"HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL IN THE HUMAN BREAST."
"Ah! one rose,
One rose, but one by those fair fingers culled,
Were worth a hundred kisses, pressed on lips
Less exquisite than thine."
--TENNYSON'S "GARDENER'S DAUGHTER."
It is the latter part of the month of February, and Norfolk is waking
up from its winter torpor. Our friends who wintered in Washington are
all at home again. Mrs. Conway and her well-beloved nephew are located
once more at Ocean View. Mrs. Winans, only just recovered from her
severe and lengthy illness, is once more established in her handsome
residence in Cumberland street, and has prevailed on Miss Clendenon to
spend the first few weeks after their return with her--Mrs. Clendenon,
though lonely without her, willingly giving up those weeks of her
daughter's treasured society to the fair woman of whom both son and
daughter speak in terms of such unqualified praise.
They are very fond of each other--Grace and Lulu--and, indeed, the fair
mistress of that grand home feels as if life will be a blank indeed
when Lulu, too, leaves her, for her pleasant company helps to dispel
the aching sense of waiting and suspense that broods drearily over her
own heart.
Senator Winans has not returned to the United States--indeed, seems
in no haste to return--for he has resigned his seat in Congress, and
writes that he will never return until accompanied by the child so
strangely lost.
At present the fate of that little child is wrapped in impenetrable
mystery. The detectives in Liverpool who were watching for the
arrival of the steamer there, were eluded by the cunning of his poor,
half-insane abductor, and not a trace of her afterward could be
found, though the story was widely circulated in the prominent papers,
munificent rewards offered for his restoration to his father, and the
best detectives employed to hunt the woman down. In vain.
Whether the little Paul yet lived was a matter of doubt to many who
considered the subject carefully, and remembered how irresponsible, how
poorly fitted to take care of the tenderly nurtured babe, was the poor,
grief-stricken, demented creature. But Winans remained abroad, resolved
that he would never give up the search nor return home until success
crowned his efforts. And with him, to make a resolve was generally to
keep it.
As for Grace, the first sharp agony of her grief being past, a sort
of apathy settled upon her, a quietude that appeared to infold her so
closely it seemed as if joy or pain could never touch her more. Very
still and quiet, though sweet, and gently observant of the cares of
others, she glided through the elegant rooms of her strangely quiet and
solitary home, and books and music, and long, lonely drives, shared
only by Lulu, formed the only objects of her daily occupation. Health
returned to her so slowly that life seemed slipping from her grasp
by gradual declining, and the fair cheek, never very rosy, wore the
settled shadow of an inward strife, the girlish lip a quiet resolution
that moved the gazer to wonder.
And for Lulu, also, a slight paleness has usurped the place of the
brilliant roses she carried to Washington. The starry brown eyes hold
a grave thoughtfulness new to their soft depths, and sometimes, when
suddenly spoken to, the girl starts, as if her thoughts had strayed
hundreds of miles away, though the truth of the matter is they never
strayed further than Ocean View, where the handsome object of their
thoughts dawdled life away, "killing time" and thought as best he
might, and seldom coming into Norfolk--"recruiting after a fatiguing
season," he was wont to say, when rallied on the subject by his
numerous friends in the city, and had Lulu been at her mother's, he
would very possibly have called occasionally to see her, but while she
staid with Grace she was debarred the pleasure of seeing him, for Bruce
never expected to cross the threshold of the house that called Mrs.
Winans its mistress, and where Lulu sat one bright, sunny morning,
toward the last of the month of February. As is often the case,
February had borrowed a windy day from March, and the "homeless winds"
shrieked around the corners, and moaned dismally in the trees that were
just putting out the safest and greenest of velvet buds, and Lulu,
sitting alone in the cozy morning parlor, idly turning the pages of a
new volume, started up in surprise and pleasure as a servant ushered
"dear brother Willie" quite unexpectedly into the room.
"So glad to see you," she said, brightly, putting both hands in his
one, and rising on tiptoe for a kiss.
He stooped and gave her a dozen before he accepted the chair she placed
for him beside her own.
"Mother is well? I haven't seen her these two days," she queries,
anxiously.
"Mother is well--yes, and sent her love."
"Now," she chattered, laying aside her book, and concentrating all her
attention on him, "give me all the news."
"Well, Lulu, all the news I have is soon told. I am come to bid you
good-by. Winans has been urging me so earnestly in his letters to join
him abroad in his search for the little Paul, that I have not the heart
to refuse, if I wished, which I do not, and I start to-night. There is
no use putting it off, and I do not need to. The only thing I regret
is that this will curtail your stay with Mrs. Winans, as mother cannot
spare us both at once, and will want to have you with her to console
her anxieties while 'with a smile at her doleful face, her Willie's on
the dark blue sea.' Still, dear little sister, you can spend much of
your time with Mrs. Winans, which I hope you will do."
"I certainly will do so," she gravely promises.
"It is solely for her sake that I go," he concluded. "Otherwise I do
not care for the trip, and it rather encroaches on my business at this
time. But if I can help lift the cloud from her life, no effort of mine
shall be wanting. _Noblesse oblige_, you know, little sister."
She glanced up into the soft, serious, gray eyes, that met her gaze so
kindly with a smothered sigh.
"How noble and calm was that forehead,
'Neath its tresses of dark curling hair;
The sadness of thought slept upon it,
And a look that a seraph might wear."
"My darling," he bent and looked into the face that lay against his
shoulder, "you are not well--you do not look like my bright, happy
bird. What is it--what has troubled you?"
"Nothing; indeed it is nothing. I have the least bit of a headache, but
it is wearing off in the joy of seeing you," she answered, smiling a
little, and then, woman-like, touched by a sympathizing word, breaking
into tears and sobbing against his shoulder.
He put his arm around her, inexpressibly shocked and pained.
"Something _has_ troubled you, and I know it. Tell me, Lulu, or I
cannot be content to cross the ocean leaving you with some untold grief
in your happy young heart. Come, you do not have any secrets from
brother Willie."
"No, no, it is nothing, dear brother, but I am so nervous of late--have
learned to be a fashionable lady, you know," smiling faintly to allay
his anxiety, "and I am so shocked to think you are going away--so far,
and so _soon_--how long do you mean to stay?"
"I cannot tell. I shall write to you often, anyhow, so that you and
mother shall not miss me so much. I shall throw all my powers into this
undertaking. And, Lulu, I think--that is--I should like to see _her_
and say good-by--if you think she would see any one?"
"She would see you, certainly; she is very fond of you; talks often
of you. You can go down into the conservatory; she was there a little
while since. I know she is there still. After you tell her good-by, you
will come back to me--will you?"
"Yes, dear," he answered, as he rose and left her, passing on through
the continuation of the elegant suite of rooms leading out to the door
of the conservatory and glancing in for her he sought.
She was there. He caught his breath with a pang as he saw the slender
figure standing under a slim young palm tree, looking like a sculptured
image of thought with her downcast eyes and gravely quiet lips. A
furred, white morning robe of fine French merino, girded at the waist
by silken white cords and tassels, fell softly about her form and
trailed its sweeping length on the marble floor. There were faint blue
shadows around the glorious eyes, though they may have been but the
shadow of the sweeping black lashes--there was a glow but no color on
the pure, fragile cheek, and a dumb suggestion of quiet martyrdom in
the droop of the hands that loosely clasped each other, as
"Stiller than chiseled marble standing there,
A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair,"
the eyes of Captain Clendenon dwell on her for a moment with a mist
before their sight, and then--but then she lifted the sweeping lids of
those rare pansy-vailed eyes, and looked up at him.
The ghost of a smile touched her lips as she gave him her hand.
"It seems a long time since I saw you," she said, "though it really is
not two months."
"Sometimes," he answered, gravely, "so much suffering can be crowded
into two months that it may well seem two centuries."
"Ah! yes." She set her lips suddenly in the straight line with which
she was wont to keep back a sob. After a moment, "Have you seen Lulu?"
"Yes, I have seen her," going over patiently, and at more length, the
information he had just given his sister, talking this time brightly
and cheerfully. "I feel almost assured he will be found; he must
be--'there is no such word as fail,' you know, in the 'lexicon of
youth,'--and I think you are giving up too easily. You will undermine
your health already weakened by your severe illness. Why, you have the
appearance of one who has given up all hope."
"And I have," she calmly made answer.
"That is simply suicidal," he said, trying to rouse her into hope with
all the strength of his strong, true nature.
"You are so kind, Captain Clendenon," she flashed a blinding ray of
gratitude from her dusk eyes upon him, "so kind to go and look for
him--my baby--believe me, I never, never can forget it, though I feel
that all search will be in vain--still, still, it is so kind, so noble
in you to do all this, and I know you are doing it for me," laying her
small hand mechanically on his coat-sleeve in a childish fashion she
had, and keeping the grateful eyes still on his face.
"Mrs. Winans," he answered, quite gravely, "I would go to the ends of
the earth to serve you--any man who knows your unmerited sufferings,
and appreciates you as well as I do, could not do less, I think."
"Thank you," she murmured, with the faintest quiver in the music of her
voice.
"And now," he spoke less gravely, and more brightly, "I think I must be
saying good-by. Is there anything I can do for you on the other side of
the Atlantic--any commission for Parisian finery--any message for your
husband?"
"Nothing--thanks," she answered, decisively.
He sighed, but did not urge the matter.
"You are not going to send me to Europe without one flower, and so rich
in floral blessings?" his glance roving over the booming wilderness of
beauty and fragrance all around her.
"No, indeed, but you are not going yet. You will certainly stay to
luncheon, will you not?"
"I cannot--thanks!"
"You shall have all the flowers you want. What are your favorites? Pray
help yourself to all you fancy, and welcome," she urged, earnestly.
He glanced around. Everything rare, and sweet, and bright he could
think of, glowed lavishly around him, but the only white rose that had
blown that day she had quite mechanically broken and placed on her
breast.
"I only want one flower. I like white roses best," he answers.
She turned her head, bending forward to see if any were there, and one
of her long, fair curls swept across and tangled itself in a thorny
bush beside her. She caught it impatiently away, leaving a tangle of
broken gold strands on the thorny stem. Before she turned back to him
he had broken off the spray and hid it in his breast.
"There is not a rose," lifting regretful eyes to his face, "excepting
this one I wear. I carelessly broke it, but it is still fresh. You are
welcome to that, if you will have it," she said, sweetly.
"If you please."
She disengaged it, and put it in his hand. He retained hers a moment.
"Thanks, and--good-by."
"Good-by," her voice said, regretfully, then added: "Oh! Captain
Clendenon, find him for me, if you can! Oh, try your best!"
"I pledge you my word I will," he answered, "but promise me that you
will have faith in my endeavor; that you will live in hope."
"Oh! I cannot, I cannot! I feel that I can never hope again!" she
cried, but with a brightening glance.
"But you will," he answered, cheerily. "Health, and hope, and love
will all come back to you in time. 'Hope springs eternal in the human
breast.' God bless you, and good-by."
Their hands met a moment in a strong, friendly clasp; her violet orbs
dusk and dewy with feeling; her voice scarce audible as it quivered:
"Good-by!"