The Sword of Damocles: A Story of New York Life

Mr. Sylvester watched him with growing sadness. "Mr. Stuyvesant," said he, as the latter stood before him ready for the street, "we have always been on terms of friendship, and nothing but the most pleasant relations have ever existed between us. Will you pardon me if I ask you to give me your hand in good-day?"

The director paused, looked a trifle astonished, but held out his hand not only with cordiality but very evident affection.

"Good day," cried he, "good-day."

Mr. Sylvester pressed that hand, and then with a dignified bow, allowed the director to depart. It was his last effort at composure. When the door closed, his head sank on his hands, and life with all its hopes and honors, love and happiness, seemed to die within him.

He was interrupted at length by Bertram. "Well, uncle?" asked the young man with unrestrained emotion.

"The theft has been committed by some one in this bank; so the detective gives out, and so we are called upon to believe. Who the man is who has caused us all this misery, neither he, nor you, nor I, nor any one, is likely to very soon determine. Meantime – "

"Well?" cried Bertram anxiously, after a moment of suspense.

"Meantime, courage!" his uncle resumed with forced cheerfulness.

But as he was leaving the bank he came up to Bertram, and laying his hand on his shoulder, quietly said:

"I want you to go immediately to my house upon leaving here. I may not be back till midnight, and Miss Fairchild may need the comfort of your presence. Will you do it, Bertram?"

"Uncle! I – "

"Hush! you will comfort me best by doing what I ask. May I rely upon you?"

"Always."

"That is enough."

And with just a final look, the two gentlemen parted, and the shadow which had rested all day upon the bank, deepened over Bertram's head like a pall.

It was not lifted by the sight of Hopgood stealing a few minutes later towards the door by which his uncle had departed, his face pale, and his eyes fixed in a stare, that bespoke some deep and moving determination.

XXXVIII

BLUE-BEARD'S CHAMBER

"Present fears
Are less than horrible imaginings." – Macbeth.

Clarence Ensign was not surprised at the refusal he received from Paula. He had realized from the first that the love of this beautiful woman would be difficult to obtain, even if no rival with more powerful inducements than his own, should chance to cross his path. She was one who could be won to give friendship, consideration, and sympathy without stint; but from the very fact that she could so easily be induced to grant these, he foresaw the improbability, or at least the difficulty of enticing her to yield more. A woman whose hand warms towards the other sex in ready friendship, is the last to succumb to the entreaties of love. The circle of her sympathies is so large, the man must do well, who of all his sex, pierces to the sacred centre. The appearance of Mr. Sylvester on the scene, settled his fate, or so he believed; but he was too much in earnest to yield his hopes without another effort; so upon the afternoon of this eventful day, he called upon Paula.

The first glimpse he obtained of her countenance, convinced him that he was indeed too late. Not for him that anxious pallor, giving way to a rosy tinge at the least sound in the streets without. Not for him that wandering glance, burning with questions to which nothing seemed able to grant reply. The very smile with which she greeted him, was a blow; it was so forgetful of the motive that had brought him there.

"Miss Fairchild," he stammered, with a generous impulse to save her unnecessary pain, "you have rejected my offer and settled my doom; but let me believe that I have not lost your regard, or that hold upon your friendship which it has hitherto been my pleasure to enjoy."

She woke at once to a realization of his position. "Oh Mr. Ensign," she murmured, "can you doubt my regard or the truth of my friendship? It is for me to doubt; I have caused you such pain, and as you may think, so ruthlessly and with such lack of consideration. I have been peculiarly placed," she blushingly proceeded. "A woman does not always know her own heart, or if she does, sometimes hesitates to yield to its secret impulses. I have led you astray these last few weeks, but I first went astray myself. The real path in which I ought to tread, was only last night revealed to me. I can say no more, Mr. Ensign."

"Nor is it necessary," replied he. "You have chosen the better path, and the better man. May life abound in joys for you, Miss Fairchild."

She drew herself up and her hand went involuntarily to her heart. "It is not joy I seek," said she, "but – "

"What?" He looked at her face lit with that heavenly gleam that visited it in rare moments of deepest emotion, and wondered.

"Joy is in seeing the one you love happy," cried she; "earth holds none that is sweeter or higher."

"Then may that be yours," he murmured, manfully subduing the jealous pang natural under the circumstances. And taking the hand she held out to him, he kissed it with greater reverence and truer affection than when, in the first joyous hours of their intercourse, he carried it so gallantly to his lips.

And she – oh, difference of time and feeling – did not remember as of yore, the noble days of chivalry, though he was in this moment, so much more than ever the true knight and the reproachless cavalier.

For Paula's heart was heavy. Fears too unsubstantial to be met and vanquished, had haunted her steps all day. The short note which Mr. Sylvester had written her, lay like lead upon her bosom. She longed for the hours to fly, yet dreaded to hear the clock tick out the moments that possibly were destined to bring her untold suffering and disappointment. A revelation awaiting her in Mr. Sylvester's desk up stairs? That meant separation and farewell; for words of promise and devotion can be spoken, and the heart that hopes, does not limit time to hours.

With Bertram's entrance, her fears took absolute shape. Mr. Sylvester was not coming home to dinner. Thenceforward till seven o'clock, she sat with her hand on her heart, waiting. At the stroke of the clock, she rose, and procuring a candle from her room, went slowly up stairs. "Watch for me," she had said to Aunt Belinda, "for I fear I shall need your care when I come down."

What is there about a mystery however trivial, that thrills the heart with vague expectancy at the least lift of the concealing curtain! As Paula paused before the door, which never to her knowledge had opened to the passage of any other form than that of Mr. Sylvester, she was conscious of an agitation wholly distinct from that which had hitherto afflicted her. All the past curiosity of Ona concerning this room, together with her devices for satisfying that curiosity, recurred to Paula with startling distinctness. It was as if the white hand of that dead wife had thrust itself forth from the shadows to pull her back. The candle trembled in her grasp, and she unconsciously recoiled. But the next moment the thought of Mr. Sylvester struck warmth and determination through her being, and hastily thrusting the key into the lock, she pushed open the door and stepped across the threshold.

Her first movement was that of surprise. In all her dreams of the possible appearance of this room, she had never imagined it to be like this. Plain, rude and homely, its high walls unornamented, its floor uncovered, its furniture limited to a plain desk and two or three rather uncomfortable-looking chairs, it struck upon her fancy with the same sense of incongruity, as might the sight of a low-eaved cottage in the midst of stately palaces and lordly pleasure-grounds. Setting down her candle, she folded her hands to still their tremblings, and slowly looked around her. This was the spot, then, to which he was accustomed to flee when oppressed by any care or harassed by any difficulty; this cold, bare, uninviting apartment with its forbidding aspect unsoftened by the tokens of a woman's care or presence! To this room, humbler than any in her aunt's home in Grotewell, he had brought all his griefs, from the day his baby lay dead in the rooms below, to that awful hour which saw the wife and mother brought into his doors and laid a cold and pulseless form in the midst of his gorgeous parlors! Here he had met his own higher impulses face to face, and wrestled with them through the watches of the night! In this wilderness of seeming poverty, he had dreamed, perhaps, his first fond dream of her as a woman, and signed perhaps his final renunciation of her as the future companion of his life! What did it mean? Why a spot of so much desolation in the midst of so much that was lordly and luxurious? Her fears might give her a possible interpretation, but she would not listen to fears. Only his words should instruct her. Going to the desk, she opened it. A sealed envelope addressed to herself, immediately met her eyes. Taking it out with a slow and reverent touch, she began to read the long and closely written letter which it contained.

And the little candle burned on, shedding its rays over her bended head and upon the dismal walls about her, with a persistency that seemed to bring out, as in letters of fire, the hidden history of long ago, with its vanished days and its forgotten midnights.

XXXIX

FROM A. TO Z

"A naked human heart." – Young.

"My Beloved Child:

"So may I call you in this the final hour of our separation, but never again, dear one, never again. When I said to you, just twenty-four hours ago, that my sin was buried and my future was clear, I spake as men speak who forget the justice of God and dream only of his mercy. An hour's time convinced me that an evil deed once perpetrated by a man, is never buried so that its ghost will not rise. Do as we will, repent as we may, the shadowy phantom of a stained and unrighteous youth is never laid; nor is a man justified in believing it so, till death has closed his eyes, and fame written its epitaph upon his tomb.

"Paula, I am at this hour wandering in search of the being who holds the secret of my life and who will to-morrow blazon it before all the world. It is with no hope I seek him. God has not brought me to this pass, to release me at last, from shame and disgrace. Suffering and the loss of all my sad heart cherished, wait at my gates. Only one boon remains, and that is, your sympathy and the consolation of your regard. These, though bestowed as friends bestow them, are very precious to me; I cannot see them go, and that they may not, I tell you the full story of my life.

"My youth was happy – my early youth, I mean. Bertram's father was a dear brother to me, and my mother a watchful guardian and a tender friend. At fifteen, I entered a bank, the small bank in Grotewell, which you ought to remember. From the lowest position in it, I gradually worked my way up till I occupied the cashier's place; and was just congratulating myself upon my prospects, when Ona Delafield returned from boarding-school, a young lady.

"Paula, there is a fascination, which some men who have known nothing deeper and higher, call love. I, who in those days had cherished but few thoughts beyond the ordinary reach of a narrow and somewhat selfish business mind, imagined that the well-spring of all romance had bubbled up within me, when my eyes first fell upon this regal blonde, with her sleepy, inscrutable eyes and bewildering smile. Ulysses within sound of the siren's voice, was nothing to it. He had been warned of his danger and had only his own curiosity to combat, while I was not even aware of my peril, and floated within reach of this woman's power, without making an effort to escape. She was so subtle in her influence, Paula; so careless in the very exercise of her sovereignty. She never seemed to command; yet men and women obeyed her. Peculiarities which mar the matron, are often graces in a young, unmarried girl, whose thoughts are a mystery, and whose emotions an untried field. I believed I had found the queen of all beauty and when in an unguarded hour she betrayed her first appreciation of my devotion, I seemed to burst into a Paradise of delights, where every step I took, only the more intoxicated and bewildered me. My first realization of the sensuous and earthly character of my happiness came with the glimpse of your child-face on that never-to-be-forgotten day when we met beside the river. Like a star seen above the glare of a conflagration, the pure spirit that informed your glance, flashed on my burning soul, and for a moment I knew that in you budded the kind of woman-nature which it befitted a man to seek; that in the hands of such a one as you would make, should he trust his honor and bequeath his happiness. But when did a lover ever break the bonds that imprisoned his fancy, at the inspiration of a passing voice. I went back to Ona and forgot the child by the river.

"Paula, I have no time to utter regrets. This is a hard plain tale which I have to relate; but if you love me still – if, as I have sometimes imagined, you have always loved me – think what my life had been if I had heeded the warning which God vouchsafed me on that day, and contrast it with what it is, and what it must be.

"I went back to Ona, then, and the hold which she had upon me from the first, took form and shape. As well as she could love any one, she loved me, and though she had offers from one or two more advantageous sources, she finally decided that she would risk the future and accept me, if her father consented to the alliance. You who are the niece of the man of whom I must now speak, may or may not know what that meant. I doubt if you do; he left Grotewell while you were a child, and any gossip concerning him must ever fall short of the real truth. Enough, then, that it meant, if Jacob Delafield could see in my future any promises of success sufficient to warrant him in accepting me as his son-in-law, no woman living ought to hesitate to trust me with her hand. He was the Squire of the town, and as such entitled to respect, but he was also something more, as you will presently discover. His answer to my plea was:

"'Well, how much money have you to show?'

"Now I had none. My salary as cashier of a small country bank was not large, and my brother's prolonged sickness and subsequent death, together with my own somewhat luxurious habits, had utterly exhausted it. I told him so, but added that I had, somewhere up among the hills, an old maiden aunt who had promised me five thousand dollars at her death; and that as she was very ill at that time – hopelessly so, her neighbors thought – in a few weeks I should doubtless be able to satisfy him with the sight of a sum sufficient to start us in housekeeping, if no more.

"He nodded at this, but gave me no distinct reply. 'Let us wait,' said he.

"But youth is not inclined to wait. I considered my cause as good as won, and began to make all my preparations accordingly. With a feverish impatience which is no sign of true love, I watched the days go by, and waited for, if I did not anticipate, the death which I fondly imagined would make all clear. At last it came, and I went again into Mr. Delafield's presence.

"'My aunt has just died,' I announced, and stood waiting for the short, concise,

"'Go ahead, then, my boy!' which I certainly expected.