Constance Fenimore Woolson

by Constance Fenimore Woolson

  “Well, let her in; but I don’t want the maid. I may as well see her now, I suppose, and end the affair.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I did not put down my book. My visitor should have a hearing, but not much more: she had sacrificed her womanly claims by her persistent attacks upon my door. Presently Simpson ushered her in. “Miss Grief,” he said, and then went out, closing the curtain behind him.

  A woman—yes, a lady—but shabby, unattractive, and more than middle-aged.

  I rose, bowed slightly, and then dropped into my chair again, still keeping the book in my hand. “Miss Grief?” I said interrogatively as I indicated a seat with my eyebrows.

  “Not Grief,” she answered—“Crief: my name is Crief.”

  She sat down, and I saw that she held a small flat box.

  “Not carving, then,” I thought—“probably old lace, something that belonged to Tullia or Lucrezia Borgia.” But as she did not speak I found myself obliged to begin: “You have been here, I think, once or twice before?”

  “Seven times; this is the eighth.”

  A silence.

  “I am often out; indeed, I may say that I am never in,” I remarked carelessly.

  “Yes; you have many friends.”

  “—Who will perhaps buy old lace,” I mentally added. But this time I too remained silent; why should I trouble myself to draw her out? She had sought me; let her advance her idea, whatever it was, now that entrance was gained.

  But Miss Grief (I preferred to call her so) did not look as though she could advance anything; her black gown, damp with rain, seemed to retreat fearfully to her thin self, while her thin self retreated as far as possible from me, from the chair, from everything. Her eyes were cast down; an old-fashioned lace veil with a heavy border shaded her face. She looked at the floor, and I looked at her.

  I grew a little impatient, but I made up my mind that I would continue silent and see how long a time she would consider necessary to give due effect to her little pantomime. Comedy? Or was it tragedy? I suppose full five minutes passed thus in our double silence; and that is a long time when two persons are sitting opposite each other alone in a small still room.

  At last my visitor, without raising her eyes, said slowly, “You are very happy, are you not, with youth, health, friends, riches, fame?”

  It was a singular beginning. Her voice was clear, low, and very sweet as she thus enumerated my advantages one by one in a list. I was attracted by it, but repelled by her words, which seemed to me flattery both dull and bold.

  “Thanks,” I said, “for your kindness, but I fear it is undeserved. I seldom discuss myself even when with my friends.”

  “I am your friend,” replied Miss Grief. Then, after a moment, she added slowly, “I have read every word you have written.”

  I curled the edges of my book indifferently; I am not a fop, I hope, but—others have said the same.

  “What is more, I know much of it by heart,” continued my visitor. “Wait: I will show you;” and then, without pause, she began to repeat something of mine word for word, just as I had written it. On she went, and I—listened. I intended interrupting her after a moment, but I did not, because she was reciting so well, and also because I felt a desire gaining upon me to see what she would make of a certain conversation which I knew was coming—a conversation between two of my characters which was, to say the least, sphinx-like, and somewhat incandescent as well. What won me a little, too, was the fact that the scene she was reciting (it was hardly more than that, though called a story) was secretly my favorite among all the sketches from my pen which a gracious public has received with favor. I never said so, but it was; and I had always felt a wondering annoyance that the aforesaid public, while kindly praising beyond their worth other attempts of mine, had never noticed the higher purpose of this little shaft, aimed not at the balconies and lighted windows of society, but straight up toward the distant stars. So she went on, and presently reached the conversation: my two people began to talk. She had raised her eyes now, and was looking at me soberly as she gave the words of the woman, quiet, gentle, cold, and the replies of the man, bitter, hot, and scathing. Her very voice changed, and took, though always sweetly, the different tones required, while no point of meaning, however small, no breath of delicate emphasis which I had meant, but which the dull types could not give, escaped an appreciative and full, almost overfull, recognition which startled me. For she had understood me—understood me almost better than I had understood myself. It seemed to me that while I had labored to interpret, partially, a psychological riddle, she, coming after, had comprehended its bearings better than I had, though confining herself strictly to my own words and emphasis. The scene ended (and it ended rather suddenly), she dropped her eyes, and moved her hand nervously to and fro over the box she held; her gloves were old and shabby, her hands small.

  I was secretly much surprised by what I had heard, but my ill-humor was deep-seated that day, and I still felt sure, besides, that the box contained something which I was expected to buy.

  “You recite remarkably well,” I said carelessly, “and I am much flattered also by your appreciation of my attempt. But it is not, I presume, to that alone that I owe the pleasure of this visit?”

  “Yes,” she answered, still looking down, “it is, for if you had not written that scene I should not have sought you. Your other sketches are interiors—exquisitely painted and delicately finished, but of small scope. This is a sketch in a few bold, masterly lines—work of entirely different spirit and purpose.”

  I was nettled by her insight. “You have bestowed so much of your kind attention upon me that I feel your debtor,” I said, conventionally. “It may be that there is something I can do for you—connected, possibly, with that little box?”

  It was impertinent, but it was true; for she answered, “Yes.”

  I smiled, but her eyes were cast down and she did not see the smile.

  “What I have to show you is a manuscript,” she said after a pause which I did not break; “it is a drama. I thought that perhaps you would read it.”

  “An authoress! This is worse than old lace,” I said to myself in dismay.—Then, aloud, “My opinion would be worth nothing, Miss Crief.”

  “Not in a business way, I know. But it might be—an assistance personally.” Her voice had sunk to a whisper; outside, the rain was pouring steadily down. She was a very depressing object to me as she sat there with her box.

  “I hardly think I have the time at present—” I began.

  She had raised her eyes and was looking at me; then, when I paused, she rose and came suddenly toward my chair. “Yes, you will read it,” she said with her hand on my arm—“you will read it. Look at this room; look at yourself; look at all you have. Then look at me, and have pity.”

  I had risen, for she held my arm, and her damp skirt was brushing my knees.

  Her large dark eyes looked intently into mine as she went on; “I have no shame in asking. Why should I have? It is my last endeavor; but a calm and well-considered one. If you refuse I shall go away, knowing that Fate has willed it so. And I shall be content.”

  “She is mad,” I thought. But she did not look so, and she had spoken quietly, even gently.—“Sit down,” I said, moving away from her. I felt as if I had been magnetized; but it was only the nearness of her eyes to mine, and their intensity. I drew forward a chair, but she remained standing.

  “I cannot,” she said in the same sweet, gentle tone, “unless you promise.”

  “Very well, I promise; only sit down.”

  As I took her arm to lead her to the chair I perceived that she was trembling, but her face continued unmoved.

  “You do not, of course, wish me to look at your manuscript now?” I said, temporizing; “it would be much better to leave it. Give me your address, and I will return it to you with my written opinion; tho
ugh, I repeat, the latter will be of no use to you. It is the opinion of an editor or publisher that you want.”

  “It shall be as you please. And I will go in a moment,” said Miss Grief, pressing her palms together, as if trying to control the tremor that had seized her slight frame.

  She looked so pallid that I thought of offering her a glass of wine; then I remembered that if I did it might be a bait to bring her there again, and this I was desirous to prevent. She rose while the thought was passing through my mind. Her pasteboard box lay on the chair she had first occupied; she took it, wrote an address on the cover, laid it down, and then, bowing with a little air of formality, drew her black shawl round her shoulders and turned toward the door.

  I followed, after touching the bell. “You will hear from me by letter,” I said.

  Simpson opened the door, and I caught a glimpse of the maid, who was waiting in the anteroom. She was an old woman, shorter than her mistress, equally thin, and dressed like her in rusty black. As the door opened she turned toward it a pair of small, dim blue eyes with a look of furtive suspense. Simpson dropped the curtain, shutting me into the inner room; he had no intention of allowing me to accompany my visitor further. But I had the curiosity to go to a bay-window in an angle from whence I could command the street-door, and presently I saw them issue forth in the rain and walk away side by side, the mistress, being the taller, holding the umbrella: probably there was not much difference in rank between persons so poor and forlorn as these.

  It grew dark. I was invited out for the evening, and I knew that if I should go I should meet Miss Abercrombie. I said to myself that I would not go. I got out my paper for writing, I made my preparations for a quiet evening at home with myself; but it was of no use. It all ended slavishly in my going. At the last allowable moment I presented myself, and—as a punishment for my vacillation, I suppose—I never passed a more disagreeable evening. I drove homeward in a murky temper; it was foggy without, and very foggy within. What Isabel really was, now that she had broken through my elaborately-built theories, I was not able to decide. There was, to tell the truth, a certain young Englishman— But that is apart from this story.

  I reached home, went up to my rooms, and had a supper. It was to console myself; I am obliged to console myself scientifically once in a while. I was walking up and down afterward, smoking and feeling somewhat better, when my eye fell upon the pasteboard box. I took it up; on the cover was written an address which showed that my visitor must have walked a long distance in order to see me: “A. Crief.”—“A Grief,” I thought; “and so she is. I positively believe she has brought all this trouble upon me: she has the evil eye.” I took out the manuscript and looked at it. It was in the form of a little volume, and clearly written; on the cover was the word “Armor” in German text, and, underneath, a pen-and-ink sketch of a helmet, breastplate, and shield.

  “Grief certainly needs armor,” I said to myself, sitting down by the table and turning over the pages. “I may as well look over the thing now; I could not be in a worse mood.” And then I began to read.

  Early the next morning Simpson took a note from me to the given address, returning with the following reply: “No; I prefer to come to you; at four; A. CRIEF.” These words, with their three semicolons, were written in pencil upon a piece of coarse printing-paper, but the handwriting was as clear and delicate as that of the manuscript in ink.

  “What sort of a place was it, Simpson?”

  “Very poor, sir, but I did not go all the way up. The elder person came down, sir, took the note, and requested me to wait where I was.”

  “You had no chance, then, to make inquiries?” I said, knowing full well that he had emptied the entire neighborhood of any information it might possess concerning these two lodgers.

  “Well, sir, you know how these foreigners will talk, whether one wants to hear or not. But it seems that these two persons have been there but a few weeks; they live alone, and are uncommonly silent and reserved. The people round there call them something that signifies ‘the Madames American, thin and dumb.’”

  At four the “Madames American” arrived; it was raining again, and they came on foot under their old umbrella. The maid waited in the anteroom, and Miss Grief was ushered into my bachelor’s parlor. I had thought that I should meet her with great deference; but she looked so forlorn that my deference changed to pity. It was the woman that impressed me then, more than the writer—the fragile, nerveless body more than the inspired mind. For it was inspired: I had sat up half the night over her drama, and had felt thrilled through and through more than once by its earnestness, passion, and power.

  No one could have been more surprised than I was to find myself thus enthusiastic. I thought I had outgrown that sort of thing. And one would have supposed, too (I myself should have supposed so the day before), that the faults of the drama, which were many and prominent, would have chilled any liking I might have felt, I being a writer myself, and therefore critical; for writers are as apt to make much of the “how,” rather than the “what,” as painters, who, it is well known, prefer an exquisitely rendered representation of a commonplace theme to an imperfectly executed picture of even the most striking subject. But in this case, on the contrary, the scattered rays of splendor in Miss Grief’s drama had made me forget the dark spots, which were numerous and disfiguring; or, rather, the splendor had made me anxious to have the spots removed. And this also was a philanthropic state very unusual with me. Regarding unsuccessful writers, my motto had been “Væ victis!”

  My visitor took a seat and folded her hands; I could see, in spite of her quiet manner, that she was in breathless suspense. It seemed so pitiful that she should be trembling there before me—a woman so much older than I was, a woman who possessed the divine spark of genius, which I was by no means sure (in spite of my success) had been granted to me—that I felt as if I ought to go down on my knees before her, and entreat her to take her proper place of supremacy at once. But there! one does not go down on one’s knees, combustively, as it were, before a woman over fifty, plain in feature, thin, dejected, and ill-dressed. I contented myself with taking her hands (in their miserable old gloves) in mine, while I said cordially, “Miss Crief, your drama seems to me full of original power. It has roused my enthusiasm: I sat up half the night reading it.”

  The hands I held shook, but something (perhaps a shame for having evaded the knees business) made me tighten my hold and bestow upon her also a reassuring smile. She looked at me for a moment, and then, suddenly and noiselessly, tears rose and rolled down her cheeks. I dropped her hands and retreated. I had not thought her tearful: on the contrary, her voice and face had seemed rigidly controlled. But now here she was bending herself over the side of the chair with her head resting on her arms, not sobbing aloud, but her whole frame shaken by the strength of her emotion. I rushed for a glass of wine; I pressed her to take it. I did not quite know what to do, but, putting myself in her place, I decided to praise the drama; and praise it I did. I do not know when I have used so many adjectives. She raised her head and began to wipe her eyes.

  “Do take the wine,” I said, interrupting myself in my cataract of language.

  “I dare not,” she answered; then added humbly, “that is, unless you have a biscuit here or a bit of bread.”

  I found some biscuit; she ate two, and then slowly drank the wine, while I resumed my verbal Niagara. Under its influence—and that of the wine too, perhaps—she began to show new life. It was not that she looked radiant—she could not—but simply that she looked warm. I now perceived what had been the principal discomfort of her appearance heretofore: it was that she had looked all the time as if suffering from cold.

  At last I could think of nothing more to say, and stopped. I really admired the drama, but I thought I had exerted myself sufficiently as an anti-hysteric, and that adjectives enough, for the present at least, had been administered. She had put down her
empty wine-glass, and was resting her hands on the broad cushioned arms of her chair with, for a thin person, a sort of expanded content.

  “You must pardon my tears,” she said, smiling; “it was the revulsion of feeling. My life was at a low ebb: if your sentence had been against me it would have been my end.”

  “Your end?”

  “Yes, the end of my life; I should have destroyed myself.”

  “Then you would have been a weak as well as wicked woman,” I said in a tone of disgust. I do hate sensationalism.

  “Oh no, you know nothing about it. I should have destroyed only this poor worn tenement of clay. But I can well understand how you would look upon it. Regarding the desirableness of life the prince and the beggar may have different opinions.—We will say no more of it, but talk of the drama instead.” As she spoke the word “drama” a triumphant brightness came into her eyes.

  I took the manuscript from a drawer and sat down beside her. “I suppose you know that there are faults,” I said, expecting ready acquiescence.

  “I was not aware that there were any,” was her gentle reply.

  Here was a beginning! After all my interest in her—and, I may say under the circumstances, my kindness—she received me in this way! However, my belief in her genius was too sincere to be altered by her whimsies; so I persevered. “Let us go over it together,” I said. “Shall I read it to you, or will you read it to me?”

  “I will not read it, but recite it.”

  “That will never do; you will recite it so well that we shall see only the good points, and what we have to concern ourselves with now is the bad ones.”

  “I will recite it,” she repeated.

  “Now, Miss Crief,” I said bluntly, “for what purpose did you come to me? Certainly not merely to recite: I am no stage-manager. In plain English, was it not your idea that I might help you in obtaining a publisher?”

  “Yes, yes,” she answered, looking at me apprehensively, all her old manner returning.