The Sword of Damocles: A Story of New York Life

by Anna Katharine Green

  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."

  --MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

  Mrs. Sylvester reclining on the palest of blue couches, in the slantingsunlight of an April afternoon, is a study for a painter. Not that suchinspiring loveliness breathed from her person, conspicuous as it was forits rich and indolent grace, but because in every attitude of her largeand well formed limbs, in every raise of the thick white lids from eyeswhose natural brightness was obscured by the mist of aimless fancies,she presented such an embodiment of luxurious ease, one might almostimagine they were gazing upon the favorite Sultana of some easterncourt, or, to be for once poetical as the subject demands, a full blownEgyptian lotos floating in hushed enjoyment on the placid waters of itsnative stream. Indeed for all the blonde character of her beauty, therewas certainly something oriental about the physique of this favoredchild of fortune. Had the tint of her skin been richened to a magnoliabloom instead of reminding you of that description accorded to thecomplexion of one of Napoleon's sisters, that it looked like white satinseen through pink glass, she would have passed in any Eastern market,for a rare specimen of Circassian beauty.

  But Mr. Sylvester coming home fatigued and harassed, cared little forCircassian beauties or Oriental odalisques. It was a welcome that hedesired, and such refreshment as a quick eye and ready hand can bestowwhen guided by a tender and loving heart; or so thought the watchfulPaula as she glided from her room at the sound of his step in the hall,and met him coming weary and disheartened from the side of Ona's couch.The sight of her revived him at once.

  "Well, little one, what have you been doing to-day?"

  Instantly a shade fell over her countenance. "I hardly know how to tellyou. It has been a day of great experiences to me. I am literally shakenwith them. I have been wanting to talk to Ona about what I have seen andheard, but thought I had best wait till you came home, for I could notrepeat the story twice."

  "What! you look pale. Nothing has happened to frighten you I hope,"exclaimed he, leading her back to Ona's side, who stirred a little, andpresently deigned to take an upright position.

  "I do not know if it is fear or horror," cried Paula, shuddering; "Ihave seen a fearful woman--But first I ought to tell you that I took aride with Miss Stuyvesant in the Park this morning--"

  "Yes, and persisted in going for that lady on horseback instead ofsending the groom after her, and all starting from the front of ourhouse," murmured Mrs. Sylvester with lazy chagrin.

  Paula smiled, but otherwise took no notice of this standing topic ofdisagreement.

  "It was a beautiful day," she proceeded, "and we enjoyed it very much,but we were so unfortunate as to run over a little boy, at that placewhere the equestrian road crosses the foot path; a lame child, Mr.Sylvester, who could not get out of our way; poor too, with a raggedjacket on which seemed to make it all the worse."

  Ona gave a shrug with her white shoulders, that seemed to question this."Did you injure him very much?" queried she, with a show of interest;not sufficient however to impair her curiosity as to the cut of one ofher nails.

  "I cannot say; his little arm was struck, and when I went to pick himup, he lay back in my lap and moaned till I thought my heart wouldbreak. But that was not the worst that happened. As we went hurrying upthe walk to find the child's father, we were met by a woman wrapped in ablack cloak whose long and greasy folds seemed like the symbol of herown untold depravity. Her glance as she encountered the child writhingin pain at my feet, made my heart stand still. It was more thanmalignant, it was actually fiendish. 'Is he hurt?' she asked, and itseemed as if she gloated over the question; she evidently longed to hearthat he was, longed to be told that he would die; and when I inquired ifshe was his mother, she broke into a string of laughter, that seemed todarken the daylight. 'His mother! O yes, we look alike, don't we!' sheexclaimed, pointing with a mocking gesture frightful to see, first athis eyes which were very blue and beautiful, and then at her own whichwere dark as evil thoughts could make them. I never saw anything sodreadful. Malignancy! and towards a little lame child! what could bemore horrible!"

  Mr. Sylvester and his wife exchanged looks, then the former asked, "Didshe follow you, Paula?"

  "No; after telling me that I--But I cannot repeat what she said,"exclaimed the young girl with a quick shudder. "Since I came home," shemusingly continued, "I have looked and looked at my face in the glass,but I cannot believe that what she declared is true. There is nosimilarity between us, could never have been any: I will not have itthat she ever saw in all the days of her life such a picture as that inher glass." And with a sudden gesture Paula started up and pointed toherself as she stood reflected in one of the tall mirrors with whichOna's boudoir abounded.

  "And did she dare to make any comparison between you and her owndegraded self?" exclaimed Mr. Sylvester, with a glance at the exquisitevision of pure girlhood thus doubly presented to his notice.

  "Yes, what I am, she was once, or so she said. And it may be true. Ihave never suffered sorrow or experienced wrong, and cannot measuretheir power to carve the human face with such lines as I beheld on thatwoman's countenance to-day. But do not let us talk of her any more. Sheleft us at last, and we found the child's father. Mr. Sylvester," shesuddenly asked, "are there to be found in this city, men occupyinghonorable positions and as such highly esteemed, who like Damocles ofold, may be said to sit under the constant terror of a falling sword inthe shape of some possible disclosure, that if made, would ruin theirposition before the world forever?"

  Mr. Sylvester started as if he had been shot. "Paula!" cried he, andinstantly was silent again. He did not look at his wife, but if he had,he would have perceived that even her fair skin was capable of blanchingto a yet more startling whiteness, and that her sleepy eyes could flashopen with something like expression in their lazy depths.

  "I mean," dreamily continued Paula, absorbed in her own remembrance,"that if what we overheard said by the father of that child to-day istrue, some one of our prominent men, whose life is not all it appears,is standing on the verge of possible exposure and shame; that a hound ison his track in the form of a starving man; and that sooner or later hewill have to pay the price of an unprincipled creature's silence, orfall into public discredit like some others of whom we have latelyread." Then as silence filled the room, she added, "It makes me trembleto think that a man of means and seeming honor should be placed in sucha position, but worse still that we may know such a one and be ignorantof his misery and his shame."

  "It is getting time for me to dress," murmured Ona, sinking back on herpillow and speaking in her most languid tone of voice. "Could you nothasten your story a little Paula?"

  But Mr. Sylvester with a hurried glance at the closing eyes of his wife,requested on the contrary that she would explain herself moredefinitely. "Ona will pardon the delay," said he, with a set, strainedpoliteness that called up the least little quiver of suppressed sarcasmabout the rosy infantile lips that he evidently did not consider itworth his while to notice.

  "But that is all," said Paula. However she repeated as nearly as shecould just what the boy's father had said. At the conclusion Mr.Sylvester rose.

  "What kind of a looking man was he?" said that gentleman as he crossedto the window.

  "Well, as nearly as I can describe, he was tall, dark and seedy, with ashock of black hair and a pair of black whiskers that floated on thewind as he walked. He was evidently of the order of decayed gentleman,and his manner of talking, especially in the profuse use he made of hisarms and hands, was decidedly foreign. Yet his speech was pure andwithout accent."

  Mr. Sylvester's face as he asked the next question was comparativelycheerful. "Was the other man with whom he was talking, as dark andforeign as himself?"

  "O no
, he was round and jovial, a little too insinuating perhaps, in hisway of speaking to ladies, but otherwise a a well enough appearing man."

  Mr. Sylvester bowed and looked at his watch. (Why do gentlemen alwaysconsult their watches even in the face of the clock?) "Ona, you areright," said he, "it is time you were dressing for dinner." Andconcluding with a word or two of sympathy as to the peculiar nature ofPaula's adventures as he called them, he hastened from the room andproceeded to his little refuge above.

  "He has not asked me what became of the child," thought Paula, with acertain pang of surprise. "I expected him to say, 'Shall we not try andsee the little fellow, Paula?' if only to allow me to explain that thechild's father would not tell me where they lived. But the later affairhas evidently put the child out of his head. And indeed it is onlynatural that a business man should be more interested in such a fact asI have related, than in the sprained arm of a wretched creature's'little feller.'" And she turned to assist Ona, who had arisen from hercouch and was now absorbed in the intricacies of an uncommonly elaboratetoilet.

  "Those men did not mention any names?" suddenly queried that lady,looking with an expression of careful anxiety, at the twist of her backhair, in the small hand-mirror she held over her shoulder.

  "No," said Paula, dropping a red rose into the blonde locks she was socarefully arranging. "He expressly said he did not know the name of theperson to whom he alluded. It was a strange conversation for me tooverhear, was it not?" she remarked, happy to have interested her cousinin anything out of the domains of fashion.

  "I don't know--certainly--of course--" returned Mrs. Sylvester with someincoherence. "Do you think red looks as well with this black as thelavender would do?" she rambled on in her lightest tone, pulling out abox of feathers.

  Paula gave her a little wistful glance of disappointment and decided infavor of the lavender.

  "I am bound to look well to-night if I never do so again," said Ona.They were all going to a public reception at which a foreign lord wasexpected to be present. "How fortunate I am to have a perfect littlehairdresser in my own family, without being obliged to send for somegossipy, fussy old Madame with her stories of how such and such a onelooked when dressed for the Grand Duke's ball, or how Mrs. So and Soalways gave her more than her price because she rolled up puffs soexquisitely." And stopping to aid the deft girl in substituting thelavender feather for the red rose in her hair--she forgot to ask anymore questions.

  * * * * *

  "Ona," remarked her husband, coming into the room on his way down todinner--Mrs. Sylvester never dined when she was going to any grandentertainment; it made her look flushed she said--"I am not in the habitof troubling you about your family matters, but have you heard from yourfather of late?"

  Mrs. Sylvester turned from her jewel-casket and calmly surveyed hisface. It was fixed and formal, the face he turned to his servants andsometimes--to his wife. "No," said she, with a light little gesture asthough she were speaking of the most trivial matter. "In one respect atleast, papa is like an angel, his visits are few and far between."

  Mr. Sylvester's eye-brows drew heavily together. For a man with a smileof strange sweetness, he could sometimes look very forbidding. "_When_was he here last?" he inquired in a tone more commanding than he knew.

  She did not appear to resent it. "Let me see," mused she. "When was it Ilost my diamond ear-ring? O I remember, it was on the eve of New Year'sday a year ago; I recollect because I had to wear pearls with my garnetbrocade," she pettishly sighed. "And papa came the next week, after youhad given me the money for a new pair. I have reason to remember _that_,for not a dollar did he leave me."

  "Ona!" exclaimed her husband, shrinking back in uncontrollable surprise,while his eyes flashed inquiringly to her ears in which two noblediamonds were brilliantly shining.

  "O," she cried, just raising one snowy hand to those sparklingornaments, while a faint blush, the existence of which he had sometimesdoubted, swept over her careless face. "I was enabled to procure them intime; but for a whole two months I had to go without diamonds." She didnot say that she had bartered her wedding jewels to make up the sum sheneeded, but he may have understood that without being told.

  "And that is the last time you have seen him?" He held her eyes withhis, she could not look away.

  "The very last, sir; strange to say."

  His glance shifted from her face and he turned with a bow towards thedoor.

  "May I ask," she slowly inquired as he moved across the floor, "what isthe reason of this sudden interest in poor papa?"

  "Certainly," said he, pausing and looking back, not without some emotionof pity in his glance. "I am sometimes struck with a sense of the duty Iowe you, in helping you to bear the burden of certain secretresponsibilities which I fear may sometimes prove too heavy for you."

  She gave a little rippling laugh that only sounded hollow to the imagelistening in the glass. "You choose strange times in which to bestruck," said she, holding up two dresses for his inspection, with alift of her brows evidently meant as an inquiry as to which he thoughtthe most becoming.

  "Conscience is the chooser, not I," declared he, for once allowinghimself to ignore the weighty question of dress thus propounded.

  His wife gave a little toss of her head and he left the room.

  "I should like Edward very much," murmured she in a burst of confidenceto her own reflection in the glass, "if only he would not bother himselfso much about that same disagreeable conscience."

  * * * * *

  "You look unhappy," said Mr. Sylvester to Paula as they came from thedining-room. "Have the adventures of the day made such an impressionupon you that you will not be able to enjoy the evening's festivities?"

  She lifted her face and the quick smile came.

  "I do not like to see your brow so clouded," continued he, smoothing hisown to meet her searching eye. "Smiles should sit on the lips of youth,or else why are they so rosy."

  "Would you have me smile in face of my first glimpse of wickedness,"asked she, but in a gentle tone that robbed her words of half theirreproach. "You must remember that I have had but little experience withthe world. I have lived all my life in a town of wholesome virtues, andwhile here I have been kept from contact with anything low or base. Ihave never known vice, and now all in a moment I feel as if I have beenbathed in it."

  He took her by the hand and drew her gently towards him. "Does yourwhole being recoil so from evil, my Paula? What will you do in thiswicked world? What will you say to the sinner when you meet him--as youmust?"

  "I don't know; it's a problem I have never been brought to consider. Ifeel as if launched on a dismal sea for which I have neither chart norcompass. Life was so joyous to me this morning--" a flush swept over hercheek but he did not notice it--"I held, or seemed to hold, a cup ofwhite wine in my hand, but suddenly as I looked at it, it turned blackand--"

  Ah, the outreach, the dismal breaking away of thought into theunfathomable, 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 inevitableshadow of that great mass of human frailty and woe which has beenaccumulating from the foundation of the world?"

  "No, no, I cannot, and retain my humanity. If there is such evil in theworld, 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 lifewas pure and white, now it is black and befouled. What will make itclean again?"

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

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

  "Yes, yes."

  "There are some persons," he went on slowly, "you know them, who treadthe ways of life with their eyelids closed to everything but the stripof velvet lawn on which they choose to walk. Earth's sighs anddeep-drawn groans are nothing to them. The world may swing on in its wayto perdition; so long as their pathway feels soft, they neither heed norcare. But you do not desire to be one of these, Paula! With your greatsoul 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 ofdestruction, you might have made pools of healing by the touch of yourwomanly sympathy."

  "No, no."

  "I cannot tell you, I dare not tell you," he went on in a strangepleading voice that tore at the very roots of her heart, and rung in hermemory forever, "what evil underlies the whole strata of life! At homeand abroad, on our hearthstones and within our offices, the mockingdevil sits. You can scarcely walk a block, my little one, withoutencountering a man or brushing against the dress of a woman across whosesoul the black shadow lies heavier than any words of his or hers couldtell. What the man you saw to-day, said of one unhappy being in thiscity, is true, God help us all, of many. Dark spots are easier acquiredthan blotted out, my Paula. In business as in society, one needs tocarry the white shield of a noble purpose or a self-forgetting love, toescape the dripping of the deadly upas tree that branches above allhumanity. I have walked its ways, my darling, and I know of what Ispeak. Your white robe is spotless but--"

  "O there is where the pain comes in," she cried; "there, just there, iswhere the dagger strikes. She says she was once like me. O, could anytemptation, 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 toomuch of a frenzied woman's impulsive exclamation. To her darkened anddespairing eyes any young woman of a similar style of beauty would havecalled forth the same remark. It was a sign that she was not entirelygiven up to evil, that she could remember her youth. Instead of feelingcontaminated by her words, you ought to feel, that unconsciously toyourself, your fresh young countenance with its innocent eyes did anangel's work to-day. They made her recall what she was in the days ofher own innocence; and who can tell what may follow such arecollection."

  "O Mr. Sylvester," said she, "you fill me with shame. If I could thinkthat--"

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

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

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

  The tears were falling from Paula's eyes now. He looked at them withstrange 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 moreeasily bear to see the shadow upon your cup of joy than upon the bannerof truth you carry. These eyes must lose none of their inner light inglancing compassionately on your fellow-men. Only remember that divinityitself has stooped to rescue, and let the thought make your contact withweary, wicked-hearted humanity a little less trying and a little morehopeful to you. And now, my dear, that is enough of serious talk forto-day. We are bound for a reception, you know, and it is time we weredressing. Do you want me to tell you a secret?" asked he in a lightmysterious 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 gravenature of my offence; but Paula I hate all public receptions, and shallonly be able to enjoy myself to-night just so much as I see that you aredoing so. Life has its dark portals and its bright ones. This is onethat you must enter with your most brilliant smiles."

  "And they shall not be lacking," said she. "When a treasure-box ofthought 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 thehush 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 carrywith us wherever we go, the remembrance of our hidden treasure," shesmilingly added, looking back upon him from the stair.

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

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