The Sword of Damocles: A Story of New York Life

"Yes," said Miss Belinda, with a significant glance at the table, "everything."

Paula followed her glance, saw the silver box with its wealth of blossoms, and faltered back with a quick look at Mr. Sylvester's grave and watchful countenance.

"Mr. Ensign seems to be possessed of clairvoyance," observed Miss Belinda easily. "How he could know that you were to be in town to-day, I cannot imagine."

"I wrote him in my last letter that in all probability I should spend the holidays with Mr. Sylvester," explained Paula simply, but with a slow and deepening flush, that left the roses she contemplated nothing of which to boast. "I did so, because he proposed to visit Grotewell on Christmas."

There was a short silence in the room, then Mr. Sylvester rose, and remarking with polite composure, "It is a very pretty remembrance," led the way into the dining-room. Paula with a slow drooping of her head quickly followed, while Miss Belinda brought up the rear, with the look of a successful diplomat.

A meal in the Sylvester mansion was always a formal affair, but this was more than formal. A vague oppression seemed to fill the air; an oppression which Miss Belinda's stirring conversation found it impossible to dissipate. In compliance to Mr. Sylvester's request, she sat at the head of the table, and was the only one who seemed able to eat anything. For one thing she had never seen Ona in that post of honor, but Paula and Mr. Sylvester could not forget the graceful form that once occupied that seat. The first meal above a grave, no matter how long it has been dug, must ever seem weighted with more or less unreality.

Besides, with Paula there was a vague unsettled feeling, as if some delicate inner balance had been too rudely shaken. She longed to fly away and think, and she was obliged to sit still and talk.

The end of the meal was a relief to all parties. Miss Belinda went up stairs, thoughtfully shaking her firm head; Mr. Sylvester sat down again to his paper, and Paula advanced towards the dainty gift that awaited her inspection on the library table. But half way to it she paused. A strange shyness had seized her. With Mr. Sylvester sitting there, she dared not approach this delicate testimonial of another's affection. She did not know as she wished to. Her eyes stole in hesitation to the floor. Suddenly Mr. Sylvester spoke:

"Why do you not look at your pretty present, Paula?"

She started, gave him a quick glance, and advanced hurriedly towards the table; but scarcely had she reached it when she paused, turned and hastened over to his side. He was still reading, or appearing to read, but she saw his hand tremble where it grasped the sheet, though his face with its clear cut profile, shone calm and cold against the dark background of the wall beyond.

"I do not care to look at it now," said she, with a hurried interlacing of her restless fingers.

He turned towards her and a quick thrill passed over his countenance. "Sit down, Paula," said he, "I want to talk to you."

She obeyed as might an automaton. Was it the tone of his voice that chilled her, or the studied aspect of his fixed and solemn countenance? He did not speak at once, but when he did, there was no faltering in his voice, that was lower than common, but deep, like still waters that have run into dark channels far from the light of day.

"Paula, I want to ask you a question. What would you think of a man that, with deliberate selfishness, went into the king's garden, and plucking up by the roots the most beautiful flower he could find there, carried it into a dungeon to pant out its exquisite life amid chill and darkness?"

"I should think," replied she, after the first startled moment of silence, "that the man did well, if by its one breath of sweetness, the flower could comfort the heart of him who sat in the dungeon."

The glance with which Mr. Sylvester regarded her, suddenly faltered; he turned with quickness towards the fire. "A moment's joy is, then, excuse for a murder," exclaimed he. "God and the angels would not agree with you, Paula."

There was a quivering in his tone, made all the more apparent by its studied self-possession of a moment before. She trembled where she sat, and opened her lips to speak, but closed them again, awed by his steady and abstracted gaze, now fixed before him in gloomy reverie. A moment passed. The clock ticking away on the mantel-piece seemed to echo the inevitable "Forever! never!" of Longfellow's old song. Neither of them moved. At length, in a low and trembling voice, Paula spoke:

"Is it murder, when the flower loves the dark of the dungeon more than it does the light of day?"

With a subdued but passionate cry he rose hastily to his feet. "Yes," said he, and drew back as if he could not bear the sight of her face or the glance of her eye. "Sunshine is the breath of flowers; sweet wooing gales, their natural atmosphere. He who meddles with a treasure so choice does it at his peril." Then as she hurriedly rose in turn, softened his whole tone, and assuming his usual air of kindly fatherhood, asked her in the most natural way in the world, what he could do to make her happy that day.

"Nothing," replied she, with a droop of her head; "I think I will go and see Cicely."

A short sigh escaped him. "The carriage shall be ready for you," said he. "I hope your friend's happiness will overflow into your own gentle bosom, and make the day a very pleasant one. God bless your young sweet heart, my Paula!"

Her breast heaved, her large, dark, mellow eyes flashed with one quick glance towards his face, then she drew back, and in another moment left his side and quietly glided from the room. His very life seemed to go with her, yet he did not stir; but he sighed deeply when, upon turning towards the library-table, he found that she had carried away with her the silent testimonial of another and more fortunate man's love and devotion.

XXXII

FULL TIDE

"A skirmish of wit between them." – Much Ado About Nothing.

Man thinks he is strong, and lays his foundations, raises his walls, and dreams of his completed turrets, without reckoning the force of the gales or the insidious inundating of the waters that may bring low the mounting structure before its time. When with a firm hand, Mr. Sylvester thrust back from his heart the one delight which of all the world could afford, seemed to him at that moment the dearest and the best, he thought the struggle was over and the victory won. It had not even commenced. He was made startlingly alive to this fact at the very next interview he had with Paula. She had just come from Miss Stuyvesant, and the reflection of her friend's scarcely comprehended joy was on her countenance, together with a look he could not comprehend, but which stirred and haunted him, until he felt forced to ask if she had seen any other of her old friends, in the short visit she had paid.

"Yes," said she, with a distressed blush. "Mr. Ensign was unexpectedly there."

It is comparatively easy to restrain your own hand from snatching at a treasure you greatly covet, but it is much more difficult to behold another and a lesser one grasp and carry it away before your eyes. He succeeded in hiding the shadow that oppressed him, but he was constrained to recognize the sharpness of the conflict that was about to be waged in the recesses of his own breast. A conflict, because he knew that a lift of his finger, or a glance of his eye would decide the matter then, while in a week, perhaps, the glamour of a young sunshiny love, would have worked its inevitable result, and the happiness that had so unexpectedly startled upon him in his monotonous and sombre path, would have wandered forever out of his reach. How did he meet its unexpected rush. Sternly at first, but with greater and greater wavering as the days went by, each one revealing fresh beauties of character and deeper springs of feeling in the enchanting girl thus brought in all her varied charm before his eyes. Why should he not be happy? If there were dark pages in his life, had they not long ago been closed and sealed, and was not the future bright with promise? A man of his years was not through with life. He felt at times as he gazed upon her face with its indescribable power of awakening far-reaching thoughts and feelings in callous breasts long unused to the holy influence of either, that he had just begun to live; that the golden country, with its enticing vistas, lay all before him, and that the youth, which he had missed, had somehow returned to his prime, fresh with more than its usual enthusiasm and bright with more than its wonted hopes and projects. With this glorious woman at his side, life would be new indeed, and if new why not pure and sweet and noble? What was there to hinder him from making the existence of this sweet soul a walking amongst gentle duties, satisfied dreams and holy aspirations? A past remorse? Why the gates could be closed on that! A strain of innate weakness for the world's good opinion and applause? Ah! with love in his life such a weakness must disappear; besides had he not taken a vow on her dear head, that ought to hedge him about as with angel's wings in the hour of temptation? Men with his experience do not invoke the protection of innocence to guard a degraded soul. Why, then, all this hesitation? A great boon was being offered to him after years of loneliness and immeasurable longing; was it not the will of heaven, that he should meet and enjoy this unexpected grace? He dared to stop and ask, and once daring to ask, the insidious waters found their way beneath the foundations of his resolution, and the lofty structure he had reared in such self-confidence, began to tremble where it stood, though as yet it betrayed no visible sign of weakness.

Meanwhile, society with its innumerable demands, had drawn the beautiful young girl within its controlling grasp. She must go here, she must go there; she must lend her talents to this, her beauty to that. Before she had decided whether she ought to remain in the city a week, two had flown by, and in all this time Mr. Ensign had been ever at her side, brightening in her own despite, hours which might else have been sad, and surrounding her difficult path with proofs of his silent and wary devotion. A golden net seemed to be closing around her, and, though as yet, she had given no token of a special recognition of her position, Miss Belinda betrayed by the uniform complacence of her demeanor, that she for one regarded the matter as effectually settled.

The success which Bertram had met in his first visit at Mr. Stuyvesant's, was not the least agitating factor in this fortnight's secret history. He was too much a part of the home life at Mr. Sylvester's, not to make the lightest thrill of his frank and sensitive nature felt by all who invaded its precincts. And he was in a state of repressed expectancy at this time, that unconsciously created an atmosphere about him of vague but restless excitement. The hearts of all who encountered his look of concentrated delight, must unconsciously beat with his. A strain sweeter than his old-time music was in his voice. When he played upon the piano, which was but seldom, it was as if he breathed out his soul before the holy images. When he walked, he seemed to tread on air. His every glance was a question as to whether this great joy, for which he had so long and patiently waited, was to be his? Love, living and apotheosized, appeared to blaze before them, and no one can look on love without feeling somewhere in his soul the stir of those deep waters, whose pulsing throb even in the darkness of midnight, proves that we are the children of God.

Cicely was uncommunicative, but her face, when Paula beheld it, was like the glowing countenance of some sculptured saint, from which the veil is slowly being withdrawn.

Suddenly there came an evening when the force of the spell that held all these various hearts enchained gave way. It was the night of a private entertainment of great elegance, to be held at the house of a friend of Miss Stuyvesant. Bertram had received formal permission from the father of Cicely, to act as his daughter's escort, and the fact had transformed him from a hopeful dreamer, into a man determined to speak and know his fate at once. Paula was engaged to take part in the entertainment, and the sight of her daintily-decked figure leaving the house with Mr. Ensign, was the last drop in the slowly gathering tide that was secretly swelling in Mr. Sylvester's breast; and it was with a sudden outrush of his whole determined nature that he stepped upstairs, dressed himself in evening attire, and deliberately followed them to the place where they were going. "The wealth of the Indies is slipping from my grasp," was his passionate exclamation, as he rode through the lighted streets. "I cannot see it go; if she can care more for me than for this sleek, merry-hearted young fellow, she shall. I know that my love is to his, what the mighty ocean is to a placid lake, and with such love one ought to be panoplied as with resisting steel."

A stream of light and music met him, as he went up the stoop of the house that held his treasure. It seemed to intoxicate him. Glow, melody and perfume, were so many expressions of Paula. His friends, of whom there were many present, received him with tokens of respect, not unmingled with surprise. It was the first time he had been seen in public since his wife's death, and they could not but remark upon the cheerfulness of his bearing, and the almost exalted expression of his proud and restless eye. Had Paula accompanied him, they might have understood his emotion, but with the beautiful girl under the care of one of the most eligible gentlemen in town, what could have happened to Mr. Sylvester to make his once melancholy countenance blazon like a star amid this joyous and merrily-laughing throng. He did not enlighten them, but moved from group to group, searching for Paula. Suddenly the thought flashed upon him, "Is it only an hour or so since I smiled upon her in my own hall, and shook my head when she asked me with a quick, pleading look, to come with them to this very spot?" It seemed days, since that time. The rush of these new thoughts, the final making up of this slowly-maturing purpose, the sudden allowing of his heart to regard her as a woman to be won, had carried the past away as by the sweep of a mountain torrent. He could not believe he had ever known a moment of hesitancy, ever looked at her as a father, ever bid her go on her way and leave the prisoner to his fate. He must always have felt like this; such momentum could not have been gathered in an hour; she must know that he loved her wildly, deeply, sacredly, wholly, with the fibre of his mind, his body and his soul; that to call her his in life and in death, was the one demanding passion of his existence, making the past a dream, and the future – ah, he dared not question that! He must behold her face before he could even speculate upon the realities lying behind fate's down-drawn curtain.

Meanwhile fair faces and lovely forms flitted before him, carrying his glance along in their train, but only because youth was a symbol of Paula. If these fresh young girls could smile and look back upon him, with that lingering glance which his presence ever invoked, why not she who was not only sweet, tender, and lovely, but gifted with a nature that responded to the deep things of life, and the stern passions of potent humanity. Could a merry laugh lure her while he stood by? Was the sunshine the natural atmosphere of this flower, that had bloomed under his eye so sweetly and shed out its innocent fragrance, at the approach of his solemn-pacing foot? He began to mirror before his mind's eye the startled look of happy wonder with which she would greet his impassioned glance, when released from whatever duties might be now pressing upon her; she wandered into these rooms, to find him awaiting her, when suddenly there was a stir in the throng, a pleased and excited rush, and the large curtain which he had vaguely noticed hanging at one end of the room, uplifted and – was it Paula? this coy, brilliant, saucy-eyed Florentine maiden, stepping out from a bower of greenery, with finger on her lip, and a backward glance of saucy defiance that seemed to people the verdant walks behind her with gallant cavaliers, eager to follow upon her footsteps? Yes; he could not be mistaken; there was but one face like that in the world. It was Paula, but Paula with youth's merriest glamour upon her, a glamour that had caught its radiant light from other thoughts than those in which he had been engaged. He bowed his head, and a shudder went through him like that which precedes the falling knife of the executioner. Even the applause that greeted the revelation of so much loveliness and alluring charm, passed over him like a dream. He was battling with his first recognition of the possibility of his being too late. Suddenly her voice was heard.

She was speaking aloud to herself, this Florentine maiden who had outstripped her lover in the garden, but the tone was the same he had heard beside his own hearthstone, and the archness that accompanied it had frequently met and encouraged some cheerful expression of his own. These are the words she uttered. Listen with him to the naïve, half tender, half pettish voice, and mark with his eyes the alternate lights and shadows that flit across her cheek as she broodingly murmurs:

He is certainly a most notable gallant. His "Good day, lady!" and his "Good even to you!" are flavored with the cream of perfectest courtesy. But gallantry while it sits well upon a man, does not make him one, any more than a feather makes the cap it adorns. For a Tuscan he hath also a certain comeliness, but then I have ever sworn, in good faith too, that I would not marry a Tuscan, were he the best made man in Italy. Then there is his glance, which proclaims to all men's understandings that he loves me, which same seems overbold; but then his smile!

Well, for a smile it certainly does credit to his wit, but one cannot live upon smiles; though if one could, one might consent to make a trial of his – and starve belike for her pains. (She drops her cheek into her hand and stands musing.)

Mr. Sylvester drew a deep breath and let his eyes fall, when suddenly a hum ran through the audience about him, and looking quickly up, he beheld Mr. Ensign dressed in full cavalier costume, standing behind the musing maiden with a half merry, half tender gleam upon his face, that made the thickly beating heart of his rival shrink as if clutched in an iron vise. What followed, he heard as we do the words of a sentence read to us from the judge's seat. The cavalier spoke first and a thousand dancing colors seemed to flash in the merry banter that followed.

Martino.– She muses, and on no other than myself, as I am ready to swear by that coy and tremulous glance. I will move her to avow it. (Advances.) Fair lady, greeting! A kiss for your sweet thoughts.

Nita. (With a start). – A kiss, Signior Martino? You must acknowledge that were but a sorry exchange for thoughts like mine, so if it please you, I will keep my thoughts and you your kiss; and lest it should seem ungracious in me to give nothing upon your asking, I will bestow upon you my most choice good day, and so leave you to your meditations. (Curtseys and is about to depart.)

Martino.– You have the true generosity, lady; you give away what it costs you the dearest to part from. Nay, rumple not your lip; it is the truth for all your pretty poutings! Convince me it is not.

Nita.– Your pardon, but that would take words, and words would take time, and time given to one of your persuasion would refute all my arguments on the face of them. (Still retreating.)

Martino.– Well, lady, since it is your pleasure to be consistent, rather than happy, adieu. Had you stayed but as long as the bee pauses on an oleander blossom, you would have heard —

Nita.– Buzzing, signior?

Martino.– Yes, if by that word you would denominate vows of constancy and devotion. For I do greatly love you, and would tell you so.

Nita.– And for that you expect me to linger! as though vows were new to my ears, and words of love as strange to my understanding as tropical birds to the eyes of a Norseman.

Martino.– If you do love me, you will linger.

Nita.– Yet if I do, (Slowly advancing) be assured it is from some other motive than love.

Martino.– So it be not from hate I am contented.

Nita.– To be contented with little, proves you a man of much virtue.