Vanderlyn

“ At last, finding himself opposite the Hotel Continental, Vanderlyn stopped and deliberately read over the bill of fare attached to the door of the restaurant. As he did so, the light of a large réverbère beat down on his face; from the human current sweeping slowly on behind him a man quietly detached himself, and, standing for a moment by the side of the American diplomatist, looked up into his face with a long deliberate stare. ”

“ Frank Vanderlyn suddenly left the group with whom he had been conversing but a few feet away, stepped up to his sister, and before either she or Rowan could have been aware of his intention, drew her hand away from the arm of her escort, and somewhat rudely placed it within his own, with a bold glance at Rowan and the words:
"Miss Clara Vanderlyn, if you wish to dance, your family would prefer that you should select a different partner from the first low-bred nobody who happens to fall in your way—a good enough ten-pin-alley companion, perhaps, but not quite the thing in a ball-room!" ”

“ Vanderlyn had always disliked, with a rather absurd, unreasoning dislike, Peggy's plain-featured, rough-tongued sister-in-law. To him Sophy Pargeter had ever been a grotesque example of the deep—they almost appear racial—differences which may, and so often do, exist between different members of a family whose material prosperity is due to successful commerce. ”

“ Having made his plan, Vanderlyn found it remarkably easy to carry out.
In London, such a man as himself would have found it difficult to have ascertained at a moment's notice the address of even a famous palmist or fortune-teller. But in everything to do with social life Paris is highly organised, London singularly chaotic. ”

“ Walking up and down the sunny room which held for him such agonising memories of the long hours spent there during the last three days in Tom Pargeter's company, Vanderlyn lived again every moment of his own strange interview with the soothsayer. ”

“ Vanderlyn had safely gone their several ways. Poor Ellie was not noted for prudence, and when life smiled on her she was given to betraying her gratitude too openly; but thanks to Susy's vigilance (and, no doubt, to Strefford's tacit co-operation) , the dreaded twenty-four hours were happily over. Nelson Vanderlyn had departed without a shadow on his brow, and though Ellie's, when she came down from bidding Nick good-bye, had seemed to Susy less serene than usual, she became her normal self as soon as it was discovered that the red morocco bag with her jewel-box was missing. ”

“ He turned that which had been Margaret Pargeter so that her face would be completely hidden from anyone opening the door and looking into the carriage.
Yet, even as he was doing this, Vanderlyn kept a sharp watch and ward over his own nerves. His had now become the mental attitude of a man who desires to save the living woman whom he loves from some great physical danger. Blessing his own foresight in providing the large rug which he had folded about her so tenderly an hour ago, he pulled up a fold of it till it covered, and completely concealed, her head. ”

“ In the meantime, Martin Vanderlyn is convalescent, and making himself more and more interesting to her. He addresses her always with so much respect and courtesy that it is a continual flattery to her; for this woman has her vanity under all her severe simplicity of garb and mien, and to be recognized as being superior to her position in life is the strongest—or weakest—desire of her heart. ”

“ With nerves strung up to their highest tension, forcing himself only to think of the present, Vanderlyn put on his evening clothes. It was still wanting some minutes to midnight when he left the Rue de Rivoli for the Boulevard de la Madeleine. A few moments later he was at the door of the club where he was sure of finding, even at this time of night, plenty of friends and acquaintances who would be able to testify, in the very unlikely event of its being desirable that they should do so, to the fact that he had been there that evening. ”

“ Ironic fortune was kind to Vanderlyn that night; his return ticket from far-away Orange, though only issued in Paris some two hours before, was allowed to pass unchallenged; and a couple of francs bestowed on a communicative employé drew the welcome news that a southern express bound for Paris was about to stop at Dorgival. ”

“ Vanderlyn desires. He wishes Agnes Thorndyke to know him to be her lover, long before he will dare to avow it to her. Well he knows that he must prepare her for that, lead her step by step up to that avowal; and he knows that she may recoil at any moment, and turn out from the slippery path through which he is leading her. Too many good instincts and habits of early training are warring with the bad teachings he is so assiduously implanting, to make his task a perfectly easy one. ”

“ Herr Kreutzer slowly nodded, seeing no significance in her quick thought of Vanderlyn, save that the thought was rare good sense. Being an American, the young man naturally would have been better able to explain the matter to the officers, and, had [104] the matter been enough explained, he thought, they could not, possibly, have had the heart to hold the child. "Ach, yes," said he. "If he was here! He certainly would know."
Luck, that day, as usually in his wealth-smoothed life, was with young Vanderlyn, for, just as Anna and her father were regretting that he was not there, lo, he appeared! ”

“ Did nothing matter, then, in this world she was fleeing from, did no one love or hate or remember?
"No idea you were in Paris—just got here myself," Vanderlyn continued, visibly delighted at the meeting. "Look here, don't suppose you're out of a job this evening by any chance, and would come and cheer up a lone bachelor, eh? No? You are? Well, that's luck for once! I say, where shall we go? One of the places where they dance, I suppose? Yes, I twirl the light fantastic once in a while myself. Got to keep up with the times! Hold on, taxi! ”

“ Going to Paris, he employed to assist him a French artist, who, it is said, did most of the work. He died in absolute want at Kingston, New York, on the 23rd of September 1852. Vanderlyn was the first American to study in France instead of in England, and to acquire accurate draughtsmanship. ”

“ Nevertheless, Vanderlyn failed in achieving the success his genius merited, and he once declared bitterly that "no one but a professional quack can live in America." Poverty paralyzed his energies, and in 1852, old and discouraged he retired to his native town of Kingston, New York, so poor that he had to borrow twenty-five cents to pay the expressage of his trunk. ”

“ Vanderlyn also recalled, with almost the same surprise and discomfort as he had experienced at the time itself, the way in which Margaret Pargeter, so refined and so delicately bred, had discussed all the material details connected with their coming adventure—details from which the American diplomatist himself had shrunk, and which he would have done almost anything to spare her.
"There is one person, and one alone," she had said with some decision, "who must know. I must tell Adèle de Léra—she must have my address, for I cannot remain without news of my boy a whole week. ”

“ Strefford, Lansing had noticed, always used American slang when he was slightly at a loss, and wished to divert attention from the main point. But why was he embarrassed, whose attention did he wish to divert, It was plain that Vanderlyn’s protest had been merely formal: like most of the wealthy, he had only the dimmest notion of what money represented to the poor. But it was unusual for Strefford to give any one a present, and especially an expensive one: perhaps that was what had fixed Vanderlyn’s attention. ”

“ It is not that he loves the boy overmuch, but it is his revenge upon her. He would rather burden himself with the care of this little child than forego the pleasure it gives him to punish her. And so, while the father of her child lives, she lays her head on another man’s breast, and calls him husband. Vanderlyn is spared either the keeping or the breaking of his promise to care for her children—two in the graves where he wished them, and one in a strange woman’s care. He has all he wished for—John Thorndyke’s pretty wife at last. ”

“ The offer Vanderlyn was about to convey to Madame d'Elphis was quite simple; in exchange for saying a very few words to Tom Pargeter,—words which would add greatly to the belief the millionaire already possessed in what he took to be her extraordinary gifts of divination,—the soothsayer would receive ten thousand francs.
There need be no difficulty even as to the words she should use to reveal the truth; Vanderlyn had cut out from the Petit Journal the paragraph which told of the strange discovery made three nights before at Orange. ”

“ I seem to have heard so—not lately, but long ago?"
"They say so," said Jacques de Léra, casting a quick glance at Vanderlyn. "They say she helped to catch Pranzini. Extraordinary stories are told of her gifts. But none of us have ever been at all anxious to consult her—after poor Jeanne's affair. You may have seen her,"—he turned to Vanderlyn,—"for she's sometimes at first nights and at private views. She's by way of being artistic and cultivated; and though she's strikingly handsome, she dresses oddly—poses as a Muse."
"She must make a great deal of money," said Madame de Léra, thoughtfully ”

“ I feel too much alone, too entirely unconnected with the world, to take much interest in any thing. Yet, without the smallest solicitude about the result, I shall certainly not fail to discharge my public duty, whenever the opportunity occurs, by giving a very strong and frank expression of my opinion on the subject suggested.
Vanderlyn, I perceive from the papers, has returned to New-York. Nothing, I trust, has prevented his bringing back the portrait [2] you left with him. Let me again entreat you to use your influence with him in procuring me a good copy. ”

“ The facts speak for themselves. Madame de Léra had taken only one servant to the country, and this servant, an old woman whom she has had with her many years, and whom she can entirely trust, had no idea that her mistress was expecting a visitor! I repeat—that no preparations for Mrs. Pargeter's arrival had been made at Marly-le-Roi. It is my belief—nay, my conviction—that Madame de Léra knows perfectly well where her friend is now concealed."
It was then that Vanderlyn committed what was perhaps the only mistake he was destined to commit during this difficult interview. ”

“ She looks her fate steadily in the face. Young enough and strong enough yet for work, but with a helpless child upon her hands, what shall she do? She sells promptly her furniture, books, pictures, and jewelry. For the last she has never cared, but Vanderlyn had lavished it upon her during the days she was seeking a divorce. Very rarely has she worn it. With the sum thus raised, she can, for a time, pay her board until she can find employment, and she seeks the most retired house she can find for a refuge. ”

“ The man is an old German, handsome and refined, evidently out of place upon the steerage-deck, the girl—she—why, mother, she's a peach. She'd be out of place 'most anywhere but on a throne!" [52]
"How very vulgar, John," his mother answered with that cold assumption of superiority which had come to her with money. "I cannot see how even you can link the steerage-deck with thrones. Princesses do not travel steerage except between the covers of cheap books."
He laughed again. John Vanderlyn was clean and healthy-souled. He did not always take his mother (whom he idolized) too seriously. ”

“ But the particular detached bit of Dormer was listening and listening for something else. Watching and watching, too, all those faces under tin helmets, and just above gas-mask wallets, all so alike under those conditions that it seemed as difficult to pick out one man from another as one mule from another. Listening for one man to say “I am the one!” to be able to see him, and know that at last he had got rid of that job at Vanderlynden’s. ”

“ We feel in Copley’s canvases a very modern quality, and in most of Stuart’s, but not in Allston’s.
ELIZABETH PATTERSON, MME. JEROME BONAPARTE
By Stuart.
VANDERLYN AND SULLY
A more modern man, though not so celebrated, was John Vanderlyn, a native of Kingston, New York, who spent many years in Paris. He had aspiration after beauty for its own sake. His Ariadne, owned by the Pennsylvania Academy, was really the first important nude painted here. Such subjects in those days caused much protest. This artist’s life was a stern struggle against adverse conditions ”

“ Nay, even if the incredible event had come to pass, and the young stranger had taken the initiative, even then she would not by any means have jumped at the bait. For in the first place, she was fully imbued with the idea that the Vanderlyns were quite as good as any other people in the world, and that (the ordinary conceit of an American belle) to whatever man she might give her hand, all the honor would come from her side, and all the gain be his ”

“ In a moment, Mademoiselle Vanderlynden stood over them. “I am sorry, we have only sardines, they will not let the fish come by train!” Chicken and salad (“Excellent. Ah, they understand oil, the French”) , little biscuits, coffee that dripped through a strainer into glasses, rum (“That’s English, I bet!”) , and Dormer, shy in such matters, and without social code, began wondering whether he could offer to pay.
He had learned during bitter years, one rule: “Always treat an A.P.M. if you can!” This had not been his preoccupation during the meal. ”