 | CHAPTER XXVII.
ANY PORT IN A STORM. The Wetherel affair |  |
27. CHAPTER XXVII.
ANY PORT IN A STORM.
The two young women alighted below Canal street, in one of those quiet
quarters of the east side of the city which have been forsaken by whatever grandeur
they once possessed, where dingy and dirty and unlovely tenement houses
mingle with sombre and unpleasantly odorous storehouses, where fashionable
ladies never go, and suppose that no one else lives.
Turning into a narrow street, bordered by sloppy gutters and piles of garbage,
and walking for some distance under the mildewing shadow of tall, unshapely,
hard-visaged, discolored edifices, they halted before a plain, dolefully
plain doorway, a mere rectangular opening in an ungarnished front of cold
gray stone.
“I have lodgings here,” said Miss Imogen, with an air which seemed to
explain that it was only a temporary arrangement, and she should soon move
into a castle. “I am sorry, on your account, that they are in the fourth story.
But the air and light are so much better up there! Hold on to my arm as hard
as you want to.”
Up they went, clinging to dirty banisters, avoiding the flaky whitewash of
neglected walls, and creaking along the bare floors of musty, not to say rancid
passages. At last, breathless and tottering, Nestoria was ushered into a small
furnished room, the combined parlor and bedehamber of Imogen Eleonore. It
was not sumptuous, but it was less comfortless and forbidding than the approach
to it had promised, for there was a carpet, a fresh and clean bed, and a
small array of other decent chattels.
“Now, the first chore is to dry you,” said Miss Jones, who was as simple
and practical in some moments as she was stilted and sentimental in others.
“You'll have to go to bed till your clothes are dried, for in mine you'd look
like a baby in a long gown. You fix yourself the best you can for repose while
I light my gas-stove and make a dish of tea for you. I feel as though I was
ministering to some survivor of a shipwreck. There is a beautiful passage in
a story that I want you to read: something about how he lifted in his arms
a white, white form, with a beautiful dead face and sweeping yellow hair, dripping,
dripping ever, with the green seaweed tangled in its golden depths—
Well, I won't tell any more,” she added, seeing that Nestoria was stopping her
ears. “I mustn't spoil it for you.”
There was a busy silence of a few minutes, during which the one girl prepared
her “dish of tea,” while the other nestled into her resting-place.
“So you have retired, have you?” resumed Imogen Eleonore, turning to
survey her guest. “What lovely hair you have—sweeping yellow hair—golden
depths!” she went on, staring with admiration at Nestoria's abundant sunny
tresses. “Truly the stranger within my gates is worthy of the hospitality of
a castle. I wish I could treat you in a castle-like fashion, and wave my hand
toward some vast hall full of servitors, and say, What ho, without there! more
wine, page! But it must be tea or nothing to-day. Here it is on this little table,
and here's your lunch, and there are the periodicals—the `Weekly Turtle
Dove' and `Spasmodic'—all the back numbers for six months. I'll be back at
three, and then we'll consider about dinner, and lay our plans for the future.
You'll have to lock the door after me, and you must only open when I tap
three times, twice quickly, and then once. Fear naught; your secret is safe.
Adeu and o revore.”
And with a wave of her hand, which she had caught from a sensational
woodcut, the kindly, eccentric Imogen Eleonore departed. She went forth
into a world of temptation, and she overcame it. She met people who would
have been charmed to hear the story of her problematic guest, and she told
them nothing. The mystery was to her a fountain of exquisite happiness and
glory, too precious to be shared with such commonplace souls as all her friends
now seemed to her. During the humdrum hours of her school-teaching, she
had this nectar served in the most gorgeous halls of her imagination, and held
incessant revelry over it. It was refreshment for the immortals, ennobling
and aggrandizing her entire nature, and enabling her to look down upon her
fellow “instructors,” and even upon the principal. At last she had a finger
in a romance, a real and thrilling and abysmal romance, an adventure which
was not one bit like common life, an enigma as sombre and ghostly as any of
the gooseflesh marvels of the “Spasmodic”
The matter gave her much thought as well as much gladness. What could
be the spring, the awful motive force, the dark and deep first cause of this
mystery? A false lover? A flinty-hearted father? An unintended crime?
Aspirations too great for humanity? This strange, plaintive girl, who had
made her apparition in Fulton Market as damp and as long-haired as a mermaid,
had she escaped from the pirates who, as is well known to readers of
weekly literature, haunt the waters of New York bay, or had she simply come
forth from an unavailing attempt at suicide? Well, whatever the precise realistic
bottom of the business might be, it was on the surface a solemn, tremendous,
fascinating, luxurious mystery. As Imogen Eleonore went about her
arithmetical and geographical tuitions that morning, she constantly murmured
in the recesses of her soul, “Oh, enigma! enigma!” Keep the secret? Yes, by
all that was romantic and sentimental; by all those tender heroines who had
pined away in the pages of the “Turtle Dove,” and those queenly ones who
had died at the feet of the ensanguined columns of the “Spasmodic;” by all
the tears and pantings and long-drawn screams that she had read of as “to be
continued in our next.” The very extravagances of this fantastic schoolma'am
made her one of the securest confidantes and most zealous protectors which all
our motley humanity could have furnished for Nestoria.
Her educational duties performed, Miss Jones hurried homeward with
breathless speed, and found her protégée dressed.
“I am so relieved!” she gasped. “I had a fearful presentiment that you
had flown. Are your garments dry? Well, now, let us discourse the thrilling
future. An idea struck me as I wended my way homeward, by which we can
save filthy lucre. Instead of taking a room for yourself, why not share mine?”
“Oh, thank you,” answered Nestoria. “I could not bear, not yet a while,
to live alone.”
“Poo—r, poor cheild!” murmured Imogen Eleonore. “Solitude and darkness
would add to the horror of thy obscure, unshared sorrow.”
“Do not speak of it, I beg of you,” implored Nestoria, her face quite pale.
“Never, nevermore!” promised Miss Jones in her most exalted manner.
“Never again shall that drear topic pass the sealed portal of my lips. The
past no more! Henceforward we will live for the future. Well, now about
dinner?” she continued, relapsing into her earthly tone.
Dinner they obtained in a cheap little restaurant, one of many in New York
which are unknown to fame, and which deserve to remain so. It was a shop
or “saloon” of moderate dimensions, the front crowded with tables and chairs
which in diminutiveness and fragility resembled insects, and the rear cut up
into narrow alcoves, where the very atmosphere seemed oleaginous and nourishing.
On their arrival they found most of the tables already occupied by
people who were evidently of the class which must glance at the cost of a dish
before ordering it. There were gentlemen, for instance, who were clerks or
mechanics, and ladies who were school-teachers, or milliners, or otherwise industrial.
They talked little, as is the time-saving fashion of Americans in
feeding, and appeared to find their chief social enjoyment in looking at each
other in a dumb, unobtrusive way, like so many sheep or other ruminating animals
at pasture. Through these tranquil revellers, as silent as the old fellows
whom Rip Van Winkle encountered among the Catskills, Miss Jones made her
way with an air of secrecy which was equivalent to wearing an iron mask,
pursing her thin lips with lofty firmness, and glancing neither to right nor left.
Nestoria, her face hidden by a green veil, and every nerve trembling with fear
the ragged curtains drawn upon the world. The waiter suspected nothing
illegal; at least he brought no policeman. The prandial problem was solved
for that day, and for many days succeeding.
On the way homeward they bought a few fans, colors, and brushes, such as
Nestoria needed to commence her small industry; and all the evening she
painted, while Imogen Eleonore watched her in admiration, or read tremendous
serials to her out of the “Spasmodic.”
“Why, it's beyu—ti-ful!” exclaimed this easily-moved young woman,
when a partially finished fan was spread before her, splendid with a bordering
of roses and lilies. “What a lovely pattern of gorgeous hues and labyrinthine
verdure! It reminds me of enchanted gardens of delights, too fair—far too fair
—for earth. You must teach me how to do this sort of work.”
“I will show you all I know,” said Nestoria.
“Not so!” resolutely answered Miss Jones, after a moment of severe reflection.
“I have my own sphere, and I will not intrude upon yours.”
It had occurred to her that if she once began to paint fans, her genius
would impel her to paint them as no other woman ever did or could,
and so she should drive her little guest out of the market. That, of course,
she might never, never do; and she must resist the very beginnings of
temptation.
“Farewell, art!” she continued, waving her maguanimous right hand.
“Farewell the bright sunlights and rich clouds of the æsthetic! Hail, geography
and arithmetic! To your anstere mysteries I dedicate my powers.”
What did Nestoria, what could the entirely artless, sincere Nestoria
think of this whimsical companion? She marvelled at her; she was as much
perplexed by Miss Imogen Eleonore as a lamb might be by a monkey or a
chicken by a parrot; but, while she found her passing strange, she did not find
her ridiculous. It was not in the child's serious and kind nature to discover
absurdity in that mysterious medley which she had been taught to call “poor
humanity,” nor to make of any fellow in the solemn pilgrimage of life an object
of lightminded mirth. Furthermore, she was profoundly grateful to this
good Samaritan in calico who had given her shelter and sympathy; and had
she been capable of detecting aught ludicrous in her ways, she would not have
laughed at it; she would as soon have made sport of the bald head of Elijah.
No such thoughtless or disrespectful young person was she as were those two
and forty who were torn by the bears.
The two girls were now fairly launched on a hermit-like existence, such as
Nestoria's position demanded. Amid the busy and incurious million of New
York they led the life of the proverbial needle in the haymow. Early every
morning they took a long walk in the unfrequented down-town streets, breakfasting
in Fulton Market or some similar resort of slender purses, and bringing
home their modest lunches. Then Imogen went off to “instruct,” and
Nestoria sat down to her painting. Afterward came a dinner in some romantic
alcove; then another promenade in the friendly gloom of twilight; then
what Miss Jones styled “a soirée of art and literature.” It was a monotonous
life, but it was mysterious, and, in the schoolma'am's opinion, delightful.
There was no danger of disturbance and discovery because of visitors. Imogen
Eleonore, like many assiduous readers of fiction, was disposed to seclusion;
she had not been in the habit, as she frequently said, of mingling with
the common herd of mankind; she had found the elevating society of heroes
halls of fancy and the enchanted gardens of revery.
Fans, a flowery half-dozen of them, were painted in a week or so, and Miss
Jones put them under her waterproof and “hawked them from mart to mart,”
as she had valiantly promised. It was new business to her, and she might
have scorned it as very low business, only that it was ennobled to her mind by
a mystery. Was she not befriending the heroine of some dark and doubtless
thrilling tragedy? Uplifted by this thought, she entered a “fancy store” with
the air of a duchess in disguise, and fairly cowed the dealer into giving her
merchandise a respectful consideration. Still, he did not want to buy; it was
a “line of goods,” he said, that he had never seen before; nor did he believe
such an article would be called for. But just then two customers, a dark-eyed
and showy young lady of twenty, and a tall, handsome, blonde dandy of nearer
thirty, entered the shop. They were talking earnestly, and otherwise had an
air of being interested in each other, so that Imogen Eleonore immediately
speculated in her mind as to whether they were lovers. I believe it may be
stated, by the way, that a woman scarcely ever sees two young people together
without trying to form some idea as to their heart affairs.
“What beautiful fans!” exclaimed the lady. “Oh, Count Poloski, just
look at them. Are those for sale?”
“I was just taking the lot, Miss Dinneford,” bowed and smiled the dealer.
“Finish your bargain and then let me have one,” said Alice, little guessing
whose handiwork it was that she coveted.
So, the Count and Alice withdrawing a little, the fans were bought at a dollar
and a half apiece, to be resold at three dollars.
| CHAPTER XXVII.
ANY PORT IN A STORM. The Wetherel affair | |