A BUD AND A BLOSSOM.
Farnham was sitting the next evening in his library, when Budsey entered and said Mr. Ferguson desired to see him. The gaunt Scotchman came in and said with feverish haste: "The cereus grandiflorus will be goin' to bloom the night. The buds are tremblin' and laborin' now." Farnham put on his hat and went to the conservatory, which was separated from the house by the entire extent of the garden. Arriving there, the gardener took him hurriedly to an inner room, dimly lighted,—a small square piece between the ferns and the grapes,—where the regal flower had a wall to itself. Two or three garden chairs were disposed about the room. Ferguson mounted on one of them, and turned up the gas so that its full light shone upon the plant. The bud was a very large one, perfect and symmetrical; the strong sheath, of a rich and even brown, as yet showed only a few fissures of its surface, but even now a faint odor stole from the travailing sphere, as from a cracked box of alabaster filled with perfume.
The face of the canny Fergus was lighted up with an eager joy. He had watched the growth and progress of this plant from its infancy. He had leaned above its cradle and taken pride in its size and beauty. He had trained it over the wall—from which he had banished every rival—in large and graceful curves, reaching from the door of the fernery to the door of the grapery, till it looked, in the usual half light of the dim chamber, like a well-regulated serpent maturing its designs upon the neighboring paradise; and now the time was come when he was to see the fruit of his patience and his care.
"Heaven be thankit," he murmured devoutly, "that I was to the fore when it came."
"I thank you, Fergus, for calling me," said Farnham, smiling. "I know it must have cost you an effort to divide such a sight with any one."
"It's your siller bought it," the Scotchman answered sturdily; "but there's nobody knows it, or cares for it, as I do,—and that's the truth."
His glance was fixed upon the bud, which seemed to throb and stir as he spoke. The soft explosive force within was at work so strongly that the eye could watch its operation. The fissures of the sheath widened visibly and turned white as the two men looked at them.
"It is a shame to watch this beautiful thing happening for only us," Farnham said to the gardener. "Go and tell Mrs. Belding, with my compliments, and ask her and Miss Belding to come down." But observing his crestfallen expression, he took compassion on him and said: "No, you had better remain, for fear something should happen in your absence. I will go for the ladies."
"I hope ye'll not miss it," said Fergus, but his eyes and his heart were fixed upon the bud, which was slowly gaping apart, showing a faint tinge of gold in its heart.
Farnham walked rapidly up the garden, and found the Beldings at the door, starting for evening service with their prayer-books in their hands.
"Do you wish to see the prettiest thing you ever saw in your lives? of course I except your mirrors when in action," he began, without salutation. "If so, come this moment to my conservatory. My night-blooming cereus has her coming-out party tonight."
They both exclaimed with delight, and were walking with him toward the garden. Suddenly, Mrs. Belding stopped and said:
"Alice, run and get your sketch-book and pencil. It will be lovely to draw the flower."
"Why, mamma! we shall not have time for a sketch."
"There, there! do as I tell you, and do not waste time in disputing."
The young girl hesitated a moment, and then, with instinctive obedience, went off to fetch the drawing materials, while her mother said to Farnham:
"Madame de Veaudrey says Alice is very clever with her pencil; but she is so modest I shall have to be severe with her to make her do anything. She takes after me. I was very clever in my lessons, but never would admit it."
Alice came down the steps. Farnham, seeing her encumbered by her books, took them from her, and they went down the walks to the conservatory. They found Ferguson sitting, with the same rapt observation, before his tropical darling. As the ladies entered, he rose to give them seats, and then retired to the most distant corner of the room, where he spent the rest of the evening entirely unaware of any one's presence, and given up to the delight of his eyes. The bud was so far opened that the creamy white of the petals could be seen within the riven sheath, whose strong dark color exquisitely relieved the pallid beauty it had guarded so long. The silky stamens were still curled about the central style, but the splendor of color which was coming was already suggested, and a breath of intoxicating fragrance stole from the heart of the immaculate flower.
They spoke to each other in low tones, as if impressed with a sort of awe at the beautiful and mysterious development of fragrant and lovely life going forward under their sight. The dark eyes of Alice Belding were full of that vivid happiness which strange and charming things bring to intelligent girlhood. She was looking with all her soul, and her breath was quick and high, and her soft red lips were parted and tremulous. Farnham looked from her to the flower, and back again, gazing on both with equal safety, for the one was as unconscious of his admiring glances as the other.
Suddenly, the sound of bells floated in from the neighboring street, and both of the ladies started. "No, don't you go," said Mrs. Belding to her daughter. "I must, because I have to see my 'Rescue the Perishing.' But you can just as well stay here and make your sketch. Mr. Farnham can take care of you, and I will be back in an hour."
"But, mamma!" cried Miss Alice, too much scandalized to speak another word.
"I won't have you lose this chance," her mother continued. "I am sure Mr. Farnham will not object to taking care of you a little while; and if he hasn't the time, Fergus will bring you home—hm, Fergus?"
"Ay, madam, with right guid will," the gardener said, his hard face softening into a smile.
"There, sit down in that chair and begin your sketch. It is lovely just as it is." She waited until Alice, whose confusion had turned her face crimson, had taken her seat, opened her sketch-book, and taken her pencils in her trembling hands, and then the brisk and hearty woman drew her shawl about her and bustled to the door.
"I will walk to the church door with you," said Farnham, to the infinite relief of Alice, who regained her composure at the instant, and began with interest to sketch the flower. She thought, while her busy fingers were at work, that she had perhaps been too prudish in objecting to her mother's plan. "He evidently thinks nothing of it, and why should I?"
By the time Farnham returned, the cereus had attained its full glory of bloom. Its vast petals were thrown back to their fullest extent, and shone with a luminous beauty in which its very perfume seemed visible; the countless recurved stamens shot forth with the vigorous impulse and vitality of sun rays; from the glowing centre to the dark fringe with which the shattered sheath still accented its radiant outline it blazed forth, fully revealed; and its sweet breath seemed the voice of a pride and consciousness of beauty like that of the goddess on Mount Ida, calmly triumphant in the certainty of perfect loveliness.
Alice had grown interested in her task, and looked up for only an instant with her frank, clear eyes as Farnham entered. "Now, where shall I sit?" he asked. "Here, behind your right elbow, where I can look over your shoulder and observe the work as it goes on?"
"By no means. My hand would lose all its little cunning in that case."
"Then I will sit in front of you and study the artistic emotions in your face."
"That would be still worse, for you would hide my subject. I am sure you are very well as you are," she added, as he seated himself in a chair beside her, a little way off.
"Yes, that is very well. I have the flower three-quarters and you in profile. I will study the one for a panel and the other for a medal."
Miss Alice laughed gently. She laughed often from sheer good humor, answering the intention of what was said to her better than by words.
"Can you sketch and talk too?" asked Farnham.
"I can sketch and listen," she said. "You will talk and keep me amused."
"Amusement with malice aforethought! The order affects my spirits like a Dead March. How do the young men amuse young ladies nowadays? Do they begin by saying, 'Have you been very gay lately?'"
Again Miss Alice laughed. "She is an easy-laughing girl," thought Farnham. "I like easy-laughing girls. When she laughs, she always blushes a very little. It is worth while talking nonsense to see a girl laugh so pleasantly and blush so prettily."
It is not worth while, however, to repeat all the nonsense Farnham uttered in the next hour. He got very much interested in it himself, and was so eager sometimes to be amusing that he grew earnest, and the gentle laugh would cease and the pretty lips would come gravely together. Whenever he saw this he would fall back upon his trifling again. He had the soldier's fault of point-blank compliment, but with it an open sincerity of manner which relieved his flattery of any offensiveness. He had practised it in several capitals with some success. A dozen times this evening, a neat compliment came to his lips and stopped there. He could hardly understand his own reserve before this laughing young lady. Why should he not say something pretty about her hair and eyes, about her graceful attitude, about the nimble play of her white fingers over the paper? He had uttered frank flatteries to peeresses without rebuke. But he held his hand before this school-girl, with the open dark-brown eyes and a club of yellow hair at the back of her neck. He could not help feeling that, if he talked to her with any forcing of the personal accent, she would stop laughing and the clear eyes would be troubled. He desired anything rather than that, and so the conversation went rattling on as free from personalities as the talk of two light-hearted and clever schoolboys.
At one moment he was describing a bill of fare in a Colorado hotel.
"With nice bread, though, one can always get on," she said.
"True," Farnham answered; "but this bread was of a ghostly pallor and flatness, as if it had been baked by moonlight on a grave-stone."
"The Indian women cook well, do they not?" she asked.
"Some are not so bad as others. One young chief boasted to me of his wife's culinary accomplishments. He had been bragging all the morning about his own exploits, of the men he had killed and the horses he had stolen, and then to establish his standing clearly in my mind, he added: 'My squaw same white squaw—savey pie.'"
"Even there, then, the trail of the pie-crust is over them all."
"No! only over the aristocracy."
"I should like so much to see that wonderful country."
"It is worth seeing," he said, with a curious sinking of the heart, "if you are not under orders."
He could not help thinking what a pleasant thing a journey through that Brobdingnaggian fairy-land would be with company like the young girl before him. Nature would be twice as lovely reflected from those brown eyes. The absurdities and annoyances of travel would be made delightful by that frank, clear laugh. The thought of his poor Nellie flitted by him an instant, too gentle and feeble for reproach. Another stronger thought had occupied his mind.
"You ought to see it. Your mother will need rest before long from her Rescue-the-Perishings, and you are overworking yourself dreadfully over that sketch-book. There is a touch of malaria about the fountain in Bluff Park. Colorado will do you both no end of good. I feel as if I needed it myself. I haven't energy enough to read Mr. Martin's 'Life of the Prince Consort.' I shall speak to Mrs. Belding as soon as she returns."
"Do, by all means. I should like to go, but mamma would not spend three nights in a sleeping-car to see the Delectable Mountains themselves."
He rose and walked about the room, looking at the flower and the young artist from different points of view, and seeing new beauties in each continually. There were long lapses of conversation, in which Alice worked assiduously and Farnham lounged about the conservatory, always returning with a quick word and a keen look at the face of the girl. At last he said to himself: "Look here! She is not a baby. She is nearly twenty years old. I have been wondering why her face was so steady and wise." The thought that she was not a child tilled his heart with pleasure and his face with light. But his volubility seemed to die suddenly away. He sat for a good while in silence, and started a little as she looked up and said:
"Now, if you will be very gentle, you can see my sketch and tell me what to do next."
It was a pretty and unpretentious picture that she had made. The flower was faithfully though stiffly given, and nothing especially remarkable had been attempted or achieved. Farnham looked at the sketch with eyes in which there was no criticism. He gave Alice a word or two of heartier praise for her work than she knew she deserved. It was rather more than she expected, and she was not altogether pleased to be so highly commended, though she could hardly have said why. Perhaps it was because it made her think less of his critical faculty. This was not agreeable, for her admiration of him from her childhood had been one of the greatest pleasures of her life. She had regarded him as children regard a brilliant and handsome young uncle. She did not expect from him either gallantry or equality of treatment.
"There! Do not say too much about it—you will make me ashamed of it. What does it lack?"
"Nothing, except something on the right to balance the other side. You might sketch in roughly a half-opened flower on the vine about there," indicating the place.
She took her pencils and began obediently to do what he had suggested. He leaned over her shoulder, so near her she could feel his breath on the light curls that played about her ear. She wished he would move. She grew nervous, and at last said:
"I am tired. You put in that flower."
He took the book and pencils from her, as she rose from her chair and gave him her place, and with a few strong and rapid strokes finished the sketch.
"After all," she said to herself, with hearty appreciation, "men do have the advantage of girls. He bothered me dreadfully, and I did not bother him in the least. And yet I stood as near to him as he did to me."
Mrs. Belding came in a moment later. She was in high spirits. They had had a good meeting—had converted a Jew, she thought. She admired the sketch very much; hoped Alice had been no trouble to Farnham. He walked home with the ladies, and afterward smoked a cigar with great deliberation under the limes.
Mrs. Belding asked Alice how they had got on.
"He did not eat you, you see. You must get out of your ideas of men, especially men of Arthur Farnham's age. He never thinks of you. He is old enough to be your father."
Alice kissed her mother and went to her own room, calculating on the way the difference between her age and Captain Farnham's.