Short Fiction · The Facts In The Curious Case Of H Hyrtl Esq (3/8)

III

Once planted, the germ of friendship blooms apace. Barely a fortnight had gone, and here were these three people on the best of terms. In the discreetest manner, Hugh had managed to ingratiate himself with the old man; he was serviceable, and he asked no questions. The timidity, the shrinking fear of strangers, which was the peculiar characteristic of this curious individual, he treated as he would have one of those natural afflictions, such as rheumatism or baldness, to which advanced age is subject and for which there is no cure. Certainly he made no allusion to it, but then he had so much to occupy him that it may be he gave it, if at all, little more than a passing thought.

Ah, yes! he had much to occupy him. Heliogabalus was indeed turned to the wall, but the atelier was bright with different studies of the same lead, luminous with blue eyes, yellow hair and complexions of roses and cream. Yet, for all his art, there was an intangible something in the original, a freshness, a vivacity, a charm that eluded him and escaped.

“I am too much in love to paint her properly,” he declared to himself; and as a matter of fact he was wholly, turbulently, absurdly in love with a girl whom he had known but a fortnight and of whose previous existence he had been absolutely unaware.

Of this state of affairs Jenny was seemingly ignorant. Now and again of an evening he sat with her and her father in that little sky-parlor where he had first tasted the food of the gods, and there, with a sentiment akin to reverence, listened to the sweet music of her words. Sometimes, when the evening happened to be clear, they took a stroll among the factory girls and mechanics in the Square, and sometimes they would sit awhile on one of the benches and discuss subjects in which⁠—by comparison to one, the great one as yet unbroached⁠—the interest was probably feigned; for there were times when their conversation, however animated, would subside and cease, and the wonder of love would be upon them. These silences, painfully awkward, indeed, Hugh would break with snatches of verse⁠—lines of Owen Meredith, that poet of the nineteenth century who died the other day in his beloved France; quatrains of Browning, too; and once the ill-mannered young fellow recited a conceit of Leigh Hunt’s:

“Jenny kissed me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief who love to get

Sweets upon your list, put that in⁠—

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

Say that wealth and health have missed me,

Say I’m growing old; but add,

Jenny kissed me.”

At this impertinence, however, the girl’s face took on such mantling hues, that for very shame her companion was obliged to drop into sedater measures, and divert her attention with astronomical hypotheses in regard to the moon, which, at that moment, happened to be suspended above them, a slender sickle of gold.

In parishes like Tompkins Square, that pomp of Satan, which we have agreed to call Etiquette, is not always as punctiliously observed as it is in fairer precincts; and a day or two later when Hugh had related the disadvantages under which he labored, when trying, in the absence of the model, to get a certain face on canvas, not Miss Jenny Sisseton, no, nor her father, either, saw the slightest objection to her sitting in propria persona to this audacious young man. What need had they of our effete survival of the duenna of the past? Theirs was a solitude as harmless, yes, and as fragrant, as that of two flowers on separate stalks.

But one dazzling noon, it so happened, that this young woman, after sitting for at least ten minutes as quiet as a mouse, pouted her pretty lips, and looking straight at Hugh, who was painting them very determinedly, remarked with an air of sweet unconcern:

“Why don’t you tell me something of yourself?”

“Why?” Hugh echoed. “Because there is nothing to tell, I suppose. My life began⁠—” he was about to say, “when I met you,” but he tacked adroitly⁠—“the first time I saw an oil-painting. I was a child then, and ever since I have dreamed of being an artist.”

“But you are.”

“No, an apprentice, merely. And yet when I think of my first efforts, my one grief is that my poor mother could not have lived to see the progress I have made. She never believed much in art, but she did believe in me.”

“Is it long since⁠—”

“Since she died? Yes, it is a long time ago. I was at school in Baltimore; a message came and they sent me to her at once. Our home was in Virginia, a little cottage not far from Richmond. There my mother lived with only an old negress to assist her. When I arrived, she was dead. Some excitement, the receipt of a letter, the old woman said, and she had sent for me, but she had sent too late. After the funeral I barred the windows, locked the door and went back to school. But they did not keep me long. I had no money. The little income which my mother enjoyed died with her, and the cottage could not be sold until I came of age.”

“Did you sell it then?”

“No, indeed. I shall never sell it. My mother was born there and it was there she died.”

“Tell me of her,” Jenny murmured. “Are you like her?”

“No, they used to say not. I take after my father, I believe. He was a sailor, the captain of a merchantman, and was lost at sea. It was a terrible blow for my mother; she was left alone with but myself for consolation. It was that she used to call me, and I⁠—I loved her with all my heart.”

“I would have loved her, too,” Jenny sighed.

“If she could hear you, do you know what she would say?⁠—do you know, Jenny? She would say: ‘My dear child, I love you, too. I love you because you are sweet and good, because you are tenderhearted, because you are the loveliest, best and dearest girl in all the world, because you have filled my boy’s life with living springs, because you are the future to him, and hope and fame.’ That is what she would say to you, Jenny, and she would add, I know: ‘Love him, Jenny, for my sake if you cannot love him for his own.’ ”

“But I do love you,” said the young woman, with great decision. “Didn’t you know it?”

At this unexpected avowal Hugh stood very still, his brush in the air; then the brush fell, and suddenly he was at her side, an arm about the whiteness of her neck, his lips on hers.

“Here! Here! Stop that!”

The two culprits separated so quickly that neither were quite sure whether the kiss had been given or yet returned. Across the court, in the window opposite, Mr. Sisseton glowered, imposing and irate.

“Stop that, I say!” he repeated. “You have no right to do that. No right at all. As for you, young man, go back to your easel. Jenny, don’t you move until I am there.”

In their innocence, a thunderbolt from a clear sky could not have startled more. Jenny hid her face in her hands and Hugh bit his fingers. A minute passed, that seemed an hour long, then another, a third, a fourth; finally there came a shuffle in the hall and the old man entered, this time without the formality of a rap.

“Now, sir⁠—” he began.

“Mr. Sisseton,” Hugh interrupted, “I swear to you it is the first time, and I swear to you, also, it would not have occurred if⁠—if⁠—”

“Well, sir, if what? If I hadn’t brought you together, perhaps. And do you suppose I didn’t do it on purpose?”

“What!”

“Precisely. Now will you be good enough to inform me what your intentions are?”

“My intentions are to marry your daughter, if she will do me the honor to become my wife.”

“Oh, they are, are they? And have you any reason to think that she will consent?”

“He knows that I will,” said that forward young woman.

“It’s come to that pass, has it?” muttered the tyrant. “Very good. Now, Mr. Hyrtl, perhaps you will answer a question. How do you propose to support her?”

Hugh’s answer was in the expression which he then assumed, one pathetic enough to have mollified a tiger. But Mr. Sisseton was either not to be mollified or else he demanded something more explicit than pantomime.

“Well, sir?” he growled.

“Well, sir,” Hugh at last made answer, “I am young, strong, ambitious, and it seems to me⁠—”

“Fiddlesticks! So was I young, strong, ambitious, and it seemed to me that I was quite capable of supporting a wife on just those things for capital. The result was not satisfactory. I have had the experience, though, and on the day when my wife, outworn with privation and misery, died, I swore that my daughter should never marry a pauper.”

Hugh raised a hand in protest.

“Unless,” the old man continued, “unless my daughter happened to be an heiress.”

“Oh, papa, papa,” sobbed Jenny, “how can you be so cruel!”

Mr. Sisseton went to the door, opened it, peered out in the corridor, then closing it again, took a seat in the middle of the room and stared at Hugh as though he had never seen him before.

“What day of the month is it?” he asked, abruptly.

“Really⁠—”

“Come now, a clever young fellow like you ought to tell me like a shot.”

“It’s the 10th,” said Hugh, morosely.

“The 10th of what?”

“The 10th of June,” sobbed Jenny.

“The 10th of June, is it?” the old man repeated, meditatively, “the 10th of June. Dear me, dear me, how time flies! Well, it being the 10th of June⁠—You are quite sure, are you, that it is the 10th of June?”

“Yes, yes,” Hugh and Jenny answered in chorus.

“Well, it being the 10th of June, I may say, in confidence, of course, I may say that my daughter is an heiress.”

“An heiress!” the girl exclaimed.

“As if I cared,” said Hugh.

“Well, you might just as well care, then,” the old man retorted. “For if she were not, she would never be your wife. No, sir, never. However, in the circumstances, and in view of the fact that today is the 10th of June, I may congratulate you. Jenny will have eighty-seven thousand dollars.” And drawing from his pocket a package done up in oilskin, the old man displayed to the startled lovers a roll of banknotes of fabulous size.

“But where did you get them from?” Jenny gasped.

Up to this point the old man had conducted himself with the assurance and bravado of a stockbroker, but that simple little question seemed to have precisely the same effect on him that the prick of a pin has on a toy balloon. He collapsed.

“Why⁠—why,” he stammered at last, “they belonged to your mother.”

“But only a moment ago you said she died of privation and want.”

“I saved them out of my pension, then.”

“Papa! Out of your pension! Fifty pensions like yours wouldn’t make that amount.”

The old man turned upon her, with recovered strength.

“Do you take me for a thief?” he gnashed.

“Perhaps you have a reason of your own,” said Hugh, “for not wishing to tell where the money came from.”

“I have. I have a dozen. I have a thousand.”

“Let us say no more about it, then. For my part, I regard you as above suspicion.”

“So do I,” said Jenny.

“And it’s lucky you do,” bawled the old man, all his former assurance and bravado returning. “It’s mighty lucky you do. You don’t know what a narrow squeeze you’ve had. You don’t either of you know of what I am capable when I’m vexed. But what do you mean, anyway, by asking me questions? Such impudence!”

“There, there, papa,” murmured Jenny.

“Yes, miss, such impudence! Now, you can accept what I choose to give you and accept it, too, with a devilish good grace or⁠—or that’s the end of the marriage. I’ll pack you off to a convent, by gad, that’s just what I’ll do with you.”

And as he made these direful threats the fierce old man fairly chuckled.

“I’ll be good as gold,” said Jenny, seraphically.

“Well, you had better, and so had that lackadaisical simpleton there. Now, let us talk about the wedding. Good Heavens, what’s that?”

There had come on the door a knock that would have waked the dead. The old man jumped as though stung by a wasp.

“Don’t let anyone come in,” he entreated. “Barricade the door, hide me somewhere.”

His hands were trembling so that he could hardly get the oilskin package back in his pocket. His face was haggard and his eyes dilated, and suddenly he assumed the appearance of a hunted beast.

“Hide me,” he implored. “Don’t let anyone in!”

“But before either Hugh or Jenny could make even a pretense at obeying him, the door flew open and a little man with a long beard entered the room.

“Thundering guns!” he exclaimed, “I can’t congratulate you on your stairs.”

“Sir,” said Hugh, stepping forward, “to what do I owe the honor⁠—”

“Do you mean to say that you don’t remember me?”

“I do not, sir; and as I happen to be discussing family matters⁠—”

Mr. Sisseton beckoned frantically to Jenny, and slid like a shadow through the door.

“I will join you in a moment!” Hugh called after them. “Now, sir,” he continued; “what is it?”

“Nice gal, that,” said the stranger, appreciatively. “Why, there she is again, and again,” he added, pointing to the pictures that illuminated the room. “Is the old party her pa?”

“Sir, I am waiting⁠—”

“Thundering guns! so you are, dear boy. Let’s sit down; those stairs of yours would tire a resurrectionist.”