Afternoon Tea Mysteries, Volume Two: A Collection of Cozy Mysteries

by Marion Bryce

  He turned with alacrity. In his relief he could have kissed the snowy neck held so erectly before him, as he drew around it the shawl he had hastily lifted from the chair at his side. But that would not have suited this calm and languid beauty who disliked any too overt tribute to her charms and saved her caresses for her bird. Besides it would look like gratitude, and gratitude would be misplaced towards a wife who had just indicated her acceptance of his offer to receive a relative of her own into his house.

  “She might as well come at once,” was her final remark, as satisfied at last with the lay of every ribbon she swept in finished elegance from the room. “Mrs. Kittredge’s reception comes off a week from Thursday, and I should like to see how a dark beauty with a fair skin would look in that new shade of heliotrope.”

  And so the battle was over and the victory won; for Mrs. Sylvester for all her seeming indifference was never known to change a decision she had once made. As he realized the fact, as he meditated that ere long this very room which had been the scene of so much frivolity and the witness to so many secret heart-burnings, would re-echo to the tread of the pure and innocent child, whose mind had flights unknown to the slaves of fashion, and in whose heart lay impulses of goodness that would satisfy the long smothered cravings of his awakened nature, he experienced a feeling of relenting towards the wife who had not chosen to thwart him in this the strongest wish of his childless manhood, and crossing to her dressing table, he dropped among its treasures a costly ring which he had been induced to purchase that day from an old friend who had fallen into want. “She will wear it,” murmured he to himself, “for its hue will make her hand look still whiter, and when I see it sparkle I will remember this hour and be patient.” Had he known that she had yielded to this wish out of a certain vague feeling of compunction for the disappointments she had frequently occasioned him and would occasion him again, he might have added a tender thought to the rich and costly gift with which he had just endowed her.

  “I expect a young cousin of mine to spend the winter with me and pursue her studies,” were the first words that greeted his ears as an hour or so later he entered the parlor where his wife was entertaining what few guests had been anxious enough for a sight of Mrs. Sylvester’s newly furnished drawingroom, to brave the now rapidly falling snow. “I hope that you and she will be friends.”

  Curious to see what sort of a companion his wife was thus somewhat prematurely providing for Paula, he hastily advanced towards the little group from which her voice had proceeded, and found himself face to face with a brown-haired girl whose appealing glance and somewhat infantile mouth were in striking contrast to the dignity with which she carried her small head and managed her whole somewhat petite person.

  “Miss Stuyvesant! my husband!” came in musical tones from his wife, and somewhat surprised to hear a name that but a moment before had been the uppermost in his mind, he bowed with courtesy and then asked if he was so happy as to speak to a daughter of Thaddeus Stuyvesant.

  “If it will give you especial pleasure I will say yes,” responded the little miss with a smile that irradiated her whole face. “Do you know my father?”

  “There are but few bankers in the city who have not that pleasure,” replied he with an answering look of regard. “I am especially happy to meet his daughter in my house tonight.”

  There was something in his manner of saying this and in the short inquiring glance which at every opportunity he cast upon her bright young face with its nameless charm of mingled appeal and reserve, that astonished his wife.

  “Miss Stuyvesant was in the carriage with Mrs. Fitzgerald,” said that lady with a certain dignity she knew well how to assume. “I am afraid if it had not been for that circumstance we should not have enjoyed the pleasure of her presence.” And with the rare tact of which she was certainly a mistress, as far as all social matters were concerned, she left the aspiring magnate of Wall Street to converse with the daughter of the man whom all New York bankers were expected to know, and hastened to join a group of ladies discussing ceramics before a huge plaque of rarest cloisonné.

  Mr. Sylvester followed her with his eyes; he had never seen her look more vivacious; had the hope of seeing a young face at their board touched some secret chord in her nature as well as his? Was she more of a woman than he imagined, and would she be, though in the most superficial of ways, a mother to Paula? Flushed with the thought, he turned back to the little lady at his side. She was gazing in an intent and thoughtful way at an engraving of Dubufe’s “Prodigal Son” that adorned the wall above her head. There was something in her face that made him ask:

  “Is that a favorite picture of yours?”

  She smiled and nodded her small and delicate head. “Yes sir, it is indeed, but I was not looking at the picture so much as at the face of that dark-haired girl that sits in the centre, with that faraway expression in her eyes. Do you see what I mean? She is like one of the rest. Her form is before us, but her heart and her interest are in some distant clime or forsaken home to which the music murmured at her side recalls her. She has a soul above her surroundings, that girl; and her face is indescribably pathetic to me. In the recesses of her being she carries a memory or a regret that separates her from the world and makes certain moments of her life almost holy.”

  “You look deep,” said Mr. Sylvester, gazing down upon the little lady’s face with strongly awakened interest. “You see more perhaps than the painter intended.”

  “No, no; possibly more than the engraving expresses, but not more than the artist intended. I saw the original once, when as you remember it was on exhibition here. I was a wee thing, but I never forgot that girl’s face. It spoke more than all the rest to me; perhaps because I so much honor reserve in one who holds in his breast a great pain or a great hope.”

  The eye that was resting upon her, softened indescribably. “You believe in great hopes,” said he.

  The little figure seemed to grow tall; and her face looked almost beautiful. “What would life be without them?” she answered.

  “True,” returned Mr. Sylvester; and entering into the conversation with unusual spirit, was astonished to find now young she was and yet how thoroughly bright and self-possessed.

  “Lovely girls are cropping up around me in all directions,” thought he; “I shall have to correct my judgment concerning our young ladies of fashion if I encounter many more as sensible and earnest-hearted as this.” And for some reason his brow grew so light and his tone so cheerful that the ladies were attracted from all parts of the room to hear what the demure Miss Stuyvesant could have to say to the grave master of the house, to call forth such smiles of enjoyment upon his usually melancholy countenance.

  Take all together, the occasion though small was one of the pleasantest of the season, and so Mrs. Sylvester announced when the last carriage had driven away, and she and her husband stood in the brilliantly lighted library, surveying a new cabinet of rare and antique workmanship which had been that day installed in the place of honor beneath my lady’s picture.

  “I thought you seemed to enjoy it, Ona,” her husband remarked.

  “O, it was an occasion of triumph to me,” she murmured. “It is the first time a Stuyvesant has crossed our threshold, mon cher.”

  “Ha,” he exclaimed, turning upon her a brisk displeased look. He was proud and considered no man his superior in a social sense. “Do you acknowledge yourself a parvenue that you rejoice at the entrance of any one special person into your doors?”

  “I thought,” she replied somewhat mortified, “that you betrayed unusual pleasure yourself at her introduction.”

  “That may be; I was glad to see her, for her father is one of the most influential directors in the bank of which I shortly expect to be made president.”

  The nature of this disclosure was calculated to be especially gratifying to her, and effectually blotted out any remembrance of the break by which it had been introduced. After a few hasty inquiries, followed by a scene
of quite honest mutual congratulation, the gratified wife left her husband to put out the lights himself or call Samuel as he might choose, and glided up stairs to delight the curious Sarah with the broken soliloquies and inconsequent self-communings which formed another of her peculiar habits.

  As for her husband, he stood a few minutes where she left him, abstractedly eying the gorgeous vista that spread out before him down to the further mirror of the elaborate drawingroom, thinking perhaps with a certain degree of pride, of the swiftness with which he had risen to opulence and the certainty with which he had conquered position in the business as well as in the social world when he could speak of such a connection with Thaddeus Stuyvesant as a project already matured. Then with a hasty movement and a quick sigh which nothing in his prospects actual or apparent would seem to warrant, he proceeded to put out the lights, my lady’s picture shining with less and less importunity as the flickering jets disappeared, till all was dark save for the faint glimmer that came in from the hall, a glimmer just sufficient to show the outlines of the various articles of furniture scattered about—and could it be the tall figure of the master himself standing in the centre of the room with his palms pressed against his forehead in an attitude of sorrow or despair? Yes, or whose that wild murmur, “Is it never given to man to forget!” Yet no, or who is this that calm and dignified, steps at this moment from the threshold? It must have been a dream, a phantasy. This is the master of the house who with sedate and regular step goes up flight after flight of the spiral staircase, and neither pauses or looks back till he reaches the top of the house where he takes out a key from his pocket, and opening a certain door, goes in and locks it behind him. It is his secret study or retreat, a room which no one is allowed to enter, the mystery of the house to the servants and something more than that to its inquisitive mistress. What he does there no man knows, but tonight if any one had been curious enough to listen, they would have heard nothing mere ominous than the monotonous scratch of a pen. He was writing to Miss Belinda and the burden of his letter was that on a certain day he named, he was coming to take away Paula.

  XII. MISS BELINDA MAKES CONDITIONS.

  “For of the soul the body form does take.

  For soul is form, and doth the body make.”

  —SPENSER.

  Miss Belinda was somewhat taken aback at the proposal of Mr. Sylvester to receive Paula into his own house. She had not anticipated any such result to her efforts; the utmost she had expected was a couple of years or so of instruction in some state Academy. Nor did sue know whether she was altogether pleased at the turn affairs were taking. From all she had heard, her niece Ona was, to say the least, a frivolous woman, and Paula had a mind too noble to be subjected to the deteriorating influence of a shallow and puerile companionship. Then the child had great beauty; Mr. Sylvester who ought to be a judge in such matters had declared it so, and what might not the adulation of the thoughtless and the envy of the jealous, do towards belittling a nature as yet uncontaminated.

  “We ought to think twice,” she said to Miss Abby with some bitterness, who on the contrary never having thought once was full of the most childish hopes concerning a result which she considered with a certain secret complacency she would not have acknowledged for the world, had been very much furthered by her own wise recommendations to Mr. Sylvester in the beginning of his visit. Yet notwithstanding her doubts Miss Belinda allowed such preparations to be made as she considered necessary, and even lent her hand which was deft enough in its way, to the task of enlarging the child’s small wardrobe. As for Paula, the thought of visiting the great city with the dear friend whose image had stood in her mind from early childhood as the impersonation of all that was noble, generous and protecting, was more than joyful; it was an inspiration. Not that she did not cling to the affectionate if somewhat quaint couple who had befriended her childhood and sacrificed their comfort to her culture and happiness. But the chord that lies deeper than gratitude had been struck, and fond as were her memories of the dear old home, the charm of that deep “My child,” with its hint of fatherly affection, was more than her heart could stand; and no spot, no not the realms of fairyland itself, looked so attractive to her fancy as that far fireside in an unknown home where she might sit with cousin Ona and alternately with her exert her wit to beguile the smile to his melancholy lips.

  When therefore upon the stated day, Mr. Sylvester made his second appearance at the little cottage in Grotewell, it was to find Paula radiant, Miss Abby tearfully exultant and Miss Belinda—O anomaly of human nature—silent and severe. Attributing this however to her very natural regret at parting with Paula, he entered into all the arrangements for their departure on the following morning without a suspicion of the real state of her mind, nor was he undeceived until the day was nearly over and they sat down to have a few minutes of social conversation before the early tea.

  They had been speaking on some local topic involving a question of right and wrong, and Mr. Sylvester’s ears were yet thrilling to the deep ringing tones with which Paula uttered the words, “I do not see how any man can hesitate an instant when the voice of his conscience says no. I should think the very sunlight would daunt him at the first step of his foot across the forbidden line,” when Miss Belinda suddenly spoke up and sending Paula out of the room on some trivial pretext, addressed Mr. Sylvester without reserve.

  “I have something to say to you, sir, before you take from my home the child of my care and affection.”

  Could he have guessed what that something was that he should turn with such a flush of sudden anxiety to meet her determined gaze.

  “The rules of our life here have been simple,” continued she in a tone of voice which those who knew her well recognized as belonging to her uncompromising moods. “To do our duty, love God and serve our neighbor. Paula has been brought up to reverence those rules in simplicity and honor; what will your gay city life with its hollow devices for pleasure and its loose hold on the firm principles of life, do for this innocent soul, Mr. Sylvester?”

  “The city,” he said firmly but with a troubled undertone in his voice that was not unnoted by the watchful woman, “is a vast caldron of mingled good and evil. She will hear of more wrong doing, and be within the reach of more self-denying virtue, than if she had remained in this village alone with the nature that she so much loves. The tree of knowledge bears two kinds of fruit, Miss Belinda; would you therefore hinder the child from approaching its branches?”

  “No, sir; I am not so weak as to keep a child in swaddling-clothes after the period of infancy is past, neither am I so reckless as to set her adrift on an unknown sea without a pilot to guide her. Your wife—” she paused and fixed an intent look upon the flames leaping before her. “Ona is my niece,” she resumed in a lower tone of voice, “and I feel entitled to speak with freedom concerning her. Is she such a guide as I would choose for a young girl just entering a new sphere in life? From all I have heard, I should judge she was somewhat over-devoted to this world and its fashions.”

  Mr. Sylvester flushed painfully, but seeing that any softening of the truth would be wholly ineffectual with this woman, replied in a candid tone, “Ona is the same now as she was in the days of her girlhood. If she loves the world too well she is not without her excuse; from her birth it has strewn nothing but roses in her path.”

  “Humph!” came from the lips of the energetic spinster. Then with a second stern glance at the fire, continued, “Another question, Mr. Sylvester. Does your wife consent to receive my niece into her house, for the indefinite length of time which you mention, from interest in the girl herself or indeed from any motive I should judge worthy of Paula? It is a leading question I know, but this is no time for niceties of speech.”

  “Miss Belinda,” replied he, and his voice was firm though his fingers slightly trembled where they rested upon the arms of his chair, “I will try and forget for a moment that Ona is my wife, and frankly confide to you that any such motive on her part, as wo
uld meet with your entire approval, must not be expected from a woman who has never fully recognized the solemn responsibilities of life. That she will be kind to Paula I have no doubt, that she may even learn to take an interest in her for her own sake, is also very possible, but that she will ever take your place towards her as guide or instructor, I neither anticipate nor would feel myself justified in leading you to.”

  The look which Miss Belinda cast him was anything but reassuring. “And yet,” said she, “you will take away my darling and give her up to an influence that can not be for good, or your glance would not be so troubled or your lip so uncertain. You would set her young feet in a path where the very flowers are so thick they conceal its tendency and obscure its dangers. Mr. Sylvester you are a man who has seen life with naked eyes, and must recognize its responsibilities; dare you take this Paula, whom you have seen, out of the atmosphere of truth and purity in which she has been raised, and give her over to the enervating influences of folly and fashion? Will you assume the risk and brave the consequences?”

  As though an electric shock had touched the nerve of his nature, Mr. Sylvester hastily rose and moved in a restless manner to the window. It was his favorite refuge in any time of sudden perplexity or doubt, and this was surely an occasion for both,

  “Miss Belinda,” he began and then paused, looking out on the hills of his boyhood, every one of which spoke to him at that moment with a force that almost sickened his heart and benumbed the faculties of his mind; “I recognize the love which leads you to speak in this way, and I bow before it. but—” here his tongue faltered again, that ready tongue whose quick and persuasive eloquence on public occasions had won for him the name of Silver-speech among his trends and admirers—“but there are others who love your Paula also, love her with a yearning that only the childless can feel or the disappointed appreciate. I had hoped—” here he left the window and approached her side, “to do more for Paula than to give her the temporal benefit of a luxurious home and such instruction as her extraordinary talents demand. If Ona upon seeing and knowing the child had found she could love her, I had intended to ask you to yield her to us unreservedly and forever, in short to make her my child in place of the daughter I nave lost. But now—” with a quick gesture he began pacing the floor and left the sentence unfinished.