Esmeralda | Page 4

she'd set her
mind on it."
She was very simple and unsophisticated. To the memory of her former
truly singular life she clung with unshaken fidelity. She recurred to it
constantly. The novelty and luxury of her new existence seemed to
have no attractions for her. One thing even my Clélie found
incomprehensible, while she fancied she understood the rest--she did
not appear to be moved to pleasure even by our beloved Paris.
"It is a true maladie du pays," Clélie remarked to me. "And that is not
all."
Nor was it all. One day the whole truth was told amid a flood of tears.
"I--I was going to be married," cried the poor child. "I was to have been
married the week the ore was found. I was--all ready, and
mother--mother shut right down on us."
Clélie glanced at me in amazed questioning.
"It is a kind of argot which belongs only to Americans," I answered in
an undertone. "The alliance was broken off."
"Ciel!" exclaimed my Clélie between her small shut teeth. "The woman
is a fiend!"
She was wholly absorbed in her study of this unworldly and untaught
nature. She was full of sympathy for its trials and tenderness, and for its
pain.
Even the girl's peculiarities of speech were full of interest to her. She
made serious and intelligent efforts to understand them, as if she
studied a new language.
"It is not common argot," she said. "It has its subtleties. One
continually finds somewhere an original idea--sometimes even a bon

mot, which startles one by its pointedness. As you say, however, it
belongs only to the Americans and their remarkable country. A French
mind can only arrive at its climaxes through a grave and occasionally
tedious research, which would weary most persons, but which, however,
does not weary me."
The confidence of Mademoiselle Esmeralda was easily won. She
became attached to us both, and particularly to Clélie. When her mother
was absent or occupied, she stole up-stairs to our apartment and spent
with us the moments of leisure chance afforded her. She liked our
rooms, she told my wife, because they were small, and our society,
because we were "clever," which we discovered afterward meant
"amiable." But she was always pale and out of spirits. She would sit
before our fire silent and abstracted.
"You must not mind if I don't talk," she would say. "I can't; and it
seems to help me to get to sit and think about things--Mother won't let
me do it down-stairs."
We became also familiar with the father. One day I met him upon the
staircase, and to my amazement he stopped as if he wished to address
me. I raised my hat and bade him good-morning. On his part he drew
forth a large handkerchief and began to rub the palms of his hands with
awkward timidity.
"How-dy?" he said.
I confess that at the moment I was covered with confusion. I who was a
teacher of English, and flattered myself that I wrote and spoke it
fluently did not understand. Immediately, however, it flashed across my
mind that the word was a species of salutation. (Which I finally
discovered to be the case.) I bowed again and thanked him, hazarding
the reply that my health was excellent, and an inquiry as to the state of
Madame's. He rubbed his hands still more nervously, and answered me
in the slow and deliberate mariner I had observed at the Louvre.
"Thank ye," he said, "she's doin' tol'able well, is mother--as well as
common. And she's a-en-joyin' herself, too. I wish we was all"--

But there he checked himself and glanced hastily about him.
Then he began again:--
"Esmeraldy," he said,--"Esmeraldy thinks a heap on you. She takes a
sight of comfort out of Mis' Des----I can't call your name, but I mean
your wife."
"Madame Desmarres," I replied, "is rejoiced indeed to have won the
friendship of Mademoiselle."
"Yes," he proceeded, "she takes a sight of comfort in you and all. An'
she needs comfort, does Esmeraldy."
There ensued a slight pause which somewhat embarrassed me, for at
every pause he regarded me with an air of meek and hesitant appeal.
"She's a little down-sperrited is Esmeraldy," he said. "An'," adding this
suddenly in a subdued and fearful tone, "so am I."
Having said this he seemed to feel that he had overstepped a barrier. He
seized the lapel of my coat and held me prisoner, pouring forth his
confessions with a faith in my interest by which I was at once-amazed
and touched.
"You see it's this way," he said,--"it's this way, Mister. We're home
folks, me an' Esmeraldy, an' we're a long way from home, an' it sorter
seems like we didn't get no useder to it than we