Winter Evening Tales

I am addicted to making strange friendships, to liking people whom I have no conventional authority to like—­people out of “my set,” and not always of my own nationality.  I do not say that I have always been fortunate in these ventures; but I have had sufficient splendid exceptions to excuse the social aberration, and make me think that all of us might oftener trust our own instincts, oftener accept the friends that circumstance and opportunity offer us, with advantage.  At any rate, the peradventure in chance associations has always been very attractive to me.

In some irregular way I became acquainted with Petralto Garcia.  I believe I owed the introduction to my beautiful hound, Lutha; but, at any rate, our first conversation was quite as sensible as if we had gone through the legitimate initiation.  I know it was in the mountains, and that within an hour our tastes and sympathies had touched each other at twenty different points.

Lutha walked beside us, showing in his mien something of the proud satisfaction which follows a conviction of having done a good thing.  He looked first at me and then at Petralto, elevating and depressing his ears at our argument, as if he understood all about it.  Perhaps he did; human beings don’t know everything.

People have so much time in the country that it is little wonder that our acquaintance ripened into friendship during the holidays, and that one of my first visits when I had got settled for the winter was to Petralto’s rooms.  Their locality might have cooled some people, but not me.  It does not take much of an education in New York life to find out that the pleasantest, loftiest, handsomest rooms are to be found in the streets not very far “up town;” comfortably contiguous to the best hotels, stores, theatres, picture galleries, and all the other necessaries of a pleasant existence.

He was just leaving the door for a ride in the park, and we went together.  I had refused the park twice within an hour, and had told myself that nothing should induce me to follow that treadmill procession again, yet when he said, in his quiet way, “You had better take half an hour’s ride, Jack,” I felt like going, and I went.

Now just as we got to the Fifth Avenue entrance, a singular thing happened.  Petralto’s pale olive face flushed a bright crimson, his eyes flashed and dropped; he whipped the horse into a furious gallop, as if he would escape something; then became preternaturally calm, drew suddenly up, and stood waiting for a handsome equipage which was approaching.  Its occupants were bending forward to speak to him.  I had no eyes for the gentleman, the girl at his side was so radiantly beautiful.

I heard Petralto promise to call on them, and we passed on; but there was a look on his face which bespoke both sympathy and silence.  He soon complained of the cold, said the park pace irritated him, but still passed and repassed the couple who had caused him such evident suffering, as if he was determined to inure himself to the pain of meeting them.  During this interval I had time to notice the caressing, lover-like attitude of the beauty’s companion, and I said, as they entered a stately house together, “Are they married?”

“Yes.”

“He seems devotedly in love with her.”

“He loved her two years before he saw her.”

“Impossible.”

“Not at all.  I have a mind to tell you the story.”

“Do.  Come home with me, and we will have a quiet dinner together.”

“No.  I need to be alone an hour or two.  Call on me about nine o’clock.”

Petralto’s rooms were a little astonishment to me.  They were luxurious in the extreme, with just that excess of ornament which suggests under-civilization; and yet I found him smoking in a studio destitute of everything but a sleepy-looking sofa, two or three capacious lounging chairs, and the ordinary furniture of an artist’s atelier.  There was a bright fire in the grate, a flood of light from the numerous gas jets, and an atmosphere heavy with the seductive, fragrant vapor of Havana.

I lit my own cigar, made myself comfortable, and waited until it was Petralto’s pleasure to begin.  After a while he said, “Jack, turn that easel so that you can see the picture on it.”

I did so.

“Now, look at it well, and tell me what you see; first, the locality—­describe it.”

“A dim old wood, with sunlight sifting through thick foliage, and long streamers of weird grey moss.  The ground is covered with soft short grass of an intense green, and there are wonderful flowers of wonderful colors.”

“Right.  It is an opening in the forest of the Upper Guadalupe.  Now, what else do you see?”

“A small pony, saddled and bridled, feeding quietly, and a young girl standing on tip-toe, pulling down a vine loaded with golden-colored flowers.”

“Describe the girl to me.”

I turned and looked at my querist.  He was smoking, with shut eyes, and waiting calmly for my answer.  “Well, she has—­Petralto, what makes you ask me?  You might paint, but it is impossible to describe light; and the girl is nothing else.  If I had met her in such a wood, I should have thought she was an angel, and been afraid of her.”

“No angel, Jack, but a most exquisite, perfect flower of maidenhood.  When I first saw her, she stood just so, with her open palms full of yellow jasmine.  I laid my heart into them, too, my whole heart, my whole life, and every joy and hope it contained.”

“What were you doing in Texas?”

“What are you doing in New York?  I was born in Texas.  My family, an old Spanish one, have been settled there since they helped to build San Antonio in 1730.  I grew up pretty much as Texan youths do—­half my time in the saddle, familiar with the worst side of life and the best side of nature.  I should have been a thorough Ishmaelite if I had not been an artist; but the artistic instinct conquered the nomadic and in my twentieth year I went to Rome to study.

“I can pass the next five years.  I do not pretend to regret them, though, perhaps, you would say I simply wasted time and opportunity.  I enjoyed them, and it seems to me I was the person most concerned in the matter.  I had a fresh, full capacity then for enjoyment of every kind.  I loved nature and I loved art.  I warmed both hands at the glowing fire of life.  Time may do his worst.  I have been happy, and I can throw those five careless, jovial years, in his face to my last hour.

“But one must awake out of every pleasant dream, and one day I got a letter urging my immediate return home.  My father had got himself involved in a lawsuit, and was failing rapidly in health.  My younger brother was away with a ranger company, and the affairs of the ranch needed authoritative overlooking.  I was never so fond of art as to be indifferent to our family prosperity, and I lost no time in hurrying West.

“Still, when I arrived at home, there was no one to welcome me!  The noble, gracious Garcia slept with his ancestors in the old Alamo Church; somewhere on the llano my brother was ranging, still with his wild, company; and the house, in spite of the family servants and Mexican peons, was sufficiently lonely.  Yet I was astonished, to find how easily I went back to my old life, and spent whole days in the saddle investigating the affairs of the Garcia ranch.

“I had been riding one day for ten hours, and was so fatigued that I determined to spend the night with one of my herdsmen.  He had a little shelter under some fine pecan trees on the Guadalupe, and after a cup of coffee and a meal of dried beef, I sauntered with my cigar down the river bank.  Then the cool, dusky shadows of the wood tempted me.  I entered it.  It was an enchanted wood, for there stood Jessy Lorimer, just as I had painted her.

“I did not move nor speak.  I watched her, spell-bound.  I had not even the power, when she had mounted her pony and was coming toward me, to assume another attitude.  She saw that I had been watching her, and a look, half reproachful and half angry, came for a moment into her face.  But she inclined her head to me as she passed, and then went off at a rapid gallop before I could collect my senses.

“Some people, Jack, walk into love with their eyes open, calculating every step.  I tumbled in over head, lost my feet, lost my senses, narrowed in one moment the whole world down to one bewitching woman.  I did not know her, of course; but I soon should.  I was well aware she could not live very far away, and that my herd must be able to give me some information.  I was so deeply in love that this poor ignorant fellow, knowing something about this girl, seemed to me to be a person to be respected, and even envied.

“I gave him immediately a plentiful supply of cigars, and sitting down beside him opened the conversation with horses, but drifted speedily into the subject of new settlers.

“‘Were there any since I had left?’

“’Two or three, no ‘count travelers, one likely family.’

“‘Much of a family?’

“‘You may bet on that, sir.’

“‘Any pleasant young men?’

“‘Reckon so.  Mighty likely young gal.’

“So, bit by bit, I found that Mr. Lorimer, my beauty’s father, was a Scotchman, who had bought the ranch which had formerly belonged to the old Spanish family of the Yturris.  Then I remembered pretty Inez and Dolores Yturri, with their black eyes, olive skins and soft, lazy embonpoint; and thought of golden-haired Jessy Lorimer in their dark, latticed rooms.

“Jack, turn the picture to me.  Beautiful Jessy!  How I loved her in those happy days that followed.  How I humored her grave, stern father and courted her brothers for her sake!  I was a slave to the whole family, so that I might gain an hour with or a smile from Jessy.  Do I regret it now?  Not one moment.  Such delicious hours as we had together were worth any price.  I would throw all my future to old Time, Jack, only to live them over again.”

“That is a great deal to say, Petralto.”

“Perhaps; and yet I will not recall it.  In those few months everything that was good in me prospered and grew.  Jessy brought out nothing but the best part of my character.  I was always at my best with her.  No thought of selfish pleasure mingled in my love for her.  If it delighted me to touch her hand, to feel her soft hair against my cheek, to meet her earnest, subduing gaze, it also made me careful by no word or look to soil the dainty purity of my white lily.

“I feared to tell her that I loved her.  But I did do it, I scarcely know how.  The softest whisper seemed too loud against her glowing cheek.  She trembled from head to foot.  I was faint and silent with rapture when she first put her little hand in mine, and suffered me to draw her to my heart.  Ah!  I am sick with joy yet when I think of it.  I—­I first, I alone, woke that sweet young heart to life.  She is lost, lost to me, but no one else can ever be to her what I have been.”

And here Petralto, giving full sway to his impassioned Southern nature, covered his face with his hands and wept hot, regretful tears.

Tears come like blood from men of cold, strong temperaments, but they were the natural relief of Petralto’s.  I let him weep.  In a few minutes he leaped up, and began pacing the room rapidly as he went on: 

“Mr. Lorimer received my proposal with a dour, stiff refusal that left me no hope of any relenting.  ‘He had reasons, more than one,’ he said; ’he was not saying anything against either my Spanish blood or my religion; but it was no fault in a Scotsman to mate his daughter with people of her own kith.’

“There was no quarrel, and no discourtesy; but I saw I could bend an iron bar with my pleadings just as soon as his determination.  Jessy received orders not to meet me or speak to me alone; and the possibility of disobeying her father’s command never suggested itself to her.  Even I struggled long with my misery before I dared to ask her to practice her first deceit.

“She would not meet me alone, but she persuaded her mother to come once with her to our usual tryst in the wood.  Mrs. Lorimer spoke kindly but hopelessly, and covered her own face to weep while Jessy and I took of each other a passionate farewell.  I promised her then never to marry anyone else; and she!—­I thought her heart would break as I laid her almost fainting in her mother’s arms.

“Yet I did not know how much Jessy really was to me until I suddenly found out that her father had sent her back to Scotland, under the pretence of finishing her education.  I had been so honorably considerate of Jessy’s Puritan principles that I felt this hasty, secret movement exceedingly unkind and unjust.  Guadalupe became hateful to me, the duties of the ranch distracting; and my brother Felix returning about this time, we made a division of the estate.  He remained at the Garcia mansion, I rented out my possessions, and went, first to New Orleans, and afterward to New York.

“In New York I opened a studio, and one day a young gentleman called and asked me to draw a picture from some crude, imperfect sketch which a friend had made.  During the progress of the picture he frequently called in.  For some reason or other—­probably because we were each other’s antipodes in tastes and temperament—­he became my enthusiastic admirer, and interested himself greatly to secure me a lucrative patronage.

“Yet some subtle instinct, which I cannot pretend to divine or explain, constantly warned me to beware of this man.  But I was ashamed and angry at myself for linking even imaginary evil with so frank and generous a nature.  I defied destiny, turned a deaf ear to the whisperings of my good genius, and continued the one-sided friendship—­for I never even pretended to myself that I had any genuine liking for the man.

“One day, when we had become very familiar, he ran up to see me about something, I forget what, and not finding me in the outer apartments, penetrated to my private room.  There, upon that easel, Will Lennox first saw the woman you saw with him to-night—­the picture which you are now looking at—­and he fell as desperately in love with it, in his way, as I had done in the Guadalupe woods with the reality.  I cannot tell you how much it cost me to restrain my anger.  He, however, never noticed I was angry.  He had but one object now—­to gain from me the name and residence of the original.

“It was no use to tell him it was a fancy picture, that he was sighing for an imagination.  He never believed it for a moment.  I would not sell it, I would not copy it, I would not say where I had painted it; I kept it to my most sacred privacy.  He was sure that the girl existed, and that I knew where she lived.  He was very rich, without an occupation or an object, and Jessy’s pure, lovely face haunted him day and night, and supplied him with a purpose.

“He came to me one day and offering me a large sum of money, asked me finally to reveal at least the locality of which I had painted the picture.  His free, frank unembarrassed manner compels me to believe that he had no idea of the intolerable insult he was perpetrating.  He had always been accustomed to consider more or less money an equivalent for all things under the sun.  But you, Jack, will easily understand that the offer was followed by some very angry words, and that his threat to hunt the world over to find my beauty was not without fear to me.

“I heard soon after that Will Lennox had gone to the South.  I had neither hidden nor talked about my former life and I was ignorant of how much he knew or did not know of it.  He could trace me easily to New Orleans; how much further would depend upon his tact and perseverance.  Whether he reached Guadalupe or no, I am uncertain, but my heart fell with a strange presentment of sorrow when I saw his name, a few weeks afterward, among the European departures.

“The next thing I knew of Will Lennox was his marriage to some famous Scotch beauty.  Jack, do you not perceive the rest?  The Scotch beauty was Jessy Lorimer.  I feared it at the first.  I knew it this afternoon.”

“Will you call there?”

“I have no power to resist it.  Did you not notice how eagerly she pressed the invitation?”

“Do not accept it, Petralto.”

He shook his head, and remained silent.  The next afternoon I was astonished on going up to his rooms to find Will Lennox, sitting there.  He was talking in that loud, happy, demonstrative way so natural to men accustomed to have the whole world minister unto them.

He did not see how nervous and angry Petralto was under his easy, boastful conversation.  He did not notice the ashy face, the blazing eyes, the set lips, the trembling hands, of the passionate Spanish nature, until Petralto blazed out in a torrent of unreasonable words and taunts, and ordered Lennox out of his presence.

Even then the stupid, good-natured, purse-proud man could not see his danger.  He began to apologize to me for Petralto’s rudeness, and excuse “anything in a fellow whom he had cut out so badly.”

“Liar!” Petralto retorted.  “She loved me first; you can never have her whole heart.  Begone!  If I had you on the Guadalupe, where Jessy and I lived and loved, I would—­”

The sentence was not finished.  Lennox struck Petralto to the ground, and before I raised him, I persuaded the angry bridegroom to retire.  I stayed with Petralto that night, although I was not altogether pleased with him.  He was sulky and silent at first, but after a quiet rest and a few consoling Havanas he was willing to talk the affair over.

“Lennox tortured me,” he said, passionately.  “How could he be so unfeeling, so mad, as to suppose I should care to learn what chain of circumstances led him to find out my love and then steal her?  Everything he said tortured me but one fact—­Jessy was alone and thoroughly miserable.  Poor little pet!  She thought I had forgotten her, and so she married him—­not for love; I won’t believe it.”

“But,” I said, “Petralto, you have no right to hug such a delusion; and seeing that you had made no attempt to follow Jessy and marry her, she had every right to suppose you really had forgotten her.  Besides, I think it very likely that she should love a young, rich, good-looking fellow like Will Lennox.”

“In not pursuing her I was following Jessy’s own request and obeying my own plighted promise.  It was understood between us that I should wait patiently until Jessy was twenty-one.  Even Scotch customs would then have regarded her as her own mistress and acknowledged her right to marry as she desired; and if I did not write, she has not wanted constant tokens of my remembrance.  I have trusted her,” he said, mournfully, “without a sign from her.”

That winter the beauty of Mrs. Lennox and the devotion of her husband were on every tongue.  But married is not mated, and the best part of Jessy Lorimer’s beauty had never touched Will Lennox.  Her pure, simple, poetic temperament he had never understood, and he felt in a dim, uncertain way that the noblest part of his wife escaped him.

He could not enter into her feelings, and her spiritual superiority unconsciously irritated him.  Jessy had set her love’s first music to the broad, artistic heart of Petralto; she could not, without wronging herself, decline to a lower range of feelings and a narrower heart.  This reserve of herself was not a conscious one.  She was not one of those self-involved women always studying their own emotions; she was simply true to the light within her.  But her way was not Will Lennox’s way, her finer fancies and lighter thoughts were mysteries to his grosser nature.

So the thing happened which always has and always will happen in such cases; when the magic and the enchantment of Jessy’s great personal beauty had lost their first novelty and power, she gradually became to her husband—­“Something better than his dog, a little dearer than his horse.”

I did not much blame Will Lennox.  It is very hard to love what we do not comprehend.  A wife who could have sympathized in his pursuits, talked over the chances of his “Favorite,” or gone to sea with him in his yacht, would always have found Will an indulgent and attentive husband.  But fast horses did not interest Jessy, and going to sea made her ill; so gradually these two fell much further apart than they ought to have done.

Now, if Petralto had been wicked and Jessy weak, he might have revenged himself on the man and woman who had wrought him so much suffering.  But he had set his love far too high to sully her white name; and Jessy, in that serenity which comes of lofty and assured principles, had no idea of the possibility of her injuring her husband by a wrong thought.  Yet instinctively they both sought to keep apart; and if by chance they met, the grave courtesy of the one and the sweet dignity of the other left nothing for evil hopes or thoughts to feed upon.  One morning, two years after Jessy’s marriage, I received a note from Petralto, asking me to call upon him immediately.  To my amazement, his rooms were dismantled, his effects packed up, and he was on the point of leaving New York.

“Whither bound?” I asked.  “To Rome?”

“No; to the Guadalupe.  I want to try what nature can do for me.  Art, society, even friendship, fail at times to comfort me for my lost love.  I will go back to nature, the great, sweet mother and lover of men.”

So Petralto went out of New York; and the world that had known him forgot him—­forgot even to wonder about, much less to regret, him.

I was no more faithful than others.  I fell in with a wonderful German philosopher, and got into the “entities” and “non-entities,” forgot Petralto in Hegel, and felt rather ashamed of the days when I lounged and trifled in the artist’s pleasant rooms.  I was “enamored of divine philosophy,” took no more interest in polite gossip, and did not waste my time reading newspapers.  In fact, with Kant and Fichte before me, I did not feel that I had the time lawfully to spare.

Therefore, anyone may imagine my astonishment when, about three years after Petralto’s departure from New York, he one morning suddenly entered my study, handsome as Apollo and happy as a bridegroom.  I have used the word “groom” very happily, for I found out in a few minutes that Petralto’s radiant condition was, in fact, the condition of a bridegroom.

Of course, under the circumstances, I could not avoid feeling congratulatory; and my affection for the handsome, loving fellow came back so strongly that I resolved to break my late habits of seclusion, and go to the Brevoort House and see his bride.

I acknowledge that in this decision there was some curiosity.  I wondered what rare woman had taken the beautiful Jessy Lorimer’s place; and I rather enjoyed the prospect of twitting him with his protestations of eternal fidelity to his first love.

I did not do it.  I had no opportunity.  Madame Petralto Garcia was, in fact, Jessy Lorimer Lennox.  Of course I understood at once that Will must be dead; but I did not learn the particulars until the next day, when Petralto dropped in for a quiet smoke and chat.  Not unwillingly I shut my book and lit my cigar.

“‘All’s well that ends well,’ my dear fellow,” I said, when we had both smoked silently for a few moments; “but I never heard of Will Lennox’s death.  I hope he did not come to the Guadalupe and get shot.”

Petralto shook his head and replied:  “I was always sorry for that threat.  Will never meant to injure me.  No.  He was drowned at sea two years ago.  His yacht was caught in a storm, he ventured too near the shore, and all on board perished.”

“I did not hear of it at the time.”

“Nor I either.  I will tell you how I heard.  About a year ago I went, as was my frequent custom, to the little open glade in the forest where I had first seen Jessy.  As I lay dreaming on the warm soft grass I saw a beautiful woman, clothed in black, walk slowly toward the very same jasmine vine, and standing as of old on tip-toe, pull down a loaded branch.  Can you guess how my heart beat, how I leaped to my feet and cried out before I knew what I was doing, ‘Jessy! darling Jessy!’ She stood quite still, looking toward me.  Oh, how beautiful she was!  And when at length we clasped hands, and I gazed into her eyes, I knew without a word that my love had come to me.”

“She had waited a whole year?”

“True; I liked her the better for that.  After Will’s death she went to Scotland—­put both herself and me out of temptation.  She owed this much to the memory of a man who had loved her as well as he was capable of doing.  But I know how happy were the steps that brought her back to the Guadalupe, and that warm spring afternoon under the jasmine vine paid for all.  I am the happiest man in all the wide world.”