A NEW YEAR'S GIFT.
"And why, if we must part, Lulu!
Why let me love you so?
Nay, waste no more your sweet farewells,
I _cannot_ let you go--
Not let you go, Lulu!
I cannot let you go!" --MRS. OSGOOD.
On the following Christmas morning Mrs. Clendenon, Mrs. Winans and
Lulu, together with the returned captain, all attended divine service
at the Protestant Episcopal Church.
It seems strange how many of us become recognized members of the Church
of Christ under religious conviction, without ever having any great and
realizing sense of the saving power of God, not only in the matter of
the world beyond, but in the limitless power of sustaining us among the
trials of this.
This had been peculiarly the case with our heroine. She had for
years been a member of the Episcopal Church, and, as the world goes,
a dutiful member. But religion had been to her mind too much in the
abstract, too much a thing above and beyond her to be taken into her
daily life in the part of a comforter and sustainer. She had gone to
the world for consolation in the hour of her trial. It had failed her.
To-day as the glorious old "Te Deum" rose and soared grandly through
the arches of the temple of worship, filling her soul with sublime
pathos, she began to see how He, who had dimly held to her the place
of a Saviour in the world beyond, is an ever-present Comforter and
sustainer in the fateful Gethsemane of this probationary earth.
Captain Clendenon, as he sat by her side and heard the low, musical
voice as it uttered the prayerful responses to the Litany, thought
her but little lower than the angels. She in her deep and newly
roused humility felt herself scarcely worthy to take the name of a
long misunderstood Saviour on her lips. Few of the congregation who
commented, on dispersing, relative to the pearl-fair beauty and elegant
apparel of the Senator's deserted wife, fathomed the feelings that
throbbed tumultuously beneath that pale calm bearing as they left the
sacred edifice.
"Lulu," she queried later, as up in the young lady's dressing-room they
had laid aside their warm wrappings and furs. "Lulu, what do you do for
Christ?"
Lulu turned about in some surprise:
"What do I do for Christ?" she repeated. "Oh, Gracie, too little, I
fear."
"'Tell me," she persisted.
"Well, then, I have my Sabbath-school class, my list of Christ's poor,
whom I visit and aid to the best of my ability, my missionary fund, and
finally, Gracie, dearest, whatever my hand 'findeth to do,' I try to do
with all my might."
Gracie stood still, twisting one of the long curls that swept to her
waist over one diamond-ringed white finger.
"Darling, why do you ask?" Lulu said, with her arm about the other's
waist.
The fair cheek nestled confidingly against Lulu's own.
"I want to help you, if you will let me--let me go with you on your
errands for Christ. I belong to the world no longer. Show me how to
fill up the measure of my days with prayerful work for the Master."
One pearly drop from Lulu's eyes fell down on the golden head that had
pillowed itself on her breast.
"God, I thank Thee," she murmured, "that there is joy in heaven to-day
over the lamb that has come into the fold."
She whispered it to Brother Willie that day at a far corner of the
parlor when they happened to be alone for a moment together.
He glanced across at the slender, stately figure standing at the window
between the falling lace curtains, looking wistfully out.
"It is natural," he said. "A nature so pure, so strong, so devotional
as hers must needs have more than the world can give to satisfy its
immortal cravings. Poor girl! she is passing through the fire of
affliction. Let us thank God that she is coming out _pure gold_."
After awhile, when Lulu had slipped from the room, leaving them
alone together, he crossed over to her side, and began telling her
of his experiences and adventures abroad. She listened, pleased and
interested, soothed by his kind, almost brotherly tone.
"You do not ask me after Winans," said he, playfully, at last.
She did not answer, save by a heightened flush.
"You did not know that through his reckless bravery, his gentleness and
humanity to his men, he has risen to the rank of general in the army of
France?" A soldierly flash in the clear gray eyes.
"Yes," she answered in a low voice; "I have seen it in the newspapers."
"You have? Then you have seen also that he----"
He paused, looking down at her quiet face in some perplexity and doubt.
"That he--what?" she asked, looking up at him, and growing slightly
pale.
"I do not know how to tell you, if you do not know," his eyes, full of
grave compassion, fixed on hers.
One of her small hands groped blindly out, and clung firmly to his arm.
"Captain Clendenon, I know that the Franco-Prussian war is ended. Is
that what you mean? Is he--my husband--is he coming home--to America?"
She read in his eyes the negative she felt she could not speak.
"Tell me," she said, desperately, "if he is not coming home, what is
it? I am braver than you think. I can bear a great deal. Is he--is
he--_dead_?"
"May God have mercy on your poor, tired little soul," he answered,
solemnly. "It is more than we know. In the last great battle, General
Winans was wounded near unto death, and left on the field. When search
was made for him he was not found. Whatever his fate was--whether he
was buried, unshrouded and uncoffined, like many of those poor fellows,
in an unknown grave, or whether an unknown fate met him, is as yet
uncertain. We hope for the best while we fear the worst."
One hand still lay on his coat-sleeve--the other one followed it,
clasped itself over it, and she laid her white face down upon them,
creeping closer to him as if to shield herself against his strong, true
heart from the storms that beat on her frail woman-life. One moment he
felt the wild throb of her agonized heart against his own; then all was
still. Lifting the lifeless form on his arm, he laid it on a sofa and
called to Lulu:
"I had to tell her!" he exclaimed. "She did not bear it as well as we
hoped. I am afraid I have killed her."
Ah! grief seldom kills. If it did, this fair world would not have so
many of us striving, busy atoms struggling for its possession.
She came back to life again, lying still and white in Lulu's loving
arms. Captain Clendenon and his mother went out and left them together.
They would not intrude on the sore heart whose wound they could not
heal.
"After all we can hope still," Lulu said, cheerily. "All is uncertainty
and mere conjecture. We can still hope on, until something more
definite is known."
"Hope," repeated the listener, mournfully.
"Hope, yes," was the firm reply. "Hope and pray. One of Brother
Willie's favorite maxims is that hope springs eternal in the human
breast!"
"I can bear it," came softly from the other. "I have borne so much, I
can still endure. With God's help I will be patient under all."
"Whom He loveth He chasteneth," answered Lulu.
* * * * *
When New Year's Day came with its social gayeties, receptions, and
friendly calls, one of Lulu's latest and most surprising visits was
from our old friend, Bruce Conway. He had not called on her for a long
time, and she had heard that he was in Washington. The warm blood
suffused her face as she stood alone in the parlor, with his card in
her hand, and it grew rosier as he entered, and with his inimitable,
indolent grace, paid the compliments of the season.
"You do not ask me where I have been these many days," he said, as he
sipped the steaming mocha she offered him in the daintiest of China
cups. She never offered her friends wine.
"I had heard that you were in Washington," she answered, apologetically.
"Right--and what was I doing there? Can you undertake to guess?"
"I am sure it is beyond me." This with her most languid air. "Flirting,
perhaps."
A light smile curves his mustached lip. Certainly this little beauty,
he thinks, is "good at guessing."
"Have your callers been many to-day?" he asked.
"Quite a number of my friends have called--all, I think. I expect no
more this evening," she answers, demurely.
"I am glad of that. I shall have you all to myself, Lulu--willful,
indifferent still, since you will not ask my object in Washington, I
will e'en tell you anyhow."
"Go on--I am listening."
Putting down the cup he had finished, he seated himself on the sofa by
her side, good-humoredly taking no notice of the fact that she moved a
little farther away from him.
"How pretty you are looking, _ma belle_. Your blue silk is the
loveliest shade--so becoming; your laces exquisite. Scarlet geraniums
in your hair--ah! Lulu, for whose sake?"
"Not for yours," she flashes, with a hot remembrance that he has always
liked her in scarlet geraniums.
A slow smile dawns in his eyes--his lips keep their pretense of gravity.
"Her hair is braided not for me,
Her eye is turned away."
he begins to hum.
"All this is not telling me what mischief you were at in Washington?"
she interrupts.
"Oh," trying to look demure, but woefully failing, "no mischief at
all--only paying off old scores--spoiling Fontenay's fun for him as he
did for me last winter.
"Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do."
"Miss Clendenon, you are hard on a poor follow. Why don't you ask _her_
name; if she is pretty; if she is in the 'set;' if she is rich; and so
on, _ad infinitum_?"
"I hardly care to know," she answers, with pretty unconcern.
"Hardly care to know--now, really? I shall tell you anyhow. Well, she
is an heiress; is pretty; in her second Washington season; father in
the banking business, and Fontenay, despairing of winning you, has
transferred his 'young affections' to her. She rather likes him--will
marry him, perhaps, but then----"
"But then?"
"She likes me, too, and I have teased the gallant captain considerably.
Oh, the drives I have had with the fair Cordelia, the gas-light
flirtations; the morning strolls to the capitol; the art-gallery;
everywhere, in short, where you went with the major. I am not sure but
she would throw him over for me altogether."
Her heart sinks within her. Has his fickle love turned from her so soon
to this "fair Cordelia?" Better so, perhaps, for her in the end; but
now--oh! she has never loved him so well as at this moment, sitting
beside her in his dusk patrician beauty, with a certain odd earnestness
underlying his flippant manner.
"Mrs. Conway is well, I hope?" she says, to change that painful
conversation.
"Is well?--yes, and misses you amid the gay scenes of the capital. What
have _you_ been doing secluded here in your quiet home, little saint?"
"Oh! nothing particularly."
"You have not been falling in love, have you?"
"Why?" with an irrepressible blush.
"I wanted to know--that is all. Brownie, Aunt Conway, and I are going
abroad this spring to stay, oh, ever so long."
He is watching her narrowly. She knows it, and changes her sudden start
into one of pretty affected surprise.
"Oh, indeed! Will wedding cards and the 'fair Cordelia' bear you
company?"
"Not if some one else will. Brownie, cannot you guess why I have come
here this evening?" his voice growing eagerly earnest, a genuine love
and earnestness shining in his eyes.
"To make a New Year's call, I guess," she answers, with innocent
unconsciousness in her large dark eyes, and the faintest dimples around
her lips.
"Guess again, Brownie?"
"I cannot; I have not the faintest idea," turning slightly from him.
"Then, Brownie," taking her unwilling hand in his. "I have come to ask
you for a New Year's gift."
A scarlet geranium is fastened in with the lace at her throat. She
plucks it out and holds it toward him with a mischievous smile.
"Will you take this? I am sorry it is all I have to offer."
He takes the hand that holds the flower and puts it to his lips.
"It is all I ask; so your heart comes with it."
Vainly she tries to draw back; he holds the small hand tighter, bending
till his breath floats over her forehead.
"Lulu, I did not come here for the gift of a hot-house flower, though
coming from you it is dearer than would be a very flower from those
botanical gardens that are the glory of Washington. I wanted a rarer
flower--even yourself."
Her face is hidden in one small hand. In low tones she answers:
"I thought this matter was settled long ago. Did I not tell you no?"
There is a long pause. Presently he answers, with a wondrous patience
for him:
"You did, and rightly _then_, for I did not fully appreciate your pure
womanly affection. I thought I could easily win you, and having lost
you I loved you more. Lulu, I am woefully in earnest. Refuse me now,
and you, perhaps, drive me away from you for years--it may be forever.
I love you more than I did then--a thousand times better."
Still she is silent.
"Brownie," he pleads, "I am not so fickle as you think me. I have
fancied many pretty women, but only loved two--Grace Grey and yourself.
My love for her is a thing of the past, and has to do with the past
only--'echoes of harp-strings that broke long ago'--my love for you
is a thing of the present, and will influence my whole future. You
can make of me a nobler man than what I am. Willard is willing, your
mother is willing, I have asked them both. Brownie, let us make of that
Continental trip a wedding tour?"
Her shy eyes lifted, meeting in his a deeper love than she has ever
expected to see in them for her.
"Let me see," he goes on, "Aunt Conway and I are going to Europe in
June--that is time enough for you to get ready. Think of it, Brownie, I
am to be gone months and months. Can you bear to let me go alone?"
"No, I cannot," she sobs, hiding her face against his shoulder; and
Bruce takes her in his arms and kisses her with a genuine fondness,
prizing her, after the fashion of most men, all the better because she
was so hard to win.