The Dark Star by Robert W. Chambers (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

Dear Mr. Neeland:

Please forgive me for writing to you, but I am homesick.

I have written every week to mother and have made my letters read as though I were still married, because it would almost kill her if she knew the truth.

Some day I shall have to tell her, but not yet. Could you tell me how you think the news ought to be broken to her and father?

That man was not on the steamer. I was quite ill crossing the ocean. But the last two days I went on deck with the Princess Mistchenka and her maid, and I enjoyed the sea.

The Princess has been so friendly. I should have died, I think, without her, what with my seasickness and homesickness, and brooding over my terrible fall. I know it is immoral to say so, but I did not want to live any longer, truly I didn’t. I even asked to be taken. I am sorry now that I prayed that way.

Well, I have passed through the most awful part of my life, I think. I feel strange and different, as though I had been very sick, and had died, and as though it were another girl sitting here writing to you, and not the girl who was in your studio last August.

I had always expected happiness some day. Now I know I shall never have it. Girls dream many foolish things about the future. They have such dear, silly hopes.

All dreams are ended for me; all that remains in life 138 for me is to work very hard so that I can learn to support myself and my parents. I should like to make a great deal of money so that when I die I can leave it to charity. I desire to be remembered for my good works. But of course I shall first have to learn how to take care of myself and mother and father before I can aid the poor. I often think of becoming a nun and going out to nurse lepers. Only I don’t know where there are any. Do you?

Paris is very large and a sort of silvery grey colour, full of trees with yellowing leaves—but Oh, it is so lonely, Mr. Neeland! I am determined not to cry every day, but it is quite difficult not to. And then there are so many, many people, and they all talk French! They talk very fast, too, even the little children.

This seems such an ungrateful letter to write you, who were so good and kind to me in my dreadful hour of trial and disgrace. I am afraid you won’t understand how full of gratitude I am, to you and to the Princess Mistchenka.

I have the prettiest little bedroom in her house. There is a pink shade on my night lamp. She insisted that I go home with her, and I had to, because I didn’t know where else to go, and she wouldn’t tell me. In fact, I can’t go anywhere or find any place because I speak no French at all. It’s humiliating, isn’t it, for even the very little children speak French in Paris.

But I have begun to learn; a cheerful old lady comes for an hour every day to teach me. Only it is very hard for me, because she speaks no English and I am forbidden to utter one word of my own language. And so far I understand nothing that she says, which makes me more lonely than I ever was in all my life. But sometimes it is so absurd that we both laugh.

I am to study drawing and painting at a studio for women. The kind Princess has arranged it. I am also to study piano and voice culture. This I did not suppose would be possible with the money I have, but the Princess Mistchenka, who has asked me to let her take charge of my money and my expenses, says that I can easily afford it. She knows, of course, what things cost, and what I am able to afford; and I trust her willingly because she 139 is so dear and sweet to me, but I am a little frightened at the dresses she is having made for me. They can’t be inexpensive!—Such lovely clothes and shoes and hats—and other things about which I never even heard in Brookhollow.

I ought to be happy, Mr. Neeland, but everything is so new and strange—even Sunday is not restful; and how different is Nôtre Dame de Paris and Saint Eustache from our church at Gayfield! The high arches and jewelled windows and the candles and the dull roar of the organ drove from my mind those quiet and solemn thoughts of God which always filled my mind so naturally and peacefully in our church at home. I couldn’t think of Him; I couldn’t even try to pray; it was as though an ocean were rolling and thundering over me where I lay drowned in a most deep place.

Well, I must close, because déjeuner is ready—you see I know one French word, after all! And one other—“Bonjour, monsieur!”—which counts two, doesn’t it?—or three in all.

It has made me feel better to write to you. I hope you will not think it a presumption.

And now I shall say thank you for your great kindness to me in your studio on that most frightful night of my life. It is one of those things that a girl can never, never forget—your aid in my hour of need. Through all my shame and distress it was your help that sustained me; for I was so stunned by my disgrace that I even forgot God himself.

But I will prove that I am thankful to Him, and worthy of your goodness to me; I will profit by this dreadful humiliation and devote my life to a more worthy and lofty purpose than merely getting married just because a man asked me so persistently and I was too young and ignorant to continue saying no! Also, I did want to study art. How stupid, how immoral I was!

And now nobody would ever want to marry me again after this—and also it’s against the law, I imagine. But I don’t care; I never, never desire to marry another man. All I want is to learn how to support myself by art; and some day perhaps I shall forget what has happened 140 to me and perhaps find a little pleasure in life when I am very old.

With every wish and prayer for your happiness and success in this world of sorrow, believe me your grateful friend,

Rue Carew.

Every naïve and laboured line of the stilted letter touched and amused and also flattered Neeland; for no young man is entirely insensible to a young girl’s gratitude. An agreeable warmth suffused him; it pleased him to remember that he had been associated in the moral and social rehabilitation of Rue Carew.

He meant to write her some kind, encouraging advice; he had every intention of answering her letter. But in New York young men are very busy; or think they are. For youth days dawn and vanish in the space of a fire-fly’s lingering flash; and the moments swarm by like a flight of distracted golden butterflies; and a young man is ever at their heels in breathless chase with as much chance of catching up with the elusive moment as a squirrel has of outstripping the wheel in which he whirls.

So he neglected to reply—waited a little too long. Because, while her childish letter still remained unanswered, came a note from the Princess Mistchenka, enclosing a tremulous line from Rue: