Infelice Part 31

"Quite agreeable to all parties. I shall expect you. Good-morning."

When Regina left the sitting-room she followed the housemaid up two flights of steps, and into a small but beautifully furnished apartment, where a fire was not really necessary, as the house was heated by a furnace, still the absence of the cheerful red light she had left below made this room seem chill and uninviting.

The trunks had been brought up, and after lowering the curtain of the window that looked down on the beautiful Avenue, Hattie said:

"Will you have tea, coffee, or chocolate?"

"Neither, I thank you."

"Have you had any breakfast?"

"I do not want any."

"It is no trouble, miss, to get what you like."

Regina only shook her head, and proceeded to take off her hat and wrappings.

"Are you an orphan?" queried Hattie, her heart warming toward a stranger who avoided giving trouble.

"No; but my mother is in----is too far for me to go to her."

"Then you aren't here on charity?"

"Charity! No, indeed! Mr. Palma is my guardian until I go to my mother."

"Well, miss, try to be contented. Miss Olga has a kinder heart than her mother, and though she has a bitter tongue and rough ways she will befriend you. Don't fret about your dog, we folks belowstairs will see that he does not suffer. We will help you take care of him."

"Thank you, Hattie. I shall be grateful to all who are kind to him.

Please give him some water and a piece of bread when you go down."

It was a great relief to find herself once more alone, and, sinking down wearily into a rocking chair, she hid her face in her hands.

Her heart was heavy, her head ached; her soul rose in rebellion against the cold selfishness and discourtesy that had characterized her reception by the inmates of her guardian's house.

Everything around her betokened wealth, taste, elegance; the carpets and various articles of furniture were of the most costly materials, but at the thought of living here she shuddered. Fine and fas.h.i.+onable in all its appointments, but chilly, empty, surface gilded, she felt that she would stifle in this mansion.

By comparison, how dear and sacred seemed the old life at the parsonage I how desolate and dreary the present! how inexpressibly lonely and hopeless the future!

From the thought of Mr. Palma's return, she could borrow no pleasant auguries, rather additional gloom and apprehension; and his absence had really been the sole redeeming circ.u.mstance that marked her arrival in New York. With an unconquerable dread which arose from early childish prejudice and which she never attempted to a.n.a.lyze, she shrank from meeting him.

There came a quick low rap on the door, but she neither heard nor heeded it, and started when a warm hand removed those that covered her face.

"Just as I expected, you are having a good cry all to yourself. No, your eyes are dry and bright as stars. I daresay you have set us all down as a family of brutes; as more cruel than the Piutes or Modocs; as stony hearted as Solomon, when he ordered the poor little baby to be cut in half and distributed among its several mothers. But there is so little justice left in the world, that I imagine each individual would do well to contribute a moiety to the awfully slender public stock. Suppose you pay t.i.thes to the extent of counting me out of this nest of persecutors? Thank Heaven! I am not a Palma! My soul does not work like the piston of a steam-engine,--is not regulated by a gauge-c.o.c.k and safety-valve to prevent all explosions, to keep the even, steady, decorous, profitable tenor of its sternly politic way. I am a Neville. The blood in my veins is not 'blue' like the Palma's, but red,--and hot enough to keep my heart from freezing, as the Palma's do, and to melt the ice they manufacture, wherever they breathe. I am no Don Quixote to redress your grievances, or storm windmills; for verily neither mamma nor Erle Palma belongs to that cla.s.s of harmless innocuous bugaboos, as those will find to their cost who run against them. I am simply Olga Neville, almost twenty-three, and quite willing to help you if possible. Shall we enter into an alliance--offensive and defensive?"

She stood by the mantlepiece, slowly b.u.t.toning her glove, and looked quite handsome, and very elegant in her rich wine-coloured silk and costly furs.

Looking up into her face, Regina wondered how far she might trust that apparently frank open countenance, and Olga smiled, and added:

"You are a cunning fledgling, not to be caught with chaff. Have they sent you anything to eat?"

"I declined having anything. My head aches."

"Then do as I tell you, and you will soon feel relieved. There is a bath-room on this floor. Ring for Hattie, and tell her you want a good hot bath. When you have taken it, lie down and go to sleep. One word before I go. Do try not to be hard on mamma. Poor mamma! She married among these Palmas, and very soon from force of habit and a.s.sociation she too grew politic, cautious; finally she also froze, and has never quite thawed again. She is not unkind,--you must not think so for an instant; she only keeps her blood down to the safe, wise prudent temperature of sherbet. Poor mamma! She does not like dogs; once she was dreadfully bitten, almost torn to pieces by one, and very naturally she has developed no remarkable 'affinity' for them since that episode. Hattie will get you anything you need. Take your bath and go to sleep, and dream good-natured things about mamma."

She nodded, smiled pleasantly, and glided away as noiselessly as she came, leaving Regina perplexed, and nowise encouraged with reference to the stern cold character of her guardian.

She had eaten nothing since the previous day, had been unable to close her eyes after bidding Mrs. Lindsay farewell; and now, quite overcome with the reaction from the painful excitement of yesterday's incidents, she threw herself across the foot of the bed, and clasped her hands over her throbbing temples. No sound disturbed tier, save the occasional roll of wheels on the street below, and very soon the long lashes drooped, and she slept the heavy deep sleep of mental and physical exhaustion.

CHAPTER XIV.

Led by poppy-wreathed wands, through those fabled ivory gates that open into the enchanted realm of dreams, the weary girl forgot her woes, and found blessed reunion with the absent dear ones, whose loss had so beclouded the morning of her life.

Under the burning sun of India, through the tangled jungles of Oude, she wandered in quest of the young missionary and his mother, now springing away from the crouching tigers that glared at her as she pa.s.sed; now darting into some Himalayan cavern to escape the wild ferocious eyes of Nana Sahib, who offered her that wonderful lost ruby that he carried off in his flight, and when she seized it, hoping its sale would build a church for mission wors.h.i.+p, it dissolved into blood that stained her fingers. With a fiendish laugh Nana Sahib told her it was a part of the heart of a beautiful woman butchered in the "House of Ma.s.sacre" at Cawnpore. On and on she pressed, footsore and weary but undaunted, through those awful mountain solitudes, and finally hearing in the distance the bark of Hero, she followed the sound, reached the banks of Jumna, and there amid the ripple of fountains, and the sighing of the cypress, in the cool shadow cast by the marble minarets and domes of Shah Jehan's Moomtaj mausoleum, Mr. and Mrs. Lindsay joyfully welcomed her; while upon the fragrant air floated divine melodies that Dougla.s.s told her were chanted by angels in her mother's grave, beneath the cl.u.s.tering white columns.

When after many hours she awoke, it was night. A faint light trembled in one of the globes of the gas chandelier, and a blanket had been laid over her. Starting up she saw a figure sitting at the window, apparently watching what pa.s.sed in the street below.

"I hope you feel refreshed. I can testify you have slept as soundly as the youths whom Decius put to bed some time since near Ephesus."

Olga rose, turned on the gas that flamed up instantly, and showed her elaborately dressed in evening toilette. Her shoulders and arms, round and pearly white, were bare save the s.h.i.+ning tracery of jewels in necklace and bracelets; and in the long train of blue silk that flowed over the carpet, she looked even taller than in the morning walking suit. Her ruddy hair, heaped nigh on her head, was surmounted by a jewelled comb, whence fell a cataract of curls of various lengths and sizes, that touched the filmy lace which bordered her shoulders like a line of foam where blue silk broke on dimpled flesh.

As Regina gazed admiringly at her, Olga came closer, and stood under the gas-light.

"A penny for your thoughts! Am I handsome? Somebody says only 'fools and children tell the truth.' You are not exactly the latter; certainly not the former; nevertheless, being a rustic, all unversed in the fas.h.i.+onable accomplishment of 'fibbing,' you may dispense with the varnish pot and brush. Tell me, Regina, don't you feel inclined to fall at my feet and wors.h.i.+p me?"

"Not in the least. But I do think you very handsome, and your dress is quite lovely. Are you going to a party or a ball?"

"To a 'Reception,' where the people will be crowded like sardines, where my puffs will be mashed as flat as buckwheat cakes, and my train will go home with various gentlemen, clinging in sc.r.a.ps to their boot-heels! Were you ever at the seash.o.r.e? If you have ever chanced to walk into a settlement of fiddlers, and seen them squirming, wriggling, backward, forward, sideways, you may understand that I am going into a similar promiscuous scramble.

Human ingenuity is vastly fertile in the production of fas.h.i.+onable tortures; and when that outraged and indignant poet savagely a.s.serted, that 'Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,' I have an abiding conviction that he had just been victimized at a 'Reception,' or 'German,' or 'Kettle-drum,' or 'Masque Ball,'--or some such fine occasion, where people are amused by treading on each other's toes, and gnawing (metaphorically) their nearest neighbour's vertebrae."

"Do you not enjoy going into society?"

"_Cela depend!_ You are an unsophisticated little package of innocent rusticity, and have yet to learn

'Society is now one polished horde, Formed of two mighty tribes, The Bores and Bored!'

I speak advisedly, for lo these four years I have energetically preyed, and been preyed upon. When I was your age, I was impatient to break away from my governess, and soar into the flowery pastures of fas.h.i.+onable gaiety, with the crowd of other b.u.t.terflies that seemed so happy, so lovely; but now that I have bruised my pretty wings, and tarnished the gilding, and rubbed off the fresh enamelling, I would if I could crawl back into a safe brown coc.o.o.n, or hide in some quiet and forgotten chrysalis. Did you ever hear of Moloch?"

"Yes, of course; I know it was a brazen image, heated red hot, in whose arms children were placed by idolatrous heathen parents."

"No such thing! that is a foolish, obsolete Rabbinical myth. You must not talk such old-fas.h.i.+oned folly. Hearken to the solemn truth that underlies that fable; Moloch reigns here, in far more pomp and splendour than the Ammonites ever dreamed of. Crowned and sceptred, he is now called 'Wealth and Fas.h.i.+on,' holds daily festivals and mighty orgies where salads, boned turkeys, charlotte russe, _fistachio souffles, creams, ices, champagne-julep, champagne frappe_, and persicot call the mult.i.tude to wors.h.i.+p; and there while the stirring notes of Strauss ring above the sighs and groans of the heroic victims, fathers and mothers bring their sons and daughters bravely decked in broadcloth and satin, white kid and diamonds, and offer them in sacrifice; and Moloch clasps, scorches, blackens all!

Wide wonderful blue eyes, how shocked you look!"

Olga laughed lightly, shook out the fringed ends of her broad white silk sash, and glanced in the mirror of the bureau, to see the effect.

"Regina, don't begin city life by a system of starvation that would do infinite credit to a Thebaid anchorite. Eat abundantly. Take generous care of your body, for spiritual famine is inevitably ahead of you. Yonder on the table, carefully covered, is your dinner. Of course it is cold, stone-cold as this world's charity; but people who sleep until eight o'clock, ought not to expect smoking hot viands. A good meal gives one far more real philosophy and fort.i.tude, than all the volumes Aristotle and Plato ever wrote. Do you hear that bell? It is a signal to attend the festival of Milcom. Oh, Mammon I behold I come."