by Marion Bryce
“But the hardest trial of the day was to hear Mr. Sylvester come in at eleven o’clock—he went out again immediately after dinner—and go up stairs without giving me my usual good-night. It was such a grief to me I could not keep still, but hurried to the foot of the stairs in the hopes he would yet remember me and come back. But instead of that, he no sooner saw me than he threw out his hand almost as if he would push me back, and hastened on up the whole winding flight till he reached the refuge of that mysterious room of his at the top of the house.
“I could not go back to Ona after that—she had been to make a call somewhere with a young gentleman friend of hers;—yes on this very night had been to make a call—but I took advantage of the late hour to retire to my own room where for a long time I lay awake listening for his descending step and seeing, as a vision, the startling picture of his lifted arm raised against the unconscious piece of bronze on the stair. Henceforth that statue will possess for me a still more dreadful significance.”
“It is the twenty-fifth of February. Why should I feel as if I must be sure of the exact date before I slept?”
The next extract followed close on this and was the last which Miss Belinda read.
“Mr. Sylvester seems to have recovered from his late anxiety. He does not shrink from me any more with that half bitter, half sad expression that has so long troubled and bewildered me, but draws me to his side and sits listening to my talk until I feel as if I were really of some comfort to this great and able man. Ona does not notice the change; she is all absorbed in preparing for the visit to Washington, which Mr. Sylvester has promised her.”
Miss Belinda calmly folded up the letters and locked them again in the little mahogany box, after which she covered up the embers and quietly went to bed. But next morning a letter was despatched to Mr. Sylvester which ran thus:
“DEAR MR. SYLVESTER:
“For the present at least you may keep Paula with you. But I am not ready to say that I think it would be for her best good to be received and acknowledged as your daughter—yet. Hoping you will appreciate the motives that actuate this decision,
“I remain, respectfully yours,
“BELINDA ANN WALTON.”
XV. AN ADVENTURE—OR SOMETHING MORE.
“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven.”
—WORDSWORTH.
Oph.—What means this, my lord?
Ham.—Marry, this is the milching mallecho; it means mischief.”
—HAMLET.
A ride in the Central Park is an every-day matter to most people. It signifies an indolent bowling over a smooth road all alive with the glitter of passing equipages, waving ribbons and fluttering plumes, and brightened now and then by the sight of a well known face amid the general rush of old and young, plain and handsome, sad and gay countenances that flash by you in one long and brilliant procession.
But to Paula and her friend Miss Stuyvesant starting out in the early freshness of a fair April morning, it meant new life, reawakening joy, the sparkle of young leaves just loosed from the bonds of winter, the sweetness and promise of spring airs, and all the budding glory of a new year with its summer of countless roses and its autumn of incalculable glories. Not the twitter of a bird was lost to them, not the smile of an opening flower, not the welcome of a waving branch. Youth, joy, and innocence lived in their hearts and showed them nothing in the mirror of nature that was not equally young, joyous and innocent. Then they were alone, or sufficiently so. The stray wanderers whom they met sitting under the flowering trees, were equally with themselves lovers of nature or they would not he seated in converse with it at this early hour; while the laugh of little children startled from their play by the prance of their high-stepping horses, was only another expression of the sweet but unexpressed delight that breathed in all the radiant atmosphere.
“We are two birds who have escaped thralldom and are taking our first flight into our natural ether,” cried Miss Stuyvesant gaily.
“We are two pioneers lit by the spirit of adventure, who have left the cosy hearth of wintry-fires to explore the domains of the frost king, and lo, we have come upon a Paradise of bloom and color!” responded the ringing voice of Paula.
“I feel as if I could mount that little white cloud we see over there,” continued Cicely with a quick lively wave of her whip. “I wonder how Dandy would enjoy an empyrean journey?”
“From the haughty bend of his neck I should say he was quite satisfied with his present condition Put perhaps his chief pride is due to the mistress he carries.”
“Are you attempting to vie with Mr. Williams, Paula?”
Mr. Williams was the meek-eyed, fair complexioned gentleman, whose predilection for compliment was just then a subject of talk in fashionable circles.
“Only so far as my admiration goes of the most charming lady I see this morning. But who is this?”
Miss Stuyvesant looked up. “Ah, that is some one with whom there is very little danger of your falling in love.”
Paula blushed. The gentleman approaching them upon horseback was conspicuous for long side whiskers of a decidedly auburn tinge.
His name is—” But she had not time to finish, for the gentleman with a glance of astonished delight at Paula, bowed to the speaker with a liveliness and grace that demanded some recognition.
Instantly he drew rein. “Do I behold Miss Stuyvesant among the nymphs!” cried he, in those ringing pleasant tones that at once predispose you towards their possessor.
“If you allude to my friend Miss Fairchild, you certainly do, Mr. Ensign,” the wicked little lady rejoined with a waiving of her usual ceremony that astonished Paula.
Mr. Ensign bestowed upon them his most courtly bow, but the flush that mounted to his brow—making his face one red, as certain of his friends were malicious enough to observe on similar occasions—indicated that he had been taken a little more at his word than perhaps suited even one of his easy and proverbially careless temperament. “Miss Fairchild will understand that I am not a Harvey Williams—at least before an introduction,” said he with something like seriousness.
But at this allusion to the gentleman whose name had been upon their lips but a moment before, both ladies laughed outright.
“If I have just been accused of attempting the rôle of that gentleman myself,” exclaimed Paula. “If the fresh morning air will persist in painting such roses on ladies’ cheeks,” continued she, with a loving look at her pretty companion “what can one be expected to do?”
“Admire,” quoth the red bannered cavalier with a glance, however, at the beautiful speaker instead of the demure little Cicely at her side.
Miss Stuyvesant perceived this look and a curious smile disturbed the corners of her rosy lips. “What a fortunate man to be able to do the right thing at the right time,” laughed she, gaily touching up her horse that was beginning to show symptoms of restlessness.
“If Miss Stuyvesant will put that in the future tense and then assure us she has been among the prophets, I should be singularly obliged,” said he with a touch of his hat and a smiling look at Paula that was at once manly and gentle, careless and yet respectful.
“Ah, life is too bright for prophesies this morning. The moment is enough.”
“Is it Miss Fairchild?” queried Mr. Ensign looking back over his shoulder.
She turned just a bit of her cheek towards him. “What Miss Stuyvesant declares to be true, that am I bound to believe,” said she, and with the least little ripple of a laugh, rode on.
“It is a pity you have such a dislike for whiskers,” Cicely presently remarked with an air of great gravity.
Paula gave a start and cast a glance of reproach at her companion. “I did not notice his whiskers after the first word or two,” said she, fixing her eyes on a turn of the road before them. “Such cheerfulness is infectious. I was merry before, but now I feel as if I had been bathed in sunshine.”
Cicely’s eyes
flashed wide with surprise and her face grew serious in earnest. “Mr. Ensign is a delightful companion,” observed she; “a room is always brighter for his entrance; and with all that, he is the only young man I know, who having come into a large fortune, feels any of the responsibilities of his position. The sunshine is the result of a good heart and pure living, and that is what makes it infectious, I suppose.”
“Let us canter,” said Paula. And so the glad young things swept on, life breaking in bubbles around them and rippling away into unfathomable wells of feeling in one of their pure hearts at least. Suddenly a hand seemed to swoop from heaven and dash them both back in dismay. They had reached one of those places where the foot path crosses the equestrian and they had run over and thrown down a little child.
“O heaven!” cried Paula leaping from her horse, “I had rather been killed myself.” The groom rode up and she bent anxiously over the child.
It was a boy of some seven or eight years, whose misfortune—he was lame, as the little crutch fallen at his side sufficiently denoted—made appear much younger. He had been struck on his arm and was moaning with pain, but did not seem to be otherwise hurt. “Are you alone?” cried Paula, lifting his head on her arm and glancing hurriedly about.
The little fellow raised his heavy lids and for a. moment stared into her face with eyes so deeply blue and beautiful they almost startled her, then with an effort pointed down the path, saying,
“Dad’s over there in the long tunnel talking to some one. Tell him I got hurt. I want Dad.”
She gently lifted him to his feet and led him out of the road into the apparently deserted path where she made him sit down. “I am going to find his father,” said Paula to Cicely, “I will be back in a moment.”
“But wait; you shall not go alone,” authoritatively exclaimed that little damsel, leaping in her turn to the ground. “Where does he say his father is?”
“In the tunnel, by which I suppose he means that long passage under the bridge over there.”
Holding up the skirts of their riding-habits in their trembling right hands, they hurried forward. Suddenly they both paused. A woman had crossed their path; a woman whom to look at but once was to remember with ghastly shrinking for a life-time. She was wrapped in a long and ragged cloak, and her eyes, startling in their blackness, were fixed upon the pain-drawn countenance of the poor little hurt boy behind them, with a gleam whose feverish hatred and deep malignant enjoyment of his very evident sufferings, was like a revelation from the lowest pit to the two innocent-minded girls hastening forward on their errand of mercy.
“Is he much hurt?” gasped the woman in ineffectual effort to conceal the evil nature of her interest, “Do you think he will die?” with a shrill lingering emphasis on the last word as if she longed to roll it like a sweet morsel under her tongue.
“Who are you?” asked Cicely, shrinking to one side with dilated eyes fixed on the woman’s hardened countenance and the white, too white hand with which she had pointed as she spoke of the child.
“Are you his mother?” queried Paula, paling at the thought but keeping her ground with an air of unconscious authority.
“His mother!” shrieked the woman, hugging herself in her long cloak and laughing with fiendish sarcasm. “I look like his mother, don’t I? His eyes—did you notice his eyes? they are just like mine, aren’t they? and his body, poor weazen little thing, looks as if it had drawn sustenance from mine, don’t it? His mother O heaven!”
Nothing like the suppressed force of this invocation seething as it was with the worst passions of a depraved human nature, had ever startled those ears before. Clasping Cicely by the hand, she called out to the groom behind them, “Guard that child as you would your life!” and then flashing upon the wretched creature before her with all the force, of her aroused nature, she exclaimed, “If you are not his mother, move aside and let us pass, we are in search of assistance.”
For an instant the woman stood awe-struck before this, vision of maidenly beauty and indignation, then she laughed and cried out with shrill emphasis:
“When next you look like that, go to your mirror, and when you see the image it reflects, say to yourself, ‘So once looked the woman who defied me in the Park!’”
With a quick shudder and a feeling as if the noisome cloak of this degraded being had somehow been dropped upon her own fair and spotless shoulders, Paula clasped the hand of Cicely more tightly in her own, and rushed with her down the steps that led into the underground passage towards which they had been directed.
There were but two persons in it when they entered. A short thickset man and another man of a slighter and more gentlemanly build. They were engaged in talking, and the latter was bringing down his right hand upon the palm of his left with a gesture almost foreign its expressive energy.
“I tell you,” declared he, with a voice that while low, reverberated through the hollow vault above him with strange intensity, “I tell you I’ve got my grip on a certain rich man in this city, and if you will only wait, you shall see strange things. I don’t know his name and I don’t know his face, but I do know what he has done, and a thousand dollars down couldn’t buy the knowledge of me.”
“But if you don’t know his name and dent know his face, how in the name of all that’s mischievous are you going to know your man?”
“Leave that to me! If I once meet him and hear him talk, one more rich man goes down and one more poor devil goes up, or I’ve not the wit that starvation usually teaches.”
The nature of these sentences together with the various manifestations of interest with which they were received, had for a moment deterred the two girls in their hurried advance, but now they put away every thought save that of the poor little creature awaiting his Dad, and lifting up her voice, Paula said,
“Are either of you the father of a little lame lad—”
Instantly and before she could conclude, the taller of the two, who had also been the chief speaker in the above conversation, turned, and she saw his hand begrimed though it was with dirt and dark with many a disgraceful trick, go to his heart in a gesture too natural to be anything but involuntary.
“Is he hurt?” gasped he, but in how different a tone from that of the woman who had used the same words a few minutes before. Then seeing that the persons who addressed him were ladies and one of them at least a very beautiful one, took off his hat with an easy action, that together with what they had heard, proved him to be one of that most dangerous class among us, a gentleman who has gone thoroughly and irretrievably to the bad.
“I am afraid he is, sir,” said Paula. “He was attempting to cross the road, and a horse advancing hurriedly, struck him.” She had not courage to say her horse in face of the white and trembling dismay that seized him at these words.
“Where is he?” cried he. “Where’s my poor boy?”
And he bounded up the steps, his hat still in his hand, his long unkempt locks flying, and his whole form expressive of the utmost alarm.
“Down by the carriage road,” called out Paula, finding it impossible for them to keep up with such haste.
“But is he much injured?” cried a smooth voice at their side.
They turned; it was the short thickset man who had been the other’s companion in the conversation above recorded.
“We trust not,” answered Cicely; “his arm received the blow, and he suffers very much, but we hope it is not serious;” and they hurried on.
They found the father seated on the grass holding the little fellow in his arms. The look on his once handsome but now thoroughly corrupt and dissipated face, made their hearts melt within them. However wicked he might be—and that sly treacherous eye, that false impudent lip, that settling of the whole face into the mould which Vice applies to all her votaries, left no doubt of his complete depravity—he dearly loved his child, and love, no matter how it is expressed, or in what garb it appears, is a sacred and beautiful thing, and ennobles for the time being any creature who
displays it.
“’Twas a hard knock up, Dad,” came from the white lips of the child as he felt his father’s trembling hand feel up and down his arm, “but I guess the ‘little feller’ can stand it.” “Little feller” was evidently the name by which his father was accustomed to address him.
“There are no bones broken,” said the father. “To be lame and maimed too would be—”
He did not finish, for a delicately gloved hand was here laid on his sleeve, and a gentle voice whispered, “Money cannot pay for an injury like that, but please accept this;” and Paula thrust a purse into his hand.
He clutched it eagerly, but at her next request that he should tell her where he lived that they might inquire after the boy, he shook his head with a return of his old emphasis.
“The haunts of bats and jackals are not for ladies.” Then as he caught sight of her pitiful face bending in farewell over the little urchin, some remembrance perhaps of the days when he had a right to stoop to the ear of beautiful women and walk unrebuked at their side, returned to him from the past, and respectfully lowering his voice, he asked her name.
She gave it and he seemed to lay it away in his mind; then as the ladies turned to remount their horses, rose and began carrying the little fellow off. As he vanished in the turn of the path that led towards the main entrance, they perceived a tall dark figure arise from a seat in the distance and stand looking after him, with a leer on his face and a malicious hugging of itself in a long black cloak, that proclaimed her to be the same ominous being who had before so grievously startled them.
XVI. THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES.
“And my imaginations are as foul
As Vulcan’s smithy.”
—HAMLET.
“Why, all the souls that were, were forfeit once;
And He that might the vantage best have took
Found out the remedy.”
