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.

“The stars of midnight shall be dear
To her; and she shall lean her ear
In many a secret place
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And beauty born of murmuring sound
Shall pass into her face.”—Wordsworth.

A wintry scene. Snow-piled hills stretching beyond a frozen river. On the bank a solitary figure tall, dark and commanding, standing with eyes bent sadly on a long narrow mound at his feet. It is Edward Sylvester and the mound is the grave of his mother.

It is ten years since he stood upon that spot. In all that time no memories of his childhood’s home, no recollection of that lonely grave among the pines, had been sufficient to allure him from the city and its busy round of daily cares. Indeed he had always shrunk at the very name of the place and never of his own will alluded to it, but the reveries of a night had awakened a longing that was not to be appeased, and in the face of his wife’s cold look of astonishment and a secret dread in his own heart, had left his comfortable fireside, for the scenes of his early life and marriage, and was now standing, in the bleak December air, gazing down upon the stone that marked his mother’s grave.

But tender as were the chords that reverberated at this sight, it was not to revisit this tomb he had returned to Grotewell. No, that other vision, the vision of young sweet appreciative life has drawn him more strongly than the memory of the dead. It was to search out and gaze again upon the innocent girl, whose eloquent eyes and lofty spirit had so deeply moved him in the past, that he had braved the chill of the Connecticut hills and incurred the displeasure of his wife.

Yet when he turned away from that simple headstone and set his face towards the village streets it was with a sinking of the heart that first revealed to him the severity of the ordeal to which he had thus wantonly subjected himself. Not that the wintry trees and snow covered roofs appealed to him as strongly as the same trees and homes would have done in their summer aspect. The land was bright with verdure when that shadow fell whose gloom resting upon all the landscape, made a walk down this quiet road even at this remote day, a matter of such pain to him. But scenes that have caught the reflection of a life’s joy or a heart’s sorrow, lose not their power of appeal, with the leaves they shake from their trees, and nothing that had met the eyes of this man from the hour he left this spot, no, not the glance of his wife as his child fell back dead in his arms, had shot such a pang to his soul as the sight of that long street with its array of quiet homes, stretching out before him into the dim grey distance.

But for all that he was determined to traverse it, ay to the very end, though his steps must pass the house whose ghostly portals were fraught with memories dismal as death to him. On then he proceeded, walking with his usual steady pace that only faltered or broke, as he met the shy eyes of some hurrying village maiden, speeding upon some errand down the snowy street, or encountered some old friend of his youth who despite his altered mien and commanding carriage, recognized in him the slim young bank cashier who had left them now ten long years ago to make a name and fortune in the great city.

It was noon by the time he gained the heart of the village, and school was out and the children came rushing by with just the same shout and scamper with which he used to hail that hour of joyous release. How it carried him back to the days when those four red walls towered upon him with awful significance, as with books on his back and a half eaten apple in his pocket he crept up the walk, conscious that the bell had rung its last shrill note a good half hour before. He felt half tempted to stop and make his way through the crowd of shouting boys and dancing girls to that same old door again, and see for himself if the huge LATE which in a fit of childish revenge he had cut on its awkward panels, was still there to meet the eyes of tardy boys and loitering girls. But the wondering looks of the children unused to behold a figure so stately in their simple streets deterred him and he passed thoughtfully on. So engrossed was he by the reminiscences of Tom and Elsie which the school house had awakened, that he passed the ominous mansion which had been his dread, and the bank where he had worked, and the arbor by the side of the road where he had sat out the first hours of his fatal courtship, almost without realizing their presence, and was at the end of the street and in full view of the humble cottage which the little Paula had pointed out as her home on that day of their first acquaintance.

“Good heaven! and I do not even know if she is alive,” he suddenly ejaculated, stopping where he was and eying the lowly walls before him with a quick realization of the possibilities of a great disappointment. “Ten years have strown many a grave on the hillside and Ona would not mention it if she lost every relative she had in this town. What a fool I have been,” thought he.

But with the stern resolution which had carried him through many a difficulty, he prepared to advance, when he was again arrested by seeing the door of the house he was contemplating, suddenly open and a girlish figure issue forth. Could it be Paula? With eager, almost feverish interest he watched her approach. She was a slight young thing and came towards him with a rapid movement almost jaunty in its freedom. If it were Paula, he would know her by her eyes, but for some reason he hoped it was not she, not the child of his dreams.