"We _must_ speak of it," I answered, sitting down again. "I am your friend; it seems to me you need one. What is the matter with your cousin?"
"He is in debt."
"No doubt! But what is the special fitness of your paying his debts?"
"He has told me all his story; I am very sorry for him."
"So am I! But I hope he will give you back your money."
"Certainly he will; as soon as he can."
"When will that be?"
"When he has finished his great picture."
"My dear young lady, confound his great picture! Where is this desperate cousin?"
She certainly hesitated now. Then,--"At his dinner," she answered.
I turned about and looked through the open door into the _salle a manger_. There, alone at the end of a long table, I perceived the object of Miss Spencer"s compa.s.sion, the bright young art-student. He was dining too attentively to notice me at first; but in the act of setting down a well-emptied winegla.s.s he caught sight of my observant att.i.tude.
He paused in his repast, and, with his head on one side and his meagre jaws slowly moving, fixedly returned my gaze. Then the landlady came lightly brushing by with her pyramid of apricots.
"And that nice little plate of fruit is for him?" I exclaimed.
Miss Spencer glanced at it tenderly. "They do that so prettily!" she murmured.
I felt helpless and irritated. "Come now, really," I said; "do you approve of that long strong fellow accepting your funds?" She looked away from me; I was evidently giving her pain. The case was hopeless; the long strong fellow had "interested" her.
"Excuse me if I speak of him so unceremoniously," I said. "But you are really too generous, and he is not quite delicate enough. He made his debts himself; he ought to pay them himself."
"He has been foolish," she answered; "I know that He has told me everything. We had a long talk this morning; the poor fellow threw himself upon my charity. He has signed notes to a large amount."
"The more fool he!"
"He is in extreme distress; and it is not only himself. It is his poor wife."
"Ah, he has a poor wife?"
"I didn"t know it; but he confessed everything. He married two years since, secretly."
"Why secretly?"
Caroline Spencer glanced about her, as if she feared listeners. Then softly, in a little impressive tone,--"She was a countess!"
"Are you very sure of that?"
"She has written me a most beautiful letter."
"Asking you for money, eh?"
"Asking me for confidence and sympathy," said Miss Spencer. "She has been disinherited by her father. My cousin told me the story, and she tells it in her own way, in the letter. It is like an old romance.
Her father opposed the marriage, and when he discovered that she had secretly disobeyed him he cruelly cast her off. It is really most romantic. They are the oldest family in Provence."
I looked and listened in wonder. It really seemed that the poor woman was enjoying the "romance" of having a discarded countess-cousin, out of Provence, so deeply as almost to lose the sense of what the forfeiture of her money meant for her.
"My dear young lady," I said, "you don"t want to be ruined for picturesqueness" sake?"
"I shall not be ruined. I shall come back before long to stay with them.
The Countess insists upon that."
"Come back! You are going home, then?"
She sat for a moment with her eyes lowered, then with an heroic suppression of a faint tremor of the voice,--"I have no money for travelling!" she answered.
"You gave it _all_ up?"
"I have kept enough to take me home."
I gave an angry groan; and at this juncture Miss Spencer"s cousin, the fortunate possessor of her sacred savings and of the hand of the Provencal countess, emerged from the little dining-room. He stood on the threshold for an instant, removing the stone from a plump apricot which he had brought away from the table; then he put the apricot into his mouth, and while he let it sojourn there, gratefully, stood looking at us, with his long legs apart and his hands dropped into the pockets of his velvet jacket. My companion got up, giving him a thin glance which I caught in its pa.s.sage, and which expressed a strange commixture of resignation and fascination,--a sort of perverted exaltation. Ugly, vulgar, pretentious, dishonest, as I thought the creature, he had appealed successfully to her eager and tender imagination. I was deeply disgusted, but I had no warrant to interfere, and at any rate I felt that it would be vain.
The young man waved his hand with a pictorial gesture. "Nice old court,"
he observed. "Nice mellow old place. Good tone in that brick. Nice crooked old staircase."
Decidedly, I could n"t stand it; without responding I gave my hand to Caroline Spencer. She looked at me an instant with her little white face and expanded eyes, and as she showed her pretty teeth I suppose she meant to smile.
"Don"t be sorry for me," she said, "I am very sure I shall see something of this dear old Europe yet."
I told her that I would not bid her goodby; I should find a moment to come back the next morning. Her cousin, who had put on his sombrero again, flourished it off at me by way of a bow, upon which I took my departure.
The next morning I came back to the inn, where I met in the court the landlady, more loosely laced than in the evening. On my asking for Miss Spencer,--"_Partie_, monsieu," said the hostess. "She went away last night at ten o "clock, with her--her--not her husband, eh?--in fine, her _monsieur_. They went down to the American ship." I turned away; the poor girl had been about thirteen hours in Europe.
IV.
I myself, more fortunate, was there some five years longer. During this period I lost my friend Latouche, who died of a malarious fever during a tour in the Levant. One of the first things I did on my return was to go up to Grimwinter to pay a consolatory visit to his poor mother. I found her in deep affliction, and I sat with her the whole of the morning that followed my arrival (I had come in late at night), listening to her tearful descant and singing the praises of my friend. We talked of nothing else, and our conversation terminated only with the arrival of a quick little woman who drove herself up to the door in a "carryall,"
and whom I saw toss the reins upon the horse"s back with the briskness of a startled sleeper throwing back the bed-clothes. She jumped out of the carryall and she jumped into the room. She proved to be the minister"s wife and the great town-gossip, and she had evidently, in the latter capacity, a choice morsel to communicate. I was as sure of this as I was that poor Mrs. Latouche was not absolutely too bereaved to listen to her. It seemed to me discreet to retire; I said I believed I would go and take a walk before dinner.
"And, by the way," I added, "if you will tell me where my old friend Miss Spencer lives, I will walk to her house."
The minister"s wife immediately responded. Miss Spencer lived in the fourth house beyond the "Baptist church; the Baptist church was the one on the right, with that queer green thing over the door; they called it a portico, but it looked more like an old-fashioned bedstead.
"Yes, do go and see poor Caroline," said Mrs. Latouche. "It will refresh her to see a strange face."
"I should think she had had enough of strange faces!" cried the minister"s wife.
"I mean, to see a visitor," said Mrs. Latouche, amending her phrase.