pompous-looking gentleman with the gold eye-glasses? Look quickly.”
“No.” There was an uneasiness in his tone however that struck her
painfully.
“He is a stranger in town; has not the honor of your acquaintance he
says, but from the questions he asked, I judge he has a great interest
in your affairs. He spoke of being connected with mines in Colorado. I
was sitting behind a curtain and overheard what was said.”
Mr. Sylvester turned pale and regarded her attentively. “Might I be so
bold,” he inquired after a moment, “as to ask you what that was?”
“Yes, sir, certainly, but it is even harder for me to repeat than it was
for me to hear. He inquired about your domestic concerns, your home and
your income,” she murmured blushing; “and then said, in what I thought
was a somewhat exulting tone, that in two months or so we should see you
go South for your health or—Is not that enough for me to tell you, Mr.
Sylvester?”
He gave her a short stare, opened his lips as if to speak, then turned
abruptly aside and began picking mechanically at the blossoms before
him.
“I, of course, do not know what men mean when they talk of possessing
points. But the leer and side glance which accompanies such talk, have a
universal language we all understand, and I felt that I must warn you of
that man’s malice if only because papa regards you so highly.”
He shrank as if touched on a sore place, but bowed and answered the
wistful appeal of her glance with a shadow of his usual smile, then he
turned, and looking towards the door through which the two men had
disappeared, made a movement as if he would follow. But remembering
himself, escorted her to a seat, saying as he did so:
“You are very kind, Miss Stuyvesant; please say nothing of this to
Paula.”
She bowed and a flitting smile crossed her upturned countenance. “I am
not much of a gossip, Mr. Sylvester, or I should have been tempted to
have carried my information to my father instead of to you.”
He understood the implied promise in this remark and gave the hand on
his arm a quick pressure, before relinquishing her to the care of the
pale-complexioned youth who by this time had returned to her side.
In another moment Paula came up on the arm of a black-whiskered
gentleman all shirt front and eye-glasses. “O Cicely,” she cried, (she
called Miss Stuyvesant, Cicely now) “is it not a delightful evening?”
“Are you enjoying yourself so much?” inquired that somewhat agitated
little lady, with a glance at the countenance of her friend’s attendant.
“I fear it would scarcely seem consistent in me now to say no,” returned
the radiant girl, with a laughing glance towards the same gentleman.
But when they were alone, the gentleman having departed on some of the
innumerable errands with which ladies seem to delight in afflicting
their attendant cavaliers at balls or receptions, she atoned for that
glance by remarking,
“I do not find the average partner that falls to one’s lot in such
receptions all that fancy paints.” And then finding she had repeated a
phrase of Mr. Ensign’s, blushed, though no one stood near her but
Cicely.
“Fancy’s brush would need to be dipped in but two colors to present to
our eye the mass of them,” was Cicely’s laughing reply. “A streak of
black for the coat, and a daub of white for the shirt front. _Voila
tout._”
“With perhaps a dash of red in some cases,” murmured a voice over their
shoulders.
They turned with hurried blushes. “Ah, Mr. Ensign,” quoth Cicely in
unabashed gaiety, “we reserve red for the exceptions. We did not intend
to include our acknowledged friends in our somewhat sweeping assertion.”
“Ah, I see, the black streak and the white daub are a symbol of,
‘Er—Miss Stuyvesant—very warm this evening! Have an ice, do. _I_
always have an ice after dancing; so refreshing, you know.’”
The manner in which he imitated the usual languid drawl of certain of
the young scapegraces heretofore mentioned, was irresistible. Paula
forgot her confusion in her mirth.
“You are blessed with a capacity for playing both rôles, I perceive,”
cried Cicely with unusual abandon. “Well, it is convenient, there is
nothing like scope.”
“Unless it is hope,” whispered Mr. Ensign so low that only Paula could
hear.
“But I warn you,” continued Cicely, with a sweet soft laugh that seemed
to carry her heart far out into the passing throng, “that we have no
fondness for the model beau of the period. A dish of milk makes a very
good supper but it looks decidedly pale on the dinner table.”
“Yes,” said Paula, eying the various young men that filed up and down
before them, some pale, some dark, some handsome, some plain, but all
smiling and dapper, if not debonair, “some men could be endured if only
they were not _men_.”
Mr. Ensign gave her a quick look, and while he laughed at the paradox,
straightened himself like one who could be a man if the occasion called.
She saw the action and blushed.
But their conversation was soon interrupted. Mr. Sylvester was seen
returning from the supper-room, looking decidedly anxious, and while
Paula was ignorant of what had transpired to annoy him, her ready spirit
caught the alarm, and she was about to rush up to him and address him,
when one of the waiters approached, and murmuring a few words she did
not hear, handed him a card upon which she descried nothing but a simple
circle. Instantly a change crossed his already agitated countenance, and
advancing to the ladies with a word or two that while seemingly
cheerful, struck Paula as somewhat forced, excused himself with the
information that a business friend had been so inconsiderate as to
importune him for an interview in the hall. And with just a nod towards
Mr. Ensign, who had drawn back at his advance, left them and disappeared
in the crowd about the door.
“I do not like these interruptions from business friends in a time of
pleasure,” cried Paula, looking after him with anxious eyes. “Did you
notice how agitated he seemed, Cicely? And half an hour ago he was the
picture of calm enjoyment.”
“Business is beyond our comprehension, Paula,” returned her friend
evasively. “It is something like a neuralgic twinge, it takes a man when
he least expects it. Have you told Mr. Ensign of our adventure?”
“No, but I informed Mr. Sylvester, and he said such good, true words to
me, Cicely. I can never forget them.”
“And I told papa; but he only frowned and made some observation about
the degeneracy of the times, and the number of scamps thrown to the top
by the modern methods of acquiring instantaneous fortunes.”
“Your papa is sometimes hard, is he not, Cicely?”
With a flush Miss Stuyvesant allowed her eye to rest for a moment on the
crowd shifting before her. “He was dug from a quarry of granite, Paula.
He is both hard and substantial; capable of being hewn but not of being
moulded. Of such stuff are formed monuments of enduring beauty and
solidity. You must do papa justice.”
“I do, but I sometimes have a feeling as if the granite column would
fall and crush me, Cicely.”
“You, Paula?”
Before she could again reply, Mr. Sylvester returned. His face was still
pale, but it had acquired an expression of rigidity even more alarming
to Paula than its previous aspect of forced merriment. Lifting her by
the hand, he drew her apart.
“I shall have to leave you somewhat abruptly,” said he. “An important
matter demands my instant attention. Bertram is somewhere here, and will
see that you and Ona arrive home in safety. You won’t allow your
enjoyment to be clouded by my hasty departure, will you?”
“Not if it will make you anxious. But I would rather go home with you
now. I am sure Cousin Ona would be willing.”
“But I am not going home at present,” said he; and she ventured upon no
further remonstrance.
But her enjoyment was clouded; the sight of suffering or anxiety on that
face was more than she could bear; and ere long she said good-night to
Cicely, and accepting the arm of Mr. Ensign, who was never very far from
her side, proceeded to search for her cousin.
She found her standing in the midst of an admiring throng to whom her
diamonds, if not her smiles, were an object of undoubted interest. She
was in the full tide of one of her longest and most widely rambling
speeches, and to Paula, with that stir of anxiety at her breast, was an
image of self-satisfied complacency from which she was fain to drop her
eyes.
“Mrs. Sylvester shares the honors with her husband,” remarked Mr. Ensign
as they drew near.
“But not the trials, or the pain, or the care?” was Paula’s inward
comment.
Mrs. Sylvester was not easily wooed away from a circle in which she
found herself creating such an impression, but at length she yielded to
Paula’s importunities, and consented to accept young Mr. Sylvester’s
attendance to their home. The next thing was to find Bertram. Mr. Ensign
engaged to do this. Leaving Paula with her cousin, who may or may not
have been pleased at this sudden addition to her circle, he sought for
the young man who as Mr. Mandeville was not unknown to any of the
fashionable men and women of the day. It was no easy task, nor did he
find him readily, but at last he came upon him leaning out of a window
and gazing at a white lily which he held in his hand. Without preamble,
Mr. Ensign made known his errand, and Bertram at once prepared to
accompany him back to the ladies.
“By Jove! I didn’t know the fellow was so handsome!” thought the former,
and frowned he hardly knew why. Bertram was not handsome, but then
Clarence Ensign was plain, which Bertram certainly was not.
It was to Mr. Ensign’s face however that Paula’s eyes turned as the two
came up, and he with the ready vivacity of his natural temperament
observed it, and took courage.
“I shall soon wish to measure that loop-hole of which I have spoken,”
said he.
And the soft look in her large dark eye as she responded, “It is always
open to friends,” filled up the measure of his cup of happiness; a cup
which unlike hers, had not been darkened that day by the falling of
earth’s most dismal shadows.
XVIII.
IN THE NIGHT WATCHES.
“Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?”
—HEN. IV.
“What doth gravity out of his bed at midnight?”
—HEN. IV.
“It has been the most delightful evening I have ever passed,” said Mrs.
Sylvester, as she threw aside her rich white mantle in her ample
boudoir. “Sarah, two loops on that dolman to-morrow; do you hear? I
thought my arms would freeze. Such an elegant gentleman as the Count de
Frassac is! He absolutely went wild over you, Paula, but not
understanding a word of English—O there, if that horrid little wretch
didn’t drop his spoon on my dress after all! He swore it never touched a
thread of it, but just look at that spot, right in the middle of a
pleating too. Paula, your opinion in regard to the lavendar was correct.
I heard Mrs. Forsyth Jones whisper behind my back that lavendar always
made blondes look _fade_. Of course I needed no further evidence to
convince me that I had entirely succeeded in eclipsing her pale-faced
daughter. Her daughter!” and the lazy gurgle echoed softly through the
room, “As if every white-haired girl in the city considered herself
entitled to be called a blonde!” She stopped to listen, examining
herself in the glass near by. “I thought I heard Edward. It was very
provoking in him to leave us in the cavalier manner in which he did. I
was just going to introduce him to the count, not that he would have
esteemed it much of an honor, Edward I mean, but when one has a
good-looking husband—Sarah, that curtain over there hangs crooked, pull
it straight this instant. Did you try the oysters, Paula? They were
perfection, I shall have to dismiss Lorenzo without ceremony and procure
me a cook that can make an oyster fricassee. By the way did you
notice—” and so on and on for five minutes additional. Presently she
burst forth with—“I do believe I know what it is to be thoroughly
satisfied at last. The consideration which one receives as the wife of
the president of the Madison bank is certainly very gratifying. If I had
known I would feel such a change in the social atmosphere, I would have
advocated Edward’s dropping speculation long ago. Beauty and wealth may
help one up the social ladder, but only a settled position such as he
has now obtained, can carry you safely over the top. I feel at last as
if we had reached the pinnacle of my ambition and had seen the ladder by
which we mounted thrown down behind us. If I get my costume from Worth
in time, I shall give a German next month.”
Paula from her stand at the door—for some minutes she had been
endeavoring to escape to her room—surveyed her cousin in wonder. She
had never seen her look as she did at that moment. Any one who speaks
from the heart, acquires a certain eloquence, and Ona for once was
speaking from her heart. The unwonted emotion made her cheeks burn, and
even her diamonds, ten thousand dollars worth as we have heard declared,
were less brilliant than her eyes. Paula left her station on the
door-sill and glided rapidly back to her side. “O Ona,” said she, “if
you would only look like that when—” she paused, what right had she to
venture upon giving lessons to her benefactor.
“When what?” inquired the other, subsiding at once into her naturally
languid manner. Then with a total forgetfulness of the momentary
curiosity that had prompted the question, held out her head to the
attendant Sarah, with a command to be relieved of her ornaments. Paula
sighed and hastened to her room. She could not bring herself to mention
her anxiety in regard to the still absent master of the house, to this
lazily-smiling thoroughly satisfied woman.
But none the less did she herself sit up in the moonlight, listening
with bended head for the sound of his step on the walk beneath. She
could not sleep while he was absent; and yet the thoughts that disturbed
her and kept her from her virgin pillow could not have been entirely for
him, or why those wandering smiles that ever and anon passed flitting
over her cheek, awakening the dimples that slumbered there, until she
looked more like a dreamy picture of delight than a wakeful vision of
apprehension. Not entirely for him—yet when somewhere towards three
o’clock, she heard the long delayed step upon the stoop, she started up
with eager eyes and a nervous gesture that sufficiently betrayed how
intense was her interest in her benefactor’s welfare and happiness. “If
he goes to Ona’s room it is all right,” thought she; “but if he keeps on
upstairs, I shall know that something is wrong and that he needs a
comforter.”
He did not stop at Ona’s room; and struck with alarm, Paula opened wide
her door and was about to step out to meet him, when she caught a sight
of his face, and started back. Here was no anxiety, that she could
palliate! The very fact that he did not observe her slight form standing
before him in the brilliant moonlight, proved that a woman’s look or
touch was not what he was in search of; and shrinking sensitively to one
side, she sat down on the edge of her dainty bed, dropping her cheek
into her hand with a weary troubled gesture from which all the delight
had fled and only the apprehension remained. Suddenly she started
alertly up; he was coming down again, this time with a gliding muffled
tread. Sliding past her door, he descended to the floor below. She could
hear the one weak stair in the heavy staircase creak, and—What! he has
passed Ona’s room, passed the bronze figure of Luxury on the platform
beneath, is on his way to the front door, has opened it, shut it softly
behind him and gone out again into the blank midnight streets. What did
it mean? For a moment she thought she would run down and awaken Ona, but
an involuntary remembrance of how those lazy eyes would open, stare
peevishly and then shut again, stopped her on the threshold of her door;
and sitting down again upon the side of her bed, she waited, this time
with opened eyes eagerly staring before her, and quivering form that
started at each and every sound that disturbed the silence of the great
echoing house. At six o’clock she again rose; he had just re-entered and
this time he stopped at Ona’s room.
XIX.
A DAY AT THE BANK.
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.”
—HAMLET.
There are days when the whole world seems to smile upon one without
stint or reservation. Bertram Sylvester wending his way to the bank on
the morning following the reception, was a cheerful sight to behold.
Youth, health, hope spake in every lineament of his face and brightened
every glance of his wide-awake eye. His new life was pleasant to him.
Bach, Beethoven and Chopin were scarcely regretted now by the ambitious
assistant cashier of the Madison Bank, with a friend in each of its
directors and a something more than that in the popular president
himself. Besides he had developed a talent for the business and was in
the confidence of the cashier, a somewhat sickly man who more than once
had found himself compelled to rely upon the rapidly maturing judgment
of his young associate, in matters oftentimes of the utmost importance.
The manner in which Bertram found himself able to respond to these
various calls, convinced him that he had been correct in his opinion of
his own nature, when he informed his uncle that music was his pleasure
rather than his necessity.
Entering the building by way of Pearl Street, he was about to open the
door leading into the bank proper, when he heard a little piping voice
at his side, and turning, confronted the janitor’s baby daughter. She
was a sweet and interesting child, and with his usual good nature
Bertram at once stopped to give her a kiss.
“I likes you,” prattled she as he put her down again after lifting her
up high over his head, “but I likes de oder one best.”
“I hope the other one duly appreciates your preference,” laughed he, and
was again on the point of entering the bank when he felt or thought he
felt a hand laid on his arm. It was the janitor himself this time, a
worthy man, greatly trusted in the bank, but possessed of such an
extraordinary peculiarity in the way of a pair of protruding eyes, that
his appearance was always attended by a shock.
“Well, Hopgood, what is it?” cried Bertram, in his cheery tone.
The janitor drew back and mercifully shifted his gaze from the young
man’s face. “Nothing sir; did I stop you? Beg pardon,” he continued,
half stammering, “I’m dreadful awkward sometimes.” And with a nod he
sidled off towards his little one whom he confusedly took up in his
arms.
Now Bertram was sure the man had touched him and that, too, with a very
eager hand, but being late that morning and consequently in somewhat of
a hurry, he did not stop to pursue the matter. Hastening into the Bank,
he assisted the teller in opening the safe, that being his especial
duty, and was taking out such papers as he himself required, when he was
surprised to catch another sight of those same extraordinary organs of
which I have just spoken, peering upon him from the door by which he had
previously entered. They vanished as soon as he encountered them, but
more than once during the morning he perceived them looking upon him
from various quarters of the bank, till he felt himself growing
seriously annoyed, and sending for the man, asked him what he meant by
this unusual surveillance. The janitor seemed troubled, flushed
painfully and fixed his eyes in manifest anxiety on the cashier who,
engaged in some search of his own, was just handling over the tin boxes
that lined the vault before them. Not till he had seen him shove them
back into their place and leave the spot, did he venture upon his reply.
“I’m sure, sir, I’m very sorry if I have annoyed you, but do you think
Mr. Sylvester will be down at the usual hour?”
“I know of no reason why he should not,” returned Bertram.
“I have something to say to him when he comes in,” stammered the man,
evidently taken aback by Bertram’s look of surprise. “Will you be kind
enough to ring the bell the first moment he seems to be at leisure? I
don’t know as it is a matter of any importance but—” He stopped,
evidently putting a curb upon himself. “Can I rely on you, sir?”
“Yes, certainly, I will tell my uncle when he comes in that you want to
speak to him. He will doubtless send for you at once.”
The man looked embarrassed. “Excuse me, sir, but that’s just what I’d
rather you wouldn’t do. Mr. Sylvester is always very busy and he might
think I wished to annoy him about some matters of my own, sir, as indeed
I have not been above doing at odd times. If you would ring when he
comes in, that is all I ask.”
Bertram thought this a strange request, but seeing the man so anxious,
gave the required promise, and the janitor hurried off. “Curious!”
muttered Bertram. “Can anything be wrong?” And he glanced about him with
some curiosity as he went to his desk. But every one was at his post as
usual and the countenances of all were equally undisturbed.
It was a busy morning and in the rush of various matters Bertram forgot
the entire occurrence. But it was presently recalled to him by hearing
some one remark, “Mr. Sylvester is late to-day,” and looking up from
some papers he was considering, he found it was a full hour after the
time at which his uncle was in the habit of appearing. Just then he
caught still another sight of the protruding eyes of Hopgood staring in
upon him from the half-opened door at the end of the bank.
“The fellow’s getting impatient,” thought he, and experienced a vague
feeling of uneasiness.
Another half hour passed. “What can have detained Mr. Sylvester?” cried
Mr. Wheelock the cashier, hastily approaching Bertram.
“There is to be an important meeting of the Directors to-day, and some
of the gentlemen are already coming in. Mr. Sylvester is not accustomed
to keep us waiting.”
“I don’t know, I am sure,” returned Bertram, remembering with an
accession of uneasiness, the abruptness with which his uncle had left
the entertainment the evening before.
“Shall I telegraph to the house?”
“No, that is not necessary. Besides Folger says he passed him on
Broadway this morning.”
“Going down street with a valise in his hand,” that gentlemen quietly
put in. Folger was the teller. “He was looking very pale and didn’t see
me when I nodded.”
“What time was that?” asked Bertram.
“About twelve; when I went out to lunch.”
A quick gasp sounded at their side, followed by a hurried cough.
Turning, Bertram encountered for the fifth time the eyes of Hopgood. He
had entered unperceived by the small door that separated the inner
inclosure from the outer, and was now standing very close to them, eying
with side-long looks the safe at their back, the faces of the gentleman
speaking, yes, and even the countenances of the clerks, as they bent
busily over their books.
“Did you ring, sir?” asked he, catching Bertram’s look of displeasure.
“No.”
The man seemed to feel the rebuke implied in this short response, and
ambled softly away. But in another moment he was stopped by Bertram.
“What is the matter with you to-day, Hopgood? Can you have anything of
real importance on your mind; anything connected with my uncle?”
The janitor started, and looked almost frightened. “Be careful what you
say,” whispered he; then with a keen look at Mr. Wheelock just then on
the point of entering the directors’ room, he was turning to escape by
the little door just mentioned, when it opened and Mr. Stuyvesant came
in. With a look almost of terror the janitor recoiled, throwing himself
as it were between the latter and the door of the safe; but recovering
himself, surveyed the keen quiet visage of the veteran banker with a
rolling of his great eyes absolutely painful to behold. Mr. Stuyvesant,
who was somewhat absorbed in thought, did not appear to notice the
agitation he had caused, and with just a hurried nod followed Mr.
Wheelock into the Directors’ room. Instantly the janitor drew himself up
with an air of relief, and shortly glancing at the clock which lacked a
few minutes yet of the time fixed for the meeting, slided hastily away
from Bertram’s detaining hand, and disappeared in the crowd without. In
another moment Bertram saw him standing at the outer door, looking
anxiously up and down the street.
“Something _is_ wrong,” murmured Bertram. “What?” And for a moment he
felt half tempted to return Mr. Stuyvesant’s friendly bow with a few
words expressive of his uneasiness, but the emphasis with which Hopgood
had murmured the words, “Be careful what you say,” unconsciously
deterred him, and concealing his nervousness as best he might, he
entered the Directors’ office.
It was now time for the meeting to open, and the gentlemen were all
seated around the low green baize table that occupied the centre of the
room. Impatience was written on all their countenances. Mr. Stuyvesant
especially was looking at the heavy gold watch in his hand, with a frown
on his deeply wrinkled brow that did not add to its expression of
benevolence. The empty seat at the head of the table stared upon Bertram
uncompromisingly.
“My wife gives a reception to-day,” ventured one gentleman to his
neighbor.
“And I have an engagement at five that won’t bear postponement.”
“Sylvester has always been on hand before.”
“We can’t proceed without him,” was the reply.
Mr. Wheelock looked thoughtful.
With a nod of his head towards such gentlemen as met his eye, Bertram
hastened to a little cupboard devoted to the use of himself and uncle.
Opening it, he looked within, took down a coat he saw hanging before
him, and unconsciously uttered an exclamation. It was a dress-coat such
as had been worn by Mr. Sylvester the evening before.
“What does this mean! My uncle has been here!” were the words that
sprang to his lips; but he subdued his impulse to speak, and hastily
hanging up the coat, relocked the door. Proceeding at once to the outer
room, he asked two or three of the clerks if they were sure Mr.
Sylvester had not been in during the day. But they all returned an
unequivocal “no,” and that too with a certain stare of surprise that at
once convinced him he was betraying his agitation too plainly.
“I will telegraph whether Wheelock considers it necessary or not,”
thought he, and was moving to summon a messenger boy when he caught
sight of Hopgood slowly making his way in from the street. He was very
pale and walked with his eyes fixed on the ground, ominously shaking his
great head in a way that bespoke an inner struggle of no ordinary
nature. Bertram at once sauntered out to meet him.
“Hopgood,” said he, “your evident anxiety is infectious. What has
happened to make my uncle’s detention a matter of such apparent import?
If you do not wish to confide in me, his nephew almost his son, speak to
Mr. Wheelock or to one of the directors, but don’t keep anything to
yourself which concerns his welfare or—What are you looking at?”
The man was gazing as if fascinated at the keys in Bertram’s hand.
“Nothing sir, nothing. You must not detain me; I have nothing to say. I
will wait ten minutes,” he muttered to himself, glancing again at the
clock. Suddenly he saw the various directors come filing out of the
inner room, and darted for the second time from Bertram’s detaining
hand.
“I hope nothing has happened to Mr. Sylvester,” exclaimed one gentleman
to another as they filed by.
“If he were given to a loose ends’ sort of business it would be another
thing.”
“He looked exceedingly well at the reception last night,” exclaimed
another; “but in these days—”
Suddenly there was a hush. A telegraph boy had just entered the door and
was asking for Mr. Bertram Sylvester.
“Here I am,” said Bertram, hastily taking the envelope presented him.
Slightly turning his back, he opened it. Instantly his face grew white
as chalk.
“Gentlemen,” said he, “you will have to excuse my uncle to-day; a great
misfortune has occurred to him.” Then with a slow and horror-stricken
movement, he looked about him and exclaimed, “_Mrs. Sylvester is dead_.”
A confused murmur at once arose, followed by a hurried rush; but of all
the faces that flocked out of the bank, none wore such a look of blank
and helpless astonishment as that of Hopgood the janitor, as with
bulging eyes and nervously working hands, he slowly wended his way to
the foot of the stairs and there sat down gazing into vacancy.
XX.
THE DREGS IN THE CUP.
“O eloquent, just and mightie death! whom none could advise,
thou hast persuaded; what none hath dared, thou hast done; and
whom all the world hath flattered, thou only hast cast out of
the world and despised: thou hast drawn together all the farre
stretched greatnesses; all the pride, crueltie and ambition of
man and covered it all over with these two narrow words, _Hic
jacet_.”
—SIR WALTER RALEIGH.
Bertram’s hurried ring at his uncle’s door was answered by Samuel the
butler.
“What is this I hear?” cried the young man, entering with considerable
agitation, “Mrs. Sylvester dead?”
“Yes sir,” returned the old and trusty servant, with something like a
sob in his voice. “She went out riding this morning behind a pair of
borrowed horses—and being unused to Michael’s way of driving, they ran
away and she was thrown from the carriage and instantly killed.”
“And Miss Fairchild?”
“She didn’t go with her. Mrs. Sylvester was alone.”
“Horrible, horrible! Where is my uncle, can I see him?”
“I don’t know, sir,” the man returned with a strange look of anxiety.
“Mr. Sylvester is feeling very bad, sir. He has shut himself up in his
room and none of his servants dare disturb him, sir.”
“I should, however, like him to know I am here. In what room shall I
find him?”
“In the little one, sir, at the top of the house. It has a curious lock
on the door; you will know it by that.”
“Very well. Please be in the hall when I come down; I may want to give
you some orders.”
The old servant bowed and Bertram hastened with hushed steps to ascend
the stairs. At the first platform he paused. What is there in a house of
death, of sudden death especially, that draws a veil of spectral
unreality over each familiar object! Behind that door now inexorably
closed before him, lay without doubt the shrouded form of her who but a
few short hours before, had dazzled the eyes of men and made envious the
hearts of women with her imposing beauty! No such quiet then reigned
over the spot filled by her presence. As the vision of a dream returns,
he saw her again in all her splendor. Never a brow in all the great hall
shone more brightly beneath its sparkling diamonds; never a lip in the
whole vast throng curled with more self-complacent pride, or melted into
a more alluring smile, than that of her who now lay here, a marble image
beneath the eye of day. It was as if a flowery field had split beneath
the dancing foot of some laughing siren. One moment your gaze is upon
the swaying voluptuous form, the half-shut beguiling eye, the white
out-reaching arms upon whose satin surface a thousand loves seem
perching; the next you stare horror-stricken upon the closing jaws of an
awful pit, with the flash of something bright in your eyes, and the
sense of a hideous noiseless rush in which earth and heaven appear to
join, sink and be swallowed! Bertram felt his heart grow sick. Moving
on, he passed the bronze image of Luxury lying half asleep on its bed of
crumpled roses. Hideous mockery! What has luxury to do with death? She
who was luxury itself has vanished from these halls. Shall the mute
bronze go on smiling over its wine cup while she who was its prototype
is carried by without a smile on the lips once so vermeil with pride and
tropical languors!
Arrived at the top of the house, Bertram knocked at the door with the
strange lock, and uttering his own name, asked if there was anything he
could do here or elsewhere to show his sympathy and desire to be of use
in this great and sudden bereavement. There was no immediate reply and
he began to fear he would be obliged to retire without seeing his uncle,
when the door was slowly opened and Mr. Sylvester came out. Instantly
Bertram understood the anxiety of the servant. Not only did Mr.
Sylvester’s countenance exhibit the usual traces of grief and horror
incident to a sudden and awful calamity, but there were visible upon it
the tokens of another and still more unfathomable emotion, a wild and
paralyzed look that altered the very contour of his features, and made
his face almost like that of a stranger.
“Uncle, what is it?” sprang involuntarily to his lips. But Mr. Sylvester
betraying by a sudden backward movement an instinctive desire to escape
scrutiny, he bethought himself, and with hasty utterance offered some
words of consolation that sounded strangely hollow and superficial in
that dim and silent corridor. “Is there nothing I can do for you?” he
finally asked.
“Everything is being done,” exclaimed his uncle in a strained and
altered voice; “Robert is here.” And a silence fell over the hall, that
Bertram dared not break.
“I have help for everything but—” He did not say what, it seemed as if
something rose up in his throat that choked him.
“Bertram,” said he at last in a more natural tone, “come with me.”
He led him into an adjoining room and shut the door. It was a room from
which the sunshine had not been excluded and it seemed as if they could
both breathe more easily.
“Sit down,” said his uncle, pointing to a chair. The young man did so,
but Mr. Sylvester remained standing. Then without preamble, “Have you
seen her?”
There was no grief in the question, only a quiet respect. Death clothes
the most volatile with a garment of awe. Bertram slowly shook his head.
“No,” said he, “I came at once up stairs.”
“There is no mark on her white body, save the least little discolored
dent here,” continued his uncle, pointing calmly to his temple. “She had
one moment of fear while the horses ran, and then—” He gave a quick
shudder and advancing towards Bertram, laid his hand on his nephew’s
shoulder in such a way as to prevent him from turning his head.
“Bertram,” said he, “I have no son. If I were to call upon you to
perform a son’s work for me; to obey and ask no questions, would you
comply?”
“Can you ask?” sprang from the young man’s lips; “you know that you have
only to command for me to be proud to obey. Anything you can require
will find me ready.”
The hand on his shoulder weighed heavier. “It seems a strange time to
talk about business, Bertram, but necessity knows no law. There is a
matter in which you can afford me great assistance if you will undertake
to do immediately what I ask.”
“Can you doubt—”
“Hush, it is this. On this paper you will find a name; below it a number
of addresses. They are all of places down town and some of them not very
reputable I fear. What I desire is for you to seek out the man whose
name you here see, going to these very places after him, beginning with
the first, and continuing down the list until you find him. When you
come upon him, he will ask you for a card. Give him one on which you
will scrawl before his eyes, a circle, so. It is a token which he should
instantly understand. If he does, address him with freedom and tell him
that your employer—you need make use of no names—re-demands the papers
made over to him this morning. If he manifests surprise or is seen to
hesitate, tell him your orders are imperative. If he declares ruin will
follow, inform him that you are not to be frightened by words; that your
employer is as fully aware of the position of affairs as he. Whatever he
says, bring the papers.”
Bertram nodded his head and endeavored to rise, but his uncle’s hand
rested upon him too heavily.
“He is a small man; you need have no dread of him physically. The sooner
you find him and acquit yourself of your task, the better I shall be
pleased.” And then the hand lifted.
On his way down stairs Bertram encountered Paula. She was standing in
the hall and accosted him with a very trembling tone in her voice. All
her questions were in regard to Mr. Sylvester.
“Have you seen him?” she asked. “Does he speak—say anything? No one has
heard him utter a word since he came in from down town and saw her lying
there.”
“Yes, certainly; he spoke to me; he has been giving me some commissions
to perform. I am on my way now to attend to them.”
She drew a deep breath. “O!” she cried, “would that he had a son, a
daughter, a child, some one!”
This exclamation following what had taken place above struck Bertram
forcibly. “He has a son in me, Paula. Love as well as duty binds me to
him. All that a child could do will I perform with pleasure. You can
trust me for that.”
She threw him a glance of searching inquiry. “His need is greater than
it seems,” whispered she. “He was deeply troubled before this terrible
accident occurred. I am afraid the arrow is poisoned that has made this
dreadful wound. I cannot explain myself,” she went on hurriedly, “but if
you indeed regard him as a father, be ready with any comfort, any help,
that affection can bestow, or his necessities require. Let me feel that
he has near him some stay that will not yield to pressure.”
There was so much passion in this appeal that Bertram involuntarily
bowed his head. “He has two friends,” said he, “and here is my hand that
I will never forsake him.”
“I do not need to offer mine,” she returned, “He is great and good
enough to do without my assistance.” But nevertheless she gave her hand
to Bertram and with a glow of her lip and eye that made her beauty,
supreme at all times, something almost supernatural in its character.
“I dared not tell him,” she whispered to herself as the front door
closed with the dull slow thud proper to a house of mourning. “I dare
not tell any one, but—”
What lay beyond that but?
When Mr. Sylvester came in at six o’clock in the morning, Paula had
risen from the bed on which she had been sitting, but not to make
preparation for rest, for she could not rest. The vague shadow of some
surrounding evil or threatened catastrophe was upon her, and though she
forced herself to change her dress for a warmer and more suitable one,
she did not otherwise break her vigil, though the necessity for it
seemed to be at an end. It was a midwinter morning and the sun had not
yet risen, so being chilly as well as restless, she began to pace the
floor, stopping now and then to glance out of the window, in the hopes
of detecting some signs of awakening day in the blank and solemn east.
Suddenly as she was thus consulting the horizon, a light flashed up from
below, and looking down upon the face of the extension that ran along at
right angles to her window, she perceived that the shades were up in
Mrs. Sylvester’s boudoir. They had doubtless been left so the evening
before, and Mr. Sylvester upon turning up the gas had failed to observe
the fact. Instantly she felt her heart stand still, for the house being
wide and the extension narrow, all that went on in that boudoir, or at
least in that portion of it which Mr. Sylvester at present occupied, was
easily observable from the window at which she stood; and that something
was going on of a serious and important nature, was sufficiently evident
from the expression of Mr. Sylvester’s countenance. He was standing with
his face bent towards some one seated out of sight, his wife
undoubtedly, though what could have called her from her dreams—and was
busily engaged in talking. The subject whatever it was, absorbed him
completely. If Paula had allowed herself the thought, she would have
described him as pleading and that with no ordinary vehemence. But
suddenly while she gazed half fascinated and but little realizing what
she was doing, he started back and a fierce change swept over his face,
a certain incredulity, that presently gave way to a glance of horror and
repugnance, which the quick action of his out-thrown palm sufficiently
emphasized. He was pushing something from him, but what? A suggestion or
a remembrance? It was impossible to determine.
The countenance of Mrs. Sylvester who that moment appeared in sight
sailing across the floor in her azure wrapper, offered but little
assistance in the way of explanation. Immovable under most
circumstances, it was simply at this juncture a trifle more calm and
cold than usual, presenting to Paula’s mind the thought of a white and
icy barrier, against which the most glowing of arrows must fall chilled
and powerless.
“O for a woman’s soul to inform that breast if but for a moment!” cried
Paula, lost in the passion of this scene, while so little understanding
its import. When as if in mockery to this invocation, the haughty form
upon which she was gazing started rigidly erect, while the lip acquired
a scorn and the eye a menace that betrayed the serpent ever in hiding
under this white rose.
Paula could look no longer. This last revelation had awakened her to the
fact that she was gazing upon a scene sacred to the husband and wife
engaged in it. With a sense of shame she rushed to the bed and threw
herself upon it, but the vision of what she had beheld would not leave
her so easily. Like letters of fire upon a black ground, the panorama of
looks and gestures to which she had just been witness, floated before
her mind’s eye, awakening a train of thought so intense that she did not
know which was worse, to be there in the awful dawn dreaming over this
episode of the night, or to rise and face again the reality. The
fascination which all forbidden sights insensibly exert over the minds
of the best of us, finally prevailed, and she slowly crept to the window
to catch a parting glimpse of Mr. Sylvester’s tall form hurrying blindly
from the boudoir followed by his wife’s cold glance. The next minute the
exposed condition of the room seemed to catch that lady’s attention, and
with an anxious look into the dull gray morn, Mrs. Sylvester drew down
the shades, and the episode was over.
Or so Paula thought; but when she was returning up stairs after her
solitary breakfast—Mrs. Sylvester was too tired and Mr. Sylvester too
much engaged to eat, as the attentive Samuel informed her—the door of
Ona’s room swung ajar, and she distinctly heard her give utterance to
the following exclamation:
“What! give up this elegant home, my horses and carriage, the friends I
have had such difficulty in obtaining, and the position which I was born
to adorn? I had rather die!” And Paula feeling as if she had received
the key to the enigma of the last night’s unaccountable manifestations,
was about to rush away to her own apartment, when the door swayed open
again and she heard his voice respond with hard and bitter emphasis,
“And it might be better that you should. But since you will probably
live, let it be according to your mind. I have not the courage—”
There the door swung to.
An hour from that Mr. Sylvester left the house with a small valise in
his hand, and Mrs. Sylvester dressed in her showiest costume, entered
her carriage for an early shopping excursion.
And so when Paula whispered to herself, “I did not dare to tell him; I
did not dare to tell any one, but—” she thought of those terrible
words, “Die? It might be better, perhaps, that you should!” and then
remembered the ghastly look of immeasurable horror with which a few
hours later, he staggered away from that awful burden, whose rigid lines
would never again melt into mocking curves, and to whom the morning’s
wide soaring hopes, high reaching ambitions and boundless luxuries were
now no more than the shadows of a vanished world; life, love, longing,
with all their demands, having dwindled to a noisome rest between four
close planks, with darkness for its present portion and beyond—what?
XXI.
DEPARTURE.
“Forever and forever, farewell Cassius.
If we do meet again, why we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made.”
—JULIUS CÆSAR.
Samuel had received his orders to admit Mr. Bertram Sylvester to his
uncle’s room, at whatever hour of the day or night he chose to make his
appearance. But evening wore away and finally the night, before his
well-known face was seen at the door. Proceeding at once to the
apartment occupied by Mr. Sylvester, he anxiously knocked. The door was
opened immediately.
“Ah, Bertram, I have been expecting you all night.” And from the haggard
appearance of both men, it was evident that neither of them had slept.
“I have sat down but twice since I left you, and then only in
conveyances. I have been obliged to go to Brooklyn, to—”
“But you have found him?”
“Yes, I found him.”
His uncle glanced inquiringly at his hands; they were empty.
“I shall have to sit down,” said Bertram; his brow was very gloomy, his
words came hesitatingly. “I had rather have knocked my head against the
wall, than have disappointed you,” he murmured after a moment’s pause.
“But when I did find him, it was too late.”
“Too late!” The tone in which this simple phrase was uttered was
indescribable. Bertram slowly nodded his head.
“He had already disposed of all the papers, and favorably,” he said.
“But—”
“And not only that,” pursued Bertram. “He had issued orders by
telegraph, that it was impossible to countermand. It was at the Forty
Second Street depôt I found him at last. He was just on the point of
starting for the west.”
“And has he gone?”
“Yes sir.”
Mr. Sylvester walked slowly to the window. It was raining drearily
without, but he did not notice the falling drops or raise his eyes to
the leaden skies.
“Did you meet any one?” he asked at length. “Any one that you know, I
mean, or who knows you?”
“No one but Mr. Stuyvesant.”
“Mr. Stuyvesant!”
“Yes sir,” returned Bertram, dropping his eyes before his uncle’s
astonished glance. “I was coming out of a house in Broad Street when he
passed by and saw me, or at least I believed he saw me. There is no
mistaking him, sir, for any one else; besides it is a custom of his I am
told, to saunter through the down town streets after the warehouses are
all closed for the night. He enjoys the quiet I suppose, finds food for
reflection in the sleeping aspect of our great city.” There was gloom in
Bertram’s tone; his uncle looked at him curiously.
“What house was it from which you were coming when he passed you?”
“A building where Tueller and Co. do business, shady operators in paper,
as you know.”
“And you believed he recognized you?”
“I cannot be sure, sir. It was dark, but I thought I saw him look at me
and give a slight start.”
Ah, how desolate sounds the drip, drip of a ceaseless rain, when
conversation languishes and the ear has time to listen!
“I will explain to Mr. Stuyvesant when I see him, that you were in
search of a man with whom I had pressing business,” observed Mr.
Sylvester at last.
“No,” murmured Bertram with effort, “it might emphasize the occurrence
in his mind; let the matter drop where it is.”
There was another silence, during which the drip of the rain on the
window-ledge struck on the young man’s ears like the premonitory thud of
falling earth upon a coffin-lid. At length his uncle turned and advanced
rapidly towards him.
“Bertram,” said he, “you have done me a favor for which I thank you.
What you have learned in the course of its accomplishment I cannot tell.
Enough perhaps to make you understand why I warned you from the
dangerous path of speculation, and set your feet in a way that if
adhered to with steadfast purpose, ought to lead you at last to a safe
and honorable prosperity. Now—No, Bertram,” he bitterly interrupted
himself as the other opened his lips, “I am in need of no especial
commiseration, my affairs seem bound to prosper whether I will or
not—now I have one more commission to give you. Miss Fairchild—” his
voice quavered and he leaned heavily on the chair near which he was
standing. “Have you seen her, Bertram? Is the poor child quite
prostrated? Has this frightful occurrence made her ill, or does she bear
up with fortitude under the shock of this sudden calamity?”
“She is not ill, but her suffering is undoubted. If you could see her
and say a few words to relieve her anxiety in regard to yourself, I
think it would greatly comfort her. Her main thought seems to be for
you, sir.”
Mr. Sylvester frowned, raised his hand with a repelling gesture, and
hastily opened his lips. Bertram thought he was about to utter some
passionate phrase. But instead of that he merely remarked, “I am sorry I
cannot see her, but it is quite impossible. You must stand between me
and this poor child, Bertram. Tell her I send her my love; tell her that
I am quite well; anything to solace her and make these dark days less
dreary. If she wants a friend with her, let a messenger be sent for
whomever she desires. I place no restrictions upon anything you choose
to do for her comfort or happiness, but let me be spared the sight of
any other face than yours until this is all over. After the funeral—it
may sound ungracious, but I am far from feeling so—I shall wish to be
left alone for awhile. If she can be made to understand this—”
“I think her instincts, sir, have already led her to divine your wishes.
If I am not mistaken, she is even now making preparations to return to
her relatives.”
Mr. Sylvester gave a start. “What, so soon!” he murmured, and the
sadness of his tone smote Bertram to the heart. But in another moment he
recovered himself and shortly exclaimed, “Well! well! that is as it
should be. You will watch over her Bertram, and see that she is kindly
cared for. It would be a grief to me to have her go away with any more
than the necessary regret at losing one who was always kind to _her_.”
“I will look after her as after a sister,” returned Bertram. “She shall
miss no attention which I can supply.”
With a look Mr. Sylvester expressed his thanks. Then while Bertram again
attempted to speak, he gave him a cordial pressure of the hand, and
withdrew once more to his favorite spot.
And the rain beat, beat, and it sounded more and more like the droppings
of earth upon a nailed down coffin-lid.
* * * * *
The funeral was a large one. The largest some said that had ever been
seen in that quarter of the city. If Mrs. Sylvester’s position had not
been what it was, the sudden and awful nature of her death, would have
been sufficient to draw together a large crowd. Among those who thus
endeavored to show their respect was Miss Stuyvesant.
“I could not join you here in your pleasures,” she whispered to Paula in
the short interview they had upstairs, preparatory to the services, “but
I cannot keep away in the dark hours!” And from her look and the clasp
of her hand, Paula gained fresh courage to endure the slow pressure of
anxiety and grief with which she was secretly burdened.
Moreover she had the pleasure of introducing her beloved friend to Mr.
Bertram Sylvester, a pleasure which she had long promised herself
whenever the opportunity should arrive, as Miss Stuyvesant was somewhat
of an enthusiast as regards music. She did not notice particularly then,
but she remembered afterwards, with what a blushing cheek and beautiful
glance the dainty young girl received his bow, and responded to his few
respectful words of pleasure at meeting the daughter of a man whom he
had learned to regard with so much respect.
Mr. Sylvester was in a room by himself. The few glimpses obtained of him
by his friends, convinced them all, that this trouble touched him more
deeply than those who knew his wife intimately could have supposed. Yet
he was calm, and already wore that fixed look of rigidity which was
henceforth to distinguish the expression of his fine and noble features.
In the ride to Greenwood he spoke little. Paula who sat in the carriage
with him did not receive a word, though now and then his eye wandered
towards her with an expression that drove the blood to her heart, and
made the whole day one awful memory of incomprehensible agony and dim
but terrible forebodings. The ways of the human soul, in its crises of
grief or remorse were so new to her. She had passed her life beside
rippling streams and in peaceful meadows, and now all at once, with
shadow on shadow, the dark pictures of life settled down before her, and
she could not walk without stumbling upon jagged rocks, deep yawning
chasms and caves of impenetrable gloom.
The sight of the grave appalled her. To lay in such a bed as that, the
fair and delicate head that had often found the downy pillows of its
azure couch too hard for its languid pressure. To hide in such a dismal,
deep, dark gap, a form so white and but a little while before, so
imposing in its splendor and so commanding in its requirements. The
thought of heaven brought no comfort. The beauty they had known lay
here; soulless, inert, rigid and responseless, but here. It was gifted
with no wings with which to rise. It owned no attachment to higher
spheres. Death had scattered the leaves of this white rose, but from all
the boundless mirror of the outspread heavens, no recovered semblance of
its perfected beauty, looked forth to solace Paula or assuage the misery
of her glance into this gloomy pit. Ah, Ona, the social ladder reaches
high, but it does not scale the regions where your poor soul could find
comfort now.
Bertram saw the white look on Paula’s face and silently offered his arm.
But there are moments when no mortal help can aid us; instants when the
soul stands as solitary in the universe, as the ship-wrecked mariner on
a narrow strip of rock in a boundless sea. Life may touch, but eternity
enfolds us; we are single before God and as such must stand or fall.
Upon their return to the house, Mr. Sylvester withdrew with a few
intimate friends to his room, and Paula, lonely beyond expression, went
to her own empty apartment to finish packing her trunks and answer such
notes as had arrived during her absence. For attention from outsiders
was only too obtrusive. Many whom she had never met save in the most
formal intercourse, flooded her now with expressions of condolence,
which if they had not been all upon one pattern and that the most
conventional, might have afforded her some relief. Two or three of the
notes were precious to her and these she stowed safely away, one
contained a deliberate offer of marriage from a wealthy old
stock-broker; this she as deliberately burned after she had written a
proper refusal. “He thinks I have no home,” she murmured.
And had she? As she paced through the silent halls and elaborately
furnished rooms on her way to her solitary dinner, she asked herself if
any place would ever seem like home after this. Not that she was
infatuated by its elegance. The lofty walls might dwindle, the gorgeous
furniture grow dim, the works of beauty disappear, the whole towering
structure contract to the dimensions of a simple cottage or what was
worse, a seedy down-town house, if only the something would remain, the
something that made return to Grotewell seem like the bending back of a
towering stalk to the ground from which it had taken its root. “If?” she
cried—and stopped there, her heart swelling she knew not why. Then
again, “I thought I had found a father!” Then after a longer pause, a
wild uncontrollable; “Bless! bless! bless!” which seemed to re-echo in
the room long after her lingering step had left it.
* * * * *
“Will he let me go without a word?”
It was early morning and the time had come for Paula’s departure. She
was standing on the threshold of her room, her hands clasped, her eyes
roving up and down the empty halls. “Will he let me go without a word?”
“O Miss Paula, what do you think?” cried Sarah, creeping slowly towards
her from the spectral recesses of a dim corner. “Jane says Mr. Sylvester
was up all last night too. She heard him go down stairs about midnight
and he went through all the rooms like a gliding spectre and into _her_
room too!” she fearfully whispered; “and what he did there no one knows,
but when he came out he locked the door, and this morning the cook heard
him give orders to Samuel to have the trunks that were ready in Mrs.
Sylvester’s room taken away. O Miss, do you think he can be going to
give all those beautiful things to you?”
Paula recoiled in horror. “Sarah!” said she, and could say no more. The
vision of that tall form gliding through the desolate house at midnight,
bending over the soulless finery of his dead wife, perhaps stowing it
away in boxes, came with too powerful a suggestion to her mind.
“Shure, I thought you would be pleased,” murmured the girl and
disappeared again into one of the dim recesses.
“Will he let me go without a word?”
“Miss Paula, Mr. Bertram Sylvester is waiting at the door in a
carriage,” came in low respectful tones to her ears, and Samuel’s face
full of regret appeared at the top of the stairs.
“I am coming,” murmured the sad-hearted girl, and with a sob which she
could not control, she took her last look of the pretty pink chamber in
which she had dreamed so many dreams of youthful delight, and perhaps of
youthful sorrow also, and slowly descended the stairs. Suddenly as she
was passing a door on the second floor, she heard a low deep cry.
“Paula!”
She stopped and her hand went to her heart, the reaction was so sudden.
“Yes,” she murmured, standing still with great heart-beats of joy, or
was it pain?
The door slowly opened. “Did you think I could let you go without a
blessing, my Paula, my little one!” came in those deep heart-tones which
always made her tears start. And Mr. Sylvester stepped out of the
shadows beyond and stood in the shadows at her side.
“I did not know,” she murmured. “I am so young, so feeble, such a mote
in this great atmosphere of anguish. I longed to see you, to say
good-bye, to thank you, but—” tears stopped her words; this was a
parting that rent her tender heart.
Mr. Sylvester watched her and his deep chest rose spasmodically.
“Paula,” said he, and there was a depth in his tone even she had never
heard before, “are these tears for me?”
With a strong effort she controlled herself, looked up and faintly
smiled. “I am an orphan,” she gently murmured; “you have been kind and
tender to me beyond words; I have let myself love you as a father.”
A spasm crossed his features, the hand he had lifted to lay upon her
head fell at his side, he surveyed her with eyes whose despairing
fondness told her that her love had been more than met by this desolate
childless man. But he did not reply as seemed natural, “Be to me then as
a child. I can offer you no mother to guide or watch over you, but one
parent is better than none. Henceforth you shall be known as my
daughter.” Instead of that he shook his head mournfully, yearningly but
irrevocably, and said, “To be your father would have been a dear
position to occupy. I have sometimes hoped that I might be so blessed as
to call it mine, but that is all past now. Your father I can never be.
But I can bless you,” he murmured brokenly, “not as I did that day in
your aunt’s little cottage, but silently and from afar as God always
meant you should be blessed by me. Good-bye, Paula.”
Then all the deeps in her great nature broke up. She did not weep, but
she looked at him with her large dark eyes and the cry in them smote his
heart. With a struggle that blanched his face, he kept his arms at his
side, but his lips worked in agony, and he slowly murmured, “If after a
time your heart loves me like this, and you are willing to bear shadow
as well as sunshine with me, come back with your aunt and sit at my
hearthstone, not as my child but as a dear and honored guest. I will try
and be worthy—” He paused, “Will you come, Paula?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Not soon, not now,” he murmured, “God will show you when.”
And with nothing but a look, without having touched her or so much as
brushed her garments with his, he retired again into his room.
XXII.
HOPGOOD.
“Give it an understanding but no tongue.”
—HAMLET.
Hopgood was a man who could keep a secret, but who made so much ado in
the process that he reminded one of the placard found posted up
somewhere out west which reads, “A treasure of gold concealed here;
don’t dig!” Or so his wife used to say, and she ought to know, for she
had lived with him five years, three of which he had spent in the
detective service.
“If he would only trust the wife of his bosom with whatever he’s got on
his mind, instead of ambling around the building with his eyes rolling
about like peas in a caldron of boiling water, one might manage to take
some comfort in life, and not hurt anybody either. For two days now,
ever since the wife of Mr. Sylvester died and Mr. Sylvester has been
away from the bank, he’s acted just like a lunatic. Not that that has
anything to do with his gettin up of nights and roamin down five pair of
stairs to see if the watchman is up to his duty, or with his askin a
dozen times a day if I remembers how Mr. Sylvester found him and me,
well nigh starvin in Broad Street, and gave him the good word which got
him into this place? O no! O no, of course not! But _something_ has, and
while he persists in shutting out from his breast the woman he swore to
love, honor, and cherish, that woman is not bound to bear the trials of
life with patience. Every time he jumps out of his chair at the sound of
Mr. Sylvester’s name, and some one is always mentionin’ it, I plumps me
down on mine with an expression of my views regarding a kitchen stove
that does all its drawin’ when the oven’s empty.”
So spake Mrs. Hopgood to her special crony and constant visitor, Mrs.
Kirkshaw of Water Street, pursing up a mouth that might have been
good-natured if she had ever given it an opportunity. But Mrs. Kirkshaw
who passed for a gossip with her neighbors, was a philosopher in the
retirement of the domestic circle and did not believe in the blow for
blow system.
“La!” quoth she, with a smoothing out of her apron suggestive of her
employment as laundress, “show a dog that you want his bone and you’ll
never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you’ve been a slanderin
of. Rattle on coal when the fire’s low and you put it out entirely; but
be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you’ll
have a hot stove afore you know it.”
Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day
and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to
send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror,
lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little
daughter, Constantia Maria—so named and so called from two
grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious
as regards their resources—was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her
pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it
soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he
could roll his great eyes to his heart’s content without fear of her
descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart
abounded.
On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored
to his wife’s arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and
Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a few minutes, however, he returned,
and ambling restlessly up and down the room, stopped before his
persistently smiling wife and said somewhat tremulously:
“If Mr. Sylvester takes a notion to come up and see Constantia Maria
to-day, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to finish your ironing or
whatever else it is you may have to do. I’ve noticed he seems a little
shy with the child when you are around.”
“Shy with the child when I am around! well I do declare!” exclaimed she,
forgetting her late rôle in her somewhat natural indignation. “And what
have I ever done to frighten Mr. Sylvester? Nothing but putting on of a
clean apron, when he comes in and a dustin’ of the best chair for his
use. It’s a trick of yours to get a chance of speakin’ to him alone, and
I’ll not put up with it. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have a kettle
with the nozzle dangling, without living with a man who has a secret he
won’t share with his own wife and the mother of his innocent babe.”
With a start the worthy man stared at her till he grew red in the face,
probably with the effort of keeping his eyes steady for so long a time.
“Who told you I had a secret?” said he.
“Who told me?” and then she laughed, though in a somewhat hysterical
way, and sat down in the middle of the floor and shook and shook again.
“Hear the man!” she cried. And she told him the story of the placard out
west and then asked him, “if he thought she didn’t remember how he used
to act when he was a chasin’ up of a thief in the days when he was on
the police force.”
“But,” he cried, quite as pale now as he had been florid the moment
before, “I’m not in the police force now and you are acting quite silly
and I’ve no patience with you.” And he was making for the door,
presumably to sit upon the stairs, when with a late repentance she
seized him by the arm and said:
“La now,” an expression she had caught from Mrs. Kirkshaw, “I didn’t
mean nothin’ by my talk. Come back, John; Constantia Maria is not well,
and if Mr. Sylvester comes up to see her, I’ll just slip out and leave
you alone.”
And upon that he told her she was a good wife and that if he had any
secret from her it was only because he was a poor man. “Honesty and
prudence are all the treasures I possess to keep us three from starving.
Shall I part with either of them just to satisfy your curiosity?” and
being a good woman at heart, she said “no,” though she secretly
concluded that prudence in his case involved trust in one’s wife first,
and disbelief in the rest of the world afterward; and took her future
resolutions accordingly.
“Well, Hopgood, you look anxious; do you want to speak to me?”
The janitor eyed the changed and melancholy face of his patron, with an
expression in which real sympathy for his trouble, struggled with the
respectful awe which Mr. Sylvester’s presence was calculated to inspire.
“If you please,” said he, speaking very low, for more or less of the
bank employees were moving busily to and fro, “Constantia Maria is not
well and she has been asking all day for the _dear man_, as she insists
upon calling you, sir, with many apologies for the freedom.”
Mr. Sylvester smiled with a faint far-away look in his dark eye that
made Hopgood stare uneasily out of the window. “Sick! why then I must go
up and see her,” he returned in a matter-of-fact way that proved his
visits in that direction were of no uncommon occurrence. “A moment more
and I shall be at liberty.”
Hopgood bowed and renewed his stare out of the window, with an intensity
happily spared from serious consequences to the passers-by, by the
merciful celerity with which Mr. Sylvester procured his overcoat, put
such papers in his pocket as he required, and joined him.
“Constantia Maria, here is Mr. Sylvester come to see you.”
It was a pleasure to observe how the little thing brightened in her
mother’s arms, where but a moment before she had lain quite pale and
still, and slipping to the ground rushed up to meet the embrace of this
stern and melancholy-faced man. “I am so glad you have come,” she cried
over and over again; and her little arms went round his neck, and her
soft cheek nestled against his, with a content that made the mother’s
eyes sparkle with pleasure, as obedient to her promise, she quietly left
the room.
And Mr. Sylvester? If any one had seen the abandon with which he yielded
to her caresses and returned them, he would have understood why this
child should have loved him with such extraordinary affection. He kissed
her forehead, he kissed her cheek, and seemed never weary of smoothing
down her bright and silky curls. She reminded him of Geraldine. She had
the same blue eyes and caressing ways. From the day he had come upon his
old friend Hopgood in a condition of necessity almost of want, this
blue-eyed baby had held its small sceptre over his lonely heart, and
unbeknown to the rest of the world, had solaced many a spare five
minutes with her innocent prattle. The Hopgoods understood the cause of
his predilection and were silent. It was the one thing Mrs. Hopgood
never alluded to in her gossips with Mrs. Kirkshaw. But to-day the
attentions of Mr. Sylvester to the little one seemed to make the janitor
restless. He walked up and down the narrow room uneasily surveying the
pair out of the corner of his great glassy eyes, till even Mr. Sylvester
noticed his unusual manner and put the child down, observing with a
sigh, “You think she is not well enough for any excitement?”
“No sir, it is not that,” returned the other uneasily, with a hasty look
around him. “The fact is, I have something to say to you, sir, about—a
discovery—I made the other day.” His words came very slowly, and he
looked down with great embarrassment.
Mr. Sylvester frowned slightly, and drew himself up to the full height
of his very imposing figure. “A discovery,” repeated he, “when?”
“The day you paid that early visit to the bank, sir, the day Mrs.
Sylvester died.”
The frown on Mr. Sylvester’s brow grew deeper. “The day—” he began, and
stopped.
“Excuse me, sir,” exclaimed Hopgood with a burst. “I ought not to have
mentioned it, but you asked me _when_, and I—”
“What was this discovery?” inquired his superior, imperatively.
“Nothing much,” murmured the other now all in a cold sweat. “But I felt
as if I ought to tell you. You have been my benefactor, sir, I can never
forget what you have done for me and mine. If I saw death or bereavement
between me and any favor I could do for you, sir, I would not hesitate
to risk them. I am no talker, sir, but I am true and I am grateful.” He
stopped, choked, and his eyes rolled frightfully. Mr. Sylvester looked
at him, grew a trifle pale, and put the little child away that was
nestling up against his knee.
“You have not told me what you have discovered,” said he.
“Well, sir, only this.” And he took from his pocket a small roll of
paper which he unfolded and held out in his hand. It contained a gold
tooth-pick somewhat bent and distorted.
A flush dark and ominous crept over Mr. Sylvester’s cheek. He glanced
sternly at the trembling janitor, and uttered a short, “Well?”
“I found it on the floor of the bank just after you went out the other
morning,” the other pursued well-nigh inaudibly. “It was lying near the
safe. As it was not there when you went in, I took it for granted it was
yours. Am I right, sir?”
The anxious tone in which this last question was uttered, the studied
way in which the janitor kept his eyes upon the floor could not have
been unnoticed by Mr. Sylvester, but he simply said,
“I have lost mine, that may very possibly be it.”
The janitor held it towards him; his eyes did not leave the floor. “The
responsibility of my position here is sometimes felt by me to be very
heavy,” muttered the man in a low, unmodulated tone. It was his duty in
those days previous to the Manhattan Bank robbery, to open the vault in
the morning, procure the books that were needed, and lay them about on
the various desks in readiness for the clerks upon their arrival. He had
also the charge of the boxes of the various customers of the bank who
chose to entrust their valuables to its safe keeping; which boxes were
kept, together with the books, in that portion of the vault to which he
had access. “I should regret my comfortable situation here, but if it
was necessary, I would go without a murmur, trusting that God would take
care of my poor little lamb.”
“Hopgood, what do you mean?” asked Mr. Sylvester somewhat sternly. “Who
talks about dismissing you?”
“No one,” responded the other, turning aside to attend to some trivial
matter. “But if ever you think a younger or a fresher man would be
preferable in my place, do not hesitate to make the change your own
necessities or that of the Bank may seem to require.”
Mr. Sylvester’s eye which was fixed upon the janitor’s face, slowly
darkened.
“There is something underlying all this,” said he, “what is it?”
At once and as if he had taken his resolution, the janitor turned. “I
beg your pardon,” said he, “I ought to have told you in the first place.
When I opened the vaults as usual on the morning of which I speak, I
found the boxes displaced; that was nothing if you had been to them,
sir; but what did alarm me and make me feel as if I had held my position
too long was to find that one of them was unlocked.”
Mr. Sylvester fell back a step.
“It was Mr. Stuyvesant’s box, sir, and I remember distinctly seeing him
lock it the previous afternoon before putting it back on the shelf.”
The arms which Mr. Sylvester had crossed upon his breast tightened
spasmodically. “And it has been in that condition ever since?” asked he.
The janitor shook his head. “No,” said he, taking his little girl up in
his arms, possibly to hide his countenance. “As you did not come down
again on that day, I took the liberty of locking it with a key of my own
when I went to put away the books and shut the vault for the night.” And
he quietly buried his face in his baby’s floating curls, who feeling his
cheek against her own put up her hand and stroked it lovingly, crying in
her caressing infantile tones,
“Poor papa! poor tired papa.”
Mr. Sylvester’s stern brow contracted painfully. The look with which his
eye sought the sky without, would have made Paula’s young heart ache.
Taking the child from her father’s clasp, he laid her on the bed. When
he again confronted the janitor his face was like a mask.
“Hopgood,” said he, “you are an honest man and a faithful one; I
appreciate your worth and have had confidence in your judgment. Whom
have you told of this occurrence beside myself?”
“No one, sir.”
“Another question; if Mr. Stuyvesant had required his box that day and
had found it in the condition you describe, what would you have replied
to his inquiries?”
The janitor colored to the roots of his hair in an agony of shame Mr.
Sylvester may or may not have appreciated, but replied with the
straightforward earnestness of a man driven to bay, “I should have been
obliged to tell him the truth sir; that whereas I had no personal
knowledge of any one but myself, having been to the vaults since the
evening before, I was called upon early that morning to open the outside
door to you, sir, and that you came into the bank,” (he did not say
looking very pale, agitated and unnatural, but he could not help
remembering it) “and finding no one on duty but myself,—the watchman
having gone up stairs to take his usual cup of coffee before going home
for the day—you sent me out of the room on an errand, which delayed me
some little time, and that when I came back I found you gone, and every
thing as I had left it except that small pick lying on the floor.”
The last words were nearly inaudible but they must have been heard by
Mr. Sylvester, for immediately upon their utterance, the hand which
unconsciously had kept its hold upon the tooth-pick, opened and with an
uncontrollable gesture flung the miserable tell-tale into the stove near
by.
“Hopgood,” said the stately gentleman, coming nearer and holding him
with his eyes till the poor man turned pale and cold as a stone, “has
Mr. Stuyvesant had occasion to open his box since you locked it?”
“Yes sir, he called for it yesterday afternoon.”
“And who gave it to him?”
“I sir.”
“Did he appear to miss anything from it?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you believe, Hopgood, that there was anything missing from it?”
The janitor shrank like a man subjected to the torture. He fixed his
glance on Mr. Sylvester’s face and his own gradually lightened.
“No sir!” said he at last, with a gasp that made the little one lift her
curly head from her pillow and shake it with a slow and wistful motion
strange to see in a child of only two years.
The proud man bowed, not with the severity however that might have been
expected; indeed his manner was strangely shadowed, and though his lip
betrayed no uneasiness and his eye neither faltered or fell, there was a
vague expression of awe upon his countenance, which it would take more
than the simple understanding of the worthy but not over subtle man
before him, to detect much less to comprehend.
“You may be sure that Mr. Stuyvesant will never complain of any one
having tampered with his effects while you are the guardian of the
vaults,” exclaimed Mr. Sylvester in clear ringing tones. “As for his box
being open, it is right that I should explain that it was the result of
a mistake. I had occasion to go to a box of my own in a hurry that
morning, and misled by the darkness and my own nervousness perhaps, took
up his instead of my own. Not till I had opened it—with the tooth-pick,
Hopgood, for I had been to a reception and did not have my keys with
me—did I notice my mistake. I had intended to explain the matter to Mr.
Stuyvesant, but you know what happened that day, and since then I have
thought nothing of it.”
The janitor’s face cleared to its natural expression. “You are very
kind, sir, to explain yourself to me,” said he; “it was not necessary.”
But his lightened face spoke volumes. “I have been on the police force
and I know how to hold my tongue when it is my duty, but it is very hard
work when the duty is on the other side. Have you any commands for me?”
Mr. Sylvester shook his head, and his eye roamed over the humble
furniture and scanty comforts of this poor man’s domicile. Hopgood
thought he might be going to offer him some gift or guerdon, and in a
low distressed tone spoke up:
“I shall not try to ask your pardon, sir, for anything I have said.
Honesty that is afraid to show itself, is no honesty for me. I could not
meet your eye, knowing that I was aware of any circumstance of which you
supposed me ignorant. What I know, you must know, as long as I remain in
the position you were once kind enough to procure for me. And now that
is all I believe, sir.”
Mr. Sylvester dropped his eyes from the bare walls over which they had
been restlessly wandering, and fixed them for a passing moment on the
countenance of the man before him. Then with a grave action he lifted
his hat from his head, and bowed with the deference he might have shown
to one of his proudest colleagues, and without another look or word,
quietly left the room.
Hopgood in his surprise stared after him somewhat awe-struck. But when
the door had quite closed, he caught up his child almost passionately in
his arms, and crushing her against his breast, asked, while his eye
roamed round the humble room that in its warmth and comfort was a palace
to him, “Will he take the first opportunity to have me dismissed, or
will his heart forgive the expression of my momentary doubts, for the
sake of this poor wee one that he so tenderly fancies?”
The question did not answer itself, and indeed it was one to which time
alone could reply.