"RUE."
"Hope, cheated too often when life's in its spring,
From the bosom that nursed it forever takes wing;
And memory comes as its promises fade
To brood o'er the havoc that passion has made."
--C. F. HOFFMAN.
The gossips of Norfolk are weary of wondering at the vagaries of the
Hon. Mrs. Winans. They admired and envied her very much in the _role_
of queen of beauty and fashion; they are simply amazed when she glides
before the foot-lights in the garb of a "ministering angel."
When she first began to aid and assist Miss Clendenon in her charitable
undertakings they thought it only natural, in view of the sudden
intimacy that had sprung up between the two, that the one should be
found wherever the other was. But it was quite a different thing when
the Senator's lovely and exclusive wife assumed those duties alone.
Society, wounded by her quiet and almost complete withdrawal from its
fascinations, set it down to a lack of a new sensation, and predicted
that as soon as the novelty wore out Mrs. Winans would seek some newer
and fresher hobby.
But quietly oblivious to it all, the young lady went her way, smoothing
with gentle advice and over thoughtful bounty many a thorny path where
poverty walked falteringly on, lending a patient and sympathetic
ear to the grievous complaints that rose from the homes of want and
distress, strangely gentle to all little children, careful of their
needs, thoughtful of their future, dropping the gentle promises of
Christ along darkened paths barren of such precious seeds, and often
society was scandalized by the not unfrequent sight of the young lady
taking out for an airing on the cool, breezy suburbs or sea-shore some
puny child or ailing adult from the haunts of poverty and making them
comfortable by her side in that darling little phaeton that all Norfolk
ran to their windows to gaze at when it passed.
Miss Lavinia Story--dear old spinster!--undertook to interview the lady
on the subject of her going so far in alleviating the "fancied wants
and grievances of those wretched poor trash," and was fairly driven
from the field when Mrs. Winans, with a glimmer of mischief under her
black lashes and a very serious voice asked her if her leisure would
admit of her joining the sewing society, of which she was manager.
"For indeed," said Grace, half playfully, half in earnest, "we are in
want of workers very badly. A lady from 'our set' volunteered very
kindly last week as operator on the sewing-machine I donated the
society, and they are so dreadfully in want of basters. Surely, Miss
Lavinia, you will enlist as baster--that, if not more. Think of the
poor people who need clothing so badly, and say 'yes.'"
"I? I would not spoil _my_ eyesight with everlasting stitching for poor
people, who are always lazy and shiftless, and smell of onions," said
Miss Story, loftily.
"I beg your pardon, I am sure," smoothly returned her merciless
tormentor. "I forgot that your eyesight cannot be as strong as it once
was. Perhaps you would not object to becoming a visitor of the sick, or
something of that sort."
"My eyesight not as strong as it once was?" returned the lady, in
perceptible anger. "You mistake very much, Mrs. Winans; my eyes are as
young as they ever were" (she was fifty at the least), "but I can use
them to better advantage than by wearing them out in the service of
your sewing circle."
"It _is_ rather tedious--this endless stitching," confessed the zealous
advocate of the sewing society, "but perhaps you would not object to
taking a little sewing at home occasionally--little dresses or aprons,
and such trifling things for the little folks--even that would be a
help to us in the present limited number of workers--won't you try to
help us out that much?"
Miss Lavinia adjusted her spectacles on her high Roman nose, the better
to annihilate with a flashing glance the persistent young lady whom
she felt dimly persuaded in her own mind was "laughing in her sleeve
at her," and Mrs. Winans, with the pearly edge of one little tooth
repressing the smile that wanted to dimple on her lip, sat demurely
expectant.
"I did not call on you, Mrs. Winans, I assure you, to solicit a
situation as seamstress. I never allow myself to be brought into
personal contact with the filthy and odious poor. I do my share in
taking care of them by contributing to the regular poor fund of the
church."
"Oh, indeed?" said the listener, still unmoved and demure. "I am sure
it is very considerate of you and very comforting to the poor people
besides."
"I think, my dear," answered Miss Lavinia, pacified by the rather
equivocal compliment, "that it would be better for you to confine
yourself to the same plan. Let those who have not our refined and
delicate instincts minister to those of the poor class who are really
deserving of pity and of assistance, while we can do our part just as
well by placing our contributions in the hands of some worthy person
who can undertake its proper distribution. It hardly looks well for a
lady of your standing to be brought into such frequent and familiar
intercourse with the vulgar and low people to be met in the homes of
poverty, if you will pardon such plain speaking from an old friend and
well-wisher."
"And so you will not undertake to help us sew," persisted the placid
little tormentor, as the rustle of Miss Story's brown silk flounces
announced impending departure.
"No, indeed--quite out of the question," answered the irate spinster,
as she hurried indignantly away to report to her gossips, and only
sorry that it was out of her power or that of any of her peers to
socially ostracize the self-possessed young advocate of the sewing
society.
"The most persistent little woman you ever saw," she said. "I fairly
thought she'd have coaxed me into that low sewing-circle, or sent me
away with a bundle of poor children's rags to mend. I won't undertake
to advise her again in a hurry; and my advice to all of her friends is
to let her alone. She is 'joined to her idols.'"
And the "persistent little woman" ran up stairs and jotted down a
spirited account of her pleasant sparring with the spinster in her
friendly, even sympathetic journal--the dear little book to which was
confided the gentle thoughts of her pure young heart.
"Dear little book," she murmured, softly fluttering the scented leaves
and glancing here and there at little detatched jottings in her pretty
Italian text, "how many of my thoughts, nay hopes and griefs are
recorded here."
Now and then a smile dawns in her blue eyes, and anon her sweet lip
quivers as the written record of a joy or grief meets her gaze. Looking
back over earlier years, the pleasures of the fleeting hours, the
dawning hopes of maidenhood, the deep, wild sorrow of her slighted
love, she suddenly pauses, her finger between the pages, and says to
herself with a half-sad smile:
"And this was about the time when I fancied myself a poet. Why have I
not torn this out long ago? I wonder why I have kept this foolish rhyme
all these years?"
In soft, murmuring tones she read it aloud, a faint inflection of scorn
running through her low, musical voice:
RUE!
"Violets in the spring
You gave me with the dew-tears in their eyes,
I said, in faint surprise:
Love do not tearful omens round them cling?
You answered: Pure as dew
Our new-born love, no omens sad have we
From morning violets, save that love shall be
Forever fresh and new.
"Roses, through summer's scope,
You brought me when the violets were flown--
Flushed, like the dawn--full-blown;
No folded leaves where hope could 'live in hope,'
I moaned; the perfume soon departs;
The scented leaves fall from the thorny stem.
You said: But they were sun-kissed, child, what then?
The fragrance lingers yet within our hearts.
"November's 'flying gold'
Drives through the 'ruined woodlands,' drift on drift,
Nor violet nor rose, your later gift,
Love's foolish, sun-kissed story has been told.
Dear, were you false or true?
I know not--only this: Love had its blight;
Nor dews nor fragrance fill my heart to-night--
But only--_Rue_!
"OCEAN VIEW, November, 1866."
"Rue!" she repeats, with a low, bitter laugh; "ah, me, I have been
gathering a harvest of _rue_ all my life."
The leaves fall together over the sorrowful, girlish rhyme, the book
drops from her hand, and, sighing, she throws herself down on a low
divan of cushioned pale blue silk, looking idly out of the open window
at the evening sky glowing with the opalescent hues of a summer's
sunset.
"I daresay it's quite natural to make a dunce of one's self once in
a life-time," she muses, "and I presume there is a practical era in
every one's life. All the same I wish it had never come to me; the
consequences have followed me through life."
Her small hand goes up to her throat, touching the spring of the
pearl-studded locket she wears there. The lid flying open shows the
dusk glory of Paul Winans' pictured face smiling on her through a mist
of her own tears.
"And I drove you from me. Lulu says I did it; spoke my own doom with
fever-parched, delirious lips! _Why_ did they believe me? Why did they
not tell me of it long ago? They should have known I could not have
been so cruel! All this time you have thought I hated you, all this
time I have thought you hated me! You _did_ come; you did want to make
peace with your wronged though willful wife. It is joy to know that
though too late for hope even. Why did I go to Washington? Why did I
go in defiance of his will? All might have been well with us ere this.
Both of them--the darling baby and the darling father--might have
been mine now. Instead--oh, Heaven, Paul dearest, you will never know
now--unless, perchance, you are in heaven--how deeply, how devotedly I
loved you! Who is to blame? Ah, me! It is all _rue_!"
A moment her lips trembled against the pictured face, then she shuts it
with a snap, and lies with closed eyes and compressed lips, thinking
deeply and intensely, as "hearts too much alone" always think. But with
the passing moments her sudden heart-ache softens a little. Rousing
herself she walks over to the window, saying, with a faint, fluttering
sigh:
"Ah, well! 'Fate is above us all.'"
How sweet the air is! The salt breeze catches the odor of the
mignonette in her window, and wafts it to her, lifting the soft tresses
from her aching temples with its scented breath, and with the sublime
association that there is in some faint flower perfumes and grief, the
bitter leaven at her heart swells again with all the painful luxury of
sorrow.
"I am so weary of it all--life's daily treadmill round! What is it
worth? How is it endurable when love is lost to us?"
Ah! poor child! Love is not all of life. When love is lost life's cares
and duties still remain. We _must_ endure it. Well for us that God's
love is over all.
Some thought like this calms the seething waves of passion in her
heart. She picks up her journal from the floor where it had fallen,
and listlessly tears out the page that holds the simple rhyme of her
girlhood's folly. Leaning on the window she takes it daintily between
her fingers and tears it into tiny bits that scatter like snow-flakes
down on the graveled path of the garden below.
"Loved by two," she says, musingly. "What was Bruce Conway's love
worth, I wonder? Or Paul Winans' either, for that matter? The one
fickle, unstable, the other jealous, proud, unbending as Lucifer! Not
quite my ideal of perfect love, either one of them! After all, what is
any man's love worth, I wonder, that it should blight a woman's life?"
Loved by three she might have said, but she did not know. How much the
fleshly vail between our spirits hides from our finite eyes. How often
and often a purer, better, stronger love than we have ever known is
laid in silence at our feet, over which we walk blinded and never know
the truth.
And yet by some odd chance, nay, rather unconscious prescience, she
thinks of Willard Clendenon, recalling his words on the day of his
sister's marriage:
"Never again on this side of eternity."
"What did it mean?" she mused aloud. "It was strange at the least. I
trust no harm will come to Lulu, little darling. She is still well and
happy, or at least her letters say so." And drawing from her pocket a
letter lately received from Lulu, she ran over its contents again with
all a woman's innocent pleasure in re-reading letters.
"How happy she seems," a faint smile curving the perfect lips; "and how
devoted is Mr. Conway; how her innocent, joyous, loving heart mirrors
itself in her letters! Sunshine, roses, honeymoon, bliss. Ah, me," with
a light sigh chasing the smile away, "how evanescent are all things
new and sweet; like that sky late aglow with the radiance of day, now
darkening with the shades of twilight."
Norah comes in to light the gas, and is gently motioned away.
"Not yet, Norah. I have a fancy to sit in the twilight. You can come in
later."
And Norah goes obediently.
Then she incloses the perfumed pink epistle in the dainty envelope
bearing the monogram of the newly made wife, and laying it aside
rests her head upon her hands, watching with dusk pained eyes the
shadows that darken over the sky and over her golden head as she
sits alone, her heart on fire with that keenest refinement of human
suffering--"remembering happier things." All her brightness, all
her love lies behind her in the past, in the green land of memory.
The present holds no joy, the future no promise. The dimness of
uncertainty, of doubt, of suspense, lies darkly on the present hour,
the hopelessness of hope clouds the future. Heaven seems so far away
as she lifts her mournful gaze to the purple, mysterious twilight
sky, life seems so long as she remembers how young she is, and what
possibilities for length of days lie before her. What wonder that her
brave, long-tried strength fails her a little, that her sensitive
spirit quails momentarily, and the angel of the human breast, hope,
"Comes back with worn and wounded wing,
To die upon the heart she could not cheer."