The Sword of Damocles: A Story of New York Life

He took her by the hand and drew her gently towards him. "Does your whole being recoil so from evil, my Paula? What will you do in this wicked world? What will you say to the sinner when you meet him – as you must?"

"I don't know; it's a problem I have never been brought to consider. I feel as if launched on a dismal sea for which I have neither chart nor compass. Life was so joyous to me this morning – " a flush swept over her cheek but he did not notice it – "I held, or seemed to hold, a cup of white wine in my hand, but suddenly as I looked at it, it turned black and – "

Ah, the outreach, the dismal breaking away of thought into the unfathomable, that lies in the pause of an and!

"And do you refuse to drink a cup across which has fallen a shadow," murmured Mr. Sylvester, his eyes fixed on her face, "the inevitable shadow of that great mass of human frailty and woe which has been accumulating from the foundation of the world?"

"No, no, I cannot, and retain my humanity. If there is such evil in the world, its pressure must drive it across the path of innocence."

"And you accept the cup?"

"I must; but oh, my vanished beliefs! This morning the wine of my life was pure and white, now it is black and befouled. What will make it clean again?"

With a sigh Mr. Sylvester dropped her hand and turned towards the mantle-piece. It was April as I have said, and there was no fire in the grate, but he posed his foot on the fender and looked sadly down at the empty hearthstone.

"Paula," said he after a space of pregnant silence, "it had to come. The veil of the temple must be rent in every life. Evil is too near us all for us to tread long upon the flowers without starting up the adders that hide beneath them. You had to have your first look into the cells of darkness, and perhaps it is best you had it here and now. The deeps are for men's eyes as well as the starry heavens."

"Yes, yes."

"There are some persons," he went on slowly, "you know them, who tread the ways of life with their eyelids closed to everything but the strip of velvet lawn on which they choose to walk. Earth's sighs and deep-drawn groans are nothing to them. The world may swing on in its way to perdition; so long as their pathway feels soft, they neither heed nor care. But you do not desire to be one of these, Paula! With your great soul and your strong heart, you would not ask to sit in a flowery maze, while the rest of the world went sliding on and down into wells of destruction, you might have made pools of healing by the touch of your womanly sympathy."

"No, no."

"I cannot tell you, I dare not tell you," he went on in a strange pleading voice that tore at the very roots of her heart, and rung in her memory forever, "what evil underlies the whole strata of life! At home and abroad, on our hearthstones and within our offices, the mocking devil sits. You can scarcely walk a block, my little one, without encountering a man or brushing against the dress of a woman across whose soul the black shadow lies heavier than any words of his or hers could tell. What the man you saw to-day, said of one unhappy being in this city, is true, God help us all, of many. Dark spots are easier acquired than blotted out, my Paula. In business as in society, one needs to carry the white shield of a noble purpose or a self-forgetting love, to escape the dripping of the deadly upas tree that branches above all humanity. I have walked its ways, my darling, and I know of what I speak. Your white robe is spotless but – "

"O there is where the pain comes in," she cried; "there, just there, is where the dagger strikes. She says she was once like me. O, could any temptation, any suffering, any wrong or misfortune that might befall me, ever bring me to where she is! If it could – "

"Paula!" This time his voice came authoritatively. "You are making too much of a frenzied woman's impulsive exclamation. To her darkened and despairing eyes any young woman of a similar style of beauty would have called forth the same remark. It was a sign that she was not entirely given up to evil, that she could remember her youth. Instead of feeling contaminated by her words, you ought to feel, that unconsciously to yourself, your fresh young countenance with its innocent eyes did an angel's work to-day. They made her recall what she was in the days of her own innocence; and who can tell what may follow such a recollection."

"O Mr. Sylvester," said she, "you fill me with shame. If I could think that – "

"You can, nothing appeals to the heart of crime like the glance of perfect innocence. If evil walks the world, God's ministers walk it also, and none can tell in what glance of the eye or what touch of the hand, that ministry will speak."

It was her turn now to take his hand in hers. "O how good, how thoughtful you are; you have comforted me and you have taught me. I thank you very much."

With a look she did not perceive, he drew his hand away. "I am glad I have helped you, Paula; there is but one thing more to say, and this I would emphasize with every saddened look you have ever met in all your life. Great sins make great sufferers. Side by side came the two dreadful powers of vice and retribution into the world, and side by side will they keep till they sink at last into the awful deeps of the bottomless pit. When you turn your back on a man who has committed a crime, one more door shuts in his darkened spirit."

The tears were falling from Paula's eyes now. He looked at them with strange wistfulness and involuntarily his hand rose to her head, smoothing her locks with fatherly touches. "Do not think," said he, "that I would lessen by a hair's breadth your hatred of evil. I can more easily bear to see the shadow upon your cup of joy than upon the banner of truth you carry. These eyes must lose none of their inner light in glancing compassionately on your fellow-men. Only remember that divinity itself has stooped to rescue, and let the thought make your contact with weary, wicked-hearted humanity a little less trying and a little more hopeful to you. And now, my dear, that is enough of serious talk for to-day. We are bound for a reception, you know, and it is time we were dressing. Do you want me to tell you a secret?" asked he in a light mysterious tone, as he saw her eyes still filling.

She glanced up with sudden interest.

"I know it is treason," resumed he, "I am fully aware of the grave nature of my offence; but Paula I hate all public receptions, and shall only be able to enjoy myself to-night just so much as I see that you are doing so. Life has its dark portals and its bright ones. This is one that you must enter with your most brilliant smiles."

"And they shall not be lacking," said she. "When a treasure-box of thought is given us, we do not open it and scatter its contents abroad, but lay it away where the heart keeps its secrets, to be opened in the hush of night when we are alone with our own souls and God."

He smiled and she moved towards the door. "None the less do we carry with us wherever we go, the remembrance of our hidden treasure," she smilingly added, looking back upon him from the stair.

And again as upon the first night of her entrance into the house, did he stand below and watch her as she softly went up, her lovely face flashing one moment against the dark background of the luxurious bronze, towering from the platform behind, then glowing with faint and fainter lustre, as the distance widened between them and she vanished in the regions above.

She did not see the toss of his arm with which he threw off the burden that rested upon his soul.

XVII

GRAVE AND GAY

"No scandal about Queen Elizabeth I hope." – Sheridan.
"Stands Scotland where it did?" – Macbeth.

"Who is that talking with Miss Stuyvesant?" asked Mr. Sylvester, approaching his wife during one of the lulls that will fall at times upon vast assemblies.

Mrs. Sylvester followed the direction of his glance and immediately responded, "O that is Mr. Ensign, one of the best partis of the season. He evidently knows where to pay his court."

"I inquired because he has just requested me to honor him with a formal introduction to Paula."

"Indeed! then oblige him by all means; it would be a great match for her. To say nothing of his wealth, he is haut ton, and his red whiskers will not look badly beside Paula's dark hair."

Mr. Sylvester frowned, then sighed, but in a few minutes Paula observed him approaching with Mr. Ensign. At once her hitherto pale cheek flushed, but the young gentleman did not seem to object to that, and after the formal introduction which he had sought was over, he exclaimed in his own bright ringing tones,

"The fates have surely forgotten their usual rôle of unpropitiousness. I did not dare hope to meet you here to-night, Miss Fairchild. Was the ride all that your fancy painted?"

"O," said she, speaking very low and glancing around, "do not allude to it here. We had an adventure shortly after you parted from us."

"An adventure! and no cavalier at your side! If I could but have known! Was it so serious?" he inquired in a moment, seeing her look grave.

"Ask Miss Stuyvesant;" said she. "I cannot talk about it any more to-night. Besides the music carries off one's thoughts. It is like a joyous breeze that whirls away the thistle-down whether it will or no."

He gave her a short quick look grave enough in its way, but responded with his usual graceful humor, "The thistle-down is too vicious a sprite to be beguiled away so easily. If I were to give my opinion on the subject, I should say there was method in its madness. If you have been brought up in the country, as I suspect from your remark, you must know that the white floating ball is not as harmless as it would lead you to imagine. It is a meddlesome nobody, that's what it is, and like some country gossips I know, launches forth from a pure love of mischief to establish his prickers in his neighbor's field."

"His! I thought it must be feminine at least to fulfill the conditions you mention. A male gossip, O fie! I shall never have patience with a thistle-ball after this."

"Well," laughed he, "I did start with the intention of making it feminine, but I caught a glimpse of your eyes and lost my courage. I did what I could," added he with a mirthful glance.

"So do the thistles," cried she. Then while both voices joined in a merry laugh, she continued, "But where have we strayed? For a moment it seemed as if we were on the hills at Grotewell; I could almost see the blue sky."

"And I," said he, with his eyes on her face.

"I am sure the brooks bubbled."

"I distinctly heard a bird singing."

"It was a whippowill."

"But my name is Clarence?"

And here both being young and without a care in the world, they laughed again. And the crowded perfumed room seemed to freshen as with a whiff of mountain air.

"You love the country, Miss Fairchild?"