trip so much to Judge Bloommaert’s taste. But he did not understand--not
at all. He was mortified at his reception, and he had not that domestic
instinct which would have taught him that the constraint he felt was of
a family nature and did not include him. In his present sensitive,
jealous mood he believed the judge was reading because he preferred
reading to his society--that Mrs. Bloommaert was silent and restless
because, in some way, he had interfered; and that Sappha’s shy, abortive
efforts to restore a cheerful, confidential feeling were colder and more
perfunctory than he had ever before seen them.
In this latter estimate he was partly correct. Sappha was as eager and
anxious about the visit to the theatre and the naval ball as it was
natural a girl of eighteen years old should be, and Leonard had
interrupted discussion at a critical point; had put off settlements
about dresses and various other important items--and besides this fault
had brought into the room with him an atmosphere very different from his
usual light-hearted mood, explaining itself by interesting political or
social news. For once he was quite absorbed in Leonard Murray, and then
nobody seemed to care about Leonard Murray. Mrs. Bloommaert asked him
questions about the decorations, and Sappha about the people who were
assisting with them, and he simply answered, without adding any of his
usual amusing commentaries.
In a short time Mrs. Bloommaert left the room, and as the judge appeared
to be lost in the sources of the Nile Leonard was practically alone with
Sappha. He first asked her to practise some songs with him, but she
answered, “The parlour is unwarmed and unlighted, Leonard, and I do not
want to take cold, just when the holidays are here.”
“Certainly not,” he said, but the refusal was a fresh offence. Why had
Sappha not ordered fire and light to be put in the parlour? She usually
did. Something was interesting her more than his probable visit--what
could it be? Not the theatre--not the naval ball. Sappha was used to
such affairs; he had never known them put the whole house out of temper
before. For by this time he had decided the atmosphere was one of bad
temper, without considering for a moment that it was possibly his own
bad temper.
Suddenly he rose and said he must go; and no one asked him to remain
longer. Sappha felt the constraint of her father’s presence, and did not
accompany him to the hall. Mrs. Bloommaert was opening and shutting
drawers and doors upstairs, and the judge only gave to his “Good-night,
judge,” a civil equivalent in “Good-night, Mr. Murray.” As he was
leaving the house he saw Mr. St. Ange approaching it, and instead of
advancing to meet him he turned southward towards Stone Street. Of this
cowardly step he was soon ashamed, and he went back and forced himself
to pass the Bloommaert house. It had a more happy aspect. Some one had
stirred the logs, and the dancing flames showed through the dropped
white shades. There was a movement also in the room; the sound of
voices, and once he could have sworn he heard Sappha laugh. Did he not
know her laugh among a thousand? It was like the tinkle of a little
bell.
For at least a quarter of an hour he tormented himself with the pictures
his imagination drew of what was passing behind that illuminated screen.
Then he went gloomily to his room and sat down with jealousy, and began
to count up his suspicions. A miserable companion is jealousy! And a
miserable tale of wrongs she gave him to reckon up. But at least he
reached one truth in that unhappy occupation--it was, that the
engagement between Sappha and himself ought to be immediately made
public. All their little misunderstandings, all his humiliations, had
come through their relationship being kept secret. He felt that he was
missing much of the pleasure of his wooing; certainly he was deprived of
the _éclat_ that it ought to have brought him. It was all wrong! All
wrong! And it must be put right at once. He promised himself he would
see to that necessity the first thing he did in the morning.
With this promise his insurgent heart suffered him to sleep a little,
yet sleep did him no good. He awoke with the same consuming fever of
resentment. He could not eat, nor yet drink; he had no use for anything
but thought: jealous thought, with that eternal hurry of the soul that
will not suffer rest--thoughts of love and sorrow, starting in every
direction from his unhappy heart, to find out some hope, and meeting
only suspicion, anger, and despair. It was his first experience of that
egotistical malady,
“whose torment, no men sure
But lovers and the damned endure.”
And he was astonished and dismayed at his suffering.
But few men suffer patiently; they are usually quick for their own
relief, and accordingly very early the following morning Leonard made an
excuse for calling on Sappha. Mrs. Bloommaert had gone, however, to
Nassau Street, and he did not need to urge the excuse prepared. He
launched at once into his wrongs and his sufferings; and indeed the
latter had left some intelligible traces. Sappha was moved by his pale
face and troubled eyes to unusual sympathy; but this did not suffice. He
felt that the only way to prevent a recurrence of the night’s suffering
was to insist upon a public acknowledgment of his rights as her accepted
lover, and he told Sappha this in no equivocal words.
She was distressed by his passion and evident distraction, but she would
not listen for a moment to his proposal to explain their position to her
father that night. And his eager entreaties finally roused in her
something like anger. “You are too selfish, Leonard,” she said, “and
please do not make your love for me the excuse for your selfishness. You
must be happy, no matter who is unhappy. Could you have picked out in
the whole year a time more unpropitious, more inopportune, than this
very week? Every person who has any patriotic feeling gives up all their
interest to our country for the next few days. Christmas and New Year’s
holidays have claims we cannot forget. It is my father’s holiday, his
great holiday, when he throws all business cares from his mind. My
mother has all manner of little domesticities and household hopes and
fears and duties to attend to. Have at least a little patience! Wait
until the New Year’s feast is over.”
“And give St. Ange another ten days full of delightful opportunities.”
“St. Ange! What do you mean, Leonard? Surely you are not jealous of St.
Ange. He has given you no cause whatever.”
“At first he behaved with all the honour imaginable; but lately I have
seen a change. He is no longer influenced by a belief in our engagement.
Naturally he thinks, if it had existed, you or I would have shown some
signs of so close a relationship. I have been held back on every hand,
and you have not been as seclusive and exclusive as you might have
been.”
“Oh, Leonard! How can you?”
“You have been very kind and familiar with St. Ange. He comes here quite
as much as I do. He goes out with your grandmother and mother, and often
your father is seen walking on the Battery with him. He never walks with
me. I do not like it. It is too much suffering! I cannot endure it.”
“I heard mother come in. I will go and speak to her, Leonard.”
“Do. She must see how reasonable I am.”
But the moment Sappha entered her mother’s room she was met by a rebuff.
Mrs. Bloommaert just looked in her face, and understood; and before she
had spoken half a dozen words she said with an air of resolve and
annoyance. “Now, Sappha, I will hear nothing about Leonard. He has been
quite unreasonable lately, and he was in a bad temper last night. Oh,
yes, he was! I know bad temper when I see it.”
“But, mother, this is important. He is really determined.”
“Do not tell me what he is determined on, for I shall certainly repeat
all you say to your father.”
“He wants, dear mother, he wants----”
“Just what he cannot have; what he has no right to have--yet. He
promised you to wait. I know he did. Do not tell me anything, Sappha,
because I shall feel it my duty to tell your father all you say--just at
this time too! It is too bad! It is exceedingly selfish and
inconsiderate; and I am astonished at Leonard Murray.”
“I do not think you ought to call Leonard ‘selfish and inconsiderate.’
He is very unhappy.”
“When all the city is happy and rejoicing! Can he not put aside his own
happiness for a while and rejoice with every one else? We are going to
keep Christmas for the Christ’s sake; we are going to honour the brave
men who have done our country such honour; we are going, all of us, to
think of our country and forget ourselves; and Leonard must take this
very time to urge some bit of pleasure that will be his, and his only,
that no one else must share----”
“You forget me, mother.”
“No. I am sure you are no party to anything that is so selfishly
personal. I think you would put the general good, and the general
happiness, before your own satisfaction.”
Then Sappha answered, “I hope you judge me rightly, mother; and I will
be very firm with Leonard. Yet he seems so miserable.”
“He is nursing some silly idea that in some way or other he is being
wronged. This notion blots all other ideas out of recognition; he is, as
I said before, suffering from selfishness; and selfishness is the
worst-tempered of all vices.”
“At any rate, he is wretched. Come and speak to him, mother.”
“No, I will not. I have other things to do. Of course he is wretched! he
ought to be, for bad temper, fortunately, bites at both ends. My advice
to you is, be a little cross yourself. Dear me! How tiresome men in love
are!”
To this last exclamation Sappha closed the door. She walked slowly
downstairs, she lingered, she seemed unable to come to any decision.
But in the midst of her uncertainty she listened to her heart, and what
her heart said to her was this: “It can never be wrong to be kind.” So
strengthened, and even counselled, by this suggestion, she went back to
her lover. He was walking about the room in a fever of self-torment, and
as the door opened he turned inquiringly. And it was the loveliest of
Sapphas he saw. She met him in all her charms; her eyes had a sunny
radiance, her mouth was all smiles, she looked as if there was not a
care in the wide world--a healing, lovesome woman, wonderfully sweet and
comforting.
“Dearest one,” she said softly, “sit here beside me. Let me have your
hand, Leonard, and listen to me. My mother says this is the very worst
time in all the year to speak to my father. He is so full of public
affairs, and you know, just now, they ought to come before any private
ones. Ought they not, dear?”
“Yes, of course, but----”
“Well, there can be no ‘but’ for a few days. Christmas is Christ’s
feast--we cannot presume to put ourselves before Christmas; and then
come all the honours, and feasts, and public rejoicings for our dear
country. You would not put yourself, nor even Sappha, before America,
her honour and freedom? And so I think, with mother, we must wait until
after the New Year before we say a word about ourselves. Dear, a few
months, a few weeks ago, you were so happy with my assurance only. Is it
less sweet now than then?”
And as she spoke more and more tenderly, aiding her words with loving
glances and the light pressure of her little hand, softer thoughts
flowed in, and the enchanter, love, usurped the place of every evil
passion. Leonard finally promised to be happy, and to let others be
happy; and he kissed this agreement on her lips. Alas!
“Man, only, clogs with care his happiness,
And while he should enjoy his part of bliss,
With thoughts of what might be, destroys what is.”
DRYDEN.
And when Sappha had watched and smiled him out of sight she turned in
with a sigh and a sudden depression of spirit. She had won Leonard to
her wish and way, but anger is always self-immolation, and for a time at
least Leonard had fallen in her esteem, for she was compelled to
disapprove of much that he had said; and the more we judge, the less we
love.
The whole affair seemed trifling to Mrs. Bloommaert; it was an annoyance
in the midst of events of far more importance, and had to be got out of
the way--that was all. But to Sappha it was different. She had forgiven
Leonard, but unhappy is the lover whom a woman forgives; and Sappha was
herself quite conscious that some virtue had gone out of her life. It
was not a little event to Sappha, for there are no little events with
the heart.
Fortunately Annette and St. Ange came in, and Sappha was compelled to
meet them on the level of their joyous temper. They had finished
decorating madame’s house, and their arms were full of box and feathery
hemlock and the blooms of many-coloured everlasting flowers and great
bunches of the vermilion berries of the darling pyracantha shrub. They
were tingling with the Christmas joy, and their ringing laughter, their
jokes and snatches of song, their quips and mock reproofs of their own
mirth, filled the house with the electric atmosphere of Merry Christmas.
Negroes were chattering among them, raising ladders, and running
messages, and the tapping of the little hammers, and the cries of
admiration as the room grew to a fairy bower, was far better than the
music of many instruments--it was the music of the heart.
“We ought to have had holly,” said St. Ange. “There is always holly in
Christmas decorations.”
“The pyracantha berries are just as pretty,” answered Mrs. Bloommaert,
“and the pyracantha is a rapid grower, and can be cut with
impunity--even with profit to the bush; but to cut holly! that is rather
a cruel business. It is almost as bad as flinging the Christmas tree
into the streets when it has done its whole duty.”
“But, aunt Carlita, what else can be done? It is too big to keep,
and----”
“I will tell you. In Germany, the home of the Christmas tree, they give
it house room until Shrove Tuesday, then it is formally burned.”
“Well,” said Sapphira, “we are not going to have a Christmas tree this
year; my father likes far better the _Yule Klap_.”
“What an outlandish name!” exclaimed St. Ange.
“Truly so, but then, such a delightful custom!” replied Annette.
“To-morrow night you will have to do your part in the Yule Klap; I hope
you are prepared.”
“But then, I know not.”
“My aunt will tell you all about it.” And Mrs. Bloommaert said: “Come
now, it is easy enough. The judge will open the Christmas room, and then
every one will throw their gifts into the room, crying ‘_Yule Klap_’ in
a disguised voice. The gifts may be rich or poor, but they must be
wrapped in a great number of coverings, and each cover be addressed to a
different person, but the person whose name is on the last cover gets
the gift. The gifts are to be strictly anonymous. So then no thanks are
to be given, and there can be no envious feelings awakened.”
“That is charming,” cried St. Ange. Then he was in a hurry to leave, but
Mrs. Bloommaert insisted that he should stay and drink a glass of hot
negus ere he went into the cold air. While the negro boy was bringing in
a tray full of Christmas dainties, and Sappha spicing the Portugal wine,
they finished the dressing of the room; and then sat down round the fire
to refresh themselves.
And very soon St. Ange began to talk of certain Christmas feasts he had
spent in Europe--in Madrid, at the Christmas turkey fair, amid glorious
sunshine, the flower girls selling camillas and violets; everywhere
colour, beauty, music, barbarism, and dirt. At Rome in the antique fish
market, always brilliantly lighted with large torches on Christmas Eve.
“For I assure you,” he said, “the sumptuous fish supper of that night is
beyond anything that can be conceived of here.”--at Naples, where
Christmas is kept with confectionery, and the Toledo is a feast of sugar
and sweets.
“Are then the Neapolitans so fond of confectionery?” asked Annette.
“They must be very children,” she added.
“They are children among sweets,” he answered. “A Neapolitan noble told
me that the king was ever fearing revolution; ‘but,’ he added, ‘if he
will only present every Neapolitan with a box of sweets a revolution
will be impossible.’”
“I do not think a box of sweets to every American would have prevented
our Revolution,” said Sappha.
Every one laughed heartily at the idea, and then she pictured Washington
and Putnam, and her grandfather Bloommaert’s reception of these peace
offerings. And the scene was so funnily enacted that no one could help
laughing heartily at it. Yet in the very climax of the hilarious chorus
Sappha had a heavy heart; her mirth was only from the lips outward.
However, it seemed only too real to Leonard, who entered suddenly while
the peal of laughter was at its height. And he was so totally unexpected
that the moment’s sudden silence which followed was the most natural
consequence; especially as it ended in a rush of inquiries and
exclamations.
“So glad to see you!”
“Come and sit down, and have a glass of hot negus.”
“What good fortune sent you?”
“Is there any strange news?” And then Mrs. Bloommaert’s rather stiff
question: “Is anything wrong, Leonard?”
Leonard turned to her at once. “No, indeed,” he answered. “I met the
judge at the City Hall and he asked me to bring you this letter. I think
he expects to be detained. He was just going on to an important
committee. If there is any answer, I will carry it, if you wish me to do
so.”
And as Mrs. Bloommaert read the letter Sappha brought him some spiced
wine, but he would not take it. He said “he was going back to complete
some decorations, whose position required a very clear head and steady
foot.” But he knew in his heart that it was no fear of danger made him
refuse the proffered cup of good-will. It was jealousy that whispered to
him: “The cup was not mingled for you. There was no thought of you in
it. Others were expected and prepared for, and you were not even told.”
Under the influence of such thoughts he was constrained and quite unlike
himself, and an effectual destroyer of happiness. An uncomfortable
silence, broken by bungling attempts to restore the natural mirth he had
disturbed, were not happy efforts. He made himself an intruder, and then
blamed every one else for the position he had taken voluntarily, through
his own misconception. Sappha was painfully aware of the constraint,
and she wished for once that Annette would open her generally ready
stream of badinage. But Annette was busy advising, in a somewhat private
detail, St. Ange concerning his part of the game of _Yule Klap_; and St.
Ange, having received her instructions while Leonard was waiting, rose
when Leonard did, and proposed to walk part of the way with him.
“You will call this evening, will you not?” asked Sappha timidly, as
they stood by a little table full of mysterious packages.
“It will be impossible,” he answered. “Every part of the decorations are
in my charge, and I have a great deal to attend to.”
“To-morrow is Christmas Eve. You will be here for the _Yule Klap_?”
“If I am wanted!”
“Oh, Leonard! If you are wanted! If you are not present I shall not care
for anything, or any one else.”
“Then I will come, dearest.” This conversation had been held, almost in
whispers, as Sappha was supposed to be showing Leonard some of the _Yule
Klap_ offerings she was preparing. Then the young men went away
together, but the ocean between them could not really have set them more
apart. St. Ange made several attempts to open a conversation on _Yule
Klap_. He wanted Leonard’s advice about the gifts most suitable; but
Leonard professed both ignorance and indifference concerning a game so
childish; and at Vaarick Street St. Ange, having failed completely to
evoke anything like friendly intercourse, bid him good-morning. He was
worried over his friend’s evident displeasure; and over his own failure
to either account for or dispel it. He went westward to Greenwich
Street, and having made many purchases in the most fashionable stores,
rather wearily returned to his rooms at the City Hotel. He was depressed
and had a premonition of trouble.
After this little cloud the Christmas festivities went on with unalloyed
pleasure. Madame and Annette were to stay at the Bowling Green house
until Saturday, and when the judge saw his mother’s delight in her
anticipated visit to the theatre on Christmas night he had no heart to
say one opposing word. But Sappha was not now so eager. She felt sure
that in Leonard’s present temper he would not like her to be the guest
of St. Ange, and she resolved to forego the pleasure. “I shall have a
little headache in the morning, and it will grow worse towards night,
and I shall beg to be left at home that I may sleep it away. I do not
think it will be wrong,” she mused. “There is not room in the box St.
Ange has taken but for six; and if there was room, I am sure Leonard
would not accept the invitation to join us. Well, then, it is better to
make an excuse than to make trouble. Why did not Leonard rent a box? He
might have thought of it just as well as St. Ange. I wish I knew what it
is best, what it is right, to do.”
To such troubled thoughts she fell asleep, and when she awoke in the
morning the weather had settled the matter for her. It was bitterly
cold, and a furious snowstorm was blocking up the pathways and making a
visit to the theatre beyond a safe or pleasant probability. Madame sadly
admitted the condition, but the day went happily forward; and about two
o’clock Leonard and St. Ange and Peter arrived, and the judge opened the
Christmas room, and then there was two hours of pure mirth--of surprise
without end; of beautiful gifts whose donors were to speculate about;
half-guesses sent into conscious faces; questions asked with beaming
eyes; all the delightful uncertainties which love could make, and love
alone unravel. The Christmas dinner followed, and after it a dance,
which madame, with Peter for her partner, opened. Every one joined in
it, and the merriest of evenings was thus inaugurated. So nobody
regretted the theatre, not even madame, for she had been privately
informed by St. Ange that the box was reserved for the great naval
performance on the seventh of January; and that it would be one far more
worth seeing, one never to be forgotten. And madame kept this bit of
anticipatory pleasure as a little secret, and was as gay as a child over
it.
Leonard also was in his most charming mood, and Sappha was divinely
happy; her beauty was enchanting, and her manner so mild and sweet that
she diffused on all hands a sense of exquisite peace and felicity. For
Leonard had whispered to her such words of contrition and devotion as
erased totally and forever the memory of his unworthy temper and
suspicions. And after that confession there could be only sorrow for his
fault, and delight in pardoning and forgetting it.
All throughout the following week he preserved this sunny mood. He was
undoubtedly very busy, for the naval dinner was to be given on the
twenty-ninth of December, and he was the director of the committee of
young men who were turning the great dining room of the City Hotel into
a marine palace. It was his taste which colonnaded it with the masts of
ships wreathed with laurel and all the national flags of the
world--except that of Great Britain. It was Leonard who devised the
greensward, in the midst of which was a real lake, and floating on it a
miniature United States war frigate.
It was Leonard, also, who hung behind the dais on which Mayor Clinton,
Decatur, Hall, and the officers of the navy were to sit, the mainsail of
a ship thirty-three feet by sixteen, on which the American eagle was
painted, holding in his beak a scroll bearing these significant words:
“Our children are the property of our country.” There were many other
transparencies to attend to; besides which, every table was to bear a
miniature warship with American colours displayed. And to the five
hundred gentlemen of New York, who sat down to the dinner served in that
room, these were no childish symbols. They were the palpable, visible
signs of a patriotism that meant freedom or death, and nothing less.
In the midst of all the business connected with such preparations, in a
time when the things wanted were not always procurable, and had to be
supplied by the things that could be obtained, Leonard--whose heart was
hot in his work of patriotism--was naturally very busy and very much
occupied with the work on hand. Yet he found time sufficient to see
Sappha often enough to convince her he had not fallen away from the
promise he had made her--“to harbour no unworthy suspicions of any one
who loved him.”
At length New Year’s Eve arrived. More than three hundred of New York’s
loveliest women had been for weeks preparing for it, and all were eager
for the pleasure it promised them.