THE month sped on. The end of Madam Truxton's year was rapidly
advancing. School-friendships that had grown and matured within the
seminary walls, now deepened and intensified as the day for final
separation approached. All were studying, with a zeal commendable
and necessary, too, for the final ordeal through which Madam
Truxton's pupils must necessarily pass.
Since that dark, gloomy day when Leah Mordecai acquainted Lizzie
Heartwell with some of the facts of her sad life, not a word further
had been spoken on the subject. But they had seemed bound to each
other by an indissoluble bond of love. No word harsher than a
caress, and no look sterner than a smile, had Lizzie ever cast upon
Leah; and as the thirsty, withered flowers drink up the dew of
heaven, so this girl of misfortune received that tender, unalloyed
love.
The inexorable duties of the school were pressing, forbidding long
confidential talks and clandestine interviews. Each and all were
impressed with the fact that they were approaching an important,
and, to some, a dreaded epoch in their lives.
Leah had long since acquainted Lizzie with the consummation of her
fears, informing her of the engagement between Mark Abrams and her
sister Sarah. With this information--this avowal of her broken heart
and hopes--Leah had enshrouded the subject with silence and laid it
away, as we lay our treasures in the tomb. Lizzie, always
compassionate and discreet, made no mention of it; and so the
silence was unbroken as the days passed on.
In the Citadel Square, far above Madam Truxton's seminary, the
drilling, drilling, drilling, was daily going on in these sunny
days. Drilling, drilling, drilling--for the coming battle of life, or
for the crimson strife of war that might desolate a land. Which was
it? Only the veiled years could answer this inquiry. Meanwhile, the
drilling still went on.
High hopes filled manly bosoms, and ambitious hearts throbbed
wildly, as the approaching end of the military year drew nigh.
Emile Le Grande sat dozing in his private chamber late one evening,
at the close of a severe day's duty, seated in a capacious
arm-chair, with his head dropped upon his breast. The young man was
dozing over the journal that he held in his unconscious grasp. Had
one stolen beside him and looked down, he might have read the
following entries, beginning many months previous to this evening.
"January.--I have seen the fair Leah but three times since Bertha
Levy's tea-party, yet I have passed her house daily for that purpose
ever since. Zounds! It's an ill fate, I swear! . . .
"February.--How my heart beat to-day, as I was walking arm-in-arm
with George Marshall, and we suddenly confronted the beautiful
Jewess as she was turning into Prince street.
"'What a magnificent face, Emile! What Hebrew maiden is that bowing
to you?'
"'Miss Mordecai,' I proudly replied, 'the Jewish banker's daughter,
of whom you have heard me speak before.'
"'Yes, certainly. Well, she is beautiful. You seem a little
bewitched, boy,', he said. And I said--nothing.
"March.--I am more and more perplexed. The Jewess is at the bottom of
it all. To-day I hinted to Helen something of my fancy for Leah
Mordecai. She only laughed. I was irritated by her ridicule, and I
told her I intended to marry Leah if I could. Her silly reply was,
'Well, suppose you can't?' School-girls are intolerably silly, at
Helen's age! She thinks now of nothing and nobody but Henry Packard,
and he's the stupidest cadet in the institute--everybody knows that.
I wish I had a sister that could sympathize with me. Wh-e-e-w! I am
altogether out of sorts. Maybe I'll be all right to-morrow.
"April.--Prof. Brown said to-day that I was not studying hard enough,
and if I did not spur up I should come out shabbily at the end of
the term.
"George Marshall, too, good fellow that he is, says I think too much
about the girl. Maybe I do; but I should like him to tell me how a
fellow is to help it. That Jewess bewilders me! If old Mordecai was
not rich, I should love her for her dreamy eyes. I'll swear, ever
since she spoke to me so sweetly a week ago, and gave me a clasp of
her white, slender hand, I haven't cared whether I was prompt at
parade, studies, or anything else--so I could always be prompt at
meeting her. She looks doleful sometimes. She cannot be very happy.
I wonder what my mother would think if she could read this journal.
But, old book, you never tell any tales, do you?
"May.--The days are growing warmer--beautiful days, too. Everything is
in bloom, and the old Queen City looks charming. The girls, too,
Madam Truxton's and all others, swarm about the town like bees in a
rose-garden. I meet them at every turn.
"My uniform is getting rather shabby; the buttons and lace are quite
tarnished. I must have a new suit before long.
"I am a lucky fellow of late--have seen Leah M. many times. She came
home with Helen twice, and I have walked with her many times. I have
told her that I love her, but she does not seem inclined to trust
me. Only to-day I sent her a magnolia leaf, upon which was written,
'Je vous aime, ma belle Juive.' Helen said she smiled as she took it
and said, 'Thank him, if you please.' That was favorable, I think.
Yes I consider myself a lucky fellow.
"June 1.--I am all out of sorts to-night. Things have not gone
smoothly at the Citadel to-day. I was again reprimanded by that old
bald-headed Brown. He must forget that I am a man, and not a mere
boy. I don't care whether 'I pass,' or not, as the boys say.
"'Deficient in mathematics,' the professor said, gravely; and I
suppose I am. I never could endure figures, and yet I must make my
living by them.
"French I understand pretty well. I depend upon that to help me
through.
"George Marshall will do all he can for me, I know; there's no
better cadet in the institute; old Brown says that himself. I find
that George was right when he told me long ago that I had too many
thoughts in my head about the girls. Deuce take the thoughts! but
they are there. My very proper and punctilious mother, too, has been
scoring me lately. Somehow she found out my fancy. Whew! how she did
scold me! Said she would like to know if I had forgotten the blood
that flowed in the Le Grande veins! If I were lost to family pride
and honor so far as to mingle my blood with that of the old
pawnbroker, Mordecai! How she looked! How she stamped the floor with
her dainty foot when I hinted at the fact that my maternal
grandfather was neither duke nor lord! How she hushed my
'impertinence,' as she styled it, with such invectives as 'fool,
idiot, plebeian'! Heigho! But I felt that it was unmanly in me to
provoke mother so, and I begged her pardon.
"I did not promise her, though, to leave off loving Leah Mordecai. I
did not tell her, either, that I had asked Leah to be my wife one of
these days, when school-days were ended.
"June 5.--The closing exercises of the schools have been hurried up
this year, as the weather is exceedingly warm, and the Board of
Health fear a return of the terrible scourge, yellow fever, that so
devastated this fair city five years ago. Next week, Madam Truxton's
seminary closes, and that is one week before the institute does.
Invitations to Madam's levee are already out. The graduating class
of cadets are invited--lucky fellows!
"Helen seems really sad at the prospect of parting with her
school-days and her friends. But then she is eighteen, and that's
quite old enough for a girl to come out. She says, too, that of all
the girls at school, Lizzie Heartwell will be the most regretted
when she leaves the Queen City for her home in a distant State. She
is quite a pretty girl, but too religious, I should judge, from what
Helen says. Her mother is a widow. I guess they are poor.
"Mother is quite reconciled to me again, and spoke playfully to me
last night about marrying Miss Belle Upton, who is to visit Helen
next week and attend the closing of Madam Truxton's school. Well,
'we shall see what we shall see,' but I hardly think I will. She can
hardly eclipse 'Leah Mordecai the beautiful,'--that's the way I write
it now."