Author Unknown
Showing posts with label Location: USA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Location: USA. Show all posts
Tuesday, 17 April 2018
Friday, 30 March 2018
Wednesday, 28 March 2018
Barbara
by Annie Robertson Nixon*
Was there any mail, Eben?"
And leaning over the little wicket gate, dark locks falling about her in pretty, care-less tresses, Barbara looked wistfully down the shady street and then up at the tossing elms, where the busy birds were chattering. And, sad to relate, a frown of discontent crept over Barbara's white brow.
"No, there were no letters for the Leightons," said Eben in a savage mood. "I made special inquiries for you," and Eben's lower lip trembled a little, and his voice softened wonderfully for him. "I suppose you are anxious to get away from the old place, Miss Barbara?"
"Yes, I am," said Miss Leighton sharply, with an imperial air. "I am sick of it all. I should be glad to go anywhere from here."
Eben made no reply. He looked down at the tangled curls, the soft, wistful brown eyes, the dimpled hands clasped over the mesh of honeysuckles—then away over the tops of the snowy balsams toward the great world where Barbara's heart was. He was thinking with one cruel pang which gripped his heart at that moment of what life would be at the farm without Barbara. He had tried of late to live without connecting her in any way with his days and nights, his duties, his hardships and his joys, but he had made sorry work of it. It gave Eben a fright to know how much everything depended on this proud, spoiled beauty, whose dream now was to get away from such as he —the common folks around Larborough.
Barbara at eighteen had a great longing for that gay world of which she had read in summer evenings when sitting under the musky vines in the farm-house porch, or when lying amid the cowslips in the meadow where, under a growing weight of care, Eben toiled with great brown hands in the capacity of help to the Widow Leighton. Eben was as much part and parcel of the place as the crumbling head-stones in the little graveyard on the hill, where all the dead Leightons were lying. No one ever dreamed of his going away, although his merits were acknowledged, and it was admitted that the boy had grown into a strong, handsome man, with shrewd capacities as a financier, and a turn for machinery. A great many of the village had dropped into the habit of addressing him lately as Mr. Hexford, and Eben's muscles commanded respect. He had a little snuggery in the barn he called his workshop, where at odd hours on rainy days he tinkered with lathes and pulleys and edged tools. When his farm work had been tidied up and the cows had been milked and turned into the green woodlands again, Eben shut himself up in his workshop and pottered over his numerous inventions and thought of what great possibilities might have been his if he had been born something better than Mr. Leighton's farm hand. He realised sensibly that there were still possibilities for him out yonder before the dark line of elms and firs which he could see from his study window. But his benefactor had died and left all the tangled threads of his affairs for young Hexford to unravel, and he could not have deserted Mrs Leighton and the girls—Barbara and Theo. It would not have been right or manly. Things were going straight now, however; the farm was in a prosperous condition, and even an indifferent manager could have kept the wheels moving which Eben had fixed in their places. But Eben remained on at the farm while the sea-sons waxed and waned, and the girls were growing into fine, tall young women, with restless yearnings for a busier life than was to be had at Larborough.
He had expected that a girl so pretty as Barbara would be some time leaving so dull a place, but he nevertheless felt a wild, savage pain at his heart when he learned that a letter had been sent to a distant aunt to see if she would not look after Barbara while she enjoyed the advantages of a finishing school for young ladies. The longest summer days would fade into short summer nights, and bye-and-bye, when the first yellow leaves would be dropping into pools and hollows, Barbara would go away—perhaps for ever.
Eben was too much of a man to sigh, and too muscular to do without his supper, but he fell into the habit of taking long walks alone, or of sitting under the honeysuckles on the porch where he could see the moon rise, and where he could hear the young ladies singing rather plaintive songs, accompanied by the cracked strains of the old harpsichord in the best room. He had just plucked the first round full rose of May, and, twirling it thoughtfully in his fingers as he strolled down the garden path to his work-shop, when he heard the breezy flutter of a muslin robe and light footfall behind him on the gravel walk. He turned with a blaze of fire in his black eyes and the rose extended. His hand dropped to his side. It was Theo who came rapidly after him, swinging a white sun-bonnet by one string.
Theo was a saucy, petulant, provoking young person of sixteen, whose pranks and whims had often tried Eben's temper sorely—having him stop the harvesting to saddle Rudolf her pony, or meddle with his tools and upset his newest invention. But Theo's eyes were such lovely blue and her smile so bewitching that Eben had not the heart to scold; besides he had humored her in all her wilfulness himself, and there was the faintest resemblance to Barbara in the brow and dimpled chin which tied him hand and foot.
"Oh, what a lovely thing!" said Theo, coveting the rose and stretching out her plump little hand. "Is it for me?"
"No," said Eben rather gruffly. "I've had an eye on this bud for some time. I noticed that your Lady Isabels are in fine condition. You will have a cluster of them by the day after tomorrow."
"Well, you old stingy, I suppose you don't mind running down to the mail for me; I forgot what Barbara asked me to do, and I shall get a scolding from mamma, who can't have Bab crossed in anything, you know."
"I shall have to go down and see Nanson about the wagon gear anyway to-night, and I can just as well stop at the Post Office. Is it the letter from—from New Haven?" And Eben very thoughtlessly bit off the leaves of the rose and mangled them with his strong white teeth.
And leaning over the little wicket gate, dark locks falling about her in pretty, care-less tresses, Barbara looked wistfully down the shady street and then up at the tossing elms, where the busy birds were chattering. And, sad to relate, a frown of discontent crept over Barbara's white brow.
"No, there were no letters for the Leightons," said Eben in a savage mood. "I made special inquiries for you," and Eben's lower lip trembled a little, and his voice softened wonderfully for him. "I suppose you are anxious to get away from the old place, Miss Barbara?"
"Yes, I am," said Miss Leighton sharply, with an imperial air. "I am sick of it all. I should be glad to go anywhere from here."
Eben made no reply. He looked down at the tangled curls, the soft, wistful brown eyes, the dimpled hands clasped over the mesh of honeysuckles—then away over the tops of the snowy balsams toward the great world where Barbara's heart was. He was thinking with one cruel pang which gripped his heart at that moment of what life would be at the farm without Barbara. He had tried of late to live without connecting her in any way with his days and nights, his duties, his hardships and his joys, but he had made sorry work of it. It gave Eben a fright to know how much everything depended on this proud, spoiled beauty, whose dream now was to get away from such as he —the common folks around Larborough.
Barbara at eighteen had a great longing for that gay world of which she had read in summer evenings when sitting under the musky vines in the farm-house porch, or when lying amid the cowslips in the meadow where, under a growing weight of care, Eben toiled with great brown hands in the capacity of help to the Widow Leighton. Eben was as much part and parcel of the place as the crumbling head-stones in the little graveyard on the hill, where all the dead Leightons were lying. No one ever dreamed of his going away, although his merits were acknowledged, and it was admitted that the boy had grown into a strong, handsome man, with shrewd capacities as a financier, and a turn for machinery. A great many of the village had dropped into the habit of addressing him lately as Mr. Hexford, and Eben's muscles commanded respect. He had a little snuggery in the barn he called his workshop, where at odd hours on rainy days he tinkered with lathes and pulleys and edged tools. When his farm work had been tidied up and the cows had been milked and turned into the green woodlands again, Eben shut himself up in his workshop and pottered over his numerous inventions and thought of what great possibilities might have been his if he had been born something better than Mr. Leighton's farm hand. He realised sensibly that there were still possibilities for him out yonder before the dark line of elms and firs which he could see from his study window. But his benefactor had died and left all the tangled threads of his affairs for young Hexford to unravel, and he could not have deserted Mrs Leighton and the girls—Barbara and Theo. It would not have been right or manly. Things were going straight now, however; the farm was in a prosperous condition, and even an indifferent manager could have kept the wheels moving which Eben had fixed in their places. But Eben remained on at the farm while the sea-sons waxed and waned, and the girls were growing into fine, tall young women, with restless yearnings for a busier life than was to be had at Larborough.
He had expected that a girl so pretty as Barbara would be some time leaving so dull a place, but he nevertheless felt a wild, savage pain at his heart when he learned that a letter had been sent to a distant aunt to see if she would not look after Barbara while she enjoyed the advantages of a finishing school for young ladies. The longest summer days would fade into short summer nights, and bye-and-bye, when the first yellow leaves would be dropping into pools and hollows, Barbara would go away—perhaps for ever.
Eben was too much of a man to sigh, and too muscular to do without his supper, but he fell into the habit of taking long walks alone, or of sitting under the honeysuckles on the porch where he could see the moon rise, and where he could hear the young ladies singing rather plaintive songs, accompanied by the cracked strains of the old harpsichord in the best room. He had just plucked the first round full rose of May, and, twirling it thoughtfully in his fingers as he strolled down the garden path to his work-shop, when he heard the breezy flutter of a muslin robe and light footfall behind him on the gravel walk. He turned with a blaze of fire in his black eyes and the rose extended. His hand dropped to his side. It was Theo who came rapidly after him, swinging a white sun-bonnet by one string.
Theo was a saucy, petulant, provoking young person of sixteen, whose pranks and whims had often tried Eben's temper sorely—having him stop the harvesting to saddle Rudolf her pony, or meddle with his tools and upset his newest invention. But Theo's eyes were such lovely blue and her smile so bewitching that Eben had not the heart to scold; besides he had humored her in all her wilfulness himself, and there was the faintest resemblance to Barbara in the brow and dimpled chin which tied him hand and foot.
"Oh, what a lovely thing!" said Theo, coveting the rose and stretching out her plump little hand. "Is it for me?"
"No," said Eben rather gruffly. "I've had an eye on this bud for some time. I noticed that your Lady Isabels are in fine condition. You will have a cluster of them by the day after tomorrow."
"Well, you old stingy, I suppose you don't mind running down to the mail for me; I forgot what Barbara asked me to do, and I shall get a scolding from mamma, who can't have Bab crossed in anything, you know."
"I shall have to go down and see Nanson about the wagon gear anyway to-night, and I can just as well stop at the Post Office. Is it the letter from—from New Haven?" And Eben very thoughtlessly bit off the leaves of the rose and mangled them with his strong white teeth.
Yes, it was the letter from New Haven, and Eben was charged to bring up a new novel, and some pink sewing silk and eighteen celluloid buttons, by Theo, who ran after him to suggest chocolate caramels in case the letter failed.
It was a sort of satisfaction to him that the letter did fail. But it hurt him to see Barbara's disappointment. He had remembered Theo's womanish little errands, and he still held the rose, which he laid now on Barbara's clasped hands. For all she had grown to hate the old place, she loved its old-fashioned, big fluffy roses as fondly as when a child, and Eben had braided a long garland of them for her out of the finest and best.
She caressed the rose, and twisted it in among the curling locks, where it nestled just against her cheek. Eben flushed and paled as he remembered how he had laid his heart in the heart of that rose.
"The letter will be here to-morrow," he said, gently; "I am going down the first thing in the morning. The young ladies around Larborough are not to be without a gallant this season. A handsome young man from New York has come down to stay some weeks in the neighborhood; I met him with Dr. Ormsby in the gig."
Eben was not slow to note this bit of news awakened a faint show of interest in Barbara.
"What was he like?" said Barbara, blushing a little. "I trust he is an acquisition. Did he look like a gentleman?"
Yes, he looked like one, Eben was compelled to admit that he did, and that he wore elegant clothes, and had slender, soft white hands, which Eben had not.
Days after this, Eben, in an agony of jealous anguish, was compelled to accord the stranger a great many other advantages and accomplishments. He rode well, was a good shot, talked fluently, sketched passably, understood women, and was Miss Leighton's most ardent admirer.
Eben foresaw all this, and yet once, when their mingled voices floated out to his little den, he brought down a hammer wrathfully and smashed his thumb-nail. Morning and night he saddled and brought round horses for Barbara and Mr. Ney, and went away to his work in the hot fields, while they were cantering down the shady roads, and Mrs. Leighton and Theo were beating eggs in the buttery, and getting up rare dishes for tea. The letter had come from New Haven, and Barbara had answered briefly that she could not go until some time later. She had never looked so animated and beautiful as now. She rarely saw Eben, sending him her requests by her sister, and Eben went on at his inventions, feeling as if every blow of his chisel drove out a piece of his heart's core. And though he would have scorned the idea, Eben had grown wonderfully haggard and pale, with great dark circles under his eyes, since Dr. Ormsby had introduced Edgar Ney to the Leightons. He took little pride in the knowledge that he was the better man of the two, but he did not know that he could crush New with one hand into a limp, shape-less mass, and he wondered sometimes why he did not. One day he was seized with a fit of trembling. He was pruning a pear tree when he looked up and Barbara stood before him, in her habit, switching at the mottled butterflies that fluttered on the hollyhocks and around Eben's brown hands.
"How pale and ill you look, Eben." It was the least she could say, and it was the truth. Eben's heart beat madly for a moment and then went on slowly.
"I am not one to get ill, Miss Barbara; I am not browned so much as usual, perhaps."
His "Miss Barbara" sounded oddly, and his looks belied his words. She looked down at the ground and said nervously:
"I hope you will not argue with me this morning, Eben, but I have set my heart on riding the colt, 'Tam O'Shanter,' to the falls. I am not in the least afraid."
"But I am," said Eben calmly. "l can-not permit you to risk your life with that vicious colt."
"Mr. Ney will take care of his viciousness," Barbara answered, a trifle insolently.
"Mr. Ney may ride 'O'Shanter,' and welcome, but I cannot consent for you to."
"Then I must do it without your consent. Be so kind as to have the colt around in a quarter of an hour."
Eben finished his pear tree and went into the shop to wash his hands of blood. He had cut himself to the bone. Barbara and Ney sat in the porch reading from the "Princess," when the horses appeared. The colt sherried and reared when Barbara sprang lightly in her saddle. An admirable horsewoman, she held her own finely, and Eben stood as if rooted to the ground until a turn in the road hid them from sight, then, like a deer, he set off down a footway toward where the railway crossed the road, as with horror he remembered that the morning express would come down in ten minutes. The riders had stopped by the way to permit Mr. Nay to dis-mount and gather the first cardinals for Barbara. As they trotted sharply down the road the roar of the train was heard just beyond the curve. Maddened with terror, the wild young horse Barbara rose reared, plunged, and sprang away from the other horse and darted down the cut toward the train. With a hoarse shout to "sit firm," Eben rushed out from the copse and flung himself under his hoofs. He caught the bit in his bands, and then a violent kick made him drop like a log. Some wood-choppers came to the rescue, and as they lifted Barbara off the train thundered by. Eben was picked up for dead, and even Mr. Ney declared he was a brave fellow.
In an agony of grief and remorse, Barbara hung near him all those tedious days, when Eben's mind wandered, and he muttered troubled, incoherent sentences, in which, poor fellow, he told all his hopes and fears. He was now indeed haggard and ghostly pale, with an ugly scar in his left temple, his eye badly hurt, and his hands lay weak and nerveless on the coverlet. The first moment of sanity and consciousness which came made him sigh and wish that he had remained oblivious to life and its miseries. It was Barbara who leaned on him with her great brown eyes filled with tears.
"Oh, Eben, how can you bear to look at me? You can never forgive me!"
"You would not say that if you knew what is in my heart."
"Cannot you tell me, Eben? I am so wretched."
"I am sorry for that; I must not tell you, Barbara. I cannot suffer more than I have."
"Then, shall I tell you something?" and she hid her face in the pillow. He put out his hand and touched her head caressingly.
"I have been very wilful and very unhappy, Eben. I would have given my life to save yours, as you gave yours for me."
"But, Barbara, oh Barbara, my darling, I gave mine because I loved you better than life, than Heaven. I would rather have died than live to lose you for ever."
"But you will not lose me." Her arms stole tenderly around him, and she laid her cheek against his. "I owe my life to you, and it is yours."
"Barbara, think what you are saying. I shall be mad enough to think that you care for me!"
"Eben, my love, you are all the world to me. Cannot you see that this is so?"
"My own!"
With one great effort, and a spasm of his old strength, Eben pressed her to his heart.
"And you never meant to marry Ney?"
"I am afraid I only meant to make you jealous," said Barbara, with her old sauciness.
"I shall mend now, fast enough, but not until you have promised to abide by what I say, my darling."
"I promise solemnly."
"Then, we shall be married to-morrow."
Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 9 December 1880, supplement page 2
* Authorship given as such in another newspaper.
Tuesday, 27 March 2018
A Rose of Sharon
Author Unknown
It was in a large and handsome green-house that two young people stood, admiring a magnificent plant, on the beauty of which the owner, Doctor Doran, was expatiating.
"But what is this?" the young lady said—"this odd, dingy little plant, in the shadow of those superb blossoms? Was it placed here by way of contrast, I wonder?"
The plant to which she alluded was of a dull green color, and floated in a saucer of water, on the surface of which it lay with stiff leaves, flatly diverging from the centre.
"That," said the doctor, "is more interesting than it looks. It was sent me from Palestine, where it is vulgarly known as the Rose of Sharon, though its botanical name is—"
Some one of a group at the other end of the green-house suddenly called to him, and he was compelled to hasten away, without having explained the properties of the "odd and dingy" little plant.
The two young people stood where he had left them, screened by a group of myrtles and roses—fit surroundings for lovers.
It was one of those delicious moments of seclusion and silent communion accidentally snatched from the society of others, which are so sweet and precious to the hearts of all lovers.
A deep look into each other's eyes, a pressure of the hand, a low, whispered word, and then the clasping fingers separated, and the girl's eyes were downcast as a step came near.
"Miss Carrie, I have availed myself of the good doctor's permission, and chosen for you the prettiest flowers that I could find. Will you have them? And will you wear them to-night?"
The elegant and rather confident-looking young man held out a superb camellia of vivid scarlet, flaming against its glossy, waxen leaves.
"Oh, how beautiful!" the girl exclaimed. "Too beautiful to droop and fade in the atmosphere of a ball-room."
"I thought you preferred white," her companion remarked, quietly, yet with apparently some chagrin.
"It was you who expressed a preference for white flowers," she answered, laughingly. "White is too insipid for my taste—I like rich colors. Yes, thank you, Mr. Farley, I will wear your flowers."
Farley stroked his delicate moustache to hide a smile of triumph and amusement. The other saw it, and turned haughtily away.
"His highness is evidently not pleased," remarked Farley, with a shrug.
"His highness is welcome to be otherwise," the girl answered, lightly. "What a superb color!" and she held up the camellia admiringly.
"May I venture to ask yet another favor? Will you give me the first waltz?"
"You know I don't waltz, now!"
"You did until recently," he said, significantly. Her color rose.
"Well, I may perhaps give you one waltz. I won't promise positively, though."
"Thank you; I will live on the hope until nine o'clock, when—"
"When you will take something more substantial—oysters and turkey-salad," she said, archly.
And with a graceful "Au revoir!" not quite devoid of an air of innocent coquetry, she turned again to her companion, who had been pretending interest in the Rose of Sharon.
He now met her bright glance with a grave countenance.
"Carrie, I am sorry that you promised to wear those flowers. You must have known I had promised myself the pleasure of choosing some for you. And I doubly regret that you should have consented to waltz with Farley. Excuse me, but under the circumstances I did not expect it of you."
"I may be allowed to judge of the propriety of my own actions," she returned, with assumed dignity.
"To be engaged to one man, and to wear the flowers presented by another—"
"The engagement is not known except to ourselves," she interrupted. "And I really do not see, Mr. Rutherford, that you have a right to demand that your wishes should be my law."
"Carrie!"
He would have taken her hand, but she turned away abruptly.
In the motion, the saucer containing the plant which the doctor had called the Rose of Sharon fell to the ground and was shattered.
"There! see the mischief you have done!" he said, stepping back.
"It is you who are doing the mischief. You are crushing the plant beneath your foot."
He picked it up, and stood holding it in his hand. Neither of them spoke a word. Both felt vexed and wounded, and the heart of each accused the other of unkindness.
"You are killing that poor plant," said Caroline, at length, a little sharply. "See how its leaves are fading and curling up!"
True, the unfortunate plant was assuming a dull, brownish hue, and its leaves were already withering and crumpling into a dead looking ball. They observed it curiously.
"How quickly it has withered! and for want of water, of which you have deprived it."
"It is because you crushed it."
Light words, and yet something in the look and tone of each which sent a chill and blight to the heart of the other.
"I will get fresh water," said Rutherford.
"It is useless; it is past resuscitating," said Caroline, with something hard in her tone."
"Then let it die!" he returned, recklessly; and he tossed the little brown ball upon the shelf. "A thing which will die so quickly is not worth having "
Irate words, thoughtless words, on the part of both, the result of a moment's vexation, and yet to be repented of and mourned over, in sorrow and bitterness, for many a long year after.
They met, that evening, at the party, with a certain coldness and restraint on the part of both. Each waited for some sign of yielding from the other. Each was too proud to make it.
Caroline thought that her lover had been unreasonably jealous and exacting, and that it was, in any case, the part of the man, and not of the woman, to make advances to a reconciliation.
Rutherford, as he saw the scarlet camellia glowing in the dark tresses of his betrothed, considered himself aggrieved; and this feeling was aggravated by observing the assiduity of his former rival, Farley, who, encouraged by the apparent estrangement of the lovers, was renewing attentions which had been recently discontinued from a perception of their hopelessness.
Caroline smiled, chatted, flirted, and made herself generally charming, and no one, not even Rutherford, suspected the troubled heart beneath.
Despite his great love for her he felt disappointed in witnessing her conduct, so different from herself in general, and this feeling amounted to positive displeasure on beholding her in Farley's arms, whirling in the voluptuous mazes of a waltz.
She knew he detested waltzing, and that he especially objected to her waltzing with Farley.
He turned from the sight, with a feeling nearly approaching disgust, and devoted himself to a modest, pretty young girl, a stranger in the place.
Later in the evening he approached Caroline, and addressed her, but coldly. She replied haughtily, and, turning to Farley, complained of the heat, and the two passed out upon the piazza. In displeasure, Rutherford did not again approach her.
He did not call on her the following day. When he did call, she excused herself from seeing him, and that evening he met her promenading with Farley. It was enough. The brief dream of happiness of these two foolish young lovers was over. Rutherford went to join a brother of his in the Far West, and Caroline made herself the reigning belle that winter.
"But what is this?" the young lady said—"this odd, dingy little plant, in the shadow of those superb blossoms? Was it placed here by way of contrast, I wonder?"
The plant to which she alluded was of a dull green color, and floated in a saucer of water, on the surface of which it lay with stiff leaves, flatly diverging from the centre.
"That," said the doctor, "is more interesting than it looks. It was sent me from Palestine, where it is vulgarly known as the Rose of Sharon, though its botanical name is—"
Some one of a group at the other end of the green-house suddenly called to him, and he was compelled to hasten away, without having explained the properties of the "odd and dingy" little plant.
The two young people stood where he had left them, screened by a group of myrtles and roses—fit surroundings for lovers.
It was one of those delicious moments of seclusion and silent communion accidentally snatched from the society of others, which are so sweet and precious to the hearts of all lovers.
A deep look into each other's eyes, a pressure of the hand, a low, whispered word, and then the clasping fingers separated, and the girl's eyes were downcast as a step came near.
"Miss Carrie, I have availed myself of the good doctor's permission, and chosen for you the prettiest flowers that I could find. Will you have them? And will you wear them to-night?"
The elegant and rather confident-looking young man held out a superb camellia of vivid scarlet, flaming against its glossy, waxen leaves.
"Oh, how beautiful!" the girl exclaimed. "Too beautiful to droop and fade in the atmosphere of a ball-room."
"I thought you preferred white," her companion remarked, quietly, yet with apparently some chagrin.
"It was you who expressed a preference for white flowers," she answered, laughingly. "White is too insipid for my taste—I like rich colors. Yes, thank you, Mr. Farley, I will wear your flowers."
Farley stroked his delicate moustache to hide a smile of triumph and amusement. The other saw it, and turned haughtily away.
"His highness is evidently not pleased," remarked Farley, with a shrug.
"His highness is welcome to be otherwise," the girl answered, lightly. "What a superb color!" and she held up the camellia admiringly.
"May I venture to ask yet another favor? Will you give me the first waltz?"
"You know I don't waltz, now!"
"You did until recently," he said, significantly. Her color rose.
"Well, I may perhaps give you one waltz. I won't promise positively, though."
"Thank you; I will live on the hope until nine o'clock, when—"
"When you will take something more substantial—oysters and turkey-salad," she said, archly.
And with a graceful "Au revoir!" not quite devoid of an air of innocent coquetry, she turned again to her companion, who had been pretending interest in the Rose of Sharon.
He now met her bright glance with a grave countenance.
"Carrie, I am sorry that you promised to wear those flowers. You must have known I had promised myself the pleasure of choosing some for you. And I doubly regret that you should have consented to waltz with Farley. Excuse me, but under the circumstances I did not expect it of you."
"I may be allowed to judge of the propriety of my own actions," she returned, with assumed dignity.
"To be engaged to one man, and to wear the flowers presented by another—"
"The engagement is not known except to ourselves," she interrupted. "And I really do not see, Mr. Rutherford, that you have a right to demand that your wishes should be my law."
"Carrie!"
He would have taken her hand, but she turned away abruptly.
In the motion, the saucer containing the plant which the doctor had called the Rose of Sharon fell to the ground and was shattered.
"There! see the mischief you have done!" he said, stepping back.
"It is you who are doing the mischief. You are crushing the plant beneath your foot."
He picked it up, and stood holding it in his hand. Neither of them spoke a word. Both felt vexed and wounded, and the heart of each accused the other of unkindness.
"You are killing that poor plant," said Caroline, at length, a little sharply. "See how its leaves are fading and curling up!"
True, the unfortunate plant was assuming a dull, brownish hue, and its leaves were already withering and crumpling into a dead looking ball. They observed it curiously.
"How quickly it has withered! and for want of water, of which you have deprived it."
"It is because you crushed it."
Light words, and yet something in the look and tone of each which sent a chill and blight to the heart of the other.
"I will get fresh water," said Rutherford.
"It is useless; it is past resuscitating," said Caroline, with something hard in her tone."
"Then let it die!" he returned, recklessly; and he tossed the little brown ball upon the shelf. "A thing which will die so quickly is not worth having "
Irate words, thoughtless words, on the part of both, the result of a moment's vexation, and yet to be repented of and mourned over, in sorrow and bitterness, for many a long year after.
They met, that evening, at the party, with a certain coldness and restraint on the part of both. Each waited for some sign of yielding from the other. Each was too proud to make it.
Caroline thought that her lover had been unreasonably jealous and exacting, and that it was, in any case, the part of the man, and not of the woman, to make advances to a reconciliation.
Rutherford, as he saw the scarlet camellia glowing in the dark tresses of his betrothed, considered himself aggrieved; and this feeling was aggravated by observing the assiduity of his former rival, Farley, who, encouraged by the apparent estrangement of the lovers, was renewing attentions which had been recently discontinued from a perception of their hopelessness.
Caroline smiled, chatted, flirted, and made herself generally charming, and no one, not even Rutherford, suspected the troubled heart beneath.
Despite his great love for her he felt disappointed in witnessing her conduct, so different from herself in general, and this feeling amounted to positive displeasure on beholding her in Farley's arms, whirling in the voluptuous mazes of a waltz.
She knew he detested waltzing, and that he especially objected to her waltzing with Farley.
He turned from the sight, with a feeling nearly approaching disgust, and devoted himself to a modest, pretty young girl, a stranger in the place.
Later in the evening he approached Caroline, and addressed her, but coldly. She replied haughtily, and, turning to Farley, complained of the heat, and the two passed out upon the piazza. In displeasure, Rutherford did not again approach her.
He did not call on her the following day. When he did call, she excused herself from seeing him, and that evening he met her promenading with Farley. It was enough. The brief dream of happiness of these two foolish young lovers was over. Rutherford went to join a brother of his in the Far West, and Caroline made herself the reigning belle that winter.
* * *
Sunday, 25 March 2018
"Per C."
Author Unknown
"Mr. Bronson? Oh yes, you will find him in his private office, up three flights; turn to the right, No. 6."
"Thanks," and the compactly built, stalwart man in brown linen ulster, thread gloves, and Panama hat, ran, satchel and umbrella in hand, up three flights of black, dusty stairs, up, up through the gloomy halls of the great business house, turning to the right down a narrow space lined with offices, with open doors to get the circulation from the stairways and paused at "No. 5." A slight, graceful, pale-faced little woman glanced up from a pile of letters.
"Mr. Bronson? Oh, yes, sir. Walk in, please. Mr. Bronson, a gentleman."
Just a commonplace, everyday meeting between two large-hearted men who had maintained business relations for years, entertaining the very highest regard for each other meanwhile, without having once met face to face.
"Mr. Sturtevant? Is it possible? I am glad to see you, sir." And the two sat down and fell into a chat, which settled the Western man in his half-formed opinion that the genuine, substantial, out-and-out New Yorker is the representative man of America, and made the city man say to himself, "What a hearty frankness your real Western man brings into everything. Nothing dwarfed or contracted about him. His heart and his opinions are as broad and as breezy as his own rich prairies."
"Where do you stop?" as the visitor and long-time customer arose. "Don't know? Allow me to suggest that you go to the St. Nicholas with me, then. I'm there for a little, while my folks are out of town and the house is being brushed out. I will go with you. I was just going, in fact. Miss Clark, I will leave this last account for you to balance Oh, I want you to see Miss Clark—This is Mr. Sturtevant, from Chicago."
"Your name and your handwriting are entirely familiar, Mr. Sturtevant," said the pale-faced young woman with whom the visitor had first spoken, leaving the desk by which she was standing and coming forward toward the inner office, which was formed by heavy jet green curtains, looped back across a windowed niche, making a pleasing delusion of seclusion and of shade.
"We learn to feel acquainted with people from their handwriting," remarked Mr. Bronson pleasantly, as he drew on his gloves. "On that principle, you two must know each other quite well by this time."
"And you are 'Per C.'?" queried Mr. Sturtevant, looking critically down into the young woman's delicate, finely cut face. "Now I have a habit of conjuring people up from their handwriting, and the 'Per C.' I have kept in my mind all this time was a methodical, clear-headed, old grey-beard, whom all the sharpers in Gotham couldn't get around, and I find the real 'Per C.' to be but a mere thistledown or frost flower! Well, well!"
"You were not very far astray in your character estimate, however," smiled Mr. Bronson, tipping his light hat down over his dusky black eyes.
"'Per C.' is the most efficient helper that a perplexed merchant was ever blessed with. The firm would have been bankrupt had it not been for her. Fact, sir. At my father's death things were in bad shape. The head book-keeper, who was also a partner, had been making false entries, and the accounts were in the most inextricable tangle. They baffled me, and I employed an expert to straighten them, but he gave them up in despair. Miss Clark, who was then in the lower office, volunteered her assistance. She went through them all at odd hours, and brought everything out straight. To prevent exposure the partner refunded what he had embezzled. I bought in all the stock, and kept on with the business."
Mr. Sturtevant looked at the quiet little woman with more admiration than if he had just heard that she had painted a picture, written a book, or awakened a slumbering goddess from a block of marble.
"It was not much to do," she said, in deprecatory tones. "I had had experience with my father's books—only, unhappily—and the partner had not the embezzled funds in reserve, and the house went down."
"Good afternoon, Miss Clark," and the handsome, healthy gentleman started, full of life and spirits, to run down the stairs.
Mr. Bronson returned almost immediately to say: "Never mind about those last bills. I shall be early in the morning," and finding the little grey-dressed woman sitting at his desk in the shadow of the deep green curtains in a dejected attitude, looking so like a crashed, wilted flower that he could but wonder what had so quickly changed the bright, pleasant face that had just smiled back at him from the doorway.
"This hot wave is something fearful," said Mr. Sturtevant, as his companion regained his side. "I don't see how you can stand it here, week after week."
"Oh, I run up the Hudson, where my mother and sisters are, whenever the whim seizes me, knowing the books will not get behindhand in my absence."
"So you are not a married man?"
"No. I have never had time nor inclination to think of matrimony; and I am very well off in my present home."
"Yet it is all wrong," replied the Western man, in a fatherly way he was apt to fall into toward any one to whom he took a fancy. "A man of your age ought to be settled in a home of his own. The mother will go to heaven some day, and the sisters will take unto themselves husbands, and then, my man, you will be left adrift."
Mr. Sturtevant flitted in and out of "No. 5, third floor," every day for a week, assiduously cultivating the acquaintance of Mr. Bronson and "Per C.," as he persisted in calling the fragile little accountant, in the intervals of business, of sightseeing, and of writing to his wife—this last being his favorite way of filling in odd moments.
While driving, with Mr. Bronson late one sultry July afternoon in Central Park, he broke out abruptly, yet with a tone of peculiar earnestness, which the younger man had leaned to understand covered some deep feeling.
"Your eyes need opening, friend Bronson. Oh, not at all in regard to your horsemanship: you hold the reins like an expert. I beg your pardon, but I want to speak to you about your confidential clerk. You look surprised. I suppose I shall surprise you still more, my dear fellow, when I tell you that she is dying by inches there in that stifling office, before your very eyes, and you are so accustomed to her clear, white rose of a face anti her gentle ways that you can't understand that anythings is wrong with her. Why, man! even I, with my broad chest and perfect health, almost lose my breath every time I run up those stairs. She has faded and wilted and lost vitality perceptibly in the week that I have been here. Her lovely face grows more and more transparent every day. Now Oliver Walker, my confidential clerk, is wild to come to New York. He's a cute, sharp fellow, conscientious and industrious, and being so well acquainted with my business he would work into yours with little difficulty. Now I want to propose to you that we change confidential clerks. The fresh Western air will brace that little woman right up. I know enough of womankind to see that it is a matter of life and death with her. The change, the journey, the meeting with new people will renew her personality; she won't know herself in a month's time. This great city broadens the lives of those who are in constant attrition with their kind, but is more contracting than the most isolated country life can be to a soul moving in a daily rut. I know she is valuable to you, but when the flower wilts utterly and falls to the ground you will be obliged to take some one to fill her place."
"I can't dispute your argument," replied the young man thoughtfully, bringing his high-stepping horses down to a walk. "I have no doubt she needs rest and change. The place is a responsible one, and there is a great deal put upon her, as there is apt to be upon a person so efficient and obliging. I never saw her out of temper, and never heard her complain of weariness. She has no relatives, and never seems to care about taking a vacation. She could never be persuaded to leave us," he continued, presently, with a confidential smile, curling his tawny moustache. "We will, however, for the sake of justice, submit the proposition to her. I have no right to dismiss the subject until she has been consulted. I think you are needlessly alarmed in regard to her health, however. She has wonderful powers of endurance, although it is true she has looked as fragile as that lily yonder all the ten years she has been with us."
"Ten years ?"
"Ten years last autumn."
Mr. Sturtevant went back to his airy room at the St. Nicholas, and wrote a long letter to his wife, although he had already sent her a postal card and a telegram that day. He used to say that his pent-up enthusiasm would explode had he had not the safety-valve of writing to Eliza always at hand.
The next morning Mr. Sturtevant appeared at the Bronson office just as the old black porter was taking down the shutters. He had not long to wait, however, and disclosed his plan to Miss Clark while she was removing her simple wrap and plain straw hat.
"You say Mr. Bronson is willing to make the exchange?" she inquired with a faltering voice, seating herself at her desk, and mechanically breaking the seal of the topmost letter of that morning's mail.
"Yes, for your good, remember."
"I will go."
That was all. Mr. Sturtevant, with a rare knowledge of woman gained from his own felicitous union with Eliza, went over to a window and sat down to look at the morning papers, while she busied herself with the mail as usual; but with a faint glow on her cheeks, warning of an inward fire, like the reflection on the snowy petals of the gleam in the chalice or a cactus cup. An hour passed thus, and her employer entered, genial and gentlemanly as usual.
Mr. Sturtevant threw aside his paper, and said breezily:
"It is all settled, my dear Bronson. This is Saturday. We shall start for Chicago on Monday, on the S.A.M. express. I shall telegraph for Oliver to meet us at Niagara, where we will stop over a train, and have a looked at the Falls. He is one of those live, up and coming chaps that wouldn't ask for more than half an hour's notice to start on a voyage around the world."
Mr. Bronson gave his accountant a questionable look. She nodded. "Very well," he said, coldly yet with an effort to speak in his usual way. "You will need all the time there is, of course." He sat down in the shadow of the rich green curtains and wrote an order on the cashier. She put on her grey hat and gloves again, took the paper in her trembling fingers, and went down the dusty stairs without trusting herself to speak. I don't know as it occurred to either of them at the time, or for hours afterwards, that their parting, after their years of intimate business relationship, was a very strange one, or that it would have been very strange for two men under the same circumstances.
"Women have not the hearts of men, although it is the fashion of the time to put them and keep them in places requiring a man's strength, judgement, and impertubability. I must put that in my next letter to Eliza," said Sturtevant to himself as he ran after the little accountant, overtook her on the second landing, made some necessary arrangements, stood by when the cashier handed her her money and left her on the crowded sidewalk.
She did not go home at once, or rather to the boarding-house which she called home. Instead, she walked across to Broadway and took a Central Park omnibus.
"I can be alone in the park for a little while," she said to herself.
I don't know that she thought at all as the omnibus thundered and rattled and banged up Broadway; she was only realising the fact that she was going away from him.
She strolled about the gravel walks of the park, sat in the rustic arbours, lingering beside the fountain, ponds, and flowerbeds, but she saw nothing of the beauties that were delighting thousands of souls famishing for a breath of country summer; she was only almost overpowered by a dragging pain at being torn away from the associations of years.
Alone in her own little room, packing her scanty possessions, she burst out bitterly to herself:
"Oh, the wretchedness and wrong of shutting a young girl up in an office day after day for years with a young man no way her superior except in the matter of money, and expecting her to look upon him as indifferently as upon the improved typewriter at his elbow. Oh, the cruelty and the pity of it. I have had my dream. I will not call foolish dreams; it was only the rose bush reaching toward the trellis. Every girl has dreams, and it is right that she should have. It makes no difference whether she is filling the position of a man or that of a woman—her heart is not changed by the work that her mind and body are engaged in.
"My beautiful visions have faded into air as I have faded from a plump, pretty girl to a thin, wan, colourless old maid, and all the time he has been growing manly and strong and handsome year by year. Yet he has been kind to me, in a way, and although constantly in society, with elegant ladies he has remained single, and my woman's heart has dared to hope that it might be for my sake. For the sake of me, his book-keeper! How his proud mother and sisters would spurn the idea.
"I had better have been a kitchen girl in some good family, or a cook, or a farmer's wife with rosy children in my arms and about my knees, than to be what I am—a recluse, with no friends or associates. A disappointed woman, with her heart eaten out for love of a man who looks upon her only as a calculating machine!"
That night she arose from her bed, and, throwing a shawl around her, looked out upon the tireless moon and stars and upon the sleepless streets of the great city whose life is so abundant that it must go on by night as by day, but this thought did not occur to her now; she was saying:
"Had I been his wife he would not have allowed me to serve him as I have served him. To think of the nights that I have sat up over those books! I saved him from bankruptcy, and in his gratitude he promoted me to be his confidential clerk! He was grateful, and am I to blame for having thought that my life might grow fresh and beautiful with love, like the lives we read of in books? What hours I have spent, which should have been passed in sleep, in reading, and study, that I might keep abreast with him in mental culture. He must remember me as one who has been a help to him. It is impossible that he should forget me. There is a modicum of comfort in the fact that a young man is to take my place. I could not bear to think of him smiling over the top of his desk into the eyes of some other woman. If he marries, I hope I shall never know it.
"It is the nature of single women to love the unmarried men who treat then pleasantly and kindly, and with whom they are constantly associated. I wish it was in my power to put an end to every such unnatural relation. The people who are constantly crowding women into the places which should be filled by men wilfully misunderstand this matter. Every woman who fills a man's position is keeping some man out of a place of employment—keeping him from marrying, and so lessening, her, own chances of matrimony and of being mistress of a home. When will this problem be set right? I have been guilty, and must suffer; and yet should I dare to speak these sentiments in public how should I be ridiculed by the so-called reformers; and should I weave what I know of these shop and office flirtations into a readable newspaper article, there is no editor who would give it a place, because it would treat of an unpopular side of the subject, and because women can be hired for less money than men."
The next morning she went early to church. There had been a funeral of one of the members, and they were bearing the coffin out as she entered.
"I wish it were me," she thought, looking at the mourners, headed by the stricken husband, walking, sorrowing with bowed head, to the carriage.
As she sat in her accustomed seat that idea had such complete possession of her that she took no notice of the opening services—in fact, comprehended nothing only that she wished her life might go out then and there, as a candle is blown out by the wind.
Then she heard the minister read. "For it is not a vain thing for you, because it is your life; and through this thing you shall prolong your days in the land."
The sermon which followed was practical as well as spiritual, growing out of some circumstances in the life just ended, and Miss Clark left the church, saying:
"God has a right to my life, and therefore to serve Him I must do my best with what He has given. I have never looked at it in just that way before. I have seen my duty; I am glad I came. If, through this change which has been wrought for me, I can prolong my days in the land I will go away cheerfully. And since I have no right to trouble others with my trouble, I will take up my burden bravely, for I can never hope to leave it, and hide it away in my heart; and I will even call up a hope to take with me as I start out upon this new chapter of my history."
She told no one that she was going away. Indeed, there was no one to tell, for, aside from the minister, not more than half a dozen people had addressed a word to her in all the years that she had regularly attended the church, and now they were all away on vacations, or summer journeys, a stranger to her filling the pulpit even.
She doubled her weekly offering to a poor old woman who always stood while the congregation was dispersing at the opening of a little alleyway a short distance from the church, and said "Good-bye," as she put the scrip in the withered hand. She smiled rather bitterly as the thought asserted itself, "All my going to that church has formed that single easily-severed tie!" Then she cast about in her mind, trying to remember what had decided her to fix on that particular church, and blushed when she had to confess that it was because he attended the church just below, and that she often caught a sight of him going in or out, and sometimes he gave her a smile or a nod of recognition.
The thought that she might see him in this way to-day, for a last look, had been a comfort all the morning; but now, when it came up to her again, like the last lingering ray of sunshine in a clouded sky, she resolutely put it away, and turned down another street.
At that very hour the object of that poor soul's conflict with self was swinging in a hammock suspended from the spreading branches of a giant oak, on the Highlands, above the Hudson. There were four of these swaying crimson and yellow cradles hanging in the balmy air from the huge limbs of this massive tree; and it was characteristic of these luxury-loving Bronsons that they had lounged here, looking up into its vast emerald dome, through the shining leaves of which filtered an occasional shower of sunshine, while the clear-voiced bell, only a few rods away, was summoning other people in carriages and on foot for miles from farm and hill and meadow.
The mother and the three sisters, four stylish society women, were all beaming now upon this black-whiskered Adonis, who was their idol.
"What should you have said," he asked, indifferently, after lying for a long time with his eyes closed and his white hands clasped beneath his shapely head, "if I had married my accountant, the woman who had been so long in our office, you know?"
There was a little rustle of drapery and flutter of fans, then Marie, the youngest sister, began an indignant protest, which her brother checked by saying:
"Don't excite yourself, Marie; the idea merely occurred to me as I was about to announce to you that she has been called away."
"Is it possible!" exclaimed his mother, settling her grey frizzes and finger-puffs, which the fresh breeze had slightly disarranged. "What was her name? I never saw her, but remember hearing her spoken of in the matter of settling your poor father's estate as a faithful creature—"
"I should think so," interrupted the young man; "'she saved the estate from bankruptcy, and your daughters from going out into the world in some capacity to earn their own living, as she did when her father died insolvent, leaving her without relatives."
Mrs. Bronson ignored the point, and went on in exactly the same key as before. "It is very unfortunate. What will you do, my son?"
"I have already hired a young man to fill the vacancy."
"Ten years?" said Adelaide, the oldest sister. "She has fairly grown grey in our service."
"Do you mean that white-faced girl in No. 5?" asked Sarah, and Marie, who was swinging in the same airy couch as the second sister, added, "I never noticed anything about her."
"I thought you looked worn out," said his mother; "and I heard you up in the night walking about your room. When did it happen?"
"Yesterday."
"Suddenly?"
"Very." And the young man dismissed the subject by turning upon his side, crossing his elbow under one ear, and reaching his long, slim fingers around the back of his head, and covering the other ear with the tips of them—an old, boyish habit of his when he wished to shut out the tiresome chat of his mother and sisters. They exchanged glances and smiles, and let him alone while he was thinking, "I didn't say what had called her away, or where she is gone. Am I to blame that they think she is dead?"
Mr. Bronson took it upon himself all through the late summer and early autumn to open the mail. As usual, there were plenty of business letters from Sturtevant and Co., but none "Per C." After a time hie ventured an inquiry, in a postscript, and received, in reply: "Per C. is recruiting."
After that the morning mail was left for the new clerk, who, happily was all that was represented. Yet Mr. Bronson found an unwonted wearisomeness about the business that seemed to him would wear his very life out. Night after night he lay in his luxurious rooms at the St. Nicholas, for he had entirely given up going up the Hudson now, and dreamed that he climbed the long, hard stairs up to No. 5 with a light, hopeful step, and, sitting down by his desk, looked over the bisected back to meet the soft, blue, faithful eyes that had never failed him; and then the fair face and smooth brown hair turned into a white lily, or rose, or a forest flower, or snow wreath, and faded away.
"Always into some emblem of purity, and fitly, too," he cried one night, when these dream pictures continually haunted and deluded him, leaving him in an agony of remorseful sorrow. "What am I to do? The old time can never return."
Ripe summer wore into autumn, and as the golden days grew grey and chill, Mrs. Bronson and her daughters returned to the thoroughly-renovated family mansion on Murray Hill. The four women were all shocked at the pale face and languid air of the son and brother.
"He must have a change. He most go on a journey. Either one or all of the sisters would accompany and take care of him." But he refused to entertain their offer, and would "look out for himself," he said, should he decide upon any place to go.
Passing through No. 5 the next morning to his place in his own curtained niche, he chanced to glance over Mr. Walker's shoulder, and caught sight of an order from Sturtevant and Co. in per C.'s well-known, clear-cut characters.
He took the bill and studied it, from the "Chicago, 18th October," to the "Per C." in the lower right hand corner.
The blood danced through his veins, his heart throbbed with an exultant joy, his very fingers tingled. He was stimulated out of his languor, as he had sometimes been by the freshening breeze when sailing down the harbor on a sultry morning, or by finding himself in a cool, woodland dell, surrounded by the romantic fragrance of wild azaleas, after a brisk, warm walk.
"I have decided to start on the 8 p.m. express for Chicago," he announced, to the surprise of the household, after he had already surprised them by appearing at lunch, which they were enjoying with two or three lady friends.
After a rapid journey for a person in pursuit of rest and enjoyment, he found himself on a clear, crisp October morning in the vestibule of the business quarters of Sturtevant and Co.
"Mr. Sturtevant? One flight, No. 1, to the left."
The young New Yorker's heart beat as it had never before beaten at anticipation in any form. He thought, "I shall see her in her plain grey dress, with her smooth brown hair, white cheeks, and her thin, pliant hands busy over the morning mail. How her shy, blue eyes will light up at sight of me. I don't know what I shall say. Of course I shall go through all the proper conventionalities. Ah me!"
He reached the door. His hand trembled on the knob. Just then it was turned from within, and he stood face to face with Mr. Sturtevant.
"Why, Bronson! my man; glad to see you. Been ill? You look like the ghost of your former self." But his quick eye did not lose his visitor's rapid glance around the office, nor the change of countenance when the accountant's desk was seen to be vacant; but he made him say, after a little commonplace talk, making an effort to speak naturally:
"Miss Clark is not with you?"
"No, her place is at the house. My wife was an Eastern woman, and had relations by the name of Clark. They have hunted up some kind of relationship, and have struck up a great friendship over it. Kitty, as my wife calls her—'Per C.' she will always be to me—fits right into our household as if she belonged there. Wife needed a companion. The children needed a governess, and I needed someone at the house to straighten my books for me, and to write orders when I am in a hurry. I have never had a woman in my office, nor a Chinaman in my kitchen. I don't take kindly to the new order of things."
"'Per C.' and Eliza, my wife, are taking singing lessons and brushing up their German, and I don't know what all; but I do know that she more than earns her wages by the additional light and life and interest she brings to our home. She's a rare woman, and there are plenty of people in Chicago who are finding it out. You must go home to dinner with me this evening, and get acquainted with Eliza and the children, and see what the West has done for 'Per C.'"
He had planned to surprise her, but of course he could not make that admission, and had to accept the invitation to dinner like any other gentleman, and went abroad all that day with an undefined pain in his heart, lest, just as he approached her, she would fade away like the flower maiden of his dreams.
Mrs. Sturtevent was never surprised to see a messenger coming with a little billet from her husband. The one this morning, however, was of unusual interest.
"He's come!" it said, "I knew he would, and he looks is if he had been through a siege. You must tell her, for we won't allow her to he surprised. You ought to have seen the man, with his heart in his eyes, when I opened the door upon him just now, and the blank look that succeeded when he found me to be the only occupant of the office. I shall bring him up to dinner. Have the children down; we will receive him like a family friend. I want him to see that a man's best riches are in his home. And mind you, Eliza, we won't leave them alone for a moment. If he wants favors he must ask for them."
I think Miss Clark cried a little for joy as she knelt beside the low white bed in her pretty room, and instead of uttering any spoken prayer, saying simply, in prayerful spirit, "I shall see him again!" But experience had taught her better than to admit one stray gleam of hope into her yearning heart.
She was in the back parlor, telling the children a story, when Mr. Bronson entered the high, handsome rooms with his jolly, bustling host. Too much the man of society to fail of saying just the right thing when he was presented to Mrs. Sturtevant, he was still looking for the quiet maiden whom he had almost begun to think of as a creature of fancy.
He had never seen her surrounded by children before, and thought at first, "She has caught a gleam of youth from them," and then the thought asserted itself, "Had I known my mind we might have been married these seven or eight years," and still approaching her through the long rooms, at the further end of which she had risen and remained standing in the centre of the pretty group, he thought:
"This plump, girlish figure in blue silk and white laces and frizzes, is not she at all."
But Miss Clark smiled and blushed, and held out the small, white hand, which he took in his own for the first time in all those years of acquaintance, and as he held it fast said bravely before them all:
"I can't do without you, and have come to ask you to return with me as my wife."
"Ha, ha," laughed Mrs. Sturtevant, "I wrote to Eliza the first day I was in your office, 'Bronson is in love with his confidential clerk, but he will never know it until something happens to remove her from her position.' Thank me for opening your eyes, young man."
"Per C." became Mrs. Bronson, but the wedding did not come off until the following spring. It was well that Oliver Walker was such a treasure of a bookkeeper, as business matters kept his employer in Chicago a great deal during the winter.
The mother and sisters of Bronson admired the wife of the head of the family exceedingly. They liked "Western women," they said, and they were glad to have Clarence married and settled in a home of his own.
One day not long ago, at a family dinner in the grand Murray Hill mansion, the
oldest sister said: "It has always puzzled me who Kate resembled; now I know. It is Miss —; I have forgotten her name—your old accountant, brother."
"Perhaps," replied the young man, smiling across the table at his wife: "yes, I can see the likeness myself, although it is a long time since she was 'called away.'
"Perhaps," replied the young man, smiling across the table at his wife: "yes, I can see the likeness myself, although it is a long time since she was 'called away.'
Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 18 November 1880, supplement page 2
Saturday, 24 March 2018
Fifteen—Fourteen—Thirteen
Author Unknown
It was on a blustering evening in March that Mr. Alexander Ashe, pausing in his rapid progress through one of the tree-christened streets which bisect the city of Penn, took from his pocket a letter, and holding it well up to catch the somewhat uncertain light of a lamp, studied the address with zeal sharpened by sudden apprehension.
"Confound Uncle Nat!" he muttered. "I wish he would learn to put tails to his 5's. 1314, no; 1514, no; that quirl certainly must mean a 3. Well, this is really too bad. It never occurred to me till this moment that there could be a mistake, but certainly it is 3 and not 5. A nice business it would be to make a blunder in heiress-hunting. Pshaw! But it's to please Uncle Nat. He's been good to me in his way, the old fellow has, and I can't well refuse so slight a favour as that I should call on these—what's their name?—Ashurst, even if he does go on to air what he calls his "long matured hopes" that call may lead to something more interesting. It won't though. I never saw a girl with money yet that wasn't altogether detestable, 1514, 1314—which is it? Never mind, this is Thirteenth street; so much is certain. Now, let's see—the house must be on this side. Perhaps the name is on the door. By Jove! I never thought of that."
Sure enough, the name was on the door—"Ashurst"—revealed plainly enough by an opportune street lamp directly opposite; and Alex. Ashe rang the bell, muttering to himself: "A good hit that. It's lucky I didn't go off in search of 1514. Still, I wish Uncle Nat would mend the tails of his 5's."'
A narrow entry presented itself to his view when the door opened, for the house was small, and the misfortune of a small house is that each new comer instinctively makes his measurements, and deduces from what he sees the probable extent and compass of what he does not see. "The ladies were at home," and a white-capped maid took his card into the parlor and returning presently, ushered him in. "What a pleasant room!" was his first thought as he entered. "Not a handsome parlor" in the least. He was used to those parlors where every mirror, bronze, curtain, and piece of furniture was the exact complement of similar articles on the other side the party-wall on either hand; where sofas and chairs wore fine clothes on occasion, and common petticoats for common days, and nothing seemed intended for use, comfort, or the indulgence of unauthorised or impromptu pleasures. This was a room of different type, not handsome at all in the convential sense, but full of individuality and charm. Thick rug-like hangings of the cheap Abruzzi tapestry of Italy draped doors and windows; the walls, of a sort harmonious tint, were hung thickly with pictures and drawings, among which wandered, apparently at will, the shoots of a magnificent ivy. A bright fire of cannel coal shone in the low grate; there were books everywhere; the piano stood open, and strewed with music sheets; a writing-table heaped with paper in one corner, and an easel and paints in another, showed that busy people used the room, and worked there when so inclined—a thing not often permitted in parlors kept for show; and on the chimney piece stood a bowl of fresh violets, which diffused a spring like color about the place.
Two young ladies, evidently sisters, rose from seats beside the fire and came forward to receive the guest. The elder, who held his card between her fingers, had a sweet and sensible countenance, a remarkably pretty figure, and a manner full of gracious dignity and composure. She was of that type of woman whom other women wonder that all men don't fall in love with; but they don't. The younger was in totally different style—fair, brilliant, smiling, seduisante, possessed of a thousand untaught graces, which lent to her manner inexhaustible variety and charm, but withal with the sunny candour of a child shining in her clear blue eyes. Amy Ashurst was altogether an enchanting creature, and Alex. Ashe, struck and dazzled, muttered to himself with sudden excitement: "By Jove! Uncle Nat has hit it for once. Here is a girl with money who beats all the girls without any that I ever met. I am everlastingly indebted to him." And while these thoughts whirled through his mind, Miss Ashurst was enunciating her soft little sentences of welcome.
We are glad to see you, Mr. Ashe, and mamma will be very glad when she comes home. I am only sorry that she should happen to be out this evening, at Mr. Berguin's cercle, but they always break up early. She had a letter from—your aunt, I think it was in the autumn, in which she said that there was talk of your coming here toward spring; but she named no time, and mamma did not known when to look for you."
"My uncle, probably. He is not married. I had no idea, however, that he had written to Mrs. Ashurst so long beforehand, though he bade me call upon her without fail."
"Your uncle?" repeated Miss Ashurst, doubtfully. "I thought I recollected—but of course, I might easily mistaken. Pray, sit down, Mr. Ashe. Oh, not on that chair; that is only comfortable for ladies. Try that big square one. What a blustering night it is!"
"I thought so till I came in, but no one would suspect it from the atmosphere of your room, Miss Ashurst. What a delightful room it is!"
"I am so glad you think so," put in the beautiful Amy, whose voice was as sweet as her face. "Florence and I are always pleased when any one praises our rooms, because they are mamma's doing, and we think that she has the most perfect taste in the world."
"Nothing could be pleasanter, I am sure. It is thoroughly individual, and yet has such a look of home, and that is not an easy look to produce in a house, it seems to me."
"No, it isn't; but mamma is a real wonder-worker; she always gives that look," cried Amy, eagerly, dimpling and flushing, and looking twice as handsome for the pretty glow of pleasure.
We hear occasionally of love at first sight, and we smile at the notion as romantic; but for all our disbelief and our derision, the thing does sometimes happen even in these matter-of-fact days, and it happened that evening in the case of Alexander Ashe. His excuse must be that nothing in the world was easier than to fall in love at first sight with Amy Ashurst. Apart from her beauty and her remarkable charm of manner, which in itself would have been an irresistible outfit for a far plainer girl, every moment spent in her company made it more and more apparent that this outward loveliness was but the exponent of a nature lovelier still, "pure as her cheek, and tender her eyes." It would have required a tough heart indeed, or an already occupied one, to have resisted her spell, and Alex. Ashe had neither. He had been rather indifferent to young ladies up to this time, and piped himself a little as beauty-proof; but he melted like frost in sun under the influence of Amy's sunny looks, and with a feeling akin to that of the old woman of the nursery legend, wondered if this were indeed he, as he drifted unresistingly on under the bewitchment of the occasion. Two hours sped like two minutes. It was ten o'clock before Mrs. Ashurst walked in from her cercle. Her coming was like the breaking of a dream. She greeted him cordially, but there was a little perplexity in her manner as she said, "I am very glad to see you, but somehow you surprise me a good deal. I was not prepared for anything so tall or—formed. You know, I recollect you as 'little Albert,' and your Aunt Carry never mentioned that you were so astonishingly grown."
"Albert, Aunt Carry!" thought the mystified Alex.; and then, with a sudden sinking of heart, he began to surmise a blunder.
"I—I do not quite understand," he stammered. "I—Can there be—I am half afraid I may have made a mistake. I am Alexander Ashe, not Albert."
Mrs. Ashurst looked more puzzled than ever. Florence blushed deeply, and became grave and embarrassed; but Amy's blue eyes met his frankly, with such a sparkle of kindly fun in them that Alex. took courage to go on.
"Pray let me explain," he said. "The mistake, if mistake there be, comes in this way. My uncle, Mr. Nathaniel Ashe, off Boston, whom possibly you may know by name, wrote me this note"—taking it from his letter-case—" in which he laid upon me his commands to call on his old friends the Ashursts before I left Philadelphia. He should write in advance, he said, to mention my coming, so they would be prepared to see me. My uncle writes a blind hand, as you may perceive, and I was quite at a loss whether 13 or 15 was the number; and while I was casting about, I found the name I was in search of upon your door-plate, and made sure that I was right. Miss Ashurst seemed prepared to receive a Mr. Ashe, which confirmed my impression, and so in short, you see how it is, I trust, and will accept my assurance that the blunder was unintentional, and made in perfect good faith."
"It was a perfectly natural one," said Mrs. Ashurst, pleasantly. "And now pray resume your seat, Mr. Ashe, and let me explain in in my turn. I have a dear old friend, Mrs. Galloway Cummings, of Newburyport, whose sister married Mr. Francis Ashe, of Salem. She wrote some months ago to say that her young nephew, Albert Ashe, was coming on to study in the Medical School of Philadelphia, and we have been looking for him in a vague way since February; so when my daughters read your card, 'Mr. A. G. Ashe,' she naturally took it for granted that you were he. You see, there was a blunder on both sides, and we have apologies to make as well as you."
"I cannot regret my share in the mistake," said Alex., rising to go, "since it has procured me one of the pleasantest evenings of my life." He glanced at Amy as he spoke. Was there a little answering gleam in her eyes? He half dared to hope it.
"But about these Salem Ashes," said Mrs. Ashurst, desirous to set him at ease, and end the interview without embarrassment, "are they your relatives in any way?"
"I am afraid it is a distant cousinship, if any. My uncle, I think, has spoken of some remote connections at Salem or Marblehead, but I am not sure of the facts. And now I must wish you good evening, with renewed apologies, and go in search of those other Ashursts, at 13—no, 1514. That will be two squares farther up in the same street, will it not?"
"Yes, and I think 1514 is Mr. Walter Ashurst's number. He is a distant connection of my husband's, but we have never met them. They are old residents in Philadelphia, and we new comers, you must know. You see, we have mixed up obscure cousinships as well as names and numbers in this odd double misunderstanding of ours, Mr. Ashe."
So with courteous farewells Aelx. took his leave, and, finding it too late for further calls, went back to his hotel down-hearted, for, with all her courtesy and all her pleasantness, Mrs. Ashurst had not asked him to call again. What could be done? for go he must and would; that he was resolved upon. His spirits rose when, a little later, he missed his letter-case. "I shall have to ask for it," he thought; and fortified by this reflection, went to bed and slept soundly.
Next morning he devoted himself to the "other Ashursts," who were easily found. No. 1514 proved to be a mansion of pretensions, wide and ample, with bays, balconies, carved stone-work, a stable alongside, and in all respects belonging to that order of architecture known in newspaper parlance as the "truly palatial," Mr. Ashe was ushered through a marble-paved hall into two dimly-lighted and magnificent drawing-rooms, where rivulets of satin meandered down either side of lofty, close-blinded windows, and a parterre of huge pale-colored flowers from the looms of Aubussion covered the floor. Each gilded and carved chair and sofa wore a jacket of linen for the protection of its silken glories, each table and console boasted its unmeaning strew of costly trifles; chandeliers, pictures, mirrors, all were swathed in tarlatan as a protection from possible flies; while the family hearth was represented by a lacquered register which grinned uncheerfully from the midst of a slab of marble, monumental apparently, which filled the whole opening of the fireplace. This chic and gorgeous solicitude Alex. had to himself for a quarter of an hour, before a rustling on the stairs announced the approach of the ladies of the family, and Mrs. Ashurst and her daughters appeared in a resplendence of French dresses. She, a stately dame of the conventional type, welcomed him very graciously, and invited him to dinner on the next day but one. It was but short notice to collect a party, she remarked, but they would do their best. The young ladies, three in number, were handsome creatures, very like each other, and like half a hundred girls whom Alex. had met before. They talked enough for animation, and not too much for good taste; their attitudes and movements were studiously graceful; they had shrill, high-pitched voices, and were so perfectly at their ease as to give the impression of having been born equal to every social emergency which could possibly arise in the course of their lives. Alex. mentioned his mistake of the night before, and found the tale received with rather contemptuous amusement. There was a family of that name, Mrs. Ashurst believed, but she knew nothing about them. They lived near 13th street, did they? Ah! very odd, to be sure. Hadn't she heard somewhere that they taught something or other?—appealing to her girls. Miss Ashurst thought that they did, and with a faint very faint—degree of interest asked, "Isn't one of the daughters rather pretty?" after which the subject dropped.
Alex. Ashe was conscious of a sense of relief, when, the call being over, he found himself again in the street. "What tiresome women!" he muttered. Yet why were they so tiresome? He had been familiar with just such women all his life, but never before had found them unendurable. "But then I had never seen Amy Ashurst," he meditated. "Marry one of those girls! Not if they owned the mines of Golconda, and Uncle Nat went down on his knees to me."
His call of inquiry after the note-case he timed so as to hit what he suspected to be the leisurely hour of the family in the later evening. He was fortunate; the ladies were at home, and evidently expecting him, for the letter-case lay conspicuous on the table, and Mrs. Ashurst began with apology.
"I should have sent it to you had we known your address; but you gave us none, you remember."
"I should have been most unwilling to give you that trouble; and besides"—candidly—"when I missed it I was very glad, for it gave me a pretext for seeing you all again."
He was so frankly handsome as he spoke, looking straight into Mrs. Ashurst's eyes the while, that she was greatly pleased with him.
"We are glad to see you, without any pretext," she said. "And now, Mr. Ashe, sit down and tell us if your quest of to-day has been successful—if you have found your uncle's Ashursts, the real Simon Pure."
So began another evening of enchantment. This time, when our hero took leave, Mrs. Ashurst cordially invited him to come again; and while he eagerly thanked her, Amy, taking the forgotten letter-case from the table, handed it to him, with a wicked little smile, saying, "You mustn't forget this, Mr. Ashe;' and he, quite unable to keep from laughing, replied, "No, since, Mrs. Ashurst is so kind as to say I may come without an excuse; otherwise I should try hard to leave it for the second time."
Other evenings followed, each pleasanter than the last. There was the sweetest atmosphere about the mother and daughters, Alex. thought; they were so cordial, so intelligent; so unaffectedly fond of one another. Little by little he gathered the facts of their history, not from any formal revelation, but by chance hints and casual allusions. Mrs Ashurst, as he conjectured, had been left slenderly provided for on her husband's death, and, with far-sighted wisdom, had used her little capital in giving her girls a first rate education in Europe, with a view to their becoming teachers. They had but lately returned, and were not yet thoroughly at home in their own country; but already Miss Ashurst was instructing large classes in French and German, and Amy giving music-lessons to a number of pupils. Their evenings they kept for the enjoyment of each other and of the little home which they so valued; and entering into the spirit of this life, so bravely busy, yet so tranquilly content, Alex. realised for the first time what the charm of home may be, where each inmate has independent occupation, but where all interests are shared and united as only they can be in those homes where love is lord and king.
He dined duly with "the other Ashursts," and duly paid his 'digestion visit," but there the acquaintance rested. The insipidity of mere fashionable intercourse struck him so keenly, as contrasted with the domestic life he had just learned to understand; the elaborate graces taught in worldly schools seemed so poor and shallow compared with "the maid, the music, breathing in the face of Amy, that it struck him as sheer waste of time to devote his hours to them.
Who would care for a doll, though its clothes were of lace,He hummed to himself as he walked home after his second call at 14, 15; and from thenceforward he gave himself up with heart and soul to the cultivation of his "happy accident."
And its petticoats trimmed in the fashion?
Uncle Nat was grievously disappointed when his favorite nephew, after a stay in Philadelphia so prolonged as to justify his most sanguine hopes, wrote to announce his engagement to an entirely wrong Miss Ashurst. "A girl without a penny, sir, I give you my word," and it was long before the old gentleman could forgive the outrage. He never did forgive it, in fact, till Mrs. Alexander Ashe came to Boston in proprie persona, and then she made such a conquest of Uncle Nat as left him nothing to say in his own justification or to the reproach of his nephew. He lived to thank Heaven for his own bad handwriting. "For," as he would explain, "if the tails of my 5's had been one whit less indistinct than they are, you would never have gone astray in Hemlock street that night, my boy, and we should never have had this little jewel of ours for our own, and a sad thing that would have been for us all—hey, now, wouldn't it?"
To which Alexander replied, with emphasis, "Rather!"
Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 4 November 1880, supplement page 2
Thursday, 22 March 2018
An Opal Ring
Author Unknown
Leopold Aston, with his happy blonde face and immense fortune, had brought a letter of introduction to Doctor Sherwood, of the Elms, and Doctor Sherwood had taken Leopold Aston by the hand and introduced him to his two pretty daughters.
Now it happened that the latter had never been thrown in the company of two pretty girls in domestic life, and he found the household habits and dainty white aprons of these young ladies very charming.
In the first dazzle of pleasure they looked to him very much alike, but by-and-by he found Arabella and Mildred Sherwood were very different.
He was to stay at the Elms during the summer. In the autumn he was going abroad.
"To England, to Germany, and to Italy," said Mildred.
"Yes, and to Paris," responded Arabella, and she shut her thin, scarlet lips over some resolve.
When Leopold came in from a fine, breezy walk by the river, Mildred was dusting the ornaments on the mantel, and Arabella was rearranging some flowers upon a table.
He came straight to the table.
"Stock-blue and lilac, and crimson and white gladioles. What superb flowers you have here at the Elms, Miss Arabella."'
"Do you think so? And do you like clove pinks? she asked, handing him one.
"If this concentration of the tropic is a clove pink, yes, I do."
"Then let me give you a button-hole bouquet," and, taking the pink from his hand, she twisted it with a bit of smilax, and fastened it in his button-hole.
And he, looking down, saw the curl of her black lashes, and took the fragrance of her breath.
In that instant, he decided there was a difference in the sisters. Arabella was prettier than Mildred.
"I am going into the garden for more vines for my vases. If you like to come I will show you my geraniums," said Arabella.
Leopold took up his hat, which he had laid down, and they went out in the sunshine.
Doctor Sherwood, reading upon the piazza, lifted his spectacles from his newspaper, then took them off and looked up.
"Arabella—perhaps a father is not the best judge—but Arabella, it seems to me, is a very attractive girl," he said to himself.
Meanwhile, Mildred had put away the duster and gone down into the kitchen to help her mother make florentines for tea.
"Mother," she said, absently, after a while, "I should like to go to Italy."
"Well, probably you never will, my dear. Beat those eggs a little longer."
At the tea-table a few hours later, Leopold Aston found that the eggs for the florentine had been beaten thoroughly.
"How nice!" Mildred heard him say to Arabella. "It seems to me that you can do everything."
Mildred was about to remark that Arabella never cooked, because it made her head ache, when something in her sister's looks checked her. She swallowed her tea, in momentary confusion, and rose from the table with a bewildering thought pressing upon her.
Cast it off as she would, it was a thought which persistently returned as the summer days went by. Mr. Aston seemed to find her sister very attractive.
Was it possible that this young man of fortune, with all the world before him where to choose, had fallen in love with Arabella— that he would wish to marry her?
She knew so well all the family affairs— how the Elms were mortgaged—how hard they all exerted themselves to keep up the appearance of prosperity and comfort. It would be a splendid thing for Arabella—for them all. But could it be. And then—Adam Neele!
One night, when Arabella's voice, singing to Leopold in the parlor, came down the stairs, the Doctor remarked:
"It seems to me that Arabella spends all her evenings with Mr. Aston."
"Well, let her, if she likes. I'm sure his company is agreeable," returned his wife.
But something in her tone prevented the doctor from saying more He unfolded the evening paper thoughtfully, and held it upside down for several moments.
Mildred's quick glance went from one face to another. She thought of the mortgage; the knew her mother and father were thinking of it, too. But she went on silently shelling peas. She had taken the dish from her mothers tired hands a few moments before.
Pretty soon Arabella danced by the door up to her chamber. A moment later Leopold came out upon the piazza and lighted a cigar. Pretty soon he saw Mrs. Sherwood's lavender cap-ribbons, and came to the dining-room window.
"Mrs. Sherwood, l am called to New York for a day or two. I shall be off before you are well astir in the morning."
"But, Mr. Aston, you will want your breakfast?"
"No! I shall take breakfast on the boat."
He turned and went down into the garden.
"Rebecca," said the doctor, somewhat uneasily to his wife," Adam Neele is coming here to-morrow. He promised to come and show me about the under-draining for next year."
"Well?" said Mrs. Sherwood, after a pause.
"Her tone said, "We shall see what will happen then."
No one noticed the rosy flush which darted like a flame along Mildred's cool cheeks and her white fingertips when Leopold Aston, with his handsome presence and mellow voice, came suddenly so near her. It was too dark. She had not looked up, and did not see the quiet attention with which he observed her small, busy fingers and bowed brown head.
The next day Adam Neele came, and Arabella was confined to her room all day with a conventional sick headache, and saw no one.
He was a grave, brown-bearded man of nearly forty—honesty, goodness was stamped in every line of his plain face. He was the best farmer in the country, and owned the model farm of the township.
"Arabella?" he said questioningly, of Mildred, when they were for a moment alone.
"She—she is sick to-day," Mildred answered; but her truthful eyes dropped, and he saw it.
"Ask her if she cannot see me for a few moments," he said.
Mildred went up stairs. Arabella lay upon the bed, one arm thrown up, upon the hand of which was a beautiful opal-ring Mildred had never seen before.
"Where did you get that lovely ring, Ara?"
"From Mr. Aston," Arabella said, quietly.
She did not seem sick, and did not speak again. A tremor ran through Mildred's delicate limbs. She rested a hand upon a chair to steady herself.
"Will you come down and see Mr. Neele, Ara? He wishes it."
"No! make my excuses."
Mildred went dizzily out of the chamber. She was not quite herself when she entered the room where Adam Neele was.
"She wishes to be excused."
"Mildred, this rich German—"
"He is not a German."
"Is he anything to Arabella?"
"I do not know. He has given her a ring," stammered Mildred, scarcely knowing what she said.
"Humph! That is enough."
Adam Neele went away from the Elms the next morning. When he had gone, Arabella came down and ate her dinner.
She took a book and sauntered down into the garden then. When Mildred had coaxed her mother to take a nap, she followed her sister, and cut gladioles and pinks for the vases, which Arabella had neglected entirely for two days.
When she came around to the arbor where her sister sat, she sat down wearily.
"Adam Neele has gone, Ara."
"I know it."
"Then you prefer Mr. Aston?"
"I prefer marrying a rich man and going abroad to marrying a poor man and spending my life at Edgetown."
"But you love Mr. Aston, Ara."
"Love him? Pooh! He is just a good-natured simpleton. Adam Neele is just worth two of him. But I shall marry him if I can. I have meant it ever since he first came here."
Mildred gave a little cry.
"I don't love Adam Neele, either. But I'm sick of work and striving to keep up appearances. We shall go to pieces soon at this rate. Papa earns nothing. The mortgage will take the Elms. I am going to look out for myself I would advise you to do the same, Milly."
"I shall look out for myself. I can earn my living if need be. Earn it I will. I shall never degrade myself by marrying for a home—or for money. Ara, I had rather have my hand burn off than wear that ring as you now wear it."
There was a step upon the gravel, a putting aside of the clementis vine.
"My ring! Have you found it, Miss Arabella?"
Arabella grew red, then white. She pulled the ring from her finger, and handed it to it owner, Leopold Aston.
"Where did you find it?" he asked.
"At the end of the linden path," she answered, in a stifled voice. Then, partially recovering herself: "You are back soon."
"Yes," pleasantly.
He had his valise in his hand. he had just come over from the depot, and went up to his room.
Burning with her sister's shame, yet with a strange joy in her heart, Mildred turned and went away from the arbor. She buried her face among the pinks.
"How sweet they are," she said.
Arabella was not in the parlor that evening. The house was strangely still.
"Are we never going to have any more music?" asked the doctor. "Milly, go up and play something lively."
"When I have finished picking over these blackberries, papa."
The twilight overtook the nimble fingers, and Mildred took the pile of jetty fruit out upon the doorstep, under the porch honeysuckle.
"Are you always at work?" asked a gentle voice.
There was no pained blush now. Mildred looked up, calm and sweet.
"No, I am at leisure now," she answered, in a moment.
"Then will you walk down this path with me a little way?"
He took a soft gray shawl from its peg, and wrapped it around her. As he did so, she saw the gleam of the opal.
"Do you like my ring?' asked Leopold Aston.
"It is the most beautiful opal I ever saw."
"I lost it in the garden the first time I came to the Elms. Do you know the properties which inhere in gems?"
"No."
"The ruby restrains wrath, the hyacinth procures sleep, the topaz banishes sadness."
"And the opal?"
"The opal sharpens the sight of the possessor. Mildred—little Milly—do you think I do not know what a jewel beyond price you are? Darling, look up! I love you! Could you love me. Mildred?"
She looked up into his eyes.
"Yes, I could love you if you were the poorest, the most unfortunate man in the world."
"God bless my brave darling," he cried.
They had reached the end of the long, sweet, dewy path, and turned to come back.
"And you promise to be my wife? Let there be no mistake. Let me be happy, Mildred."
"I promise. But, Leopold, I thought it was Arabella whom you loved."
"You did. Well, I had lost my ring then, and, being without its aid, was a little stupid, he replied, with a slight blush.
And so Mildred went to Italy, and Arabella remained at Edgetown, for Adam Neele never came back to her.
Warragul Guardian and Buln Buln and Narracan Shire Advocate, Thursday 21 October 1880, supplement page 2
Wednesday, 21 March 2018
Her Grandmother's Brocade
by M.T. Caldor
CHAPTER 1.
CHAPTER 1.
The listener, a woman a little past middle life, was dressed in widow's weeds that, also a little rusty, matched appropriately the sad, worn face, the wistful, dreary eyes.
She was sitting with her hands clasped over the work, which had fallen away from her listless needle, staring off hopelessly toward the frowning sky.
The opening door and "Oh, mamma!" wrought a transformation almost as magical as the fairy surprise of the stage. It was like pouring into the previous silence the delicious melody of wild-wood songsters, such as sing their mad joy to the flowers and the sun from very exuberance of bliss. It was like sweeping off the dismal clouds of that gray March sky and letting down the golden glow and blue glory of a smiling June upon the shivering earth.
So fresh and glad and full of cheery hope and youthful energy was the musical voice—so sunny and brightening was the gay smile, the kindling glance of the bright blue eyes— the shabby, forlorn room really seemed to brightened as he stepped into it.
Mrs. Orton smiled before she sighed—an unusual circumstance in her case.
"Why, Florry, what is it?" she said. "You bring a whiff of fresh air as invigorating as a sea-breeze in August. What have you seen, or heard, or imagined? If it is anything cheery, I was never more in need of it than now.
The girl had been quickly but noiselessly removing her outdoor wraps, hanging them away in the little wardrobe that stood in one corner of the room. She came now and sank down softly upon the ottoman before her mother, and crossed her arms upon the latter's lap.
"You have been growing dismal, darling mamma, while I have been away. That is very wrong of you. I have disposed of the work, and I am promised some more. That is something, isn't it? And I'm glad to have it—for I am a little ashamed of my enthusiasm about the other. Mamma, I met Mrs. Yerrington at the store, and she was very kind. And—she gave me an invitation to a party at her house—an invitation for Ross and myself."
"A party! Oh, Florence, what will you wear? Mr poor darling, I am afraid it is impossible," sighed the mother.
"Oh, but that is the best of it! To think I can have the treat once more with no cruel debt to poison all it sweet. Don't look so grieved, darlingest mother. It's all beautiful—the whole of it, trust me it is. I am wild enough to dance before you this minute."
"I think you must be a little wild child. Will you wear that threadbare serge? No, no. I can't consent to that—you ought to shine in silk and satin. It will be wiser for you to stay at home."
The girl caught up the thin, trembling hands and kissed them fondly.
"Oh, unbeliever, didn't I say it was all right? It is to be an old folks' party. The antique costumes are the only admissible ones. And now isn't the old attic-trunk going to be fairy grandmother to this Cinderella? Don't you know grandmother's famous brocade? Shan't I be au fait in those dear little quaint sleeves, and that elegantly wrought bodice? I'll warrant there won't be its equal there. And Ross can wear grand-father's faded ruffles, knee-buckles and all. If the occasion were fitted especially to our needs it couldn't be more feasible."
The mother drew a long, low sigh of relief.
"I really believe it will be practicable."
The daughter kissed her again and again, and then went whirling lightly about the room.
"It will be a grand affair. There is no questions of that. The Yerringtons make success assured always. Oh, how refreshing it will be to enjoy a party once more!"
"Now you betray how much you have felt the deprivation, Florence," said the mother, watching her with wistful eyes, into which the tears would brim despite her best efforts. "Darling, I am afraid you have hidden away a good many sorrows from your mother."
"What a fertile imagination somebody always has!" chided the daughter. "But you may make sure that I shall have a treat of unalloyed pleasure now. So, no dismal forbodings, please. I am like a silly child having its holiday."
Mrs. Orton looked at her through brimming tears; but she suddenly smiled with a look of new bravery, and catching up a letter which all the while had lain in her lap, hidden by the neglected work, she slipped it into her pocket, murmuring, under her breath:
"No; she shall have nothing to alloy her pleasure. I can hide it a little longer that Ross has lost his situation."
"And now may I take the key and bring forth the hidden treasures?" asked Florence. "You know I have always been so proud of these sole relics of the ancient grandeur of our house. You used to tell the story over my pillow, and talk me into strange visions of courtly scenes. How thankful I am we resisted the old dealer's paltry offer for the 'old duds,' as he chose to call them. They were worn at the famous Lafayette ball. Dear, dear! if they could only talk, what stories they could tell! Ah, here is Ross! Oh, Ross, such fine doings as are before us."
And she ran gaily toward the slender youth of eighteen years, who came slowly and dejectedly into the apartment at that moment.
"Fine doings, Florry? I can't call them so," began he, in answer.
But his mother suddenly swooped forward and seized his hat.
"Let me take your hat, Ross. The band wants stitching." And she gave him a swift look of warning and laid her finger on her lip, before she said, carelessly, "Florry is planning a famous treat, and we are politely requested not to mar her enjoyment by any idle forebodings or dismal stories. Don't you see? Now, tell him about it, Florry." The fair young girl was nothing loath, and presently the contents of the dusty attic chest were transferred to the family room, and the brother and sister were laughing over the quaint old garments and admiring their richness with all the lightheartedness of buoyant youth.
The mother sat quietly watching them, with a far-off, dreamy look in her eyes.
"How many times I have heard my grandmother tell the story!" she said, slowly. "It was a memorable occasion, and the Dillinghams were among the first of the gentry in the country to be called upon in getting up the ball. But it was the beginning also of their sorrows. I can see her now shaking her head drearily while she said it. From that hour their fortunes were on the decline. It was at this ball, in that very dress, Florry, that she gave my grandfather her betrothal vow."
"Ah!"' said the girl, holding out the still lovely and dainty blue-and-silver brocade, "do you suppose the consciousness will thrill through me when I wear it? Somebody ought to propose to me. Who knows, Ross, but somebody will? Mamma, what shall I answer?"
But her mother's eyes were riveted upon the garment, and she went on, dreamily:
"How choicely they were kept! Grandmother would touch them as softy as if they were living things. It does almost seem as if the senseless cloth must creep and quiver with the knowledge that those self-same garments are to go together to another ball.
"Of course they will. To be sure they do!" laughed Florry. "Dear me, Ross, I believe they already bewitch me. I seem to be effervescing over with some secret cause of glee. If they began the misfortune of our race, who knows but now they will change the spell, and herald the dawn of better things? It's a long lane that has no turning; and ours has been rather long now, hasn't it? Do I look anything like grand-mother, I wonder? This ought to be rather becoming to me."
"She was a famous belle, and in those days that meant something more dangerous than the present article. There was a bitter feud came out of that night between the Dillinghams and another aristocratic family—what was the name?—oh, I remember! It was a Captain Percival, who persecuted her with his mad attentions, and she gave him his refusal there that night, and fairly maddened him with the show of her preference for your grandfather. The hot young men came to blows. There was a challenge, too; but it was someway prevented from execution. Percival swore a bitter revenge, and grand-mother sometimes thought he was the indirect cause of the gathering misfortunes that overtook my grandfather. But that could scarcely be, for the sorest of all was his uncle's death, which came that next day."
"Oh, yes," said Ross, "I remember that. It is told over so piteously in the old diary. His uncle brought him up as an adopted son, and always promised his great fortune to him. But he died, and it was all swallowed up in gifts to a distant relative by the old will—the only one to be found."
"The property is almost all intact now. It is worth several millions," said Mrs. Orton, dismally. "I never told you who possessed it, because I feared it might awaken bitter and envious thoughts in you."
"I think I have guessed, mamma," observed Florence, calmly. "I saw you looking at young Mr. Fitzgerald when he rode by the other day. But surely he is not to blame. It is unkind to feel any resentment. But what weird thoughts all this strange talk has conjured up! I am not sure but I shall feel like grandmother's ghost when I take this old brocade to another party."
"Young Fitzgerald is going, I'd wager a farm if I had one!" cried Ross, suddenly. "I heard him talking with Alfred Thorne about some famous old costume, which Thorne was warning him against wearing."
"Let him go," said Florence, a roseate flush stealing into her cheeks. "I shall be there in grandmother's brocade, as well dressed as himself, and you as fine a cavalier in grandfather's costume—the one that won grandmother's favor. Let him come!"
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