 | I. Azarian |  |
1. I.
Life, which slips us along like beads on a
leash, strung summer after summer on Ruth
Yetton's thread, yet none so bright as that
one where the Azarian had pictured his sunny
face and all his infinite variety of pranksome
ways. Ruth's mother had thrown her
up in despair, as good for nothing under the
sun, but her father always took her on his
knee at twilight, listened to her little idealities,
and dreamed the hour away with her. Yet
without the mother's constructive strength,
all Ruth's inherited visioning would have
availed her ill.
Perhaps it was owing to this scheming, but
reverizing brain of his, that one day her father
the city. And when, after a while, all things
went the reversed way with him there, the
schemes suddenly ran riot in fever, and he became
an old man in his prime. The mother,
with all the quiet current of years disturbed,
died then, of vexation perhaps. And Ruth
Yetton was left more than alone, with a dear
burden on her slender shoulders, and with no
other relative whose great lodestone of race
might draw her little magnet.
When the first bursts of grief had gathered
themselves darkly inward, to suffuse all the
days to come with silent rushes of gloom and
sorrow, Ruth assumed her duties. In the first
place, she counted their money; then, selecting
sufficient furniture for some tiny kitchen
or other, should she ever be able to hire two
rooms, and a few articles of a different class,
she hastened to dispose of the remainder, —
quickly, lest, delaying, she would never have
round which such memories clung. A lofty
chest of drawers with burnished brasses, the
old clock whose ponderous stroke had marked
off all those dead and gone days, her father's
chair, and one or two books of rare prints,
were not to be parted with. All done, the
accumulation in her purse seemed a great deal
to little Ruth; yet she knew it could not last
forever, and she daily sought work. Gradually,
as she paid the weekly board or bought
some little pleasure for the sad and sweet
old face in the corner, the purse began to
drop an ever lighter weight in her pocket.
One day, at last, she took the two books and
went to a place at whose windows she had
often stood to watch the storied wealth.
“No,” said the person she addressed. “You
will probably receive a good price for this on
Cornhill. We do not deal in such articles.”
But as he idly turned it over, two little papers
to the floor. He gathered them. They were
the old amusements of Ruth's careless leisure.
One, the likeness of a bunch of gentians just
plucked from the swampy mould, blue as
heaven, their vapory tissue — as if a breath
dissolved it — so tenderly curled and fringed
like some radiate cloud, fragile, fresh, a creation
of the earth's fairest finest effluence,
dreams of innocence and morning still half
veiled in their ineffable azure. The other,
only a single piece of the wandering dog-tooth,
with its sudden flamy blossom starting up
from the languid stem like a serpent's head,
full of fanged expression, and with its mottled
leaf, so dewy, so dark, so cool, that it
seemed to hold in itself the reflection of
green-gloomed transparent streams running
over pebbly bottoms.
The interlocutor examined them for a few
moments steadily. “Your name, may I ask?”
“Ruth Yetton.”
“Has it ever occurred to you, Miss Yetton,
to offer these sketches for sale?”
“Those!”
“I see not.”
“Are they — worth anything, sir?”
“Yes, decidedly. What price will you put
upon them?”
“Is — a dollar — half a dollar — too much?”
“I will mark them three. They might
bring five. You can call again in a few days,
Miss Yetton, and if they are gone we will
hand you the proceeds, deducting a small
commission. You would find ready sale, I
believe, for as many as you could furnish.”
What visions danced over Miss Yetton's
pale little face as she remembered the overflowing
desk in her trunk. Hunger and want
and fear annihilated. Soup and sirloin every
day for the uncomplaining old man at home,
new clothes for him, fragrantest tobacco,
the suburbs, now and then an evening at the
play, comfort and rest and safety and pleasure
all the days and nights of his mortal life.
That moment paid for so much. Wealth rose
round her like an exhalation; another possibility
flashed upon her and faded, — she was
half-way to Italy, tossing on the blue sea,
hastening to pictures and shrines and eternal
summer.
The lounger over Rosa Bonheur's portfolio
turned and fastened his glance upon her; she
seemed to feel it, though she was not looking,
for it entered her as a sunbeam parts the
petals of a flower.
The shopman smiled at her roseate countenance.
“Very well,” said he. “I see that we have
struck a vein!” and she tripped away.
So three months' time saw many things
altered. Little gold-pieces clinked, and precious
and she had left the new devotion of landlady
and fellow-lodgers running to waste, having
found two rooms, in an airier place, that
pleased her fancy. They were part of a house
that stood on the corner of a large, empty
square, seldom reached by the hum of business;
and as the house was old, and had none
of the modern alleviations of life, they were
obtained very reasonably. On the second
floor, with one large window for the sunshine
and one for the square, with a little carpet
pieced out by the cheap Arab mat whose
vivid elm-leaf hue seemed like perpetual fair
weather in the room, with the great chest of
drawers reaching in ancestral splendor almost
to the ceiling, with the home sound of the
clock, sentinel in the recess, the little worktable,
one window full of flowers in pots and
boxes and baskets, a portrait of some sad-eyed
lady which she had found exposed in an
weave pathetic romances, two yellow old engravings
from Angelica Kaufmann, where figured
Fancy with the wings springing from her
filleted temples; a lounge of her own fashioning,
piled with purple cushions, and which
became a very comfortable bed at night; with
a glowing fire in the grate, and a little cat
purring before it, — Miss Yetton could hardly
devise the imagination of further comfort.
Their dinners they found in any restaurant,
their breakfasts were a pleasure to contrive.
They took long trips on the horse-cars, which
were the old father's delight; long rides then
into the wintry country, got out at any prospect
of field or wood, and returned laden with
trailers of gray moss, with clusters of scarlet
hips, with withered ferns, blue juniper-berries,
dried cones, bunches of beautiful brown-bearded
grasses, which, disposed here and
there, tasselled over the dark wood of the
her sitting-room always sweetly ornamented,
till in summer she could make it a very bower
with all manner of flaunting herb or shrinking
bud, with great boughs of the snowy
medlar, and with long wreaths of the spiced
sweet-brier. Whenever, too, Miss Yetton had
a cent that she could religiously spare, —
for besides her little savings she had her little
charities, — she stole with it between the lofty
ranks of some greenhouse and won the gardener's
heart, and brought back threefold its
worth to lay massed in gorgeous bloom about
the room; while her ever passive companion
sat, lost in a bewildered enchantment, among
all the glowing greenery, the springing stems
and bending buds whose life leaped up so
riotously to break in blossom, — sat abandoned
to the soft damp warmth of atmosphere that
was like some other planet's, — sat there in
the emeraldine lustre that, filtering through
a shining sediment in great bunches of translucent
grapes, — thrilled through all his sense,
and growing ever rapt and paler, till the child
hurried him away lest his soul should exhale
entirely in the strange region of heavily-freighted
air, and be lost among all its other
ecstatic odors. Sometimes moreover, of an
afternoon, she slipped with the quiet old man
into an orchestra-concert; and afterwards the
dim dreamwork and sweet thoughts that had
been invoked by the murmuring music shaped
themselves to tint and color and design as
she walked round the Common in the sunset,
or went out and leaned a moment over the
arches of the bridges, and marked how the
green light fell like damp sunshine among
their shadows. Few of all those who on their
rambles were wont with interest to encounter
this little woman supporting the spiritual, frail
form beside her, associated the two in any
and paper that at that very moment perhaps
they treasured in their hand. It is true that
often in the after-dark hours she ached to
have her father's old intelligence back among
these pleasures, to feel once more the old
reliance on his omnipotence, to have her mother
sharing these long-desired comforts; but
when the feverish pain was by, with her constant
work, with her pleasant fancies, with
her brightening hopes and joyful attainment,
Miss Yetton was as happy a little maid as a
city roof can cover.
Without premeditation or affectation or
search, Miss Yetton had found an art. An
art in which she stood almost alone. As she
began to give herself rules, one that she found
absolute was to work from nothing but the
life. During the winter, and while yet her
means were very small, the opposite course
had been needful; but even then some little
ruddy berries from the snowy roadside seemed
to have been thrown, or where she had caught
just the topmost tips of the bare tree in the
square, lined like any evanescent sea-moss,
delicate as the threads of smoke that wander
upward, faintly tinged in rosy purple and
etched upon a calm deep sky with most exquisite
and intricate entanglement of swinging
spray and swelling bud, — even then things like
these commanded twice the price of any copy
of her past sketches. Something of this was
due to growth perhaps. Already she felt that
she handled her pencil with a swifter decision,
and there was courage in her color. But
when spring came she revelled. She took
jaunts deeper and deeper among the outlying
regions. One day, luncheon in pocket, she
went pulling apart old fallen twigs and bits
of stone on the edge of a chasm where dark
and slumbrous waters forever mantled, and
brought home with her bountiful bunches, root
and blood-red leaf, downy bud and flaky flower
of the purple hepatica, — the hepatica, whose
pristine element, floating out of heaven and
sinking into the sod with every star-sown fall
of snow, answers the first touch of wooing
sunshine, assoiled of dazzle, enriched with
some tincture of the mould's own strain, and
borrowing from the crumbling granites that
companion it all winter an atom of fibre, a
moment of permanence: breezy bits of gold
and purple at last, cuddled in among old
gnarls and roots, and calling the wild March
sponsor. These before her, she wrought patiently
on ivory with all delicate veinery and
tender tint, painting in a glossy jet of background,
till, rivalling the Florentine, the dainty
mosaic was ready for the cunning goldsmith
who should shape it to the pin that gathers
the laces deep in any lady's bosom. Then,
some messenger of the year, some little
stir in her pulse, warned her of hurrying
May-flowers, and she sped down to the Plymouth
woods, within sound of their rustling
sea-shore, to pull up clustered wet trailing
masses, flushed in warmest wealthiest pink
with the heartsomest flower that blows. And
there, in the milder weather, she took her
only familiar, that he might plunge his trembling
hands deep down among the flowers, or,
sitting on a mossy knoll, listen to the wild
song of the pines above. Sometimes too she
stood with him through long reveries in the
wide rhodora marshes, where some fleece of
burning mist seemed to be fallen and caught
and tangled in countless filaments upon the
bare twigs and sprays that lovingly detained
it. At other times she lingered over the
blushing wild-honeysuckle, and every tube
of fragrance poured strength and light into
from among their natural surroundings she
felt half her picture painted. Near the city
there were fair gardens which she knew, and
which in return for her homage gave her the
sweet-pea, fluttering, balancing, tiptoe-fine,
and pansies for remembrance; while in the
farmers' orchards great broken boughs were
put at the service of the young girl with the
happy old man upon her arm. Then came a
book of tree-blossoms, — those glad things that
are in such haste to crowd into light and air
before the leaves can get chance to burst their
shining scales, — where the faint green vapor
of the elm, the callow cloud that floats
about the oak, the red flame of the maple,
the golden, dusty tassels of the willow, —
brimmed with being, whose very perfume
seemed shaken about themselves on the paper,
— hedged in with their wildness those caught
and captived beauties but half tamed with
sweeter surprise that their frail petals wreathe
such rugged boughs, — the pear rivalling the
cornel, the cherry like a suspended snowstorm
that has caught life among the branches, the
apple veined finely as the blush on any cheek,
with its twisted stem where the aged lichens
have laid their shield, the peach, like some
splendid orchid, in its fantastic shape, with
lifted wings, yet clinging to the bough, and
full of a deep rich rosiness that already holds
the luscious juices and voluptuous savor of
the perfected growth, not without a hint of
the subtly sweet poison in its heart. Then
Miss Yetton busied herself over a set of bookmarks
with a wild-flower for every day of the
year, half of April filled with violets, white
and blue, the Alpine pedate, and the bright
roadside freak of the golden-yellow, while for
love she slipped among them that other, an
atom of summer midnight, double, says some
shall ever have; and for the days whereon
no blossom burst, she had a tip of tiny hemlock
cones, the moss from an old stone, a
bunch of berries forsaken by the birds, some
silky seedling unstripped of the rude breezes.
In all these treasures there was no flaw; the
harebell shaking in the wind and tangled
among its grasses, the wild rose whose root
so few rains had washed that there had settled
a deep color in its cup, the cardinal with the
very glitter of the stream it loves meshed
like a silver mist behind its scarlet sheen,
those slipshod little anemones that cannot stop
to count their petals, but take one from their
neighbor or leave another behind them, all
the tiny stellate things wherein the constant
crystallic force of the ancient earth steals
into light, the radiant water-lily, — these held
no dead pressed beauty, but the very spirit
and springing life of the flower. Upon them,
little hands appeared to help the climbing
vine, here a humming-bird and a scarlet rock-columbine
seemed taking flight together, there
a wasp with the purple enamel of armor on
his wing tilted against some burly husbandman
of a bee to seek the good graces of the
hooded nymph in an arethusa; — they were
little gems, and brought the price of gems.
At length, when — summer ended, and her
tramps among pastures on fire with their burning
huckleberry-bushes just begun — there
came an order from across the seas for a book
of autumn leaves, accompanied by a check
for two hundred dollars, Miss Yetton thought
her fortune made.
She was sitting at work on this order, one
afternoon while her father slept, and with a
new friend beside her. This friend had not
long since made her acquaintance, and there
had sprung up between them one of those
who have long desired and needed them,
and who are complementary each to the other.
“I am a poor little actress,” said Charmian;
“poor, I suppose, as you can be. I do not
have a great deal of money, but I do not
spend all I have. I lay up a trifle for the
rainy days, and I have squandered some on
certain water-colors. I do not mean to squander
any more, because now I shall have you,
water-colors and all, and if ever you find
yourself quite alone in the breathing world
you are to come and paint in my sitting-room,
or else I shall move, bag and baggage, and
con my parts in yours.”
So it was arranged. Charmian was exactly
what she said, a poor little actress, yet a
very good one; no star, but one who played
either Juliet or Lady Macbeth on occasion,
by the best light that was in her; at some
day, perhaps, a sudden inflorescence of character
the world of footlights pale. She felt the possibility
ever stirring within her, — it made her
restive and bold; but to-day she was a poor
little actress with a steady engagement.
Miss Yetton sat working in the black, lustrous
berries, among the carbuncle splendors
of the tupelo branch. Charmian was furbishing
Kate Percy's bodice that it might do no
dishonor to Ophelia's petticoat, and as they
wrought, their tongues ran merrily. At length
Charmian folded her work and rose, and,
going, uttered the sentence that sealed little
Ruth Yetton's fate.
“I 'm not in the afterpiece to-night,” said
she, “so I shall be out at nine, and I 'm
going to bring Constant Azarian to see you.”
“Constant Azarian?”
“Yes. He says he used to know you, and
now your things are quite the rage, you see,
he 'd like to know you again. Patronage is
thinking I would shortly extinguish Rachel.
Rachel yet burns, — and like a chiselled
flame! I hardly met his expectations, but
we 've always been on good terms.”
“Constant Azarian!”
“Oh, so you remember him? That 's bad,
or good, — tell me which! Really I don't
know whether to bring him here or not. He
is such an impostor, so perfectly charming
outside — and inside, — but there is no inside;
he is as shining and as hollow as a glass
bubble.”
“Oh, — no.”
“I must n't bring him.”
“Yes, do. I thought he could not be here
or he would have found us out. I used to
be fond of him one summer when we were
children. I should like to see him.”
“What if he should ever lay hands on our
friendship, Ruth?”
“He?” said Ruth looking up with wondering
eyes, “why, it is no affair of his.”
“Aha! well — I don't know. However, expect
us at nine, and I should so like a cup
of hot tea at that innocent hour. Stop, I
must talk to you a bit. All the girls in town,
I hear, rave over Azarian, though he 's no
match, for his father died not long ago and
left him poor. It was a great flash-in-the-pan.
Azarian had been lapped in luxury, and expected
an inheritance. However, he behaved
very well. He has some talent, he 'd have
gone on the stage, his name alone would draw
good houses for a fortnight and have given
him a pretty pocket-piece, but of course he
could n't rival Booth, and anything less is
plebeian; he has written a farce or two, and
there are dark hints of a tragedy. Then he
has sculptured a little; he had patience to get
through the clay, and money to get through
the plaster, but not genius enough to get
still half in the block. Then he has painted
a little, — portraits; but they are horrible; a
brush like a scalpel, it lays people bare to the
core; to look at one of his canvases is like
standing in a dissecting-chamber, where the
knife has gored a gash down some face and
laid open all the nerves and muscles; every
one's hidden sin suddenly flares up and glares
at him. Nobody likes to be excoriated in that
style; so Azarian's portraits don't pay. Meantime,
he was all along a student of medicine,
and is now established in a city practice. So.
There you have him. Sooner lose your heart
to Fra Diavolo. Be warned. Be armed.
Good by.”
Little Miss Yetton laughed to herself as
Charmian closed the door behind her; she
remembered the boy so well, or her ideal of
the boy, who had come in his black clothes
to spend a summer on the farm and to lose
pencil, dreaming over that season, that the
dark had fallen and the branch before her
begun to fade ere she bethought herself of
work. But her father, busying himself at the
grate, startled her with a clatter of coal-scuttle
and tongs, and she rose and swept her pretty
litter aside.
As the great clock struck nine in the distance
that evening, the long procession of its
sounds issuing on the air with a measured
tread, Miss Yetton piled the coke on her coals
for a dancing cheer of the blaze of molten
sapphire and opal, her little tea-table glittered
in a corner, and as she glanced now and then
toward the door there was an unwonted sparkle
in her eye and a restless red on the pale
cheek.
They came in laughing. Miss Yetton did not
see Charmian, for the other stepped directly
toward her, and, bowing, uttered his name.
“Constantine Azarian.”
Her hand just brushed across his palm.
He tossed his head with a motion that threw
back the golden curls. “You don't meet
me now as then,” he said.
“Come,” said Charmian, who had doffed
her things; “none of your old times! To
business. To my cup of tea, and then to
your health.”
“It is Constantine, father,” said Miss Yetton
to the old gentleman, who did not at
all comprehend the unusual proceedings, and
forced to a familiarity which she would not
have chosen; “you remember Constant?”
“Yes, — yes,” replied her father uneasily.
“Why, you're quite a man, sir!”
The guest laughed, exchanged with him a
sentence or two, then slipped over to the others.
“So, Ruth, I have found you at last. Where
have you been hiding?” he demanded, seating
himself, and perfectly at home in the minute.
“We have been here a long while. Up
and down. A year in this house,” she answered
quietly.
Her tone nettled him, he raised his eyebrows.
“Come, you want your tea,” he said,
fixing his glance coolly on Charmian.
“Yes, I want my tea, it prevents reaction
after action. But that need n't hinder your
conversation. Did you say your search for
Ruth was severe?” she asked in mischievous
demi-voice.
“No. Why should it have been?”
“Why, indeed?” said she, provoked with
herself, while the red burned into Ruth's
cheek.
“Ruh and I are such dear old friends that
she should have written to me long ago. Why
did n't you, Ruth?”
Blushing and smiling, appeased and pleased,
Ruth passed him his cup without reply. It
was a quaint little cup, a bit of translucent
the depths of her trunk and nicely washed
that very evening.
Charmian arrested her arm. “Allow me
to ask, Ruth Yetton,” said she, “where you
came across that hideous little splendor, —
old china worth its weight in gold. Perhaps
you painted it yourself. You have n't been
expending your treasure to delectate Azarian's
lips in that style?”
“Pardon, bella donna,” said Azarian, securing
the disputed object, “it is mine of old, the
viaduct of youthful draughts. I drank from
it every day of one summer. And you have
kept it all this time, Ruth?”
Ruth's little heart leaped that he should
have remembered it, she could not have answered
why; she carried her father his tray
and came back with rosy cheek and dewy
eyes.
“Your tea is mercy itself, Ruth. It puts
the spirit into one.”
“A work of supererogation, madonna.”
“It is very nice tea, it was given to me, —
because one cannot buy it; you would hardly
suppose that it was made from flowers,” said
Ruth.
“It looks as though it were strained through
sunshine,” replied Azarian.
“The quality of mercy is not strained,”
interpolated Charmian.
“Shop!” said Azarian.
“O yes, — shop, I dare say. What of that?
Now, Azarian, tell the truth and shame the
—; confess that you think it would be
splendid to be famous, while Ruth there
thinks it horrible to be infamous: but as
for me” —
“Give you liberty or give you death.”
“As for me, — it's very nice to be just unfamous;
and I hope the time will never come
when I shall be too great and dignified, and
too full of sacred genius, to make little jokes
tragic way. So much for shop!”
“No danger,” said Azarian, with mournfully
exaggerated eyebrows. “You are my
great disappointment.”
“Go along with you! What a plague you
are! Here 's to your confusion. Ach, ach!”
ejaculated Charmian, drinking fast, as if she
would rinse her mouth, “how sick I am of
Portia with her ridiculously unjust justice,
the impostress! Ach!”
“I don't think you 'll be cast for Juliet
again immediately. You made that botch of
it purposely, last evening?”
“And to-morrow night I 'm tamed for the
shrew.”
“I know no better subject.”
“It 's another abominable piece of business!
Just a burlesque of the truth, though, — the
very truth. It 's the way of the world, the
way of a man with a maid. What are we
on, — trample away then!”
“All in character. It is the role of Miss
Ann Thrope. This tea, that is made of
flowers, inverses Cowper, — inebriates, but not
cheers, I fancy.”
“Azarian, unless you conduct with more
propriety, you shall go home directly, and
I will never bring you again!”
“I can come next time alone,” he said,
getting up to saunter about the room and
examine the pictures; till, possessing himself
finally of Ruth's portfolios, and taking a seat
by her father, he went over them all, listening
to the story of each sheet from the old lips
delighted to part in recital.
“He will have more deference to Charmian's
opinions when she returns from her southern
tour; for — I am going away, Ruth.”
“You are going away?”
“Yes: the contract, as tragical factotum
sealed, and delivered to-day, since I left you.”
“O, Charmian, what shall I do?”
“Do without me. If you won't come with
me. What say, Ruth? I should so like to
make you and Mr. Yetton my guests on the
journey!”
“O, it is impossible!”
“I don't see why.”
“But it is so, all the same.”
“Ruth, dear, reconsider it. You renounce
pride, or I content? I shall never, never
desire more happiness than to do finely in
my art and have you with me wherever I go.”
“Nor I; but it can't be now, you know.
Will this last long?”
“No, only a month or two. It is literally
a golden opportunity. But in those regal
Southern cities they love the drama! Dear
rabble! How can any latent genius develop
in such a searching wind of criticism as —
warm welcoming weather, the coaxing encouraging
air, the generous permeating sunshine,
the fiery favor and love, one's very soul blossoms.
I feel it in me, Ruth, — those tropical
nights, those passionate plaudits, will make a
great actress of me.”
“I have no doubt they will. I can spare
you for that.”
“It would please you, Ruth?”
“More than you.”
“I don't know. I 'm not so unselfish, —
fame is the flower and fruit of that divine
inner impulsion at whose first stir one desires
it. Yet I like, too, to do honor to our
friendship, Ruth.”
“Ruth,” interrupted Azarian, pausing here
over one of her arabesques, “where did you
get these little winged faces?”
“O, detached studies of Reynolds's cherubs,
you remember, — except — one or two.”
“And those?”
“My little cat sat for.”
“Naughty girl! You have never seen any
Angelicos?”
“No.”
“I will take you to-morrow to some glorious
things, — copies, yet delights.”
“You need n't be taken unless you wish,”
whispered Charmian.
“Ah, but I do! Nothing could give me
such pleasure. I have even dreamed about
them. And once — when I was in great
perplexity, you know — I dreamed I was laboring
through an interminable field of stubble,
and two Angels came, with great rosy
half-mooned wings, and lifted me by the shoulders
and bore me swiftly over it all. And
they must have looked precisely like Fra
Angelicos,” said Ruth, her face all lighted.
“You can certify them to-morrow,” he replied,
gazing at her admiringly.
“Azarian! Won't you take me too?”
“Well, — you can come,” he answered,
laughing. “Shall you be free at eleven,
Ruth?”
“No, she won't. That is during my rehearsal-hour.”
“Charmian will be through by twelve,
though,” said Ruth timidly.
“Very well, I will call for you then.”
Which accordingly he did.
Charmian went too, as she had threatened,
not for her own enjoyment primarily, but she
had some dim idea of playing dragon. Moreover,
she was accustomed, by a sort of satire,
to keep Ruth's enthusiasms an atom in check.
“They look like so many wooden dolls,”
said she, when Ruth stood rapt. “See their
round polls, — the beady eyes of them! —
their pink cheeks; — just a huddle of dolls.”
“Is that St. John up there? the beautiful
angel in the red gown, with that bright warm
bent so lovingly down on the little violin?
I can hear the music! And see that St.
Cecilia, — a blaze of blue in the midst of a
blaze of gold. It is the very ecstasy of worship.”
As Ruth spoke, low-voiced, Azarian, directly
before her, was looking in her face; suddenly
her eye caught his and fell; it was a
moment of double consciousness. Azarian
felt as if he had spoken his thoughts. He
had only wondered why he had not known
it was she when he saw her that first day
in the print-shop as he lounged over Rosa
Bonheur's lithographs, why he had not spoken
to her then, why he had not thought
her pretty then: she had a certain odd and
dainty beauty of her own, those delicate features,
dark eyes, and the one great wave in
her less dark hair; she was quite petite and
perfect; when there was any red in her cheek
purple pink of the rhodora. And with her
talent, too. He had met no one like her.
What gave her glance that flashing fall just
then? Was she going to care for him, too?
That must n't be. Azarian, somewhat silent
and distraught, went home that day in an
uneasy frame.
As for little Ruth, she feared she had offended
him. She conjectured concerning it
too much for her comfort, and her heart gave
a bound the next day when he tapped and
immediately entered, — for Azarian's impetuosity,
when he allowed it any play, enforced
an entire want of ceremony, and just for the
nonce he was so innocent of self-scrutiny as
to forget consideration of why it was that he
came at all, — for sometimes destiny takes
even our predetermination out of our hand
and weaves another figure, — the fact being
only that he had felt as if he should like to
see her.
“Good morning, little Elderberry,” said he.
“Good morning,” said she, rising and taking
his hand. “Come and sit down here
and see if my work is good. Father will be
in directly; he is only walking round the
square.” And she resumed her occupation.
“Why do you call me an elderberry?” she
said at last, as he watched her.
“Why? only that you remind me of one;
of a whole panicle of them rather. They
are so tiny, so shining, so polished and perfect.
The tint is so unique, — your dress suggests
it to-day, black, and deep rich amaranth, —
there is a spark of something like it in your
eyes, and you have the stain of such juice
just now on your cheek; then your lips
are perhaps darker than other lips, like a
black-heart cherry, which has the bitter-sweet
elderberry flavor, too, — if one tastes it, — and
those little pearls when you laugh, as at this
moment, give them yet a wealthier hue. Yes,
color and pungency distilled back again to
the sunshine, and I 've no doubt that at some
time a bitter-sweet wine, hardly to be told
from old red ripened port, will be expressed
from your nature, strong enough to turn a
man's head.”
“O that will do,” said Miss Yetton, laughing,
and too utterly unaccustomed to the society
of gentlemen to know whether to repulse
this familiarity or not.
“Don't be offended. Remember that I am
a portrait-painter,” —
“Certainly. So I see a thousand reasons
why this picture is my likeness, though you
did n't paint it,” and she brought up from
among her scraps a drawing of the plant in
question.
“There are a thousand more reasons why
this is,” said Azarian, unwrapping a parcel
in his hand, — and he laid before her one of
an Angel strays singing from the Divine presence.
“I have had it a long while. It is like
those you saw yesterday, a copy from Fra
Angelico. See that robe, how it just seems
to be curdled together out of the soft purple
air. What a song the beautiful face is. It
is yours.”
“Mine!” Ruth hesitated, not because she
dreamed of any impropriety in accepting it, —
she had retaken her old childish feeling about
him, — but it seemed to her too valuable.
“No, no,” said she, “it is not mine, but if
you had really as lief, I would like to hang
it on the wall and have it a little while to
look at.”
“Forever. I shall never reclaim it. But
I should prefer you to accept it from me,
Ruth, and to thank me.”
“I do thank you.”
“Truly?” with his head resting on his
hand and his arm along the table for a while.
“How came you to know — Charmian?”
“O, she ran up behind me, one day, on the
Common, and she has been very kind to me
ever since. She is the only friend I have, —
except yourself. I like her very much, —
don't you?”
“So, so. She is — I beg your pardon —
just a mite vulgar.”
Poor little Ruth! she had seen so few people
that she did not know how that terrible
word applied itself. Her friend's peculiarities
she had taken to be points of character,
and had never suffered them to offend her.
“Moreover, she is a charmer,” quoted Azarian,
half to himself, “and can almost read
the thoughts of people.”
“I like her, — I love her!” was all Ruth
ventured to say.
“The more 's the pity,” replied the other, —
a certain rancor in his soul because
this same Charmian had at an earlier date
seen fit to afford him very decided discouragement,
and as a soothing lotion to his self-regard
he had been obliged to conjure about
her this phantasm of vulgarity, — a woman
of refinement could not have resisted his
power. In very truth, the two were antipathetical,
though he had failed to perceive it
at first; but her coldness had affected merely
his fancy, and to-day Azarian's dislike was
as sincere an emotion as he was capable of
feeling.
“Well, well,” said he, shaking off his cloud,
“have you ever seen her play? I should
think that might cure you. Once or twice?
We 'll make it thrice, and go to-night then.”
“I am much obliged to you. I should have
gone oftener, but you know I do not like to
leave my father.”
“Ah, little beggar,” said Azarian gayly,
catching her hands and laughing, “we 'll take
the father too!”
The rose burned in Ruth's cheek, and her
eyes lighted him along his way with joyful
thanks.
Azarian, being well pleased with himself,
repeated the experiment of the play. Too
prominent a personage in his own circle to
enter a local theatre without notice, more
glances than one had been directed at his
companions, — at the frail loveliness of the old
man's face, the silver locks floating round it
from under the little black velvet cap, — at
the quaint picturesqueness of the girl, with a
something alien, a strange element that, just
as you found her beautiful, presented itself
and absorbed the possibility, and, trying to
seize its volatile mystery, escaped beneath your
gaze, — the subtle writing, the braided harmony
One or two of the players, with all of whom
he was on terms of good-fellowship, came
glancing through the side-scenes, on the first
night, and wondered what little piece Azarian
had picked up now. Opera-glasses were levelled,
bows were interchanged, fair fingers and
glancing fans vainly beckoned, on the next.
Half a dozen of his acquaintance found important
reasons for joining him a moment in the
interludes, to retire and pronounce his friends
to be foreigners, as no introductions had
followed. And when, at the play's conclusion,
they resorted to Vergne's and waited for their
escaloped oysters, the place became thronged
in such a manner as to cause the poor young
maiden at the desk to lose her reckoning
and her wits altogether. This was by no
means offensive to Azarian; he was well accustomed
to pursuit, and to that rather frank
love-making in which the younger damsels of
tri-cornered notes by the mail-ful, of bouquets
with a well-known ring among the flowers,
and had even been waylaid in the halls of
his hotel for a lock of hair, — all which was
beneath contempt; moreover, ladies of grace
and wit and courtesy and piquant reserves
had unbent to him as to no other; he knew
well now that not one of them would leave
their luxurious homes to share his life of possible
struggle, had he ever intended to ask
them, and he took a somewhat malicious
pleasure in exciting their interest anew, and
in baffling the other sex as well with his little
incognita. The delicate titillation applied to
his hidden vanity made him superb. Charmian,
at another table, sat back in her chair
with grim irony, but Azarian shone. He
was sure of dozens of dancing eyes, from the
other seats, from the gallery; he slipped to
Charmian's side and asked her audibly would
declined for that time; he had a gay sentence
for every one that passed him, he expended his
skill and tact in keeping them all in the dark.
And meanwhile the old father looked eagerly
on what seemed to him so bright a scene,
musing with dreamy pleasure over the gay
and brilliant world. And in the intoxicating
light, the perfumes of dying flowers, the
plash of the little fountain, drawn to depend
on him through her timidity, Ruth sat unconscious
of the coil, sat under the influence
of Azarian's sweet and subtle smiles, the
object of all his careless grace, beaming back
upon him out of beautiful happy eyes.
Azarian was capable of that air which puts
all questioning to the right-about; he enjoyed
the little mystery among his acquaintance, he
said so to himself, and doubtless thought, indeed,
that was his only reason for meeting
Ruth upon her walks and turning them into
to her voice devotedly, met her serious upcast
eyes with steady gaze, and inspired in her a
confidence, a reliance, and an association of
himself with purity, integrity, philosophy, and
strength. Not that he had the first intention
of inspiring any such confidence, any such
association; he would have laughed at the
idea, for he knew himself much better than
Ruth did, after all, and often made a note of
his various weaknesses, — indeed, making such
note was one of his strong points. But Miss
Yetton, like many another woman, saw in this
man not what he had, but what she needed, —
and as for him, clear as his sight was, and
shallow as his nature, the one failed to penetrate
the other, — for he thought he amused
himself.
Ruth was still working on the order for
the autumn leaves. Almost every other day
she had gone out into the country, and almost
now together in the cars, now, since superiority
of strength is one of the surest attractions,
driving her behind a high-stepping
horse that brought his physical powers well
into play, — for her father of late was less
and less inclined to go, and Azarian always
followed up his fancies closely. Sometimes,
indeed, as they went across the Common, a
leaf fluttered into her hand, whose peer no
forest could produce, and towards whose curiously
flecked and painted beauty the whole
ripening year seemed to have converged; but
oftener they went into a maze of woodland,
where the dew-drops still glittered on all the
splendid points of color, where the hills
wrapped themselves far off in blue mist, and
only some giant rose seemed to blossom at
their skirts and seal them from entirely fading
and dissolving into dreams. Together
the two wandered down lanes all aglow with
it were a very Aladdin's garden; they rested
with the light flickering over them through
ruby domes of oak, they stood to watch some
golden beech intensify the sunshine, they
broke down maple-branches with every leaf
dancing on its separate stem like a tongue
of fluttering fire and casting off a flock of
scarlet shadows, they pictured the desert-edge
beneath some beam of sunset when the wild
sumachs tossed their crimson boughs like
palms, they sat down at length under majestic
hemlocks where a wild vine twisted itself
among the knolls as a gorgeously freaked
and freckled snake might do. All the ripe
earth beneath the last touch of the burnishing
sunshine, all the sweet rich air, full of its
mild decay, all the fulfilled expression of
the year, the peace, the pause, breathed only
hope about the one and a soft regret about
the other.
“These hemlocks always put me in mind
of some long-forgotten time of innocence and
freshness,” said Azarian. “Perhaps of that
when I first met you, Ruth.”
“Do you remember that time?” asked
Ruth, swinging her leaves, and looking off
into the horizon.
“I have one of those accursed memories that
never lose anything. Probably I can recall a
hundred incidents that you lost the next day.”
Ruth laughed incredulousness.
“How pretty somebody is when she laughs!
Are you happy, Ruth?”
Ruth nodded.
“Let me see. What a little monster I
was then, — but you believed in me, you
thought I was Grand Chevalier of the White
and Black Eagle. Let me see. Somebody
was calling Ruth, were n't they? I can read
that morning off as if it were a page. Don't
you want to hear it?”
Ruth nodded again.
“I was a bright-faced boy then, an hour
ago arrived. Somebody told me to keep the
sun in my eyes and I 'd find you. So the
boy started at a run; but the fields were
empty of all save the summer hum of full
July, and by and by his pace slackened, till
at length he stood silently gazing up into the
brilliant sky and unconsciously allowing all
the blithe fresh forenoon influences to touch
him. Suddenly two wide wings, two quivering
lines of shadow, trembled across his vision.
Up went hat and heels in hot pursuit. A
strange thing, with vivid life flashing through
its shining dyes, all barred and mottled in
garnet lights and diamond dust, blown to
that pasture-land on the wind sweeping up
from richer zones, a bubble of rays and
prisms, frail as resplendent. Odd that I
should treasure that butterfly, when men and
women have died and left no sign on my
led me to you. But that was the last
thing I thought of. — The boy, always remembering
that the boy means me, made himself
at length, like the small savage he was, a
shoulder-knot of the psyche, the royal colors
yet palpitating through it, but life and radiance
gone. Then, keeping the sun in his face,
he went along towards the brook, negligently
fanning himself with his hat. The path led
him into a grove of rustling young birches,
whose exuberant glee was kept within bounds
by the presence of a commanding hemlock or
two, and here and there overawed by some
martinet of a maple. The sward was still
tenderly damp and starred with faintly-scented
wild-flowers, and suddenly descending, it
opened on the stream that, brawling over
eddies and rocks above, here floated itself
on in tranquil shadow, to brawl again in foam
over eddies and rocks below.”
“Yes, I remember.”
“The dew yet drenched the heavy overhanging
branches, the laurel-wreaths lay pale
upon the other bank, the wild-rose breathed
its fragrance through the air; coming from
the interspersed sunshine of the wood, there
was a sweet and serious spell about the cool
noon-darkness here.”
“Ah, yes, — I seem to feel it now.”
“Sitting on a fallen trunk that bridged the
brook, a little girl appeared, her apron full
of all manner of blooms, dipping her bare feet
in and out of the sparkling water, and in a
rapture of silence as some bird in the bough
poured forth his jubilant song. In a minute”
—
Ruth turned upon him a smiling rosy
face. “In a minute,” said she, “another
bird seemed to burlesque the same song, the
branches parted and tossed in a shower of
sunshine, and the boy swung himself down to
and uttered his name: Constant Azarian.”
“Yes, and do you know what you did?
Stay, I 'm telling a story, why do you keep
interrupting? The girl, a quiet unsmiling
child, very, very small, having almost an uncanny
look about her countenance, with its
great preponderating eyes, set in a floating
frame, a nimbus, of bright hair, — it was
bright then, Ruth, it answered brightly when
the sun stroked it, black it lay in the shade, —
the girl, I say, surveyed the apparition a moment;
her clear glance seemed to penetrate
depths in him who depths had none, but
opposed a shallow reflection. That 's the case,
you need n't shake your head, I know it as
well as another.”
“No, no,” said Ruth quickly, “you are
mistaken, if you think so. There are deep
waters in every one's nature. If they are
sealed in the rock and slumber so darkly and
only in indistinct yearning and groping, perhaps
some day the great fact will come that
shall smite the rock and set them flowing.”
“Just as kind a little fancy as if it were
the truth. Ah, I see, tiny artificer, you don't
want to hear what you did. Did you remember
it when we met again not long since,
Ruth?”
Ruth nodded.
“Well, you may apply those pink fingers
to your ears, while I return to our small
people. He seemed at first to be only one
of her dreams, then smiles broke about her
face; here was what the sad little thing had
waited for; she rose quickly and met him
with a loud, warm, childish kiss on either
cheek. The boy laughed. The tears swept
over the girl's eyes. `Come,' said he, in a
sweet coaxing voice that took the edge off
his words, — it 's sweet now, is n't it, Ruth?
scold me if she finds it out. I came from
the city, where girls don't do so, you know.
But I like to have you kiss me, first rate.' —
Ruth —? Well, no matter. — That frosted
you. It took me some time to melt the icing.
I remember how I bound your wreath, how I
made the yellow loosestrife burn in your hair,
and crowned your forehead with a wild lily,
and said I should be sure to remember the
azalia because it was like my own name, and
you said it was delicious, and, more timidly,
that my name was too; and when I had
praised you and said that flowers always made
girls pretty, and how I remembered the ladies
at mamma's, shining in their silver wheat
and great moss-roses, you begged to take the
wreath on your arm, where you could look
at it too. You 'd do the same to-day. Upon
which I played the petty tyrant. O, don't deprecate;
it 's all fair enough; I like to tyrannize,
my queen, my fairy-queen, and then catechised
you. `What makes me a queen?'
said you. `O, because you choose me.'
“`No indeed,' said I, `it 's just the crown.
I 've heard my father say — my father 's a
Greek, — did you know it?'
“`What is it to be a Greek?'
“`What is it to be a Greek! Why, it 's to
be a great poet and a great orator and a
great actor, and to have chariots and horses
and games and beautiful temples and gardens
and statues — O, I forgot to tell you, your
mother wants you to help in the kitchen.
Are n't you hungry? I 've got a hard-bread
in my pocket, — girls don't like hard-bread.
Come, let 's go along.' Ruth, that was I in
epitome, a diamond edition!
“`Should n't you like some honey with your
hard-bread?' asked the little girl. And without
more words she led the way to a hollow
down in its heart great cakes of that brown
and golden encrustation of sunshine and perfume
and dew.
“`It 's good for my cough,' said I.
“`I like honey to eat,' said she. `I guess
the angels had it when they went to see Eve
in Eden.'
“`Very likely.'
“`It 's real heavenly food. 'T was St.
John's while he wrote the Revelation. It 's
made out of flowers; it 's the sweet juice of
roses, and of azalias too. Warm rain-storms
and the south winds and all the sunshine
helped to make it, you know.'
“`Yes, — but how are you going to get at
it?'
“`Why, I never do. It 's too precious,' said
she, confessing to a kind of sacrament of
summer. `I just put my finger in there
sometimes. There 's so much, I don't think
the bees mind.'
“`Great I care whether they do or not!
Here goes!' and the bark was being pounded
in with a stone, and a swarm of darkness,
of angry seething turbulence, was raging all
about us. Remember? Ah, I see, — your
little lips are burning now.”
“I feel as if I were living those happy days
over again.”
“If you call it happiness to be stung to
death by the bees, I take issue.”
“Thanks to your master in Virgil, we escaped.”
“Finish the story for me, Ruth. Finish
it as you did then.”
“I am afraid my invention is not equal
to yours.”
“Little witch! You accused me of having
saved your life.”
“And so you did.”
“Well, yes, I suppose I did, — as I said
at the time, in a mimic and lordly complaisance.
the honey, I should like to know,' was what
I added then. `You should n't have taken
me right to that tree, you should have known
better,' growing severe as the remembrance
nettled. `One of them 's stung my hand.
Pshaw! I could save a dozen girls' lives!'
replied your hero. But you were not waiting
for his reply. So entirely had you already
invested him with ideal attributes, that, knowing
he would always say the perfect thing,
your complete attention to his real utterance
was unnecessary. You have n't changed a
whit. `O, you saved my life, Constant!'
you cried. `I always shall love you!'”
Suddenly Ruth started to find that her
hand had been in his, — how long she did not
know. And suddenly, somehow, she never
could tell how and Azarian never could tell
why, she found herself drawn and wrapped
in a clasp that checked her pulses, and his
you told the truth! My own, you do love
me!” And then his kisses closed her lips
in burning silence.
Happy little Ruth, she could scarcely believe
her senses; she felt discovered, and in
her pretty shame was lovelier than ever, and
during those early days had only to spring
and hide her laughing blushes in his arms.
She went home on air, it was not the familiar
earth which they trod, the atmosphere was
some rosy cloud of sunset enfolding them
with radiance, informing them with warmth,
youth and strength and immortality pulsed
along their veins with every throb; it was
the life of another sphere. She sat, that
evening, in the enchanted circle of his breath,
incapable of thought, she lay the innocent
night in a dazzled dream of delight. The
days floated along and bore her with them
upbuoyed on their blissful tide. Ruth wondered
to think that his kiss had fallen upon it,
glanced of a morning in the little dressing-mirror
with half a reverence for the form he
loved. She asked if it could be true that
this transcendent fate was hers; she had seen
so much sorrow that she fancied such joy was
almost heaven-defying, and, fearing the crash
of some thunderbolt, opposed nothing but humility;
she understood now why certain ancients
poured libations and deprecated the
offices of evil deities and untoward chances.
She had sometimes thought of love, as all
girls will, — perhaps had longed for it, perhaps
had sighed to see the bloom of youth departing
and leaving her without it; and suddenly
the mighty gates had swung aside, and a great
destiny had taken her by the hand and led
her to the edge of heaven. She wondered,
too, what the matchless Azarian had found
in her; she trembled lest there might have
and let him see only the little threadbare soul
of Ruth Yetton. She desired to enter his
inmost being, and in praying that he might
become one with her she strove to make her
nature ever lovelier that he might suffer no
degradation. She confided to Azarian all these
fears and fancies, he received them as a romance
of which he unexpectedly found himself
the hero, and heard their novel burden
with pure pleasure. He was abandoned to
this happy flight of time, this forgetfulness
of the outer world, not by any choice, but
as it were in spite of himself. He sat just
now like some one dazed by the lights at a
banquet where the future was perpetually
pledged; the cup was in his hand, and all
the years to come will present Azarian nothing
of more virtue than this elixir at which
he only wet his lips.
| I. Azarian | |