STRUGGLES AND REVELS.
Wine, wine for the heart, in its struggle of pride,
And music to drown all this with'ring pain!
The arrow, the arrow is deep in her side!
Bring music and wine with their madness again.
The passions take their distinctive expression from the nature in which
they find birth. The grief that rends one heart like an earthquake,
sinks with dead, silent weight into another, uttering no sound, giving
no outward sign, and yet is powerful, perhaps, as that which exhausts
itself in tumult. Some flee from grief, half defying, half evading it,
pausing, breathless, in the race, now and then, to find the arrow still
buried in the side, rankling deeper and deeper with each fierce effort
to cast it out.
Thus it was with the woman to whom our story tends--Ada, the insulted
and suffering widow of Leicester. There had been mutual wrong between
the two; both had sinned greatly; both had tasted deep of the usual
consequences of sin. During his life her love for him had been the one
wild passion of existence; now that he was dead, her grief partook of
the same stormy nature. It was wild, fierce, brilliant; it thirsted for
change; it was bitter with regrets that stung her into the very madness
of sorrow.
As an unbroken horse plunges beneath the rider's heel, the object of
grief like this seeks for amelioration in excitement. It is a sorrow
that thirsts for action; that arouses some kindred passion, and feeds
itself with that.
Ada Leicester was not known to be connected, even remotely, with the man
for whose murder old Mr. Warren was now awaiting his trial. She was a
leader in the fashionable world; her very anguish must be concealed; her
groans must be uttered in private; her tears quenched firmly till they
turned to fire in her heart. All her life that man had been a pain and a
torment to her. The last breath she had seen him draw was a taunt, his
last look an insult; and yet these very memories embittered her grief.
He had turned the silver thread of her life into iron, but it broke with
his existence, leaving her appalled and objectless. She never had, never
could love another; and what is a woman on earth without love as a
memory, a passion, or a hope?
Her grief became a wild passion. She strove to assuage it in reckless
gaiety, and plunged into all the excitements of artificial life with a
fervor that made every hour of her existence a tumult. The opera season
was at its full height. Society had once more concentrated itself in New
York, and still Ada was the brightest of its stars. Morning dances by
gas-light took place in some few houses where novelty was an object. Not
long after Leicester's death her noble mansion was closed for a morning
revel; every pointed window was sealed with shutters and muffled with
the richest draperies. Light in every form of beauty--the pure
gas-flame--the soft glow of wax-candles--the moonlight gleam of
alabaster lamps flooded the sumptuous rooms, excluding every ray of the
one glorious lamp which God has kindled in the sky. Dancers flitted to
and fro in those lofty rooms; garlands of choice green-house flowers
scattered fragrance from the walls, and veiled many a classic statue
with their impalpable mist.
Never in her whole life had Ada appeared more wildly brilliant.
Reckless, sparkling, scattering smiles and wit wherever she passed; now
whirling through the waltz; now exchanging bright repartees with her
guests amid the pauses of the music; fluttering from group to group like
a bird of Paradise, dashing perfume from its native flower thickets, she
flitted from room to room; now sitting alone in a dark corner of the
conservatory, her hands falling languidly down, her face bowed upon her
bosom, the fire quenched in her eyes, she felt the very life ebbing, as
it were, from her parted and pale lips.
Thus with the strongest contrasts, fierce alike in her gaiety and her
grief, she spent that miserable morning. The transition from one state
to another would have been startling to a close observer, but the
changes in her mood were like lightning; the pale cheek became instantly
so red; the dull eye so bright, that her guests saw nothing but the most
fascinating coquetry in all this, and each new shade or gleam that
crossed her beautiful face brought down fresh showers of adulation upon
her. The usual quiet elegance of her manner was for the time forgotten.
More than once her wild, clear laugh rang from one room to another,
chiming in or rising above the music, and this only charmed her guests
the more. It was a new feature in their idol. It was not for her wealth
or her beauty alone that Ada Leicester became an object of worship that
day. Like a wounded bird that makes the leaves tremble all around with
its anguish, she startled society into more intense admiration by the
splendor of her agony.
At mid-day her guests began to depart, pouring forth from those
sumptuous rooms into the noontide glare, when delicate dresses, flushed
cheeks and languid eyes were exposed in all the disarray which is
sometimes picturesque when enveloped in night shadows, but becomes
meretricious in the broad sunshine.
A few of her most distinguished guests remained to dinner that day, for
Ada dreaded to be alone, and so kept up the excitement that was burning
her life out. If her spirits flagged, if the smile fled from her lips
even for an instant, those lips were bathed with the rich wines that
sparkled on her board, kindling them into smiles and bloom again. The
resources of her intellect seemed inexhaustible; the flashes of her
delicate wit grew keener and brighter as the hours wore on.
Her table was surrounded by men and women who flash like meteors now and
then through the fashionable circles of New York, intellectual
aristocrats that enliven the insipid monotony of those changing circles,
as stars give fire and beauty to the blue of a summer sky. But
keen-sighted as these people were, they failed to read the heart that
was delighting them with its agony. All but one, and he was not seated
at the table, he spoke no word, and won no attention from that haughty
circle, save by the subdued and even solemn awkwardness of look and
manner, which was too remarkable for entire oblivion.
Behind Ada's seat there stood a tall man, with huge, ungainly limbs, and
a stoop in the shoulders. He was evidently a servant, but wore no livery
like the others; and those who gave a thought to the subject saw that he
waited only upon his mistress, and that once or twice he stooped down
and whispered a word in her ear, which she received with a quick and
imperious motion of the head, which was either rejection or reproof of
something he had urged.
Nothing could be more touching than the sadness of this man's face as
the spirits of his mistress rose with the contest of intellect that was
going on around her. He saw the bitter source from which all this
brightness flowed, and every smile upon those red lips deepened the
gloom so visible in his face.
"Now," said Ada, rising from the table, and leading the way to her
boudoir, for it had been an impromptu dinner, and the drawing-room was
yet in confusion after the dance; "now let us refresh ourselves with
music. An hour's separation, a fresh toilet, and we will all meet at the
opera--then to-morrow--what shall we do to-morrow?"
She entered the boudoir while speaking, and as if smitten by some keen
memory, lifted one hand to her forehead, reflecting languidly,
"To-morrow--yes, what shall we do to-morrow?"
"You are pale; what is the matter?" inquired one of the lady guests, in
that hurried tone of sympathy which is usually superficial as sweet. "We
have oppressed you with all this gaiety!"
"Not in the least--nothing of the kind!" exclaimed the hostess, with a
clear laugh. "It was the perfume from those vases. It put me in mind--it
made me faint!"
She rang the bell while speaking, and the servant, who stood all
dinner-time behind her chair, entered.
"Take these flowers away, Jacob," she said, pointing to the vases,
"there is heliotrope among them, and you know the scent of heliotrope
affects me--kills me. Never allow flowers to be put in these rooms
again. Not a leaf, not a bud--do you understand?"
"Yes, madam," answered the servant, with calm humility, "I understand!
It was not I that placed them there now!"
Ada seated herself on the couch, resting her forehead upon one hand, as
if the faintness still continued. Her lips and all around her mouth grew
pallid. Though the flowers were gone, their effect still seemed to
oppress her more and more. At length she started up with a hysterical
laugh and went into the bed-chamber. When she came forth her cheeks were
damask again, and her lips red as coral; but a dusky circle under the
eyes, and a faint, spasmodic twitching about the mouth, revealed how
artificial the bloom was. From that moment all her gaiety returned, and
in her graceful glee her guests forgot the agitation that had for a
moment surprised them.
Later in the evening, Ada drove to the Opera House, where she again met
the gay friends who had thronged her dwelling at mid-day. Still did she
surpass them all in the superb but hasty toilet which she had assumed,
after the morning revel. Many an eye was turned admiringly upon her sofa
that night, little dreaming that the opera-cloak of rose-colored
cashmere, with its blossom-tinted lining and border of snowy
swan's-down, covered a bosom throbbing with suppressed anguish. Little
could that admiring crowd deem that the brilliants interlinked with
burning opal stones that glowed with ever-restless light upon her arms,
her bosom, and down the corsage of her brocade dress, were to the
wretched woman as so many pebbles that the rudest foot might tread upon.
Her cheeks were in a glow; her eyes sparkled, and the graceful unrest
which left her no two minutes in the same position, seemed but a pretty
feminine wile to exhibit the splendor of her dress. How could the crowd
suppose that the heart over which those jewels burned, was aching with a
burden of crushed tears.
She sat amid the brilliant throng, unmindful of its admiration. The
music rushed to her ear in sweet gushes of passion. But she sat
smilingly there, unconscious of its power or its pathos. It sighed
through the building soft and low as the spring air in a bed of violets;
but even then it failed to awake her attention. Unconsciously the notes
stole over her heart, and feeling a rush of emotions sweeping over her,
she started up, waved an adieu to her friends, and left the Opera House.
Half a dozen of the most distinguished gentlemen of her party sprang up
to lead her out. She took the nearest arm and left the house, simply
uttering a hurried good-night as she stepped into the carriage. There
was no eye to look upon her then. Those who had followed her with
admiring glances as she left the opera, little thought how keen was her
agony as she rolled homeward in that sumptuous carriage, her cheek
pressed hard against the velvet lining; her fingers interlocked and
wringing each other in the wild anguish to which she abandoned herself.