by Marion Bryce
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 m 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 .repression 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, conies 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 m 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, jet 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 m 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 day 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 clays 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; 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 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 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 ground 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 soma 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 la 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 strewn 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 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.
At a yard or two in front of him she paused astonished. This grave, tall figure with the melancholy brow, deep eyes and firmly compressed lips was an unaccustomed sight in his primitive town. Scarcely realizing what she did she gave a little courtesy and was proceeding on when he stopped her with a hurried gesture.
“Is Mrs. Fairchild still living?” he asked, indicating the house she had just left.
“Mrs. Fairchild? O no,” she returned, surveyi
ng him out of the corner of a very roguish pair of brown eyes, with a certain sly wonder at the suspense in his voice. “She has been dead as long as I can remember. Old Miss Abby and her sister live there now.”
“And who are they?” he hurriedly asked; he could not bring himself to mention Paula’s name.
“Why, Miss Abby and Miss Belinda,” she returned with a puzzled air. “Miss Abby sews and Miss Belinda teaches the school. I don’t know anything more about them, sir.”
The courteous gentleman bowed. “And they live there quite alone?”
“O no sir, Paula lives with them.”
“Ah, she does;” and the young girl looking at him could not detect the slightest change in his haughty countenance. “Paula is Mrs. Fairchild’s daughter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you,” said he, and allowed the pretty brown-eyed miss to pass on, which she did with lingering footsteps and many a backward glance of the eye.
Halting at the door of that small cottage, Edward Sylvester reasoned with himself.
“She may be just such another fresh-looking, round-faced, mischievous-eyed school-girl. Spiritual children do not always make earnest-souled women. Let me beware what hopes I build on a foundation so unsubstantial.” Yet when in a moment later the door opened and a weazen-faced dapper, little woman appeared, all smiles and welcome, he owned to a sensation of dismay that sufficiently convinced him what a hold this hope of meeting with something exceptionally sweet and high, had taken upon his hitherto careless and worldly spirit.