they have a proverb running thus: "The devil lived here seven years and could not learn one word." If his Satanic majesty had had any music in his soul, he would not have tried to learn, for the jargon has no musical sound whatever, and every word ends with something like a sneeze.

St. Jean de Luz is a small, dull fishing village, about six miles from Biarritz, looking out upon the Bay of Biscay, and more sheltered from the cool winds than Biarritz is. There are three parallel streets and five or six cross ones in the town. Nice apartment houses and wretched hovels are crowded together, and the streets are so narrow that if, by chance, a carriage goes by, the foot passengers crowd themselves close against the houses, in imminent danger of being crushed. The principal street, called the Route de Bayonne, leads at one end up to Biarritz and beyond that to Bayonne, as its name indicates, and the

other end leads to the Place Louis XIV., where there is a lovely view of the Bay of Biscay, and a small triangular bit of gravel walk, fenced in, with benches scattered about. The palace of the Infanta, or the Maison Lahobiague as it is sometimes called, stands on the right hand side of the Place, and the Maison Louis XIV. on the left. Oral tradition says that the "Grand Monarque" lived here for a time, when he was betrothed to the Infanta of Spain, she occupying the palace opposite.

There happened to be a great many Spaniards in St. Jean de Luz during the summer of 1871 (attracted probably by the presence of Don Carlos), and guitar-music and pretty little Spanish songs continually filled the air. In Spanish countries there are always many pretty popular airs, of which the music never seems to be printed; and unless one can catch them, by constantly hearing them, it is impossible to procure them. One gets at last to envy the facility with which the "gamins gamins" in the street pick up everything by ear, strum a few notes on the guitar, sing as they go along at the top of their lungs, with all the neighbors joining in. "La Boca de Pepita" was a particularly favorite air, and ran thus :

[blocks in formation]

Oh, the mouth of my Pepita,

It is sweeter than the wine; And her lips are like the roses, But they never can be mine. For my darling will not have me, My love she doth decline; Ah, her lips are like the roses, But they never can be mine.

Oh, the eyes of my Pepita

Are so dazzling and so bright, And her teeth have such a luster, Milk was never half so white.

PEPITA'S MOUTH.

But my darling does not like me,
My love she doth decline,
And her teeth and her bright eyes

They never can be mine.

But I know that my Pepita
Is a tender-hearted girl,
Very noble is her spirit,

She is purer than a pearl.
I am waiting, ever hoping,
That if faithful I shall prove,
Ah, at last my dear Pepita
Will listen to my love.

Here is another very popular street song | peculiarly knowing look, and with a toss of in old Spain, and the urchins sing it with a the head quite delicious to see:

"ME GUSTAN TODAS."

Me gus-tan to - das, me gustan to - das, Me gus-tan to das en

gene

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Among our friends in St. Jean were three pretty girls, who created quite a sensation wherever they went, being rather Rubens-like in their proportions, and different from the small delicately made French and Spanish women in the village. The youngest and prettiest was a great favorite, and her name was Emilia. She had numerous admirers; but there was one young Spaniard who was her adoring slave. This poor youth's name was Fernando, and he became a real object of pity to all who knew him, for his abject devotion to the pretty Emilia, who taunted and scorned him. Fernando, unfortunately, was not brilliant in conversation, but looked unutterable things when Emilia was by. His two broth

ers, Carlos and Felipe, dubbed him "el dudo," or "the doubtful," because he was never quite sure of anything, and was of a timid nature. If" el dudo" could talk very little, he could sing like a bird, in a most delicious tenor. His admiration of Emilia caused him to compose lovely songs in her honor, and he used to coax Carlos and Felipe to play duet accompaniments on the guitar, while he serenaded her on moonlight nights. The neighborhood rejoiced greatly whenever these serenades took place; but I regret to say that Emilia treated him always with much contumely and silent scorn. The following song was one of the numerous ones which he composed for and sang to her, and it was a great favorite with us all.

« AnkstesnisTęsti »