I remember I was young once,
Ah! how long ago it seems
Since the happy days and months
Passed away like pleasant dreams!
For I loved then. I can smile now
At myself. ’Twas long ago,
Ere time’s hand had sprinkled snow
To cool love’s fever on my brow.
--ROSALIE OSBORNE.
Everard Dawn’s words fell on his sister’s ears with a great shock,
so deep was the anguish of his tone and the emotion of his face, his
lips trembling under the rich brown beard, and his eyes gleaming under
their heavy brows like shadowed surfaces of deep blue pools, while the
pallor of his face was ghastly to behold.
She studied the agitated man in wonder and terror, for he was almost
like a stranger to his sister, having never met her since he was a
youth of sixteen, just entering college.
Since she had married in Virginia while on a visit from her home in the
far South, her communications with her relatives had been almost broken
off; the death of her father soon followed her marriage, and her only
visit home had been to the death-bed of her step-mother when Everard
was just entering college.
She was his only near relative, and she had urged the lonely boy to
visit her often, but he had never accepted the invitation but once,
having to work too hard at his chosen profession--the law--to find
time, he said.
Their correspondence had been infrequent, and she knew little of
him, save that he had been married twice, and that on the death of
his second wife he had brought her his child to raise, and gone away
abruptly, a broken-hearted, lonely man.
Yet, as she looked at him sitting there, so handsome still in his
young, splendid prime, with threads of premature silver creeping into
the thick locks on his temples, and remembered how heavily the shadows
of grief had stretched across his life, the woman’s heart was moved to
pity and tenderness, such as she had felt in his babyhood days, when
he was the pet and darling of all. Her cold gray eyes softened with
sympathy, as she cried:
“Surely, Everard, you have had more than your share of sorrow in life!
What new trouble is this? For, of course, you would not oppose such a
splendid match for your daughter without grave reasons.”
He lifted his heavy eyes to her troubled face, and answered, bitterly:
“Yes, I have reasons, grave and bitter reasons, for forbidding this
marriage, and I thank Heaven I came in time to prevent it. But ask me
nothing, Rebecca, for I shall never willingly divulge my reasons, not
even to the man whom I must send away sorrowing to-morrow over a broken
love-dream.”
His voice fell to exquisite pathos, as if he almost pitied the man he
intended to wound so cruelly.
Mrs. Flint was disappointed, crest-fallen, she had been so elated over
her niece’s prospects.
She rejoined, uneasily:
“I don’t know what Cinthy will say to this. Her heart is set on Arthur
Varian. He stands for everything she longs for most, and her hatred of
her life with me is intense and rebellious. You can never reconcile her
to it again.”
“I must make a change in it, then, though my means are not large,” he
sighed.
“So much the worse, for she loves luxury and pleasure, and her heart is
almost starved for love. You know I have a reserved nature, Everard,
and never pet anything. I have brought her up kindly, but rigidly, and
she resents my discipline and your neglect almost equally.”
“Poor girl! Perhaps she has cause. I have certainly almost forgotten
her existence in these years of exile. But what alleviation was there
to my misery except to forget?” he cried, passionately.
“Poor boy!” she sighed, forgetting that he was forty-five. She was
twenty years older, and to her he appeared young.
He made a movement of keen self-scorn.
“I don’t deserve your pity!” he cried. “I have been a coward, shifting
my burden on your shoulders, hating to come home, weary of my life. But
at last the voice of duty clamored at my heart. I remembered you were
growing old, and that the child was almost a woman. I came at last, but
even then reluctantly. Can you ever forgive my fault?”
Many times she had said to herself, in her impatience of Cinthia’s
discontent, that she could never forgive her brother for saddling her
with the care of a child in her old age; but at the sight of him, so
sad, so broken, so self-accusing, she could not utter the words of
blame that at first had trembled on her tongue. She answered instead:
“What could you have done with a girl-child? And I was the only one
you could turn to in your trouble. But I must warn you that you will
not find an affectionate daughter. You have been away so long that she
scarcely remembers your face, and she has chafed bitterly at your
neglect.”
“I suppose that is natural, and--I do not think we shall ever be very
fond of each other,” he replied, with strange bitterness.
“When do you wish to see her, Everard? She is in bed now.”
“Do not disturb her sweet dreams. Our interview can easily wait till
to-morrow,” he said, with strange coldness for a man whose nearest tie
was this beautiful, neglected daughter.
He got up and stood with his back to the fire, his pale troubled face
in shadow.
“Don’t let me keep you up longer. You look pale and tired, poor soul!”
he said, kindly; adding: “Can you give me a bed, or shall I go to the
hotel?”
“I can give you a room,” she answered, lighting a bedroom-candle for
him and leading the way to a cozy down-stairs chamber.
“Good-night. I hope you will sleep well,” she said, leaving him to
ascend to her own quarters opposite Cinthia’s own little white-hung
room that she took much pains in beautifying after her girlish fancies.
She peeped in at the girl and saw that she was wrapped in pleasant
dreams, for the murmured name of Arthur passed her lips, and she smiled
in joy beneath the gazer’s troubled eyes.
“Poor little girl--poor little girl!” she murmured, as she withdrew,
her heart heavy with sympathy for the sweet love-dream so soon to be
blighted by the father’s stern edict of separation.
“It is very, very, strange, the way Everard takes on about it. Why, he
went wild just at the very name of Varian,” she said aloud to the large
portrait of her long dead husband, Deacon Flint, good soul, that hung
over her mantel. She had acquired a habit of talking absently to this
portrait as if it were alive.
She read her short chapter in the Bible, mumbled over her prayer, and
crept shivering into bed. But slumber was far from her eyes. The events
of the evening had unstrung her nerves, and she lay awake, dreading the
dawn of the morrow that was to usher in such disappointment and sorrow
to the sleeping girl now dreaming so happily of the lover who was never
to be her husband.