FullReads

Percy Reed, seated near a table loaded with needle-books, silk-winders, and a hundred little trinkets, with a cigar in his mouth, and a sock, with a little round gourd shoved into the foot of it, in his hand, was intently occupied in darning a hole in the toe.

“There! don’t throw away your cigar. Mon Dieu! can a person never see you without being overpowered at your grand politeness?”

“Mademoiselle, I make no apologies. Buttons will come off, and stockings will contract holes. Washer-women are heartless. The mountain will not come to Mahomet: therefore I darn ’em myself.”

“A philosopher under all circumstances. And pray what have you done with your pupil in morality and economy?”

“Oh, Dupleisis? I have started him out in a carriage to view the wonders of this ‘River of January.’ By-the-by, if you ever hope to attract, don’t dream of mentioning figures in the presence of our mysterious Frenchman.”

“Why?”

“The branch of mathematics known as simple addition seems to be the crowning glory of his intellect. He knows to a milreis the value of this building, from chimney-pot to cellar.”

“Blessed with curiosity,” said Mademoiselle, significantly.

“Mathematics entirely. If Armand Dupleisis were entering the pearly gates of Paradise, amid the resounding hallelujahs of cherubim and seraphim, he would deliberately count the cost of the entire wardrobe, before he thought of receiving the waters of eternal life.”

“Mr. Reed,” said Mademoiselle, earnestly, “who did you ever see of whom you could not speak lightly?”

“One person in the world–my mother. Sometimes in my dreams of the ‘auld lang syne’ I almost see that dear little lady; she had a window just like that, with the foliage rustling over it just as this does. Never, mademoiselle, does that little morning-wrapper come up before my eyes without making me a better and a purer man.”

Both were silent for some minutes after this. Mademoiselle Milan sat leaning her face against the crimson lining of her chair, apparently lost in thought.

At length she said, “Would to God that all men understood women as well as you!”

“But your mother; where is she, mademoiselle?”

The lady’s face turned as pale as marble, and her little white hands grasped the arms of her chair, until they seemed almost imbedded in the ebony. She attempted an utterance, but her voice failed her, and there was a dead silence.

Reed was a man of feeling. He did not talk, nor persuade her to talk. He did not even sit doing nothing. He went out on the balcony to examine the flowers. He climbed noiselessly up the lattice-work for jasmines fluttering in the evening breeze. Finally, he took up a violin and played.

He always played well, but now the music was low and soft,–old Scotch ballads, wild and mournful, touching little German songs, plaintive romances full of subdued passion. Mademoiselle Milan did not notice him; but in her heart she felt grateful for his consideration. Gradually the color returned to her face, and, soothed by the sad, sweet strains, she sunk into dreamy reverie.

“When we have reached another sphere, where emotion governs instead of thought, I think that man will speak in splendid music.”

Reed looked at her earnestly for a moment, and then said, “Mademoiselle, why did you never write?”

“The public treats authors very much as drill-sergeants do recruits,–drunk the first day, and beaten the rest of their lives.”

“Great minds rule the public.”

“And yet I fear your courage would ooze away when you came to lay a lance at rest against such a windmill as the common sense of the nineteenth century, whirling its rotary sails under the steady breeze of ridicule. I am a woman, and know a woman’s place. I have had dreams in my time,–‘dreams like that flower that blooms in a single night, and dies at dawn;’ but they are passed. You see, I carry the glare of the foot-lights even here.” And a bitter smile curled from her lip.

“Mademoiselle,” said Percy, solemnly, “the foot-lights enable you to move man to a hundred passions.”