THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
A STORY OF NEW YORK LIFE.
BY ANNA KATHARINE GREEN
AUTHOR OF “THE LEAVENWORTH CASE,” “A STRANGE DISAPPEARANCE,” ETC.
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
27 & 29 West 23D Street
1881
COPYRIGHT, 1881, BY G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS.
TO
MY FATHER
I DEDICATE THIS BOOK
AS EXPRESSING SOME OF THE PRINCIPLES OF
JUSTICE AND MERCY WHICH,
BY PRECEPT AND EXAMPLE, HE HAS
INSTILLED INTO MY
BREAST
FROM EARLY CHILDHOOD.
NEW YORK, _April, 1881._
“When all else fails love saves”
CONTENTS.
BOOK I. TWO MEN.
I.—A WANDERER
II.—A DISCUSSION
III.—A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS
IV.—SEARCHINGS
V.—THE RUBICON
VI.—A HAND CLASP
VII.—MRS. SYLVESTER
VIII.—SHADOWS OF THE PAST
IX.—PAULA
X.—THE BARRED DOOR
XI.—MISS STUYVESANT
XII.—MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS
XIII.—THE END OF MY LADY’S PICTURE
BOOK II. LIFE AND DEATH.
XIV.—MISS BELINDA HAS A QUESTION TO DECIDE
XV.—AN ADVENTURE—OR SOMETHING MORE
XVI.—THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES
XVII.—GRAVE AND GAY
XVIII.—IN THE NIGHT WATCHES
XIX.—A DAY AT THE BANK
XX.—THE DREGS IN THE CUP
XXI.—DEPARTURE
XXII.—HOPGOOD
BOOK III. THE JAPHA MYSTERY.
XXIII.—THE POEM
XXIV.—THE JAPHA MANSION
XXV.—JACQUELINE
XXVI.—A MAN’S JUSTICE AND A WOMAN’S MERCY
XXVII.—THE LONE WATCHER
XXVIII.—SUNSHINE ON THE HILLS
XXIX.—MIST IN THE VALLEY
BOOK IV. FROM A. TO Z.
XXX.—MISS BELINDA PRESENTS MR. SYLVESTER WITH A CHRISTMAS GIFT
XXXI.—A QUESTION
XXXII.—FULL TIDE
XXXIII.—TWO LETTERS
XXXIV.—PAULA MAKES HER CHOICE
XXXV.—THE FALLING OF THE SWORD
XXXVI.—MORNING
XXXVII.—THE OPINION OF A CERTAIN NOTED DETECTIVE
XXXVIII.—BLUEBEARD’S CHAMBER
XXXIX.—FROM A. TO Z
XL.—HALF-PAST SEVEN
BOOK V. WOMAN’S LOVE.
XLI.—THE WORK OF AN HOUR
XLII.—PAULA RELATES A STORY SHE HAS HEARD
XLIII.—DETERMINATION
XLIV.—IN MR. STUYVESANT’S PARLORS
XLV.—“THE HOUR OF SIX IS SACRED!”
XLVI.—THE MAN CUMMINS
Damocles, one of the courtiers of Dionysius, was perpetually
extolling with rapture that tyrant’s treasures, grandeur, the
number of his troops, the extent of his dominions, the
magnificence of his palaces, and the universal abundance of all
good things and enjoyments in his possession; always repeating,
that never man was happier than Dionysius. “Since you are of
that opinion,” said the tyrant to him one day, “will you taste
and make proof of my felicity in person?” The offer was
accepted with joy; Damocles was placed upon a golden couch,
covered with carpets richly embroidered. The side-boards were
loaded with vessels of gold and silver. The most beautiful
slaves in the most splendid habits stood around, ready to serve
him at the slightest signal. The most exquisite essences and
perfumes had not been spared. The table was spread with
proportionate magnificence. Damocles was all joy, and looked
upon himself as the happiest man in the world; when
unfortunately casting up his eyes, he beheld over his head the
point of a sword, which hung from the roof only by a single
horse-hair.
ROLLIN.
THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.
BOOK I.
TWO MEN.
I.
A WANDERER.
“There’s no such word.”—BULWER.
A wind was blowing through the city. Not a gentle and balmy zephyr,
stirring the locks on gentle ladies’ foreheads and rustling the curtains
in elegant boudoirs, but a chill and bitter gale that rushed with a
swoop through narrow alleys and forsaken courtyards, biting the cheeks
of the few solitary wanderers that still lingered abroad in the darkened
streets.
In front of a cathedral that reared its lofty steeple in the midst of
the squalid houses and worse than squalid saloons of one of the
dreariest portions of the East Side, stood the form of a woman. She had
paused in her rush down the narrow street to listen to the music,
perhaps, or to catch a glimpse of the light that now and then burst from
the widely swinging doors as they opened and shut upon some tardy
worshipper.
She was tall and fearful looking; her face, when the light struck it,
was seared and desperate; gloom and desolation were written on all the
lines of her rigid but wasted form, and when she shuddered under the
gale, it was with that force and abandon to which passion lends its aid,
and in which the soul proclaims its doom.
Suddenly the doors before her swung wide and the preacher’s voice was
heard: “Love God and you will love your fellow-men. Love your fellow-men
and you best show your love to God.”
She heard, started, and the charm was broken. “Love!” she echoed with a
horrible laugh; “there is no love in heaven or on earth!”
And she swept by, and the winds followed and the darkness swallowed her
up like a gulf.
II.
A DISCUSSION.
“Young men think old men fools, and old men know young men to
be so.”—RAY’S PROVERBS.
“And you are actually in earnest?”
“I am.”
The first speaker, a fine-looking gentleman of some forty years of age,
drummed with his fingers on the table before him and eyed the face of
the young man who had repeated this assent so emphatically, with a
certain close scrutiny indicative of surprise.
“It is an unlooked-for move for you to make,” he remarked at length.
“Your success as a pianist has been so decided, I confess I do not
understand why you should desire to abandon a profession that in five
years’ time has procured you both competence and a very enviable
reputation—for the doubtful prospects of Wall Street, too!” he added
with a deep and thoughtful frown that gave still further impressiveness
to his strongly marked features.
The young man with a sweep of his eye over the luxurious apartment in
which they sat, shrugged his shoulders with that fine and nonchalant
grace which was one of his chief characteristics.
“With such a pilot as yourself, I ought to be able to steer clear of the
shoals,” said he, a frank smile illumining a face that was rather
interesting than handsome.
The elder gentleman did not return the smile. Instead of that he
remained gazing at the ample coal-fire that burned in the grate before
him with a look that to the young musician was simply inexplicable. “You
see the ship in haven,” he murmured at last; “but do not consider what
storms it has weathered or what perils escaped. It is a voyage I would
encourage no son of mine to undertake.”
“Yet you are not the man to shrink from danger or to hesitate in a
course you had marked out for yourself, because of the struggle it
involved or the difficulties it presented!” the young man exclaimed
almost involuntarily as his glance lingered with a certain sort of
fascination on the powerful brow and steady if somewhat melancholy eye
of his companion.
“No; but danger and difficulty should not be sought, only subdued when
encountered. If you were driven into this path, I should say, ‘God pity
you!’ and hold you out my hand to steady you along its precipices and
above its sudden quicksands. But you are not driven to it. Your
profession offers you the means of an ample livelihood while your good
heart and fair talents insure you ultimate and honorable success, both
in the social and artistic world. For a man of twenty-five such
prospects are not common and he must be difficult to please not to be
satisfied with them.”
“Yes,” said the other rising with a fitful movement but instantly
sitting again; “I have nothing to complain of as the world goes,
only—Sir,” he exclaimed with a sudden determination that lent a force
to his features they had hitherto lacked, “you speak of being driven
into a certain course; what do you mean by that?”
“I mean,” returned the other; “forced by circumstances to enter a line
of business to which many others, if not all others are preferable.”
“You speak strongly, speculation evidently has none of your sympathy,
notwithstanding the favorable results which have accrued to you from it.
But excuse me, by circumstances you mean poverty, I suppose, and the
lack of every other opening to wealth and position. You would not
consider the desire to make a large fortune in a short space of time a
circumstance of a sufficiently determining nature to reconcile you to my
entering Wall Street speculation?”
The elder gentleman rose, not as the other had done with a restless
impulse quickly subsiding at the first excuse, but forcibly and with a
feverish impatience that to appearance was somewhat out of proportion to
the occasion. “A large fortune in a short space of time!” he reiterated,
pausing where he had risen with an eagle glance at his companion and a
ringing tone in his voice that bespoke a deep but hitherto suppressed
agitation. “It is the alluring inscription above the pitfall into which
many a noble youth has fallen; the battle-cry to a struggle that has led
many a strong man the way of ruin; the guide-post to a life whose
feverish days and sleepless nights offer but poor compensation for the
sudden splendors and as sudden reverses attached to it. I had rather you
had accounted for this sudden freak of yours by the strongest aspiration
after power than by this cry of the merely mercenary man who in his
desire to enjoy wealth, prefers to win it by a stroke of luck rather
than conquer it by a life of endeavor.” He stopped. “I am aware that
this tirade against the ladder by which I myself have risen so rapidly,
must strike you as in ill-taste. But Bertram, I am interested in your
welfare and am willing to incur some slight charge of inconsistency in
order to insure it,” and here he turned upon his companion with that
expression of extreme gentleness which lent such a peculiar charm to his
countenance and explained perhaps the almost unlimited power he held
over the hearts and minds of those who came within the circle of his
influence.
“You are very good, sir,” murmured his young friend, who to explain
matters at once was in reality the nephew of this Wall Street magnate,
though from the fact of his having taken another name on entering the
musical profession, was not generally known as such. “No one, not even
my father himself, could have been more considerate and kind; but I do
not think you understand me, or rather I should say I do not think I
have made myself perfectly intelligible to you. It is not for the sake
of wealth itself or the eclat attending its possession that I desire an
immediate fortune, but that by means of it I may attain another object
dearer than wealth, and more precious than my career.”
The elder gentleman turned quickly, evidently much surprised, and cast a
sudden inquiring glance at his nephew, who blushed with a modest
ingenuousness pleasing to see in one so well accustomed to the critical
gaze of his fellow-men.
“Yes,” said he, as if in answer to that look, “I am in love.”
A deep silence for a moment pervaded the apartment, a sombre silence
almost startling to young Mandeville, who had expected some audible
expression to follow this announcement if only the good-natured “Pooh!
pooh!” of the matured man of the world in the presence of ardent
youthful enthusiasm. What could it mean? Looking up he encountered his
uncle’s eye fixed upon him with the last expression he could have
anticipated seeing there, namely that of actual and unmistakable alarm.
“You are displeased,” Mandeville exclaimed. “You have thought me proof
against such a passion, or perhaps you do not believe in the passion
itself!” Then with a sudden remembrance of the notable if somewhat
indolent loveliness of his uncle’s wife, blushed again at his unusual
want of tact, while his eye with an involuntary impulse sought the large
panel at their right where, in the full bloom of her first youth, the
lady of the house smiled upon all beholders.
“I do not believe in that passion influencing a man’s career,” his uncle
replied with no apparent attention to the other’s embarrassment. “A
woman needs be possessed of uncommon excellences to justify a man in
leaving a path where success is certain, for one where it is not only
doubtful but if attained must bring many a regret and heart-ache in its
train. Beauty is not sufficient,” he went on with sterner and sterner
significance, “though it were of an angelic order. There must be worth.”
And here his mind’s eye if not that of his bodily sense, certainly
followed the glance of his companion.
“I believe there is worth,” the young man replied; “certainly, it is not
her beauty that charms me. I do not even know if she _is_ beautiful,” he
continued.
“And you believe you love!” the elder exclaimed after another short
pause.
There was so much of bitterness in the tone in which this was uttered,
that Mandeville forgot its incredulity. “I think I must,” returned he
with a certain masculine naïveté not out of keeping with his general
style of face and manner, “else I should not be here. Three weeks ago I
was satisfied with my profession, if not enthusiastic over it; to-day I
ask nothing but to be allowed to enter upon some business that in three
years’ time at least will place me where I can be the fit mate of any
woman in this land, that is not worth her millions.”
“The woman for whom you have conceived this violent attachment is, then,
above you in social position?”
“Yes, sir, or so considered, which amounts to the same thing, as far as
I am concerned.”
“Bertram, I have lived longer than you and have seen much of both social
and domestic life, and I tell you no woman is worth such a sacrifice on
the part of a man as you propose. No woman of to-day, I should say; our
mothers were different. The very fact that this young lady of whom you
speak, obliges you to change your whole course of life in order to
obtain her, ought to be sufficient to prove to you—” He stopped
suddenly, arrested by the young man’s lifted hand. “She does not oblige
you, then?”
“Not on her own account, sir. This lily,” lifting a vase of blossoms at
his elbow, “could not be more innocent of the necessities that govern
the social circle it adorns, than the pure, single-minded girl to whom I
have dedicated what is best and noblest in my manhood. It is her
father—”
“Ah, her father!”
“Yes, sir,” the young man pursued, more and more astonished at the
other’s tone. “He is a man who has a right to expect both wealth and
position in a son-in-law. But I see I shall have to tell you my story,
sir. It is an uncommon one and I never meant that it should pass my
lips, but if by its relation I can win your sympathy for a pure and
noble passion, I shall consider the sacred seal of secrecy broken in a
good cause. But,” said he, seeing his uncle cast a short and uneasy
glance at the door, “perhaps I am interrupting you. You expect some
one!”
“No,” said his uncle, “my wife is at church; I am ready to listen.”
The young man gave a hurried sigh, cast one look at his companion’s
immovable face, as if to assure himself that the narrative was
necessary, then leaned back and in a steady business-like tone that
softened, however, as he proceeded, began to relate as follows:
III.
A MYSTERIOUS SUMMONS.
“Without unspotted, innocent within,
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin.”—DRYDEN.
It was after a matinée performance at —— Hall some two weeks ago that
I stopped to light a cigar in the small corridor leading to the back
entrance. I was in a dissatisfied frame of mind. Something in the music
I had been playing or the manner in which it had been received had
touched unwonted chords in my own nature. I felt alone. I remember
asking myself as I stood there, what it all amounted to? Who of all the
applauding crowd would watch at my bedside through a long and harassing
sickness, or lend their sympathy as they now yielded their praise, if
instead of carrying off the honors of the day I had failed to do justice
to my reputation. I was just smiling over the only exception I could
make to this sweeping assertion, that of the pale-eyed youth you have
sometimes observed dogging my steps, when Briggs came up to me.
“There is a woman here, sir, who insists on seeing you; she has been
waiting through half the last piece. Shall I tell her you are coming
out?”
“A woman!” exclaimed I, somewhat surprised, for my visitors are not apt
to be of the gentler sex.
“Yes sir, an old one. She seems very anxious to speak to you. I could
not get rid of her no how.”
I hurried forward to the muffled figure which he pointed out cowering
against the wall by the door. “Well, my good woman, what do you want?” I
asked, bending towards her in the hopes of catching a glimpse of the
face she held partly concealed from me.
“Are you Mr. Mandeville?” she inquired in a tone shaken as much by
agitation as age.
I bowed.
“The one who plays upon the piano?”
“The very same,” I declared.
“You are not deceiving me,” she went on, looking up with a marked
anxiety plainly visible through her veil. “I haven’t seen you play and
couldn’t contradict you, but—”
“Here!” said I calling to Briggs with a kindly look at the old woman,
“help me on with my coat, will you?”
The “Certainly, Mr. Mandeville,” with which he complied seemed to
reassure her, and as soon as the coat was on and he was gone, she
grasped me by the arm and drew my ear down to her mouth.
“If you are Mr. Mandeville, I have a message for you. This letter,”
slipping one into my hand, “is from a young lady, sir. She bade me give
it to you myself. She is young and pretty,” she pursued as she saw me
make a movement of distaste, “and a lady. We depend upon your honor,
sir.”
I acknowledge that my first impulse was to fling her back the note and
leave the building; I was in no mood for trifling, my next to burst into
a laugh and politely hand her to the door, my last and best, to open the
poor little note and see for myself whether the writer was a lady or
not. Proceeding to the door, for it was already twilight in the dim
passage way, I tore open the envelope which was dainty enough and took
out a sheet of closely written paper. A certain qualm of conscience
assailed me as I saw the delicate chirography it disclosed and I was
tempted to thrust it back and return it unread to the old woman now
trembling in the corner. But curiosity overcame my scruples, and hastily
unfolding the sheet I read these lines:
“I do not know if what I do is right; I am sure aunty would not
say it was; but aunty never thinks anything is right but going
to church and reading the papers to papa. I am just a little
girl who has heard you play, and who would think the world was
too beautiful, if she could hear you say to her just once, some
of the kind things you must speak every day to the persons who
know you. I do not expect very much—you must have a great many
friends, and you would not care for me—but the least little
look, if it were all my own, would make me so happy and so
proud I should not envy anybody in the world, unless it was
some of those dear friends who see you always.
“I do not come and hear you play often, for aunty thinks music
frivolous, but I am always hearing you no matter where I am,
and it makes me feel as if I were far away from everybody, in a
beautiful land all sunshine and flowers. But nurse says I must
not write so much or you will not read it, so I will stop here.
But if you _would_ come it would make some one happier than
even your beautiful music could do.”
That was all; there was neither name nor date. A child’s epistle,
written with a woman’s circumspection. With mingled sensations of doubt
and curiosity I turned back to the old woman who stood awaiting me with
eager anxiety.
“Was this written by a child or woman?” I asked, meeting her eye with as
much sternness as I could assume.
“Don’t ask me—don’t ask me anything. I have promised to bring you if I
could, but I cannot answer any questions.”
I stepped back with an incredulous laugh. Here was evidently an
adventure. “You will at least tell me where the young miss lives,” said
I, “before I undertake to fulfil her request.”
She shook her head. “I have a carriage at the door, sir,” said she. “All
you have got to do is to get into it with me and we shall soon be at the
house.”
I looked from her face to the letter in my hand, and knew not what to
think. The spirit of simplicity and ingenuousness that marked the latter
was scarcely in keeping with this air of mystery. The woman observing my
hesitation moved towards the door.
“Will you come, sir?” she inquired. “You will not regret it. Just a
moment’s talk with a pretty young girl—surely—”
“Hush,” said I, hearing a hasty step behind me. And sure enough just
then my intimate friend Selby came along and grasping me by the arm
began dragging me towards the door. “You are my property,” said he.
“I’ve promised, on my word of honor as a gentleman and a musician, to
bring you to the Handel Club this afternoon. I was afraid you had
escaped me, but—” Here he caught sight of the small black figure
halting in the door-way, and paused.
“Who’s this?” said he.
I hesitated. For one instant the scale of my whole future destiny hung
trembling in the balance, then the demon of curiosity got the better of
my judgment, and with the rather unworthy consideration that I might as
well enjoy my youth while I could, I released myself from my friend’s
detaining hand and replied, “Some one with whom I have very particular
business. I cannot go to the Handel Club to-day,” and darting out
without further delay, I rejoined the old woman on the sidewalk.
Without a word she drew me towards a carriage I now observed standing by
the curbstone a few feet to the left. As I got in I remember pausing a
moment to glance at the man on the box, but it was too dark for me to
perceive anything but the fact that he was dressed in livery. More and
more astonished I leaned back in my seat and endeavored to open
conversation with my mysterious companion. But it did not work. Without
being actually rude, she parried my questions in such a way that by the
end of five minutes I found myself as far from any knowledge of the real
situation of the case as when I started. I therefore desisted from any
further attempts and turned to look out, when I made a discovery that
for the first time awoke some vague feelings of alarm within my breast.
This was, that the window was not covered by a curtain as I supposed,
but by closed blinds which when I tried to raise them resisted all my
efforts to do so.
“It is very close here,” I muttered, in some sort of excuse for this
display of uneasiness. “Cannot you give us a little air?” But my
companion remained silent, and I felt ashamed to press the matter though
I took advantage of the darkness to remove to a safer place a roll of
money which I had about me.
Yet I was far from being really anxious, and did not once meditate
backing out of an adventure that was at once so piquant and romantic.
For by this time I became conscious from the sounds about me that we had
left the side street for one of the avenues and were then proceeding
rapidly up town. Listening, I heard the roll of omnibuses and the jingle
of car-bells, which informed me that we were in Broadway, no other
avenue in the city being traversed by both these methods of conveyance.
But after awhile the jingle ceased and presently the livelier sounds of
constant commotion inseparable from a business thoroughfare, and we
entered what I took to be Madison Avenue at Twenty-third Street.
Instantly I made up mind to notice every turn of the carriage, that I
might fix to some degree the locality towards which we were tending. But
it turned but once and that after a distance of steady travelling that
quite overthrew any calculation I was able to make at that time of the
probable number of streets we had passed since entering the avenue.
Having turned, it went but about half a block to the left when it
stopped. “I shall see where I am when I get out,” thought I; but in this
I was mistaken.
First we had stopped in the middle of a block of houses built, as far as
I could judge, all after one model. Next the fact of the front door
being open, though I saw no one in the hall, somewhat disconcerted me,
and I hurried across the sidewalk and up the stoop in a species of maze
hardly to be expected from one of my naturally careless disposition. The
next moment the door closed behind me and I found myself in a
well-lighted hall whose quiet richness betokened it as belonging to a
private dwelling of no mean pretensions to elegance.
This was the first surprise I received.
“Follow me,” said the old woman, hurrying me down the hall and into a
small room at the end. “The young lady will be here in a moment,” and
without lifting her veil or affording me the least glimpse of her
features, she retired, leaving me to face the situation before me as
best I might.
It was anything but a pleasant one as it appeared to me at that moment,
and for an instant I seriously thought of retracing my steps and leaving
a domicile into which I had been introduced in such a mysterious manner.
Then the quiet aspect of the room, which though sparsely furnished with
a piano and chairs was still of an order rarely seen out of gentlemen’s
houses, struck my imagination and reawakened my curiosity, and nerving
myself to meet whatever interview might be accorded me, I waited. It was
only five minutes by the small clock ticking on the mantel-piece, but it
seemed an hour before I heard a timid step at the door, and saw it swing
slowly open, disclosing—well, I did not stop to inquire whether it was
a child or a woman. I merely saw the shrinking modest form, the eager
blushing face, and bowed almost to the ground in a sudden reverence for
the sublime innocence revealed to me. Yes, it did not take a second look
to read that tender countenance to its last guileless page. Had she been
a woman of twenty-five I could not have mistaken her expression of pure
delight and timid interest, but she was only sixteen, as I afterwards
learned, and younger in experience than in age.
Closing the door behind her, she stood for a moment without speaking,
then with a deepening of the blush which was only a child’s
embarrassment in the presence of a stranger, looked up and murmured my
name with a word or so of grateful acknowledgment that would have called
forth a smile on my lips if I had not been startled by the sudden change
that passed over her features when she met my eyes. Was it that I showed
my surprise too plainly, or did my admiration manifest itself in my
gaze? an admiration great as it was humble, and which was already of a
nature such as I had never before given to girl or woman. Whatever it
was, she no sooner met my look than she paused, trembled, and started
back with a confused murmur, through which I plainly heard her whisper
in a low distressed tone, “Oh, what have I done!”
“Called a good friend to your side,” said I in the frank, brotherly way
I thought most likely to reassure her. “Do not be alarmed, I am only too
happy to meet one who evidently enjoys music so well.”
But the hidden chord of womanhood had been struck in the child’s soul,
and she could not recover herself. For an instant I thought she would
turn and flee, and struck as I was with remorse at my reckless invasion
of this uncontaminated temple, I could not but admire the spirited
picture she presented as, with form half turned and face bent back, she
stood hesitating on the point of flight.
I did not try to stop her. “She shall follow her own impulse,” said I to
myself, but I felt a vague relief that was deeper than I imagined, when
she suddenly relinquished her strained attitude, and advancing a step or
so began to murmur:
“I did not know—I did not realize I was doing what was so very wrong.
Young ladies do not ask gentlemen to come and see them, no matter how
much they desire to make their acquaintance. I see it now; I did not
before. Will you—can you forgive me?”
I smiled; I could not help it. I could have taken her to my heart and
soothed her as I would a child, but the pallor of womanhood, which had
replaced the blush of the child, awed me and made my own words come
hesitatingly.
“Forgive you? You must forgive me! It was as wrong for me,” I went on
with a wild idea of not mincing matters with this pure soul, “to obey
your innocent request, as it was for you to make it. I am a man of the
world and know its _convenances_; you are very young.”
“I am sixteen,” she murmured.
The abrupt little confession, implying as it did her determination not
to accept any palliation of her conduct which it did not deserve,
touched me strangely. “But very young for that,” I exclaimed.
“So aunty says, but no one can ever say it any more,” she answered. Then
with a sudden gush, “We shall never see each other again, and you must
forget the motherless girl who has met you in a way for which she must
blush through life. It is no excuse,” she pursued hurriedly, “that nurse
thought it was all right. She always approves of everything I do or want
to do, especially if it is anything aunt would be likely to forbid. I
have been spoiled by nurse.”
“Was nurse the woman who came for me?” I asked.
She nodded her head with a quick little motion inexpressibly charming.
“Yes, that was nurse. She said she would do it all, I need only write
the note. She meant to give me a pleasure, but she did wrong.”
“Yes,” thought I, “how wrong you little know or realize.” But I only
said, “You must be guided by some one with more knowledge of the world
after this. Not,” I made haste to add, struck by the misery in her child
eyes, “that any harm has been done. You could not have appealed to the
friendship of any one who would hold you in greater respect than I.
Whether we meet again or not, my memory of you shall be sweet and
sacred, I promise you that.”
But she threw out her hand with a quick gesture. “No, do not remember
me. My only happiness will lie in the thought you have forgotten.” And
the last remnants of the child soul vanished in that hurried utterance.
“You must go now,” she continued more calmly. “The carriage that brought
you is at the door; I must ask you to take it back to your home.”
“But,” I exclaimed with a wild and unbearable sense of sudden loss as
she laid her hand on the knob of the door, “are we to part like this?
Will you not at least trust me with your name before I go?”
Her hand dropped from the knob as if it had been hot steel, and she
turned towards me with a slow yearning motion that whatever it betokened
set my heart beating violently. “You do not know it, then?” she
inquired.
“I know nothing but what this little note contains,” I replied, drawing
her letter from my pocket.
“Oh, that letter! I must have it,” she murmured; then, as I stepped
towards her, drew back and pointing to the table said, “Lay it there,
please.”
I did so, whereupon something like a smile crossed her lips and I
thought she was going to reward me with her name, but she only said, “I
thank you; now you know nothing;” and almost before I realized it she
had opened the door and stepped into the hall.
As I made haste to follow her, the sound of a low, “He is a gentleman,
he will ask no questions,” struck my ear, and looking up, I saw her just
leaving the side of the old nurse who stood evidently awaiting me half
down the hall. Bowing with formal ceremony, I passed her by and
proceeded to the front door. As I did so I caught one glimpse of her
face. It had escaped from all restraint and the expression of the eyes
was overpowering. I subdued a wild impulse to leap back to her side, and
stepped at once over the threshold. The nurse joined me, and together we
went down the stoop to the street.
“May I inquire where you wish to be taken?” she asked.
I told her, and she gave the order to the coachman, together with a few
words I did not hear; then stepping back she waited for me to get in.
There was no help for it. I gave one quick look behind me, saw the front
door close, realized how impossible it would ever be for me to recognize
the house again, and placed my foot on the carriage step. Suddenly a
bright idea struck me, and hastily dropping my cane I stepped back to
pick it up. As I did so I pulled out a bit of crayon I chanced to have
in my pocket, and as I stooped, chalked a small cross on the curbstone
directly in front of the house, after which I recovered my cane, uttered
some murmured word of apology, jumped into the carriage and was about to
shut the door, when the old nurse stepped in after me and quietly closed
it herself. By the pang that shot through my breast as the carriage
wheels left the house, I knew that for the first time in my life, I
_loved_.
IV.
SEARCHINGS.
“Patience, and shuffle the cards.”—CERVANTES.
If I had expected anything from the presence in the carriage of the
woman who had arranged this interview, I was doomed to disappointment.
Reticent before, she was absolutely silent now, sitting at my side like
a grim statue or a frozen image of watchfulness, ready to awake and stop
me if I offered to open the door or make any other move indicative of a
determination to know where I was, or in what direction I was going.
That her young mistress in the momentary conversation they had held
before our departure had succeeded in giving her some idea of the shame
with which she had felt herself overwhelmed and her present natural
desire for secrecy, I do not doubt, but I think now, as I thought then,
that the unusual precautions taken both at that time and before, to keep
me in ignorance of the young lady’s identity, were due to the elderly
woman’s own consciousness of the peril she had invoked in yielding to
the wishes of her young and thoughtless mistress; a theory which, if
true, argues more for the mind than the conscience of this mysterious
woman. However, it is with facts we have to deal, and you will be more
interested in learning what I did, than what I thought during that short
ride in perfect darkness.
The mark which I had left on the curbstone behind me sufficiently showed
the nature of my resolve, and when we made the first turn at the end of
the block I leaned back in my seat and laying my finger on my wrist,
began to count the pulsations of my blood. It was the only device that
suggested itself, by which I might afterward gather some approximate
notion of the distance we travelled in a straight course down town. I
had just arrived at the number seven hundred and sixty-two, and was
inwardly congratulating myself upon this new method of reckoning
distance, when the wheels gave a lurch and we passed over a car track.
Instantly all my fine calculations fell to the ground. We were not in
Madison Avenue, as I supposed; could not be, since no track crosses that
avenue below Fifty-ninth Street, and we were proceeding on as we could
not have done had we gained the terminus of the avenue at Twenty-third
Street. Could it be that the carriage had not been turned around while I
was in the house, and that we had come back by way of Fifth Avenue? I
could not remember—in fact, the more I tried to think which way the
horses’ heads were directed when we went into the house, the more I was
confused. But presently I considered that wherever we were, we certainly
had not passed over the narrow strip of smooth pavement in front of the
Worth monument, and therefore could not have reached Twenty-third Street
by way of Fifth Avenue. We must be up town, and that track we crossed
must have been at Fifty-ninth Street. And soon, as if to assure me of
this, we took a turn, quickly followed at a block’s length by another,
after which I had no difficulty in recognizing the smooth pavement of
the entrance to the Park or the roll down Fifth Avenue afterwards. “They
have thought to confuse me by an extra mile or so of travel,” thought I,
with some complacency, “but the streets of New York are too simply laid
out to lend themselves to any such easy mode of mystification.” Yet I
have thought since then how, with a smarter man on the box, the affair
might have been conducted so as to have baffled the oldest citizen in
any attempt at calculation.
When we stopped in front of the Albemarle I quietly thanked the woman
who had conducted me, and stepped to the ground. Instantly the door shut
behind me, the carriage drove off, and I was left standing there like a
man suddenly awakened from a dream.
Entering my hotel, I ordered supper, thinking that the very practical
occupation of eating would serve to divert my mind into its ordinary
channels. But the dream, if dream it was, had made too vivid an
impression to be shaken off so easily. It followed me to the hall in the
evening and mingled with every chord I struck.
I could scarcely sleep that night for thinking of the sweet child’s face
that had blossomed into a woman’s before my eyes, and what a woman! With
the first hint of daylight I rose, and as soon as it was in any degree
suitable to be out, hired a cab and proceeded to the corner of
Fifty-ninth Street and Madison Avenue, where, according to my
calculations of the evening before, we had crossed the car track which
had first interrupted me in that very original method of computing
distance of which I have already spoken, a method by the way, which you
must acknowledge is an improvement on the boy’s plan of finding his way
back from the woods by means of the bread-crumbs he had scattered behind
him, forgetting that the birds would eat up his crumbs and leave him
without a clew. Bidding the driver proceed at the ordinary jog trot down
the avenue, I laid my finger on my wrist, and counted each throb of my
pulse till I had reached the magical number seven hundred and sixty-two.
Then putting my head out of the window, I bade him stop. We were in the
middle of a block, but that did not disconcert me. I had not expected to
gain more than an approximate idea of the spot where we had first turned
into the avenue, it being impossible to regulate the horses’ pace so as
to tally with that taken by the span of the night before, even if the
pulsations in my wrist were to be absolutely relied upon. Noting the
streets between which we had paused, I bade the driver to turn down one
and come back by the other, occupying myself in the meanwhile, in
searching the curbstone for the small mark I had left in front of her
door the night before. But though we drove slowly and I searched
carefully, not a trace did I perceive of that tell-tale sign, and
forsaking those two streets, I ordered my obedient Jehu to try the two
outlying ones below and above. He did so, and I again consulted the
curbstone, but with no better success. No mark or remnants of a mark was
to be found anywhere. Nor, though we travelled through three or four
other streets in the same way, did we come upon any clew liable to
assist me in my search. Clean discouraged and somewhat out of temper
with myself for my pusillanimity of the evening before in not having
braved the anger of my companion by opening the carriage door at the
first corner and leaping out, I commanded to be taken back to the hotel,
where for a whole miserable day I racked my brain with devices for
acquiring the knowledge I so much desired. The result was futile, as you
may imagine; nor will I stop to recount the various expedients to which
I afterwards resorted in my vain attempt to solve the mystery of this
young girl’s identity.
Enough that they all failed, even the very promising one of searching
the various photographic establishments of the city, for the valuable
clew which her picture would give me. And so a week passed.
“It is time this mad infatuation was at an end,” said I to myself one
morning as I sat down to write a letter. “There is no hope of my ever
seeing her again, and I am but frittering away the best emotions of my
life in thus indulging in a dream that is not the prelude to a reality.”
But in spite of the wise determination thus made, I soon found my
thoughts recurring to their old channel, and seized with sudden
impatience at my evident weakness, took up the letter I had been writing
and was about to read it, when to my great amazement I perceived that
instead of inditing the usual words of a business communication, I had
been engaged in scribbling a certain number up and down the page and
even across the bottom where my signature should have been.
“Am I a fool?” I exclaimed, and was about to tear the sheet in two, when
glancing again at the number, which was a simple thirty-six, I asked
myself where I had got those especial figures. Instantly there arose
before my mind’s eye the vision of a brown-stone front with its
vestibule and door. It was, then, the number of a house; but what house?
a _chateau en Espagne_ or a _bona fide_ New York dwelling, which for
some reason had unconsciously impressed itself upon my memory? I could
not answer. There on the page was the number thirty-six, and equally
plain in my mind was the look of the brown-stone front to which that
number belonged—and that was all.
But it was enough to awaken within me the spirit of inquiry. The few
houses thus numbered in that quarter of the city where I had lately
been, were not so hard to find but that a morning given to the business
ought to satisfy me whether the vision in my mind had its basis in
reality. Taking a cab, I rode up town and into that region of streets I
had traversed so carefully a week before. For I was assured that if the
impression had been made by an actual dwelling it had been done at that
time. Following the same course I then took, I consulted the appearance
of the various houses to which that number was assigned. The first was
built of brick; that was not it. The next one had pillars to the
vestibule; and that was not it. The third, to use an Irish bull, was no
house at all, but a stable, while the fourth was an elegant structure of
much more pretension than the plain and simple front I had in my mind or
memory. I was about to utter a curse upon my folly and go home, when I
remembered there was yet a street or two taken in my zig-zag course of
the week before, which I had not yet tested. “Might as well be
thorough,” I muttered, and bade my driver proceed down —— Street.
What was there in its aspect that dimly excited me at the first glance?
A dim remembrance, a certain ghostly assurance that we had reached the
right spot? As we neared the number I sought, I could not suppress an
exclamation of surprise. For there before me to its last detail, stood
the house which involuntarily presented itself to my mind, when my eye
first fell upon that mysterious number scribbled at the foot of the page
I was writing.
It was, then, no chimera of an overwrought brain, this vision of a
house-front which had been haunting me, but a distinct remembrance of an
actual dwelling seen by me in my former journey through this street. But
why this house-front above all others; what was there in it to make such
an impression? Looking at it I could not determine, but after we had
passed, something, I cannot tell what, brought back another remembrance,
trivial in itself, but yet a link in the chain that was destined sooner
or later to lead me out of the maze into which I had stumbled. It was
merely this; that as I rode along the streets on that memorable morning,
searching for that mark on the curbstone from which I hoped so much, I
had come upon a spot where the pavement had been freshly washed. With
that unconscious action of the brain with which we are familiar, I
looked at the sidewalk a moment, running even then with the water that
had been cast upon it, and then gave a quick glance at the house. That
glance, account for it as you will, took in the picture before it as the
camera catches the impression of a likeness, and though in another
instant I had forgotten the whole occurrence, it needed but a certain
train of thought or perhaps a certain state of emotion to revive it
again.
A noble cause for such an act of unconscious cerebration you will say, a
freshly washed pavement: _Le jeu ne faut pas la chandelle._ And so I
thought too, or would have thought if I had not been so interested in
the pursuit in which I was engaged, and if the idea had not suggested
itself that water and a broom might obliterate chalk-marks from
curbstones, and that the imps that preside over our mental forces would
not indulge in such a trick at my expense unless the play _was_ worth
the candle. At all events, from the moment I made this discovery, I
fixed my faith on that house as the one which held the object of my
search, and though I contented myself with merely noting the number of
the street as we left it, I none the less determined to pursue my
investigations, till I had learned beyond the possibility of a doubt
whether my conjectures were not true.
A perseverance worthy of a better cause you will say, but you are no
longer twenty-five and under the influence of your first passion. I own
I was astonished at myself and frequently paused in the pursuit I had
undertaken, to ask if I were the same person who but a fortnight before
laughed at the story of a man who had gone mad over the body of an
unknown woman he had saved from a wreck only to find her dead in his
arms.
The first thing I did was to ascertain the name of the gentleman
occupying the house I have specified. It was that of one of our
wealthiest and most respectable bankers, a name as well known in the
city—as your own for instance. This was somewhat disconcerting, but
with a dogged resolution somewhat foreign to my natural disposition, I
persevered in my investigations, and learning in the next breath that
the gentleman alluded to was a widower with an only child, a young
daughter of about sixteen or so, recovered my assurance, though not my
equanimity. Seeking out my friend Farrar, who as you know is a walking
gazette of New York society, I broached the subject of Mr.—excuse me
if I do not mention his name; allow me to say, Preston’s domestic
affairs, and learned that Miss Preston, “A naive little piece for so
great an heiress,” I remember Farrar called her, had left town within a
day or two for a visit to some friends in Baltimore. “I happen to know,”
said he with that careless sweep of his hand at which you have so often
laughed, “because my friend Miss Forsyth met her at the depot. She was
intending to be gone—two weeks, I think she said. Do you know her?”
That last question sprung upon me unawares, and I am afraid I blushed.
“No,” I returned, “I have not that honor but an acquaintance of mine
has—well—has met her and—”
“I see, I see,” broke in Farrar with his most disagreeable smile. Then
with a short laugh, meant to act as a warning, I suppose, added as he
walked off, “I hope your friend is in fair circumstances and not
connected with the fine arts. Music is Mr. Preston’s detestation, while
Miss Preston though too young to be much sought after yet, will in two
years’ time have the pick of the city at her command.”
“So!” thought I to myself; “my little innocent charmer is an embryo
aristocrat, eh? Well then, I was a greater fool than I imagined.” And I
walked out of the hotel where I had met Farrar, with the very sensible
conclusion to drop a subject that promised nothing but disappointment.
But the fates were against me, or the good angels perhaps, and at the
next comer I met an old acquaintance, the very opposite of Farrar in
character, who with a long love story of his own fired, my imagination
to such an extent that in spite of myself I turned down —— Street, and
was proceeding to pass her house, when suddenly the thought struck me,
“How do I know that this unapproachable daughter of one of our most
prominent citizens is one and the same person with my dainty little
charmer? Widowers with young daughters are not so rare in this great
city that I need consider the question as decided, because by a half
superstitious freak of my own I have settled upon this house as the one
I was in the other night. My inamorata may be the offspring of a
musician for all I know.” And inflamed at the thought of this
possibility—I remembered the piano, you see—I gave to the winds all my
fine resolutions and only asked how I could determine for once and all,
whether I had ever crossed the threshold of the house before me. Some
men would have run up the stoop, rung the bell and asked to see Mr.
Preston on some pretended business he could easily conjure up to suit
the occasion, but my face is too well known for me to risk any such
attempt, besides I was too anxious to win the confidence of the young
girl to shock her awakened sense of propriety by seeming to seek her
where she did not wish to be found. And yet I must enter that house and
see for myself if it was the one that held her on that memorable
evening.
Pondering the question, I looked back at the door so obstinately closed
against my curiosity, when to my satisfaction and delight it suddenly
opened and a man stepped out, whom I instantly recognized as a business
agent for one of the largest piano-forte manufactories in the city. “The
heavens smile upon my enterprise,” thought I, and waited for the man to
come up with me. He was not only a friend of mine but largely indebted
to me in various ways, so that I knew I had only to urge a request for
it to be immediately granted, and that, too, without any questions or
gossip.
You will not be interested in anything but the result, which was
somewhat out of the usual course, and may therefore shock you. But you
must remember that I am telling you of matters which young men usually
keep to themselves, and that whatever I did, was accomplished in a
spirit of respect only a shade less constraining in its power than the
love that was at once my impelling force, and my constant embarrassment.
To come, then, to the point, a piano was to be set up in that house on
that very day, Mr. Preston having yielded to the solicitations of his
daughter for a new instrument. My friend was to be engaged in the
transfer, and at my solicitation for leave to assist in the operation,
gave his consent in perfect confidence as to my possessing good and
sufficient reasons for such a remarkable request, and appointed the hour
at which I was to meet him at the ware-rooms.
Behold me, then, at half-past two that afternoon, assisting with my own
hands in carrying a piano up the stoop of that house which, four hours
before, I had regarded as unapproachable. Dressed in a workman’s blouse
and with my hair well roughened under a rude cap that effectually
disguised me, I advanced with but little fear of detection. And yet no
sooner had I entered the house and seen at a glance that the aspect of
the hall coincided with my rather vague remembrance of that through
which I had been ushered a week before, than I was struck by a sudden
sense of my situation, and experiencing that uncomfortable consciousness
of self-betrayal, which a blush always gives a man, stumbled forward
under my heavy burden, feeling as if a thousand eyes were fixed upon me
and my cherished secret, instead of the two sharp but totally
unsuspicious orbs of the elderly matron that surveyed us from the top of
the banisters. “Be careful there, you’ll knock a hole through that glass
door!” though a natural cry under the circumstances, struck on my ears
with the force and mysterious power of a secret warning, and when after
a moment of blind advance I suddenly lifted my eyes and found myself in
the little room, which like a silhouette on a white ground, stood out in
my memory in distinct detail as the spot where I had first heard my own
heart beat, I own that I felt my hands slipping from my burden, and in
another moment had disgraced my character of a workman if I had not
caught the sudden ring of a well known voice in the hall, as nurse
answered from above some question propounded by the elderly lady with
the piercing eyes. As it was, I recovered myself and went through my
duties as promptly and deftly as if my heart did not throb with memories
that each passing hour and event only served to hallow to my
imagination.
At length the piano was duly set up and we turned to leave. Will you
think I am too trivial in my details if I tell you that I lingered
behind the rest and for an instant let my hand with all its
possibilities for calling out a soul from that dead instrument, lie a
moment on the keys over which her dainty fingers were so soon to
traverse?
V.
THE RUBICON.
“I’ll stake my life upon her faith.”—OTHELLO.
Once convinced of the identity of my sweet young friend with the Miss
Preston at whose feet a two year hence, the wealth and aristocracy of
New York would be kneeling, I drew back from further effort as having
received a damper to my presumptuous hopes that would soon effectually
stifle them. Everything I heard about the family—and it seemed as if
suddenly each chance acquaintance that I met had something to say about
Mr. Preston either as a banker or a man, only served to confirm me in
this view. “He is a money worshipper,” said one. “The bluest of blue
Presbyterians,” declared another. “The enemy of presumption and anything
that looks like an overweening confidence in one’s own worth or
capabilities,” remarked a third. “A man who would beggar himself to save
the honor of a corporation with which he was concerned,” observed a
fourth “but who would not invite to his table the most influential man
connected with it if that man was unable to trace his family back to the
old Dutch settlers to which Mr. Preston’s own ancestors belonged.”
This latter statement I have no doubt was exaggerated for I myself have
seen him at dinners where half the gentlemen who lifted the wine glass
were self-made in every sense of the term. But it showed the bent of his
mind and it was a bent that left me entirely out of the sweep of his
acquaintanceship much less that of his exquisite daughter, the pride of
his soul if not the jewel of his heart.
But when will a man who has seen or who flatters himself that he has
seen in the eyes of the woman he admires, the least spark of that fire
which is consuming his own soul, pause at an obstacle which after all
has its basis simply in circumstances of position or will. By the time
the two weeks of her expected absence had expired, I had settled it in
my own mind that I would see her again and if I found the passing
caprice of a child was likely to blossom into the steady regard of a
woman, risk all in the attempt to win by honorable endeavor and
persistence this bud of loveliness for my future wife.
How I finally succeeded by means of my friend Farrar in being one
evening invited to the same house as Miss Preston it is not necessary to
state. You will believe me it was done with the utmost regard for her
feelings and in a way that deceived Farrar himself, who if he is the
most prying is certainly the most volatile of men. In a crowded parlor,
then, in the midst of the flash of diamonds and the flutter of fans Miss
Preston and I again met. When I first saw her she was engaged in
conversation with some young companion, and I had the pleasure of
watching for a few minutes, unobserved, the play of her ingenuous
countenance, as she talked with her friend, or sat silently watching the
brilliant array before her. I found her like and yet unlike the vision
of my dreams. More blithesome in her appearance, as was not strange
considering her party attire and the lustre of the chandelier under
which she sat, there was still that indescribable something in her
expression which more than the flash of her eye or the curve of her lip,
though both were lovely to me, made her face the one woman’s face in the
world for me; a charm which circumstances might alter, or suffering
impair, but of which nothing save death could ever completely divest her
and not death either, for it was the seal of her individuality, and that
she would take with her into the skies.
“If I might but advance and sit down by her side without a word of
explanation or the interference of conventionalities how happy I should
be,” thought I. But I knew that would not do, so I contented myself with
my secret watch over her movements, longing for and yet dreading the
advance of my hostess, with its inevitable introduction. Suddenly the
piano was touched in a distant room and not till I saw the quick change
in her face, a change hard to explain, did I recognize the selection as
one I was in the habit of playing. _She_ had not forgotten at least, and
thrilled by the thought and the remembrance of that surge of color which
had swept like a flood over her cheek, I turned away, feeling as if I
were looking on what it was for no man’s eyes to see, least of all mine.
My hostess’ voice arrested me and next moment I was bowing to the ground
before Miss Preston.
I am not a boy; nor have I been without my experiences: life with its
vicissitudes has taught me many a lesson, subjected me to many a trial,
yet in all my career have I never known a harder moment than when I
raised my eyes to meet hers after that lowly obeisance. That she would
be indignant I knew, that she might even misinterpret my motives and
probably withdraw without giving me an opportunity to speak, I felt to
be only too probable, but that she would betray an agitation so painful
I had not anticipated, and for an instant I felt that I had hazarded my
life’s happiness on a cast that was going against me. But the necessity
of saving her from remark speedily restored me to myself, and following
the line of conduct I had previously laid out, I addressed her with the
reserve of a stranger, and neither by word, look or manner conveyed to
her a suggestion that we had ever met or spoken to each other before.
She seemed to appreciate my consideration and though she was as yet too
much unused to the ways of the world to completely hide her
perturbation, she gradually regained a semblance of self-possession, and
ere long was enabled to return short answers to my remarks, though her
eyes remained studiously turned aside and never so much as ventured to
raise themselves to the passing throng much less to my face, half turned
away also.
Presently however a change passed over her. Pressing her two little
hands together, she drew back a step or two, speaking my name with a
certain tone of command. Struck with apprehension, I knew not why, I
followed her. Instantly like one repeating a lesson she spoke.
“It is very good in you to talk to me as though we were the strangers
that people believe us. I appreciate it and thank you very much. But it
is not being just true; that is I feel as if I were not being just true,
and as we can never be friends, would it not be better for us not to
meet in this way any more?”
“And why,” I gently asked, with a sense of struggling for my life, “can
we never be friends?”
Her answer was a deep blush; not that timid conscious appeal of the
blood that is beating too warmly for reply, but the quick flush of
indignant generosity forced to do despite to its own instincts.
“That is a question I would rather not answer,” she murmured at length.
“Only it is so; or I should not speak in this way.”
“But,” I ventured, resolved to know on just what foundations my
happiness was tottering, “you will at least tell me if this harsh decree
is owing to any offence I myself may have inadvertently given. The honor
of your acquaintance,” I went on, determined she should know just what a
hope she was slaying, “is much too earnestly desired, for me to wilfully
hazard its loss by saying or doing aught that could be in any way
displeasing to you.”
“You have done nothing but what was generous,” said she with increasing
womanliness of manner, “unless it was taking advantage of my being here,
to learn my name and gain an introduction to me after I had desired you
to forget my very existence.”
I recoiled at that, the chord of my self-respect was touched. “It was
not here I learned your name, Miss Preston. It has been known to me for
two weeks. At the risk of losing by your displeasure what is already
hazarded by your prudence, I am bound to acknowledge that from the hour
I left your father’s house that night, I have spared no effort
compatible with my deep respect for your feelings, to ascertain who the
young lady was that had done me such an honor, and won from me such a
deep regard. I had not intended to tell you this,” I added, “but your
truth has awakened mine, and whatever the result may be, you must see me
as I am.”
“You are very kind,” she replied governing with growing skill the
trembling of her voice. “The acquaintance of a girl of sixteen is not
worth so much trouble on the part of a man like yourself.” And blushing
with the vague apprehension of her sex in the presence of a devotion she
rather feels than understands, she waved her trembling little hand and
paused irresolute, seemingly anxious to terminate the interview but as
yet too inexperienced to know how to manage a dismissal requiring so
much tact and judgment.
I saw, comprehended her position and hesitated. She was so young, uncle,
her prospects in life were so bright; if I left her then, in a couple of
weeks she would forget me. What was I that I should throw the shadow of
manhood’s deepest emotion across the paradise of her young untrammelled
being. But the old Adam of selfishness has his say in my soul as well as
in that of my fellow-men, and forgetting myself enough to glance at her
half averted face, I could not remember myself sufficiently afterwards
to forego without a struggle, all hope of some day beholding that soft
cheek turn in confidence at my approach.
“Miss Preston,” said I, “the promise of the bud atones for its folded
leaves.” Then with a fervor I did not seek to disguise, “You say we
cannot be friends; would your decision be the same if this were our
first meeting?”
Again that flush of outraged feeling. “I don’t know—yes I think—I fear
it would.”
I strove to help her. “There is too great a difference between Bertram
Mandeville the pianist, and the daughter of Thaddeus Preston.”
She turned and looked me gently in the eye, she did not need to speak.
Regret, shame, longing flashed in her steady glance.
“Do not answer,” said I, “I understand; I am glad it is circumstances
that stand in the way, and not any misconception on your part as to my
motives and deep consideration for yourself. Circumstances can be
changed.” And satisfied with having thus dropped into the fruitful soil
of that tender breast, the seed of a future hope, I bowed with all the
deference at my command and softly withdrew.
But not to rest. With all the earnestness with which a man sets himself
to decide upon the momentous question of life or death, I gave myself up
to a night of reflection, and seated in my solitary bachelor apartment,
debated with myself as to the resolution at which I had dimly hinted in
my parting words to Miss Preston.
That I am a musician by nature, my success with the the public seems to
indicate. That by following out the line upon which I had entered I
would attain a certain eminence in my art, I do not doubt. But uncle,
there are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because
the spirit is in them and they cannot be silent if they would, and those
that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the
beauty that has awakened their own admiration. The first could not give
up his art for any cause, without the sacrifice of his soul’s life; the
latter—well the latter could and still be a man with his whole inner
being intact. Or to speak plainer, the first has no choice, while the
latter has, if he has a will to exert it. Now you will say, and the
world at large, that I belong to the former class. I have risen in ten
years from a choir boy in Trinity Church to a position in the world of
music that insures me a full audience wherever and whenever I have a
mind to exert my skill as a pianist. Not a man of my years has a more
promising outlook in my profession, if you will pardon the seeming
egotism of the remark, and yet by the ease with which I felt I could
give it up at the first touch of a master passion, I know that I am not
a prophet in my art but merely an interpreter, one who can speak well
but who has never felt the descent of the burning tongue and hence not a
sinner against my own soul if I turn aside from the way I am walking.
The question was, then, should I make a choice? Love, as you say, seems
at first blush too insecure a joy, if not often too trivial a one, to
unsettle a man in his career and change the bent of his whole after
life; especially a love born of surprise and fed by the romance of
distance and mystery. Had I met her in ordinary intercourse, surrounded
by her friends and without the charm cast over her by unwonted
circumstances, and then had felt as I did now that of all women I had
seen, she alone would ever move the deep springs of my being, it would
be different. But with this atmosphere of romance surrounding and
hallowing her girl’s form till it seemed almost as ethereal and
unearthly as that of an angel’s, was I safe in risking fame or fortune
in an attempt to acquire what in the possession might prove as bare and
common-place as a sweep of mountain heather stripped of its sunshine.
Curbing every erratic beat of my heart, I summoned up her image as it
bloomed in my fancy, and surveying it with cruel eyes, asked what was
real and what the fruit of my own imagination. The gentle eye, the
trembling lip, the girlish form eloquent with the promise of coming
womanhood,—were these so rare, that beside them no other woman should
seem to glance or smile or move? And her words! what had she said, that
any simple-minded, modest yet loving girl might not have uttered under
the circumstances. Surely my belief in her being the one, the best and
the dearest was a delusion, and to no delusion was I willing to
sacrifice my art. But straight upon that conclusion came sweeping down a
flood of counter-reasons. If not the wonder she seemed, she was at least
a wonder to me. If I had seen her under romantic circumstances, and
unconsciously been influenced by them, the influence had remained and
nothing would ever rob her form of the halo thus acquired. Whether I
ever won her to my fireside or not, she must always remain the fairy
figure of my dreams, and being so, the gentle eye and tender lip
acquired a value that made them what they seemed, the exponent of love
and happiness. And lastly if love well or illy founded was an uncertain
joy, and the passion for a woman a poor substitute for the natural
incentive of talent or ambition, _this_ love had within it the beginning
of something deeper than joy, and in the passion thus cheaply
characterized, dwelt a force and living fire that notwithstanding all I
have hitherto achieved, has ever been lacking from my dreams of
endeavor.
As you will see, the most natural question of all did not disturb me in
these cogitations: And that was, whether in making the sacrifice I
proposed, I should meet with the reward I had promised myself. The
fancies of a young girl of sixteen are not usually of a stable enough
character to warrant a man in building upon them his whole future
happiness, especially a young girl situated like Miss Preston in the
midst of friends who would soon be admirers, and adulators who would
soon be her humble slaves. But the doubt which a serious contemplation
of this risk must have presented, was of so unnerving a character, I
dared not admit it. _If_ I made the sacrifice, I must meet with my
reward. I would listen to no other conclusion. Besides, something in the
young girl herself, I cannot tell what, assured me then as it assures me
now, that whatever virtues or graces she might lack, that of fidelity to
a noble idea was not among them; that once convinced of the purity and
value of the flame that had been lit in her innocent breast, nothing
short of the unworthiness of the object that had awakened it, would ever
serve to eliminate or extinguish it. That I was not worthy but would
make it the business of my life to become so, was certain; that she
would mark my endeavors and bestow upon me the sympathy they deserved, I
was equally sure. No one would ever make such a sacrifice to her love as
I was willing to do, and consequently in no one would I find a rival.
The morning light surprised me in the midst of the struggle, nor did I
decide the question that day. Mr. Preston might not be as determined in
his prejudices against musicians as my friends or even his daughter had
imagined. I resolved to see him. Taking advantage of his connection with
the —— Club, I procured an introducer in the shape of a highly
respected person of his own class, and went one evening to the
Club-rooms with the full intention of making his acquaintance if
possible. He was already there and in conversation with some business
associates. Procuring a seat as near him as possible, I anxiously
surveyed his countenance. It was not a reassuring one, and studied in
this way, had the effect of dampening any hopes I may have cherished in
the outset. He soften to the sounds of sweet strains or the voice of
youthful passion! As soon as the granite rock to the surge of the
useless billow. His very necktie spoke volumes. It was an old fashioned
stock, full of the traditions of other days, while his coat, shabbier
than any I would presume to wear, betrayed in every well-worn seam the
pride of the aristocrat and millionaire who in his native city and
before the eyes of his fellow magnates does not need to carry the
evidences of his respectability upon his back.
“It would be worse than folly for me to approach him on such a subject,”
I mentally ejaculated. “If he did not stare the musician out of
countenance he would the newly risen man.” And I came very near giving
up the whole thing.
But the genius that watches over the affairs of true love was with me
notwithstanding the unpropitious state of my surroundings. In a few
minutes I received my expected introduction to Mr. Preston, and I found
that underneath the repelling austerity of his expression, was a kindly
spark for youth, and a decided sympathy for all instances of manly
endeavor if only it was in a direction he approved; further that my own
personality was agreeable to him and that he was disposed to regard me
with favor until by some chance and very natural allusion to my
profession by the friend standing between us, he learned that I was a
musician, when a decided change came over his countenance and he
exclaimed in that blunt, decisive way of his that admits of no reply:
“A jingler on the piano, eh? Pretty poor use for a man to put his brains
to, I say, or even his fingers. Sorry to hear we cannot be friends.” And
without waiting for a reply, took my introducer by the arm and drew him
a step or so to one side. “Why didn’t you say at once he was Mandeville
the musician,” I overheard him ask in somewhat querulous tones. “Don’t
you know I consider the whole race of them an abomination. I would have
more respect for my bank clerk than I would for the greatest man of them
all, were it Rubenstein himself.” Then in a lower tone but distinctly
and almost as if he meant me to hear, “My daughter has a leaning towards
this same fol-de-rol and has lately requested my permission to make the
acquaintance of some musical characters, but I soon convinced her that
manhood under the disguise of a harlequin’s jacket could have no
interest for her; that when a human being, man or woman has sunk to be a
mere rattler of sweet sounds, he has reached a stage of infantile
development that has little in common with the nervous energy and
business force of her Dutch ancestry. And my daughter stoops to make no
acquaintances she cannot bid sit at her father’s table.”
“Your daughter is a child yet, I thought,” was ventured by his
companion.
“Miss Preston is sixteen, just the age at which my mother gave her hand
to my respected father sixty-seven years ago.” And with this drop of
burning lead let fall into my already agitated bosom they passed on.
He would have more respect for his bank clerk! Would his bank clerk or
what was better, a young man with means at his command, working in a
business capacity more in consonance with the tastes he had evinced,
have a chance of winning his daughter? I began to think he might. “The
way grows clearer!” I exclaimed.
But it was not till after another interview with him ten minutes later
in the lobby that I finally made up my mind. He was standing quite alone
in an obscure corner, fumbling in an awkward way with his muffler that
had caught on the button of his coat. Seeing it, I hastened forward to
his assistance and was rewarded by a kind enough nod to embolden me to
say,
“I have been introduced to you as a musician; would my acquaintance be
more acceptable to you if I told you that the pursuit of art bids fair
in my case to yield to the exigencies of business? That I purpose
leaving the concert-room for the banker’s office and that henceforth my
only ambition promises to be that of Wall Street?”
“It most certainly would,” exclaimed he, holding out his hand with an
unmistakable gesture of satisfaction. “You have too good a countenance
to waste before a piano-top strumming to the smirks of women and the
plaudits of weak-headed men. Let us see you at the desk, my lad. We are
in want of trustworthy young men to take the place of us older ones.”
Then politely, “Do you expect to make the change soon?”
“I do,” said I.
And the Rubicon was passed.
VI.
A HAND CLASP.
“_Fer._—Here’s my hand.
_Mir._—And mine with my heart in it.”
—TEMPEST.
Once arrived at a settled conclusion, I put every thought of wavering
out of my mind. Deciding that with such a friend in business circles as
yourself, I needed no other introducer to my new life, I set apart this
evening for a confab with you on the subject. Meanwhile it is pretty
generally known that I make no more engagements to appear through the
country.
I have but one more incident to relate. Last Sunday in walking down
Fifth Avenue I met her. I did not do this inadvertently. I knew her
custom of attending Bible class and for once put myself in her way. I
did not give her time to remonstrate.
“Do not express your displeasure,” said I, “this shall never be
repeated. I merely wish to say that I have concluded to leave a
profession so little appreciated by those whose esteem I most desire to
possess; that I am about entering a banker’s office where it shall be my
ambition to rise if possible, to wealth and consequence. If I
succeed—you shall then know what my incentive has been. But till I
succeed or at least give such tokens of success as shall insure respect,
silence must be my portion and patience my sole support. Only of one
thing rest assured, that until I inform you with my own lips that the
hope which now illumines me is gone, it will continue to burn on in my
breast, shedding light upon a way that can never seem dark while that
glow rests upon it.” And bowing with the ceremonious politeness our
positions demanded, I held out my hand. “One clasp to encourage me,” I
entreated.
It seemed as if she did not comprehend. “You are going to give up music,
and for—for—”
“You?” said I. “Yes, don’t forbid me,” I implored; “it is too late.”
Like a lovely image of blushing girlhood turned by a lightning flash
into marble, she paused, pallid and breathless where she was, gazing
upon me with eyes that burned deeper and deeper as the full
comprehension of all that this implied gradually forced itself upon her
mind.
“You make a chaos of my little world,” she murmured at length.
“No,” said I, “_your_ world is untouched. If it should never be my good
fortune to enter it, you are not to grieve. You are free, Miss Preston,
free as this sunshiny air we breathe; I alone am bound, and that because
I must be whether I will or no.”
Then I saw the woman I had worshipped in this young fair girl shine
fully and fairly upon me. Drawing herself up, she looked me in the face
and calmly laid her hand in mine. “I am young,” said she, “and do not
know what may be right to say to one so generous and so kind. But this
much I can promise, that whether or not I am ever able to duly reward
you for what you undertake, I will at least make it the study of my life
never to prove unworthy of so much trust and devotion.”
And with the last lingering look natural to a parting for years, we
separated then and there, and the crowd came between us, and the Sunday
bells rang on, and what was so vividly real to us at the moment, became
in remembrance more like the mist and shadow of a dream.
VII.
MRS. SYLVESTER.
Love is more pleasant than marriage, for the same reason that
romances are more amusing than history.
—CHAMFORT.
“He draweth out the thread of his verbosity, finer than the
staple of his argument.”
—LOVES LABOR LOST.
Young Mandeville having finished his story, looked at his uncle. He
found him sitting in an attitude of extreme absorption, his right arm
stretched before him on the table, his face bent thoughtfully downwards
and clouded with that deep melancholy that seemed its most natural
expression, “He has not heard me,” was the young man’s first mortifying
reflection. But catching his uncle’s eye which at that moment raised
itself, he perceived he was mistaken and that he had rather been
listened to only too well.
“You must forgive me if I have seemed to rhapsodize,” the young man
stammered. “You were so quiet I half forgot I had a listener and went on
much as I would if I had been thinking aloud.”
His uncle smiled and throwing off the weight of his reflections whatever
they might be, arose and began pacing the floor. “I see you are past
surgery,” quoth he, “any wisdom of mine would be only thrown away.”
Young Mandeville was hurt. He had expected some token of approval on his
uncle’s part, or at least some betrayal of sympathy. His looks expressed
his disappointment.
“You expected to convert me by this story,” continued the elder, pausing
with a certain regret before his nephew; “nothing could convert me
but—”
“What?” inquired Mandeville after waiting in vain for the other to
finish.
“Something which we will never find in the whirl of New York fashionable
life. A woman with faith to reward and soul to understand such
unqualified trust as yours.”
“But I believe Miss Preston is such a girl and will be such a woman. Her
looks, her last words prove it.”
“Nothing proves it but time and as for your belief, I have believed
too.” Then as if fearing he had said too much, assumed his most
business-like tone and observed, “But we will drop all that; you have
resolved to quit music and enter Wall Street, your object money and the
social consideration which money secures. Now, why Wall Street?”
“Because I can think of no other means for attaining what I desire, in
the space of time I would consent to keep a young lady of Miss Preston’s
position waiting.”
“Humph! and you have money, I suppose, which you propose to risk on the
hazard?”
“Some! enough to start with; a small amount to you, but sufficient if I
am fortunate.”
“And if you are not?”
The young man opened his arms with an expressive gesture, “I am done
for, that is all.”
“Bertram,” his uncle exclaimed with a change of tone, “has it ever
struck you that Mr. Preston might have as strong a prejudice against
speculation as against the musical profession?”
“No, that is, pardon me but I have sometimes thought that even in the
event of success I should have to struggle against his inherited
instincts of caste and his natural dislike of all things new, even
wealth, but I never thought of the possibility of my arousing his
distrust by speculating in stocks and engaging in enterprises so nearly
in accord with his own business operations.”
“Yet if I guess aright you would run greater risk of losing the support
of his countenance by following the hazardous course you propose, than
if you continued in the line of art that now engages you.”
“Do you know—”
“I know nothing, but I fear the chances, Bertram.”
“Then I am already defeated and must give up my hopes of happiness.”
A smile thin and indefinable crossed the other’s face. “No,” said he,
“not necessarily.” And sitting down by his nephew’s side, he asked if he
had any objections to enter a bank. “In a good capacity,” he exclaimed.
“No indeed; it would be an opportunity surpassing my hopes. Do you know
of an opening?”
“Well,” said he, “under the circumstances I will let you into the secret
of my own affairs. I have always had one ambition, and that was to be at
the head of a bank. I have not said much about it, but for the last five
years I have been working to this end, and to-day you see me the
possessor of at least three-fourths of the stock of the Madison Bank. It
has been deteriorating for some time, consequently I was enabled to buy
it low, but now that I have got it I intend to build up the concern. I
am able to throw business of an important nature in its way, and I dare
prophesy that before the year is out you will see it re-established upon
a solid and influential footing.”
“I have no doubt of it, sir; you have the knack of success, any thing
that you touch is sure to go straight.”
“Unhappily yes, as far as business operations go. But no matter about
that;—” as if the other had introduced some topic incongruous to the
one they were considering—“the point is this. In two weeks time I shall
be elected President of the Bank; if you will accept the position of
assistant cashier,—the best I can offer in consideration of your total
ignorance of all details of the business,—it is open to you—”
“Uncle! how generous! I—”
“Hush! your duties will be nominal, the present cashier is fully
competent; but the leisure thus afforded will offer you abundant
opportunity to make yourself acquainted with all matters connected with
the banking system as well as with such capitalists as it would be well
for you to know. So that when the occasion comes, I can raise you to the
cashier’s place or make such other disposal of your talents as will best
insure your rapid advance.”
The young man’s eyes sparkled; with a sudden impetuous movement he
jumped to his feet and grasped his uncle’s hand. “I can never thank you
enough; you have made me your debtor for life. Now let any one ask me
who is my father, and I will say—”
“He was Edward Sylvester’s brother. But come, come, this extreme
gratitude is unnecessary. You have always been a favorite with me,
Bertram, and now that I have no child, you seem doubly near; it is my
pleasure to do what I can for you. But—” and here he surveyed him with
a wistful look, “I wish you were entering into this new line from love
of the business rather than love of a woman. I fear for you my boy. It
is an awful thing to stake one’s future upon a single chance and that
chance a woman’s faith. If she should fail you after you had compassed
your fortune, should die—well you could bear that perhaps; but if she
turned false, and married some one else, or even married you and then—”
“What?” came in silvery accents from the door, and a woman richly clad,
her trailing velvets filling the air at once with an oppressive perfume,
entered the room and paused before them in an attitude meant to be arch,
but which from the massiveness of her figure and the scornful carriage
of her head, succeeded in being simply imperious.
Mr. Sylvester rose abruptly as if unpleasantly surprised. “Ona!” he
exclaimed, hastening, however, to cover his embarassment by a courteous
acknowledgement of her presence and a careless remark concerning the
shortness of the services that had allowed her to return from church so
early. “I did not hear you come in,” he observed.
“No, I judge not,” she returned with a side glance at Mandeville. “But
the services were not short, on the contrary I thought I should never
hear the last amen. Mr. Turner’s voice is very agreeable,” she went on,
in a rambling manner all her own, “it never interferes with your
thoughts; not that I am considered as having any,” she interjected with
another glance at their silent guest, “a woman in society with a
reputation for taste in all matters connected with fashionable living,
has no thoughts of course; business men with only one idea in their
heads, that of making money, have more no doubt. Do you know, Edward,”
she went on with sudden inconsequence, which was another trait of this
amiable lady’s conversation, “that I have quite come to a conclusion in
regard to the girl Philip Longtree is going to marry; she may be pretty,
but she does not know how to dress. I wish you could have seen her
to-night; she had on mauve with old gold trimmings. Now with one of her
complexion—But I forget you haven’t seen her. Bertram, I think I shall
give a German next month, will you come? Oh, Edward!” as if the thought
had suddenly struck her, “Princess Louise _is_ the sixth child of Queen
Victoria; I asked Mr. Turner to-night. By the way, I wonder if it will
be pleasant enough to take the horses out to-morrow? Bird has been
obliging enough to get sick just in the height of the season, Mr.
Mandeville. There are a thousand things I have got to do and I hate
hired horses.” And with a petulant sigh she laid her prayer-book on the
table and with a glance in the mirror near by, began pulling off her
gloves in the slow and graceful fashion eminently in keeping with her
every movement.
It was as if an atmosphere of worldliness had settled down upon this
room sanctified a moment before by the utterances of a pure and noble
love. Mr. Sylvester looked uneasy, while Bertram searched in vain for
something to say.
“I seem to have brought a blight,” she suddenly murmured in an easy tone
somewhat at variance with the glance of half veiled suspicion which she
darted from under her heavy lids, at first one and then the other of the
two gentlemen before her. “No, I will not sit,” she added as her husband
offered her a chair. “I am tired almost to death and would retire
immediately, but I interrupted you I believe in the utterance of some
wise saying about matrimony. It is an interesting subject and I have a
notion to hear what one so well qualified to speak in regard to it—”
and here she made a slow, half lazy courtesy to her husband with a look
that might mean anything from coquetry to defiance—“has to say to a
young man like Mr. Mandeville.”
Edward Sylvester who was regarded as an autocrat among men, and who
certainly was an acknowledged leader in any company he chose to enter,
bowed his head before this anomalous glance with a gesture of something
like submission.
“One is not called upon to repeat every inadvertent phrase he may
utter,” said he. “Bertram was consulting me upon certain topics and—”
“You answered him in your own brilliant style,” she concluded. “What did
you say?” she asked in another moment in a low unmoved tone which the
final act of smoothing out her gloves on the table with hands delicate
as white rose leaves but firm as marble, did not either hasten or
retard.
“Oh if you insist,” he returned lightly, “and are willing to bear the
reflection my unfortunate remark seems to cast upon the sex, I was
merely observing to my nephew, that the man who centered all his hopes
upon a woman’s faith, was liable to disappointment. Even if he succeeded
in marrying her there were still possibilities of his repenting any
great sacrifice made in her behalf.”
“Indeed!” and for once the delicate cheek flushed deeper than its rouge.
“And why do you say this?” she inquired, dropping her coquettish manner
and flashing upon them both, the haughty and implacable woman Bertram
had always believed her to be, notwithstanding her vagaries and fashion.
“Because I have seen much of life outside my own house,” her husband
replied with undiminished courtesy; “and feel bound to warn any young
man of his probable fate, who thinks to find nothing but roses and
felicity beyond the gates of fashionable marriage.”
“Ah then, it was on general principles you were speaking,” she remarked
with a soft laugh that undulated through an atmosphere suddenly grown
too heavy for easy breathing. “I did not know; wives are so little apt
to be appreciated in this world, Mr. Mandeville, I was afraid he might
be giving you some homely advice founded upon personal experience.” And
she moved towards their guest with that strange smile of hers which some
called dangerous but which he had always regarded as oppressive.
She saw him drop his eyes, and smiled again, but in a different way.
This woman, whom no one accused of anything worse than levity, hailed
every tribute to her power, as a miser greets the glint of gold. With a
turn of her large but elegant figure that in its slow swaying reminded
you of some heavy tropical flower, hanging inert, intoxicated with its
own fragrance, she dismissed at once the topic that had engaged them,
and launched into one of her choicest streams of inconsequent talk. But
Mandeville was in no mood to listen to trivialities, and being of a
somewhat impatient nature, presently rose and excusing himself, took a
hurried leave. Not so hurried however that he did not have time to
murmur to his uncle as they walked towards the door:
“You would make comparison between the girl I worship and other women in
fashionable life. Do not I pray; she is no more like them than a star
that shines is like a rose that blooms. My fate will not be like that of
most men that we know, but better and higher.”
And his uncle standing there in the grand hall-way, with the fresh
splendors of unlimited wealth gleaming upon him from every side, looked
after the young man with a sigh and repeated, “Better and higher? God in
his merciful goodness grant it.”
VIII.
SHADOWS OF THE PAST.
“Memory, the warder of the brain.”—MACBETH.
It was long past midnight. The fire in the grate burned dimly, shedding
its lingering glow on the face of the master of the house as with bowed
head and folded hands he sat alone and brooding before its dying embers.
It was a lonesome sight. The very magnificence of the spacious apartment
with its lofty walls and glittering works of art, seemed to give an air
of remoteness to that solitary form, bending beneath the weight of its
reflections. From the exquisitely decorated ceiling to the turkish rugs
scattered over the polished floor, all was elegant and luxurious, and
what had splendors like these to do with thoughts that bent the brows
and overshadowed the lips of man? The very lights burned deprecatingly,
illuminating beauties upon which no eye gazed and for which no heart
beat. The master himself seemed to feel this, for he presently rose and
put them out, after which he seated himself as before, only if possible
with more abandon, as if with the extinguishing of the light some eye
had been shut whose gaze he had hitherto feared. And in truth my lady’s
image shone fainter from its heavy panel, and the smile which had met
with unrelenting sweetness the glare of the surrounding splendor,
softened in the mellow glimmer of the fire-light to an etherial halo
that left you at rest.
_One, two_, THREE, the small clock sounded from the mantel and yet no
stir took place in the sombre figure keeping watch beneath. What were
the thoughts which could thus detain from his comfortable bed a man
already tired with manifold cares? It would be hard to tell. The waters
that gush at the touch of the diviner’s rod are tumultuous in their flow
and rush hither and thither with little heed to the restraining force of
rule and reason. But of the pictures that rose before his eyes in those
dying embers, there were two which stood out in startling distinctness.
Let us see if we can convey the impression of them to other eyes and
hearts.
First, the form of his mother. Ah grey-bearded men weighted with the
cares of life and absorbed in the monotonous round of duties that to you
are the be all and end all of existence, to whom morning means a
jostling ride to the bank, the store or the office, and with whom night
is but the name for a worse unrest because of its unfulfilled promises
of slumber, what soul amongst you all is so callous to the holy memories
of childhood, as not to thrill with something of the old time feeling of
love and longing as the memory of that tender face with its watchful eye
and ready smiles, comes back to you from the midst of weary years! Your
mother!
But Edward Sylvester with that black line across his life cutting past
from present, what makes him think of his mother to-night; and the
cottage door upon the hillside where she used to stand with eager eyes
looking up and down the road as he came trudging home from school,
swinging his satchel and shouting at every squirrel that started across
the road or peeped from the branches of the grand old maples overhead!
And the garret-chamber under the roof, the scene of many a romp with
Elsie and Sonsie and Jack, neighbors’ children to whom the man of to-day
would be an awe and a mystery! And the little room where he slept with
Tom his own blue-eyed brother so soon to die of a wasting disease, but
full of warm blood then and all alive with boyish pranks. He could
almost hear the wild clear laugh with which the mischievous fellow
started upon its travels, the rooster whose legs he had tied a short
space apart with one of Sonsie’s faded ribbons, a laugh that became
unrestrained when the poor creature in attempting to run down hill,
rolled over and over, cutting such a figure before his late admirers,
the hens, that even Elsie smiled in the midst of her gentle entreaties.
And Jocko the crow, whom taming had made one of the boys! poor Jocko! is
it nearly thirty years since you used to stalk in majesty through the
village streets, with your neat raven coat closely buttoned across your
breast and your genteel caw, caw, and condescending nod for old
acquaintances? The day seems but as yesterday when you marred the stolen
picnic up in the woods by flying off with a flock of your fellow
black-coats, nor is it easy to realize that the circle of tow-headed
fellows who hailed with shouts your ignominious return after a day or
so’s experience of the vaunted pleasures of freedom, are now sharp
featured men without a smile for youth or a thought beyond the hard cold
dollar buried deep in their pockets.
And the church up over the hills! and the long Sunday walk at mother’s
side with the sunshine glowing on the dusty road and beating on the
river flowing far beyond! The same road, the same river of Monday and
Tuesday but how different it looked to the boy; almost like another
scene, as if Sunday clothes were on the world as well as upon his
restless little limbs. How he longed for it to be Monday though he did
not say so; and what a different day Saturday would have been if only
there was no long, sleepy Sunday to follow it.
But the mother! She did not dread that day. Her eyes used to brighten
when the bell began to ring from the old church steeple. Her eyes! how
they mingled with every picture! They seemed to fill the night. What a
sparkle they had, yet how they used to soften at his few hurried
caresses. He was always too busy for kisses; there were the snares in
the north woods to be looked after; the nest in the apple-tree to be
inquired into; the skates to be ground before the river froze over; the
nuts to be gathered and stored in that same old garret chamber under the
eaves. But now how vividly her least look comes back to the tired man,
from the glance of wistful sympathy with which she met his childish
disappointments to the flash of joy that hailed his equally childish
delights.
And another scene there is in the embers to-night; a remembrance of
later days when the mother with her love and yearning was laid low in
the grave, and manhood had learned its first lessons of passion and
ambition from the glance of younger eyes and the smile of riper lips.
Not the picture of a woman, however; that was already present beside
him, shining from its panel with an insistence that not even the putting
out of the lights could quite quench or subdue, but of a child young,
pure and beautiful, sitting by the river in the glow of a June sunshine,
gazing at the hills of his boyhood’s home with a look on her face such
as he had never before seen on that of child or woman. A simple picture
with a simple villager’s daughter for its centre, but as he mused upon
it to-night, the success and triumph of the last ten years faded from
his sight like the ashes that fell at his feet, and he found himself
questioning in vain as to what better thing he had met in all the walks
of his busy life than that young child’s innocence and faith as they
shone upon him that day from her soft uplifted eyes.
He had been sitting the whole warm noontide at the side of her whose
half gracious, half scornful, wholly indolent acceptance of his homage,
he called love, and enervated by an atmosphere he was as yet too
inexperienced to recognize as of the world, worldly, had strolled forth
to cool his fevered brow in the fresh autumn breeze that blew up from
the river. He was a gay-hearted youth in those days, heedless of
everything but the passing moment; nature meant little to him; and when
in the course of his ramble he came upon the form of a child sitting on
the edge of the river, he remembers wondering what she saw in a sweep of
empty water to interest her so deeply. Indeed he was about to inquire
when she turned and he caught a glimpse of her eyes and knew at once
without asking. Yet in those days he was anything but quick to recognize
the presence of feeling. A face was beautiful or plain to him, not
eloquent or expressive. But this child’s countenance was exceptional. It
made you forget the cotton frock she wore, it made you forget yourself.
As he gazed on it, he felt the stir of something in his breast he had
never known before, and half dreaded to hear her speak lest the charm
should fail or the influence be lost. Yet how could he pass on and not
speak. Laying his hand on her head, he asked her what she was thinking
of as she sat there all alone looking off on the river; and the wee
thing drew in her breath and surveyed him with all her soul in her great
black eyes before she replied, “I do not know, I never know.” Then
looking back she dreamily added, “It makes me want to go away, miles
away,”—and she held out her tiny arms towards the river with a longing
gesture; “and it makes me want to cry.”
And he understood or thought he did and for the first time in his life
looked upon the river that had met his gaze from childhood, with eyes
that saw its exceeding beauty. Ah it was an exquisite scene, a rare
scene, mountain melting into mountain and meadow vanishing into meadow,
till the flow of silver waters was lost in a horizon of azure mist. No
wonder that a child without snares to set or nuts to gather, should
pause a moment to gaze upon it, as even he in the days gone by would
sometimes stop on Sabbath eves to snatch a kiss from his mother’s lips.
“It is like a fairy land, is it not?” quoth the child looking up into
his face with a wistful glance. “Do you know what it is that makes me
feel so?”
He smiled and sat down by her side. Somehow he felt as if a talk with
this innocent one would restore him more than a walk on the hills. “It
is the spirit of beauty, my child, you are moved by the loveliness of
the scene; is it a new one to you?”
“No, oh no, but I always feel the same. As if something here was hungry,
don’t you know?” and she laid her little hand on her breast.
He did not know, but he smiled upon her notwithstanding, and made her
talk and talk till the gush of the sweet child spirit with its hidden
longings and but half understood aspirations, bathed his whole being in
a reviving shower, and he felt as if he had wandered into a new world
where the languors of the tropics were unknown, and passion, if there
was such, had the wings of an eagle instead of the siren’s voice and
fascination.
Her name was Paula, she said, and before leaving he found that she was a
relative of the woman he loved. This was a slight shock to him. The lily
and the cactus abloom on one stalk! How could that be? and for a moment
he felt as if the splendors of the glorious woman paled before the
lustre of the innocent child. But the feeling, if it was strong enough
to be called such, soon passed. As the days swept by bringing evenings
with light and music and whispered words beneath the vine-leaves, the
remembrance of the pure, sweet hour beside the river, gradually faded
till only a vague memory of that gentle uplifted face sweet with its
childish dimples, remained to hallow now and then a passing reverie or a
fevered dream.
But to-night its every lineament filled his soul, vying with the
memories of his mother in its vividness and power. O why had he not
learned the lesson it taught. Why had he turned his back upon the high
things of life to yield himself to a current that swept him on and on
until the power of resistance left him and—O dwell not here wild
thoughts! Pause not on the threshold of the one dark memory that blasts
the soul and sears the heart in the secret hours of night. Let the dead
past bury its dead and if one must think, let it be of the hope, which
the remembrance of that short glimpse into a pure if infantile soul has
given to his long darkened spirit.
One, two, three, FOUR; and the fire is dead and the night has grown
chill, but he heeds it not. He has asked himself if his life’s book is
quite closed to the higher joys of existence? whether money getting and
money holding is to absorb him body and soul forever; and with the
question a great yearning seizes him to look upon that sweet child
again, if haply in the gleam of her pure spirit, something of the noble
and the pure that lay beneath the crust of life might be again revealed
to his longing sight.
“She must be a great girl now,” murmured he to himself, “as old as if
not older than she whom Bertram adores so passionately, but she will
always be a child to me, a sweet pure child whose innocence is my
teacher and whose ignorance is my better wisdom. If anything will save
me—”
But here the shadow settled again; when it lifted, the morning ray lay
cool and ghostly over the hearthstone.
IX.
PAULA.