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The House With The Green Blinds
by
By this time he had arrived directly opposite the box; and although he was still undetermined what to do or whether to do anything, he turned his head and lifted his eyes. No sooner had he done so than he uttered a cry of disappointment and remained rooted to the spot. The box was empty. During his slow advance Mr. Vandeleur and his daughter had quietly slipped away.
A polite person in his rear reminded him that he was stopping the path; and he moved on again with mechanical footsteps, and suffered the crowd to carry him unresisting out of the theatre. Once in the street, the pressure ceasing, he came to a halt, and the cool night air speedily restored him to the possession of his faculties. He was surprised to find that his head ached violently, and that he remembered not one word of the two acts which he had witnessed. As the excitement wore away, it was succeeded by an overweening appetite for sleep, and he hailed a cab and drove to his lodging in a state of extreme exhaustion and some disgust of life.
Next morning he lay in wait for Miss Vandeleur on her road to market, and by eight o’clock beheld her stepping down a lane. She was simply, and even poorly, attired; but in the carriage of her head and body there was something flexible and noble that would have lent distinction to the meanest toilette. Even her basket, so aptly did she carry it, became her like an ornament. It seemed to Francis, as he slipped into a doorway, that the sunshine followed and the shadows fled before her as she walked; and he was conscious, for the first time, of a bird singing in a cage above the lane.
He suffered her to pass the doorway, and then, coming forth once more, addressed her by name from behind. “Miss Vandeleur,” said he.
She turned and, when she saw who he was, became deadly pale.
“Pardon me,” he continued; “Heaven knows I had no will to startle you; and, indeed, there should be nothing startling in the presence of one who wishes you so well as I do. And, believe me, I am acting rather from necessity than choice. We have many things in common, and I am sadly in the dark. There is much that I should be doing, and my hands are tied. I do not know even what to feel, nor who are my friends and enemies.”
She found her voice with an effort.
“I do not know who you are,” she said.
“Ah, yes! Miss Vandeleur, you do,” returned Francis “better than I do myself. Indeed, it is on that, above all, that I seek light. Tell me what you know,” he pleaded. “Tell me who I am, who you are, and how our destinies are intermixed. Give me a little help with my life, Miss Vandeleur – only a word or two to guide me, only the name of my father, if you will – and I shall be grateful and content.”
“I will not attempt to deceive you,” she replied. “I know who you are, but I am not at liberty to say.”
“Tell me, at least, that you have forgiven my presumption, and I shall wait with all the patience I have,” he said. “If I am not to know, I must do without. It is cruel, but I can bear more upon a push. Only do not add to my troubles the thought that I have made an enemy of you.”
“You did only what was natural,” she said, “and I have nothing to forgive you. Farewell.”
“Is it to be FAREWELL?” he asked.
“Nay, that I do not know myself,” she answered. “Farewell for the present, if you like.”
And with these words she was gone.
Francis returned to his lodging in a state of considerable commotion of mind. He made the most trifling progress with his Euclid for that forenoon, and was more often at the window than at his improvised writing-table. But beyond seeing the return of Miss Vandeleur, and the meeting between her and her father, who was smoking a Trichinopoli cigar in the verandah, there was nothing notable in the neighbourhood of the house with the green blinds before the time of the mid-day meal. The young man hastily allayed his appetite in a neighbouring restaurant, and returned with the speed of unallayed curiosity to the house in the Rue Lepic. A mounted servant was leading a saddle-horse to and fro before the garden wall; and the porter of Francis’s lodging was smoking a pipe against the door-post, absorbed in contemplation of the livery and the steeds.