Rensselaer Republican, Volume 12, Number 20, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 January 1880 — NIKA. [ARTICLE]

NIKA.

Victor Blcmenthal was sauntering through the public garden, thinking about the picture he was painting, how the light among the trees suggested certain strains of music tonim, when his eye fell upon a young girl feeding swans, and lingered there. “If I could only carry that face home in my mind's eye and reflect it upon my canvas!” he thought. “She is the very image of Undine nimself.” Just then the child beside her reached across the brim of the basin to toss a crumb into the water, and lost her balance. Quick as thought Victor sprang to the rescue, brought the child up dripping, and confronted*Undine, out of whose face all 'the rose had faded, all the sunshine had fled. “Oh, how shall I thank you? what shall Ido for you?” she cried. “If you had not saved her, how could I have lived? She is my little neighbor, and I promised to be so careful of her. Oh, though you are a stranger, I feel as if you were my best friend!” “Then oblige me by meeting me here again, and telling me how your little fnend bears her drenching/’ he returned, as he put them .into a carriage. Then he went to his studio and tried to limn the face of Undine, and threw down his brush in despair. And the next day, happening into the public garden again, there sne was before him, smiling and blushing, with the child beside her. “I thought perhaps we should meet you here,” she confessed. “Jenny brings her mother's thanks. How can we repay you but with our prayers?” “If you could sit to me—■” “IP* You mean Jenny?” “I mean yourself. If you could come to my studio and let me paint you—” “Oh, you are laughing at me!” “I was never more serious in mv life.” - 3

“Let us go then," she said. “Your picture is long in finishing,” sht remarked one day, after innumerable sittings; .for Victor had every night wiped out what he had laboriously painted in during the day, so difficult Was it to imprison the shadow of his model within the canvas, to lend to Undine the soul that sat ami smiled in Nina’s eyes, to endow her with the spirit that informed the face, flashed in the oval cheek, or trembled about 'the mobile mouth. “ You are tired of coining to me. I tax you too long.” “No,” she replied, “I was only thinking that if I made my flowers so slowly, I should starve.” Victor laughed softly. “ Fame is better than mqney.” “And then Victor threw down his brush- “ The sun is setting,” he said; let us go out upon the bay for inspiration.” And Nina followed, nothing loath. How cool and sweet the hour was out there, with sails blowing out like wings of white gulls in the offing, and pleasure boats loitering or speeding by! How gayly the sun smote the city's spires, and changed the windows*of dingy warehouses on the wharves into precious stones like those of Aladdin’s palace! How much pleasanter all this was than sitting at home, in a dark alley, over her artificial flowers, trying to embody her fancies in velvet and satin! Victor walked to the dark alley in the dusk with Nina, and thought of the white lilies that grew in perfect beauty and sweetness, though rooted in mold and slime. • -

So the friendship grew between Victor an l Nina—Nina, the poor little flower-maker, the last of her race, and Victor Blumenthal, the artist and millionaire—and the picture grew apace. Somehow he dared not finish it, lest Nina should feel her debt paid, and escape him. “oh, what is that beautiful thing?” she asked one day, as he trilled a familiar air while spreading his pallet. ** Did you make it up yourself ?’ r —her face all aglow. “It is an air from an opera,” laughed Victor—“ from Trovator. The honor of ‘ making it up ’ belongs to one Verdi. Have you never heard an Opera?” “ Never.” “Then yon shall hear one to-night. Hold! Trovatore is on the bill for this blessed night. What a coincidence!” And so, when the city lamps were trying to outdo the stars, Victor drew Nun’s trembling hand within his arm, and they became a part of the gay and fashionable world inside the theater. And what a world it was, with all the glitter of lights and beautiful faces, the shimmer of silk and jewels, the odor of musk and sandal-wood, and the kind, handsome face of Victor Blumenthal shining upon her! How the tenor sang out, sweet u syllables of love! how the soprano soared! what depths the bass explored! what pathos, what sorrow, what delight swelled and ebbed with the chords! Did people really love, and suffer, and despair, and triumph like thisP Had she lived through it all herself, somewhere, somehow, that it seemed an echo of her own experience, ° r w ?* iL but » shadow of thing, to come? When the curtain fell, Victor discovered tears in her eyes. Other

people were laughing around her; one tall gentleman almost stooped to look under her hat as he passed, bowed to her companion, and would hare Joined them had Bhnnenlhal been less frigid. “ I hare seen that gentleman before,” said Nina; “he came with a lady who was in a hurry for some flowers’l had promised. He called her Stella.” “It waa hia cousin, Stella Grandelaw.” said Victor. One day Victor, who could no longer find a pretext to continue the sittings, put his picture on exhibition. All toe town was talking of it before night. “Such flesh-tints! such expression! such beauty P 1 “ Yet it does not equal the original,” said Grmndelaw. “No,” returned Victor; “pigment is a poor make-shift for fire and spirit.” At about this time he received news that his only sister was seriously ill in London. He was obliged to drop his pencil and flv to her snthout so much as bidding Nina good-by; but he would write ana explain, he promised himself. In the mean-time Grandelaw found occasion to make friends with Nina. She had happened into a shop to purchase materials for her work; she had laid her pocket-book down for an instant, and not till she had nearly reached the door did she discover that she had taken up, not her own, but another’s plethoric purse. At the same moment a strange hand detained her, and she was accused of theft. “ This lady is a friend of mine,” said Grandelaw, stepping forward to her rescue, having followed her into the shop—“she is a friend of mine;” and the accuser begged a thousand pardons, and obsequiously bowed himself out of sight , After this, what could Nina do but accept him at his own valuation? How conla she avoid meeting him in her walks, and allowing him to accompany her? how refuse admittance to one who had befriended her? And he knocked often, and watched her at her pretty toil, and the intimacy progressed. Sometimes she opened her door, and showed a beaming face, but the smile would fade soon. At other times he observed that she started when a footstep paused outside: she expected some one, answered absently, listened to bis flateries with a far-away look in her soft eyes. One day Grandelaw determined to probe the wound. - “Did yon not sit to Victor Blumenthal for his Undine?” he asked. “It was a picture worth painting: he must hare had a thousand sittings.” “ Not nearly so many,” sighed Nina. “ I should have been jealous, if I had been Mrs. Blumenthal.”

“Jealous!” repeated Nina—“ Mrs. Blumenthal! His mother? ” “ His wife—Victor’s wife.” “ His wife Victor Blumenthal's wife!” “ Oh, then, perhapsyon did not know he was married?” “ He never spoke of it.” “ Because everybody knew it. Come, Miss Nina, don’t look at me as if I was to blame*. Victor Blumenthal was married more than two years ago to his cousin Theodora. If you doubt it I will find you the notice of his marriage among my file of the Tribune. But of course you have no interest in it. What is it to you or me?” “ Nothing, nothing,” she answered. “I do not doubt it.” But she had grown very white, and her eyes shone like wandering stars, and the needle trembled in her hand. “Of course he is married,” she added, in a lighter tone, “ only the idea never occurred to me before —it took me unawares.’ 1 What had Victor Blumenthal meant, she asked herself, "by those words a thought too tender,” by glances that made love plainer than speech? Why had he held her hand till she blushed, and kissed the pink finger-tips? Why had he sought her out, only to break her heart? Did he not love his cousin Theodora? And then she hid her face in her pillow, remembering how her heart had gone out to a married man. Another woman’s lover, and she had mistaken him. for her own! Doubtless this was had neither seen nor heard from him for so long: he had divined her heart, and conscience had made a coward of him. But it should never be said of her that she wore her heart on her sleeve. And when Victor returned with the sister whom he had just succeeded in snatching from the valley of shadows, having written to Nina, but in bis anxiety mailed the letter without an address, she had been engaged to Mr. 'Grandelaw for a month already, and had gone to visit his mother in a neighboring town till the wedding should take place, without leaving any trace behind her. Grandelaw had, in fact, persecuted her into consent. A thousand things had conspired in his, favor. She had fallen ill and into debt, and work had failed, and Grandelaw had sent his own physician to her, with fruits and flowers and wines, had taken her out in his carriage when air was prescribed, and had ended by proposing to take care of her all her life, by winning a reluctant consent to endow her with all his worldly goods. Victor hajl deceived her, or rather she had taken too much for granted, and had deceived herself, and what better could she do than reward the devotion of Grandelaw, who assured her that he had love enough for them both? Everybody was very kind /it Laurel Lodge; everything was fine enough to win a mercenary heart, if Nina had owned one. Nobody hinted that Grandelaw was making an unequal marriage. One day when Nina returned from a gallop aci oss the hills with Grandelaw, there was a tall, gracious woman waiting for them on the veranda, who allowed Grandelaw to kiss her hand, and made Nina a stately bow. “ Have the skies fallen, that we catch larks?” asked Nina's lover.

“ I see that you have already cailght one,” laughed his cousin Stella. ‘ ‘ Stella has come to look at her rival,” said Mrs. Grandelaw, when Nina bade her good-night. "We feared that my son would marry Stella some day. She thought so herself, but I disapprove of cousins marrying.” “ Did she love him?” gasped Nina. “I dare say she loved him well enough; but one survives these things.” ‘*oh, how she must hate me!” cried Nina. But if Cousin Stella hated or loved, she knew how to disguise her feelings; nobody could be gayer or sunnier than she during those days. She sparkled with repartee and anecdote, ana shook her listeners with gales of laughter. Perhaps she was showing Grandelaw what a mistake he had made to choose this sad, shadowy woman instead of herself.

“ f have been sitting for my portrait,” she said one evening. Nina’s heart gave a little stir: had the not sat for her picture once? The moon was shining in through the long windows of iie drawing-room; there was no other light in the room, except the fitful blaze behind the fender. Grandelaw had been called out of town on business for a night or two. “ Indeed, said Mrs. Grandelaw. “Is it not a tedious affair? ” “It would be, perhaps, if any one but Victor Blumenthal were painting Nina started and dropped her fan. Had she come to Laurel Lodge to hear of Victor? “And who is Victor BlumenthalP” asked Stella’s aunt—“ another flame of yours?” “ I have seen no symptoms of' that kind, laughed Stella. “I wish I might. He would make an ideal lover.” “ But he is married,” spoke Nina oat

oi the shadow, aad there was the sound of tears in her voice, if any one had had ears to hear. “He is married, Stella.” “Then Grandelaw has toldyoo about him? Yes: it was bo romantic—and sad.” “ Didn’t the marriage turn out wellF’ asked Mrs. Grandelaw, to whom romance meant nonsense. “That depends,” returned Stella. “He married his ooosin Theodora—” “I have no patience with cousins marrying.” “No? There was no great need of patience in this case. Blumenthal's grandfather had left all the money to Theodora and her mother. Victor was as poor as became an artist to be. 1 suppose Theodora had always loved him, but she insisted upon being married to him on her death-bed, that he might inherit her portion of the fortune. She died an hour afterward.”' Nina sat like one stunned by an earthquake shock; all Grandelaw*a perfidy stood ont like the handwriting on the wall. Victor had loved her after all! His kiss had not been treachery. She would go to him. Shewould leave this prison for ever and ever. How had she ever dreamed of loving Grandelaw some day? “ You have been very kind to me,” Nina said, when she kissed Mrs. Grandelaw good-nigh t. ‘‘ I shall always bless you for it; t>ut —Stella would make Grandelaw a better wife and you a wiser daughter.” “My son and I think differently,” replied his mother; but she remembered afterward that Nina had lingered and hesitated—“ just as if she wished to ask pardon for something,’* Mrs. Grandelaw explained; and when Grandelaw himself retained to Laurel Lodge, there was a little three-oomered note on his library table, in Nina’s hand, which read: “If I should marry you, Mr. Anaon Grandelaw, some day. In looking over your file of old Tribunes, I should happen upon one containing the marriage of Victor Blumenthal to his oouatn Theodora, and the notice of her death on the same day, and your deceit would kill whatever love I had learned to bear you. 44 Bo good-by, and make Stella happ^. — Harper's Bazar.