Chapter VII: Part 7

For an hour or more he walked about trying to secure some degree of calmness, and to solve this inscrutable mystery. What was the secret of this miraculous change of voice? Had it all been a clever imitation of inferiority and discordant sound that she had practiced behind her mask? How could it be possible to so disguise the voice of a lark or of an angel such as this? And what could have been the object? Whatever it was, the creature who had long ago won his love, and who had now by the possession of this voice deepened that love to adoration, was the woman he must have for his wife, if work of man and prayers to heaven could accomplish it! The fact that she had been a masked street singer, the uncertain quantity of her relation toward the man who had played with her in that character,--all these things vanished, and Randall was possessed by the headlong wish, which dominated everything else, of getting access to her immediately, and begging her to become his wife.

He made his way back at last to the concert hall, and found the audience just dispersing. He had not wished to hear her sing again; he felt that it would be more than he could bear, but he had a definite purpose in view as he made his way to the rear of the stage. Here he met several men whom he knew, coming away.

“It’s no use, my boy!” said one of these. “Old Mensenn is immovable. He not only will not introduce us, but he refuses, for the present, to answer any questions. Perhaps he’s wise, for after such an ovation as this, if she showed up, she’d run the risk of being eaten alive. The women are as mad over her as the men.” Randall hurried on, however, and catching sight of the well-known face of old Mensenn, approached him with a certain confidence. The man had known him long, and, as Randall hoped, in a way that had made him trust him. Every effort which he made was perfectly useless, however. It was evident that no exception to his decision was to be made.

Randall was turning away half-resentfully when a man, small and unremarkable in appearance, came from a long, dark passage and, seeing him, stopped a second, and then, as if recognizing him, approached rapidly and said:

“You do not know me, but you rendered me and mine a service once, which I can never forget. You are the man who punished the brute who offered an insult to the being dearest to me in the world. I saw you from behind my mask, and have often wished that I could thank you properly for what you did. Will you call to see me to-morrow afternoon at four, and let me introduce you to my daughter that she may thank you, too?” And while Randall stood astonished and delighted, the man gave the address of the house opposite his own, and then walked away.

Randall, on his way home, felt, in spite of his joy at this stroke of fortune, as puzzled and confused in mind as ever. It was an untold relief to learn that the man with whom the woman he loved had sung in the public streets was her father, but oh, how could he have let her do it? What sort of a father could he be? And yet his somewhat pathetic face had beamed with tenderness during the few seconds in which he had spoken to him. Well, one great burden had been rolled away from his heart by the discovery of this relationship between the street singer and her companion; another had gone with the discovery that that awful sound of discord was not her natural voice; and the one that still remained, the fact that she had been a masked street singer, lay heavy on his heart still, but contrasted with the love he had for this woman, that burden he was more than ready to carry.

The next afternoon at precisely four, he rang at the door of the opposite house, and asked for Mr. May. The servant led him up several flights of stairs to the very top of the house, and then along a dark passage leading to the back building, and here she knocked at a door, and then turned and left him. A man’s voice called “Come in!” and Randall opened the door and saw his new acquaintance sitting at a table writing, and at his side his old acquaintance seated on a low chair engaged in stroking Tommy, who was greatly grown. He did not see the kitten at first, because of the fact that the young girl was dressed in deep, intense black, which swathed her to her throat and wrists. It made the brilliant loveliness of her face, however, all the more startling, as she rose to her feet, still holding Tommy, and recognized him with her usual tribute of a rosy blush. His appearance was evidently a surprise to her, though it soon became evident that her father had prepared her for the reception of a stranger, and had told her to what cause the visit was due.

The father, himself, a somewhat feeble and timid man, explained that they were in the shadow of a recent bereavement, his wife, and the girl’s mother, having died only a month or so ago. He alluded to it in a low and sorrowful voice, and ended with the words:

“You can understand, therefore, all the more, why I should have wished for the opportunity of thanking you for resenting the affront that was offered to her, by that brute, when she was exposing herself, for the sake of our child, to the dangers which such a position made inevitable. It was all that our dear daughter might be nurtured in refined and wholesome conditions, for the preservation of her health and her innocence, and the development of her voice, which has fulfilled, at last, all our hopes concerning it, when the dear mother, who so passionately loved her has passed beyond the knowledge of it.”

“Don’t say so, Father,” said the young girl, gently. “I felt her very near to me, last night. It was that thought which kept me up and enabled me to sing my best.”

As she spoke, she drew a little nearer to him, and putting Tommy on the floor, she took her father’s hand in hers and held it, while he talked to their visitor, and told his story, in a simple, frank, unworldly way that very soon put Randall in possession of the whole situation. It was made very clear to him that the mother had been the master spirit of this trio, and that this mild and ineffectual little man was very helpless without her. His lack of worldly prudence showed plainly enough in the fact that he took this stranger so fully into his confidence on the sole ground that he had once defended his dead wife from an insult. The girl, herself, too, seemed to find nothing strange in the situation, as she sat by and listened to her father’s recital of his wife’s labor of love and sacrifices.

She had once possessed a superb voice, herself, it seemed, and had received the most perfect and thorough training in a great European _conservatoire_, being herself an Italian, but before she had sung in public at all, a severe attack of throat trouble had ruined her voice forever, and she had come to America to give lessons, and in a southern town had met and married her husband. Then had begun a long life of vicissitudes of various kinds, culminating in the street-singing performances, a necessity to which they had been reduced, at last, by positive want. In this way she had eked out the little that she could make by taking pupils at a small price, and by the little jobs of writing and bookkeeping which the man himself could get, until the time should be ripe for her daughter’s _début_.

All this was told to Randall with the utmost simplicity, and Bianca, herself, sitting by, seemed pleased that he should know it. When at last he rose to go, it was like the parting of friends, and he asked and received permission to come again. He longed almost intolerably to ask her now, to-day, to be his wife, and he chafed under the necessity of delay.

And the delay, in point of fact, was not very long. When hearts are young and trusting, why should it be? And Bianca had had an instinct of blind trust in him from the first. He got Mensenn to say a good word for him; he cultivated the father and took pains to make him acquainted with the details of his life, position and circumstances; and then, at last, he felt that he had only Bianca’s consent to win.

How would she answer him? How did she feel toward him? He asked himself these questions with agitated hope and fear. Her very friendliness and frankness half frightened him at times.

One afternoon when he went to call, as he did almost daily now, he found Bianca in the little sitting-room alone. It was the first time it had happened so, and she explained her father’s absence, and that he might be in at any moment. The situation was a little constrained for her, and Randall saw it, and to reassure her he asked her to sing. She had done this frequently before, but always with her father to play her accompaniments. He volunteered to do this now, himself, and sitting down to the piano he struck the opening chords of the song he had first heard her sing. The song which had been the consummation of her revelation to him. She began to sing it. They were alone together. The song was more than speech. He turned his head and looked upward at her. His look agitated her, and her voice faltered. At this he smiled, and the voice grew more unsteady. Then suddenly he stopped playing, and without the support of the accompaniment, she broke down utterly.

But the hands that were lifted from the keys suddenly took both of hers in an imperious grasp. The gaze that she tried desperately to avoid, compelled her to look at him, and after the confession of that look she knew no more, but that she was in his arms, and was glad and satisfied.

The Story of an Old Soul

The Story of an Old Soul

All things considered, it was not strange that Clement Rhodes should have looked back upon his one year of marriage as a mere episode in his experience. His had been a life of more or less excited and turbulent episodes, all through, and perhaps that one--his marriage with an ignorant and pretty school-girl--was now among the vaguest of all the emotional impressions which were stamped upon his brain.

He had been nearer to fifty than forty, and a conventional type of old beau, when he had chanced to be thrown familiarly into the society of this young girl. Young girls were somewhat rare in his experience, for the reason that all such who had any one to look out for them, were protected from the dangers of anything more than a very casual acquaintance with him. He was permitted to take them in to dinner, to dance with them, or to pay them any passing attention when they were fully chaperoned, but there the line was drawn.

It was an unusual experience for him, therefore, when, during a visit to some friends in the country, he found himself frequently _tête-à-tête_ with a girl of eighteen, who had as little idea of protecting herself from a man like him, as her hostess had of protecting her. The fact was that this hostess had frankly declared to him her wish that he should marry this girl, saying that she was both too poor and too pretty to look out for herself.

The idea, when first presented to Rhodes, seemed absurd in the extreme, for he was poor also, and lived in a hand-to-mouth fashion, which he had known better than to ask any woman to share. He had never entertained the possibility of marrying any but a rich woman, and now, as he had grown older, and his shiftless habits were more fixed upon him, he had begun to realize that his chance of doing this was very small. The idea of marrying a penniless girl, however, was more preposterous still, and it was therefore a great surprise to him when he found himself committed to this marriage.

It had come about simply enough. He was a thoroughly initiated old flirt, and when he had tried some of his wiles upon this _ingénue_, and she had responded by an innocent revelation of her love for him, there proved to be one note in him sufficiently finely attuned to compel him to act honorably by this young girl who had trusted him. Without stopping to consider how it would hamper him for the future, he married her, and took her to as comfortable a little set of rooms as he could manage to secure.

He was in love with her, of course. Falling in love was one of the most facile of feats to Rhodes, and falling out was about as easy. Heretofore, dancers and comic-opera singers had been the most frequent objects of his worn-out affections, and the present contrast to all this had undoubtedly something piquant in it.

After a few months, however, the prosaic demands of the monotonous home life in the little suburban roost, where his friends never came, grew very wearing, particularly as his wife was delicate, and indisposed to join him in his trips to the theatres and concert-halls, which had become a confirmed habit of his life. She did not wish to confine him at home, however, and she insisted that he should go without her, so that gradually he found himself slipping back into his bachelor ways.

It was very welcome to Rhodes about this time to have any means of drowning care, for he was badgered about debts and expenses, finding it more than he could do to keep going even that poor establishment. He had a desultory occupation as an insurance agent, by which he picked up a little money now and then; but younger and more industrious men were fast pushing him aside, and his income diminished as his expenses increased.

It was, therefore, even to his consciousness, just as well that his young wife died. It would perhaps have been better if the baby had died with her, and he could so have buried out of sight all reminder of that strange and incongruous episode in his life.

But the baby, a tiny girl, did not die. She struggled through teething, and whooping cough, and measles, and many other such attacks, in the midst of neglect, cold, heat, hunger, and pain, and lived on, growing into an almost preternaturally serious, wise, and thoughtful child.

There is a theory of which this father and child might be taken as striking examples. It is to the effect that every created soul has the same period of human life to compass, and that it exists, in successive human incarnations, until that period is accomplished. Sometimes, but an hour or a minute may be needed to make up the exact sum, but the re-incarnation must necessarily be, even if for no longer a time than that. This theory, we are told, accounts for the phenomena of youth in age, and age in youth, which we so often see; in other words, it explains why a very aged person is often silly and childish, and a young child wise and matured in mind. When this occurs (so the theory goes) the old person is in his or her first incarnation--is, in fact, a young soul--while the child may be in his or her last incarnation, an old soul almost ready to be liberated from humanity and admitted to the higher life.

Whether there be truth in this theory, or not, certain it is that Clem Rhodes had the attributes of a young soul, ignorant in mind and shallow in feeling, while his little daughter (whom her fond mother had named Clementina) had the mental force and depth of feeling which might well seem to belong to an old soul.

The strangest part of it was the way in which they both seemed to realize the truth about themselves. Although Clementina was now but six years old, and her father was well over fifty, there could be no question as to which of them was the guiding, ruling, dominating spirit. Her mind was as marked for its orderliness as her father’s was for the absence of that trait. Quite from within, she had evolved a sentiment of horror for debt and loose dealing of every kind, and she would sit in judgment on her father for such practices in a way, which, however strange, he never thought of resenting. In some way never fully accounted for, she had formed the habit of calling him “Clem,” or “Boy,” instead of “Papa.”

Clementina was by no means beautiful--a small, thin, pale child, with enormous dark eyes, which were so thoughtful and steady in their expression that most people who looked at her, ever so casually, found their attention caught and fixed, and an impression of wonder conveyed to them.

The child’s life was almost absolutely lonely, in spite of the fact that she had found out and entered herself as a pupil at a small free school in the neighborhood; for she kept apart from everyone; and although she made extraordinary progress in her lessons, she made no friends. It was her father’s habit to be absent all day, so she prepared her little mid-day meal, and partook of it alone.

By this time Rhodes’s flagging energies and accumulating years had reduced him to such poverty, that his former rather comfortable set of rooms was now diminished to one, and in this he and the child slept, cooked, ate their meals, and lived. They had two folding-beds, which were closed up in the daytime, and a folding-table, which was then opened. At night, the beds were lowered into the central space of the room, and the table folded back against the wall.

Rhodes always took his breakfast and late dinner with the child, these meals being cooked and served by her with very little help from him. She also did the marketing, and kept the accounts, setting down all her figures neatly and accurately, but getting his help in adding up the columns.

The father, of course, had a life of his own, which was as apart from that of the child, as her long, lonely hours were apart from his. He had dropped out of society, almost entirely, and he frequented the theatres more than ever. Occasionally, he took the child with him; but although she never so far relaxed her dignity as to fall asleep, she seemed to get but little pleasure out of it, and her solemn air and deeply thoughtful expression so grated on him, that he was glad that she did not oftener express a wish to go.

Clementina was a strangely wakeful child, and he had never yet been able to steal into the room, no matter at what hour of the night, or with what degree of stealth, that she had not heard him.

“That you, Boy?” she would say, her voice sounding strangely conscious in the stillness and darkness. Then, invariably, she would sit up in her little bed, and strike a match and light the candle placed beside her. Then, when at her command he would come to kiss her good-night, she would give him that swift, searching look, which he always knew was coming, and then, if satisfied, she would lie down and go quietly to sleep.

As a general thing, it happened that she was satisfied, but there had been times when it was otherwise, and those occasions Rhodes remembered with such distinct unpleasantness, that they served him as valuable warnings. She had never uttered any rebuke in words, but the deep, penetrating condemnation of her concentrated gaze had made him feel, that for that moment his life was turned inside out to her, and that she saw him as he was.

This was all the more painful to him, because of the fact that the child seemed to be possessed of an inherent respect for him. She advised, and even censured him at times, it is true, but always Rhodes had a sense of being deferred to, and it was a grateful feeling to the heart of such a poor devil as he.

Clementina never complained of solitude, and, as a rule, she seemed to prefer these lonely evenings, spent in studying her lessons, tidying things up, sewing on buttons, cleaning spots from her father’s clothes, and doing odd jobs of mending, to the alternative of going to the theatre. Occasionally, however, she would announce that she was going with him, and at such times he never objected.

Rhodes had now been a widower for more than six years, and these years had been a tolerably fair copy of his bachelor days, except that he now made his life among people of a somewhat lower grade than formerly; for they were almost exclusively third-rate actresses, dancers, concert-singers, etc. It was a life through which he would quickly have sunk very low, but for one thing--the influence of Clementina. She never preached goodness to him, nor talked religion (poor child, she had been taught little enough of either!), and yet she continually held him up to his better self, and dragged him back to it when he fell away.

About this time there appeared a celebrated dancer, whose services were engaged for the entire season at the Summer-Garden concerts, and poor old Clem, for the fortieth time, imagined that the _grande passion_ of his life had come upon him.

Mademoiselle Tarara was not so far removed from first youth as he, but still she was by no means young. Her matured charms, however, were positively deadly to the troops of boys who attended these concerts, and she soon found herself not only a financial, but a popular success. She was fond of boys, and her intercourse with them was far less harmful to them than it might have been. She had a great deal of rollicking fun in her, and she could always sing better and kick higher, when she was spurred on by the enthusiastic clapping and shouting of her young admirers. With the single exception of Rhodes, they were all many years her junior.

And if she was fond of the boys, she was also fond of Rhodes, for the very reason that he was a foil for them. Life was behind him, as it was behind her, and she often found his point of view congenial, after too much of the boyish element.

So Rhodes was admitted to the privilege of visiting her at her own rooms, which the boys were not, and his battered old heart was in the seventh heaven of delight.

The people whom he met at the Tarara’s rooms were of a sort with herself, and all of them were so easy-going and inconsequent, that it was a pleasant reaction from the rather constraining ideal held up to him by his child.

Poor old Clem! He had been a dreamer all his life--of the earth, earthy, though his dreams had been--and shifting and unstable as they were in character. The favor which the Tarara showed him now had led him into dreams of a marriage with her, which would establish him for life in the green-room and lime-light atmosphere which he loved, and would give him, not only the Tarara herself, with whom he believed he was madly in love, but also all the other things which he desired in life. In the pursuance of these hopes, he had resolutely concealed from her the knowledge of the fact that he had a child, believing that it would be quite fatal to his cause.

In the evenings, when work was over, and the tiny room in perfect order, Clementina would sit alone and think. Of what did she think there in her little chair, so neat and self-collected, with her eyes fixed on space, or else occasionally turned upward to the stars, of which she could see a small bright patch out of her little window? Her experience in this human existence had been so meagre, the avenues of knowledge so limited, that it would almost seem reasonable to suppose that she drew upon former experiences in some other incarnation, for the material of that deep thinking and wise doing, which continually occupied her.

One evening, it happened that Clem became conscious of an unusually penetrating and scrutinizing look fixed upon him by this austere child of his, and he imagined that it was in some occult way the result of that investigation, which caused her to announce, suddenly,

“I’m going with you this evening, Clem.”

“Where?” he said, surprised.

“Wherever you are going.”

“I’m going to the concert,” he said; and then added, dissuadingly, “You wouldn’t like it.”

“But I’m going,” she answered, putting away her dusting-cloth, after having made the room as neat as usual.

He felt a certain protest and anxiety, but he never resisted her, and so a little later they were taking their places in front of the lowered curtain. The prices at these concerts were very small, and there was always a good attendance, but the child and her father being early, had secured good seats.

In spite of himself, Clem was feeling rather uncomfortable this evening. He was not so free to indulge his admiration for the inimitable Tarara with this discordant element beside him--and what if his secret should be discovered? He had, moreover, the strongest feeling that Clementina’s eyes invariably saw through the surface of things into their souls. He was afraid for her to see the Tarara, and still more afraid for the Tarara to see her, though, of course, if this should happen, he need not own the relationship between them.

Clem now felt a shrinking from the thought of Clementina’s comments on the Tarara, and he didn’t like the idea of the dancer appearing before the child in her tinsel and tights. She always came out arrayed thus for at least one dance, though she generally changed her costume several times during the evening.

As Rhodes took a furtive look at the figure beside him, his sense of discomfiture increased.

She was startlingly pale, and so slim and delicate, that he was not surprised that the people about them looked at her with a certain pity, of which, it was evident, she took no account. Her odd garments and queer hat also marked her out for special notice; and when, taken in connection with all the rest, one noted the strange penetrating gaze of her immense dark eyes, it was not surprising, perhaps, that Rhodes felt uncomfortable and half irritated at the position in which he found himself.

That fixed, absorbed look on the child’s face did not change when the performance began. It was a merry chorus which made the audience laugh and beat time, but Clementina was unmoved. Then two men came out and danced a clog-dance, during which her look remained the same--as if, somehow, she saw through and beyond it all.

It was with a feeling of distinct apprehension that Rhodes now saw Mademoiselle Tarara make her appearance. She was dressed in an Italian peasant costume, but the skirts were shorter and the bodice lower than necessity required. He looked at the child to see if her countenance expressed any disapproval. To his great surprise, he saw that the little pale face had softened into a look of pleasure, as if she recognized something that she liked.

The Tarara, meanwhile, was posed, with her hands on her hips, waiting for her cue from the orchestra.

As she stood thus, she looked around the house with an expression of friendly good-will on her face--the true index of a quality in her which accounted largely for her popularity. Then she began to sing.

It was a ballad of the “homely pathetic” order, such as never fails to go to the hearts of an audience, with its allusions to mother, wife, child, home, etc., and the Tarara sang it with great feeling.

Rhodes, watching that strange child of his, whom he always felt to be a mystery beyond his ken, saw now a look of deep content and pleasure settle on her face, and some very rare tear-drops rise to her eyes.

When the song had ended, she turned to him and said, abruptly:

“I love that lady.”

A strange sense of joy throbbed through the man’s heart at these words. They were something more than a surprise.

“She is good and kind,” said Clementina, with the same tone of conviction. “I wish she would come back.”

Rhodes, for his part, rather dreaded that return, for fear the sweet impression might be destroyed. But when she afterward appeared as a smart hussar, and sang a barrack song, and then as a _vivandière_ and gurgled her song from over a tin canteen, the impression which she had made upon the child was evidently not disturbed.

It was noticeable, however, that the Tarara was the only one of the performers who had found favor with Clementina. The others either bored her, or roused a feeling of disapproval, which that strong little face well knew how to express.

The last appearance of the Tarara was in a ballet costume, and as she floated out on the stage and pirouetted up to the footlights, Rhodes glanced with real timidity at the child. He dreaded the effect of the bare limbs and painted face upon this austere judge. But Clementina’s eyes were fixed with a look of unmixed pleasure upon the dancer, who, as Clem now saw to his amazement, caught and returned her gaze.

It was for a second only, but there could be no doubt of it, and the child saw it, also, for she flushed with happiness and said, under her breath:

“Oh, the sweet lady!”

With the same look of confidence and content, she followed every movement until the dance was ended.

The Tarara, after that one glance, did not again look at the child, but as she skimmed and bounded about the stage, going through all the peculiarly imbecile motions of the modern ballet dance, as she toyed with her tarletan skirts and sidled diagonally on her poor blunted toes, threw her body backward and waved her arms, then smirked and grimaced at the applause that burst from the house, the child’s gaze grew more and more delighted, until it deepened into a look of burning love.

This gaze, also, the dancer caught as she was leaving the stage, and she not only caught, but returned it. Rhodes began to feel deeply alarmed for his secret, but the reflection, that she could not possibly know that the child was his, partly reassured him.

The Tarara vanished in a storm of applause. She had outdone herself to-night, and the audience sent up a vociferous encore.

“Oh, is she coming back? Is she coming back?” asked Clementina, breathlessly.

Her father, greatly wondering, assured her that the dancer would return.

But as the applause rose, subsided, then swelled again, and no Tarara appeared, he found that he had spoken too quickly. It became evident that the favorite refused to respond to the encore, and now, as four couples in the costumes of Bowery toughs swaggered out on the stage, the house grew quiet and turned its attention to the new performance.

But Clementina would not look at them. Instead, she turned to her father and said, in a voice of emphatic command:

“Take me to see that lady.”

Rhodes was accustomed to obey the mandates of this imperious child, but for once he resisted her.

“I cannot,” he said. “She is in her room. She is tired. People are not allowed to go to her private room.”

“But I am going,” said Clementina, in a tone in which, in all his experience, he had never known her to utter a fiat that was unfulfilled. As she spoke she rose from her place and took her father’s hand, urging him insistently to go. Seeing that they were being observed by those about them, Rhodes yielded unwillingly, and when they were without in the vestibule of the theatre, she spoke again, in the same tone:

“I am going to see that lady,” she said. “If you do not take me, I will go without you.”

He was so accustomed to seeing her perform resolutely whatever she undertook--this strange, determined child of his--that he felt that he could not thwart her will, and so he began, in a helpless, entreating fashion, to try to alter it.

“Oh, Clementina, please don’t go!” he said. “Come home with me--please do! I’ll do anything you want if you’ll only come home with me now.”

“Not until I have seen that lady,” said the child, an expression of indomitable purpose making her little face look strangely old.

Poor Clem was almost in tears. He felt that he had not the power to resist her, and he felt, at the same time, that if she carried her point his case was lost with the Tarara. He had hoped to win her consent to marry him, and he had meant to conceal the child’s existence until the marriage should be over, and then to confess it, throwing himself upon her mercy, and offering to put the child in some school or asylum where she should be kindly treated and yet be out of the way.

But if Clementina persisted, now, all would be lost. He resolved upon a subterfuge and a lie. The child’s purpose must be frustrated at all costs.

“If you will come with me now,” he said, “I will take you to see her to-morrow. Come, Clementina, please.”

“To-morrow will not do,” the child began, in that same tone of resolution, but at this instant a boy came up to them, and delivered a message to Clem. This message was a summons to him to come at once to the Tarara’s room, and to bring the child.

With a last effort at resistance he was beginning to frame an excuse, when, in the very midst of his speech, Clementina said, decisively, speaking to the boy:

“I am coming. Show me the way,” and the poor old father was scarcely surprised when he found the messenger ignoring him entirely, and obeying the words of the child.

She had already started after him, and Clem could only follow them, in feeble wretchedness and disappointment.

The boy led the way through various dusty and dimly-lighted passages, and presently paused before a door at which he rapped sharply, and then walked away.

A voice said: “Come in!”

Clementina turned the knob, and entered, her father following, and taking care to close the door behind him.

Instead of finding the popular dancer flung in picturesque abandonment on the lounge, drinking iced champagne or smoking a cigarette (which was what Rhodes expected) he saw her seated before her dressing-table, on which were scattered a disorderly collection of wigs, masks, powder-puffs, curling-irons, rouge-pots, and various other paraphernalia of her profession. Her elbows were crushing some artificial flowers, as she sat with her chin in her hands and her gaze fixed solemnly upon her own reflection in the mirror.

As she turned toward them, the child ran forward and flung her arms around the dancer’s bare neck, lifting her face to be kissed.

The Tarara gave a little cry, and sprang to her feet, and then, the next instant, crouched down again, and made a motion as if she would cover, with her short tarletan skirts, the exposure of plump legs cased in thin flesh-colored tights. What had come over her? Those shapely limbs were usually her pride. When had she felt any sense of modesty about them before?

But the child was not looking at them. Neither did she look at the false hair, the rouge, the powder, the painted eyebrows, and _bistré_ lids. She had clasped her arms around the dancer’s neck again, and was looking straight into her eyes.

The feeling which came to the Tarara as she met that look was that one creature saw her soul, at last.

“I love you. You are kind, and sweet, and good,” the child said, softly, still regarding her with that deep, penetrating gaze, and with intense conviction in her tone.

The Tarara’s painted face began to quiver, and great tear-drops brimmed her eyes, as she caught the little creature to her, crushing to irremediable flatness her diaphanous tarletan skirts. She strained the small creature to her breast a moment, and then seated her on her lap. She had caught up a rich plush cape from a chair, and had thrown it over the tights and dancing-shoes.

Rhodes, meanwhile, stood looking on, in a state of stupefaction. They had both forgotten him, as they clung to each other, with close kisses and embraces.

A deep emotion was evident in both of them, but its character was different. The woman was stirred to a passionate excitement; her breaths came in deep, catching sobs; her face worked with a nervous strain; and her cheeks flushed hotly under their rouge. The child, on the other hand, was deeply calm and grave. She lay with utter contentment in that bedizened creature’s arms, and looked up at her as trustingly and unquestioningly as though she had been a Madonna. This long, deep, concentrated look was undisturbed, as she said with a wondering seriousness:

“Are you my mother?”

“No, darling, no,” the dancer said, bending above her with a mother’s tenderness, while the tears ran down her cheeks, making a pitiable daub of black and white and red there.

“My mother died,” the child went on, looking only at the gentle eyes of the woman, and speaking in a grave and placid tone.

“And my little baby died,” the dancer said. “She would have been as old as you. She died before she ever knew her mother’s face, and my heart has been empty, ever since.”

“I love you,” said the child.

The strong, spasmodic movement with which the dancer crushed her to her heart, as she said these words, must have been physically painful, but if it was, the child gave no sign, except a radiant smile of joy. There was a look of almost holy calm upon the little pallid face. She put up one small hand, and patted lovingly the smeared face that bent above her.

“You are good,” she said.

“Am I, darling? Oh, I should like to be! If my little baby had lived perhaps I should have been, though everybody has been bad to me. No one has ever loved me, as you do, before.”

“Your little child loves you,” was the quiet answer, still with that look and tone of knowledge.

“Oh, do you think she does, and that I will some time have her again?”

“Yes,” said the child, with a certainty that seemed to make doubt unreasonable. Then looking around, as if in sudden recollection, she said, “Clem--Boy--come here.”

At these words a lingering hope sprang up in Rhodes’s heart. This strange mode of addressing him might enable him to keep his secret still. If he could only get the child away now, and to-morrow contrive some way of accounting for her! With this end in view he came forward, the child turning on him, as he did so, the fond, penetrating look he knew so well.

The dancer glanced quickly from one to the other, but it was the child she questioned, and not the man.

“Is he your father?” she said.

“Yes,” said Clementina. “My mother died when I was very little. He has been so good to me.”

But what was the matter with Clementina’s voice, and why was her breath suddenly so short and difficult? Rhodes was conscious of this, even in that moment when he realized that his secret was revealed, and his hopes of the Tarara blasted. She was conscious of it, too, and her face took on a sudden look of terror.

Rhodes dropped upon his knees beside the two, who still clung to one another in that close embrace. Over the child’s drooped head the man and the woman exchanged a quick, scared look. Then both looked at the child.

The gaze that answered their excited ones was so calm, so strong, so full of knowledge and assured content, that outwardly, at least, they were quieted. One thin, little arm lay still around the dancer’s neck, and with evident effort she lifted the other and laid it around the neck of her frightened, childish old father.

Almost instantly it fell back heavily. There was a little twitch of the thin body, a stifled breath, one more sweet glance of love, and the child lay dead between them.

In a moment all was excitement and confusion. The alarm was given. People thronged the room. Doctors were summoned, but one look assured them that all was over with the child.

The Tarara, with trembling limbs and chattering teeth, threw on some clothes and drove home in the carriage with Rhodes, holding the dead child all the way close pressed against her heart.

Only once did the woman speak to him. It was when, between them, they had got the little body up to the tiny room, which had been its home in life, and had laid it upon one of the folding-beds, which had been so neatly made a few hours back. Then the Tarara, glancing around the poor place, so purely clean and orderly, taking in the details here and there--the child’s slate and lesson books, and her little work-basket, with its half-used spools of thread and small brass thimble--and contrasting it with her own sumptuous rooms and luxurious living, turned her gaze upon the man who stood helpless and miserable in the midst of this poverty-stricken home, and said:

“I would have married you for this child. You should have let me know.”

Once More

Once More

In the days when the great West was still the wild West, many a strange scene took place before the eye of the gazer, who had the advantage of two points of view, and who could get the whole zest of these primitive conditions, by the process of contrasting them with a foregone civilization.

Such a one was the man, who had once been known in the fashionable circles of an eastern city as William Wilmerding, but who now, in the mining-camp, went by the more convenient name of Bill Will.

He had been a tender-foot when he first came to the camp, but it was not long before he hardened to the necessary state of roughness and toughness, to make him acceptable to his companions and approved mining standards, and at last he became a prime favorite with the spirited and desperate fellows, who knew but the savage and seamy side of life, but who yet had something in them which responded to the charm of education and refinement, when properly repudiated and concealed.

For Bill, in his dress and in his daring deeds, was as tough and wild as any of them; indeed, there was a spirit of desperation in the man, which more than once had roused the admiration of the camp, in times of danger, and which had its source in a certain feeling in William Wilmerding’s heart, which was his life secret--a secret which he had come to bury in this strange new existence. Nothing but despair of his heart’s desire would have brought and kept him here.

Every camp in those days had its own pet pursuit, and in this one it was horse-racing. Their track was not as smooth as civilization would have made it, but for that very reason better horses and better riders were required. Every spring and autumn they had a grand race-day, and the purses put up were so large, and the private betting was so reckless, that big sums of money were exchanged, and often the rich became poor, and the poor rich. These men had no families dependent upon them, and when once their blood was up, they did not hesitate to risk their last cent.

On the occasion of one of the spring races, the bustle and excitement were at their very height, and the most important race of the day was about to be run, when there drove into the field a wagon, in which were seated two such strange and alien-looking figures, that even the exciting demands of the present moment gave place, for a little while, to this new influence. The cart was driven by a hale and hearty old man, who looked impressively proud of his mission, and who was lifted so far above mining etiquette as to take off his hat to the assembled horse racers, as he brought his cart to a standstill. It was probably, however, reverence for his passengers that led to this “break.”

The passengers were two gray-clad, white-bonneted sisters of charity, who looked about them, on this alien scene, with mild-eyed wonder. One of them was stout, middle-aged, and homely, with energy and resolution written on every line of her face. The other was small, and young, and fair.

As the cart halted, the old man got up and announced that the sisters had come up from the mission, two hundred miles away, to ask for contributions toward the building of an orphanage, of which there was pressing need.

His speech was listened to with the politest attention by the crowd, a few men, here and there, being so far affected as to take off their hats in a shame-faced sort of way, and then confusedly to put them on again. The two sisters said nothing, but their mere presence there, looking about them with placid kindly faces that carried a message of pure goodness to every heart, so impressed the camp that, for the moment, the zest about the coming race seemed in danger of eclipse.

This peril was perceived by one of the crowd, a tough and wiry little old man known as Jerry, who had great influence in the camp, and he now pushed his way to the front, and jumping on an upturned box, addressed the assemblage in lusty tones. Jerry was not altogether temperate in his habits, and his face and manner, to-day, indicated an ardor and excitement not wholly to be attributed to the coming great race. He was in the highest good humor, however, and his face fairly kindled, as he said:

“Time for the race, boys! Clear the track! Never you mind, old girl,” to the elder of the sisters. “You’re all right. Pull off to one side there, driver, and let the sisters watch the race; and if Whirlwind wins it, we’ll give the old girl a send-off that’ll make her heart jump out of her body.”

The crowd answered with a cheer, and the current of interest was again turned toward the race track, down which Whirlwind, ridden by Bill Will, was now returning from a gentle preliminary canter. Bill Will had been at the other side of the course when the sisters had arrived, and now, as he rode up to the starting-point, his eyes rested on these strange figures for the first time.

As they did so, he turned deadly white, and his body swayed in the light saddle, so that he almost lost his balance--a fact noticed, perhaps, by but one being in all that crowd, for, to the miners, a man amounted to little, beside a horse, on this day, and they were all gazing eagerly at Whirlwind to see if he looked in condition.

The person who saw only the man, and who had no consciousness of the horse, was the younger of the two sisters. Her face had turned as white as his, and now, while the attention of all the rest was fixed upon the horse, her glance met that of the rider, with a gaze of mutual consciousness.

She saw him struggle to right himself, and to regain his self control, and she heard him say faintly that his throat was dry. A dozen flasks were hurriedly jerked from pockets, and held out to him.

“No,” he said, “water!” and, at the sound of his voice, the little sister turned from white to burning red.

A man ran quickly and brought him some water in a tin cup. Before he took it, he removed his cap, and as he bent to drink, he looked again into the little sister’s eyes, as if he pledged her thus, in silence.

Then, with a powerful rallying of his forces, he drew in Whirlwind’s reins, and settled himself in his saddle, and with a low bow that might have graced a knight at a tournament, but which no one here noticed, or would have comprehended, he took his place with the other horses at the starting-point.

There was mad riding that day. The camp had hitherto seen nothing like it. The men from neighboring camps, who had entered fine horses upon which they had staked all their earthly possessions, had gone in to win, and were resolved that Whirlwind should not have this race, if grit in man and beast could prevent it. Every horse was strained to its extremest powers, and every rider rode with a conscious risk of neck and limb, but if the others did the utmost possible, it seemed as though Whirlwind and his rider did the impossible.

Every eye was so strained upon that break-neck rush around the course, that a spectator was very sure of escaping observation; so no one saw the little sister’s face. Even the motherly old creature at her side was peering eagerly through her steel-rimmed spectacles, not in any absorption in the race, but in dire anxiety for the life and limbs of those reckless men.

One man, in truth, was thrown and stunned, one noble horse out-strained himself and broke a blood-vessel, but Whirlwind’s rider, who had been the boldest there, came in unscathed, and Whirlwind won the race.

And then began a whooping and cheering that made the place a pandemonium, which even the unwonted feminine presence in their midst could not keep in abeyance. Gold and silver, flowing like water, passed from hand to hand, making some rich, and others poor; for in the camp such indebtednesses were settled on the instant, and no man shirked.

When accounts were apparently squared, Jerry, wild with enthusiasm, sprang up in front of the cart in which the sisters sat, and shouted lustily:

“Our horse has won the race! Hurrah for Whirlwind and Bill Will!”

When the cheer had been repeated to the echo, Jerry, taking fresh breath, went on:

“And hurrah for the sisters and the orphans, too, I say! March up here, every mother’s son of you, and ante up half your winnin’s for the orphans! Here you are, old girl,” he said, throwing a big handful of gold into her lap. “That’s half of my pile, and if ever you tackle an orphan o’ mine, teach it to bet its last dollar on the winnin’ horse! Come ahead, boys! Every last one o’ you throw in half your pile, and the devil take the one that refuses!”

For the next five minutes, the gold and silver coins fell like pouring hailstones into the old sister’s ample lap, and while this was going on, Bill Will, with quiet, stealthy footsteps, approached the cart from the other side, and poured his contribution into the lap of the younger sister. Those who noticed it were not aware that it was not the half, but the whole of his winnings, of which he so disposed. Nor did they notice that, among the coins, was a little woodland flower, which he had stooped and gathered.

This small and worthless offering was not wholly overlooked, however, for before she turned over her rich tribute of gold to her companion, the little sister took the flower and hid it in the folds of her gray gown--an action that was clearly seen by one.

Presently the old man stirred up his drowsy horse, and the cart began to move. He had thanked the crowd for their generous charity, in the name of the sisters, whose order did not permit them such public speech.

The men stood watching the departure of the cart with a certain wistfulness. The sight of these good women had roused them to unwonted musings. But of the tragedy taking place beneath their eyes, they had no imagination--for in that moment, a man and a woman who had loved with the supreme passion of their hearts, and who had been separated by an inexorable fate, had looked their last into each other’s eyes.

PRINTED AT THE LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO
FOR HERBERT S. STONE & CO.
MDCCCXCVI

October, 1896. _Established May, 1896._ Number 1.

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