"You say that you are a Union soldier. Will you swear it?" he asked, in the same low, solemn tones.
"I do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God," said John Crawford, lifting his hand to heaven, remembering some portions of the oath so commonly administered in our courts of justice, and adding on some words not commonly used in the same connection, "that I am a true and loyal soldier in the service of the United States, and the enemy of all rebels and traitors! Amen!"
"Thank God!" said the old man, solemnly. "If I cannot die with the old flag over me, I can at least have the company of those who uphold it! Give me your hand. What!" as the young soldier came closer. "You are wounded. You have been in the battle to-day. You are defeated and a fugitive?"
"No!" said the Zouave, with a world of triumph in his tone, and giving his uninjured hand at the same time. "I am wounded, but McClellan and Fitz-John Porter have to-day flogged the rebels out of their boots at Malvern Hill, and the Union army is safe!'
"Thank God! oh, thank God!" said the old man, reverently. "Marion, lay me back, I am faint." He did not seem to be aware that Webster was assisting to hold him up, or that any one was in the place except Crawford and his granddaughter. His request was obeyed, and he was laid down again on the pallet; but the excitement of the last few minutes had perceptibly weakened him, and he was evidently failing fast. "Marion, it hurts me to talk—a little. Tell the gentleman, for he is a gentleman, I know—who we are and how we came to be here."
"This is my grandfather," the young girl said, still on her knees by the pallet, and evidencing in her calm and childlike tone no surprise at the request, and no agitation in relating what must have pained her so terribly under the circumstances. "His name is Chester Hobart. We belong to a good family, and they say that we are related to the English Earls of Buckinghamshire. My father was Charles Hampden Hobart. He was an officer in the navy, and was drowned when I was quite a little girl." Crawford did not notice, then, but remembered afterwards, that in this strange relation she said nothing of another parent who seemed likewise to be dead—hermother. "My grandfather and myself lived in the house, here. We had black servants, but they have all gone away. We did not have any negro quarter—the servants lived in one part of the house. My grandfather has been very ill—so ill that I thought he would die. He is very fond of the Union—Ido not know anything about politics. He was better a little; but the house took fire awhile ago, and I could scarcely help him out. I got out the straw mattress and a sheet, and I could get out nothing more. I am afraid my poor grandfather is very ill, now; perhaps he is dying. I thought he was dying a little while ago, and I screamed—I could not help it. That is all, grandfather, is it not? oh, grandfather! grandfather!" and the poor girl, for the first time broken down, fell forward on the straw pallet, buried her face near the old man's head, and sobbed like an overtasked child.
"Poor girl!" said John Crawford. He did not mean to speak aloud, but he did so, and the dying man heard him.
"Young man," he said, "you took an oath just now. Will you take another, to make an old man die happier?"
"I will!" answered the young man, bending close to him. He was too much exhausted, now, to raise his head any more.
"You say that the Union troops have won the fight to-day?"
"I do say so. We have repulsed the rebel attacks every time; and the last repulse was a rout. They are defeated."
"You believe that you can reach the Union camp in safety?"
"I have no doubt of it," answered the Zouave.
"Then swear to me, with the same uplifted hand you used awhile ago, that you will remove my granddaughter, Marion Hobart, to the North—out of this den of secession. She has money in a Bank in New York, enough to make her comfortable—I put it there three years ago, thinking such a time as this might come. Swear to me that you will find her a home with some honest family, and that you will neither do harm to her yourself nor permit it to approach her if you can shelter her from it. Swear it by the Ever-Living God."
"I swear!" said the young soldier, lifting his hand solemnly.
The old man lay still on his pillow, a strange and awful shadow stealing over his face. His granddaughter had raised her head, and she saw it, though the torch had burned low and there was little but the red light of the fire glimmering into the building. She buried her face once more in the pallet, threw her arms around the old man's form, and sobbed,
"Grandfather! oh, grandfather!"
"Hark! did I not hear cannon again? Are yousurethe Union troops have won the victory?" came from the closing lips. "You are a soldier and a gentleman. You said your name was Craw—Crawford. A good old name. Never mind me—take care of Marion. Marion—Ma—." He was silent, and silent forever, except as the dumb lips may be hereafter opened!
Marion Hobart saw the lower jaw fall and the open eyes put on that ghastly appearance which is the seal of the triumph of death: and she knew, without a word from either of her companions, that he was dead. The soldiers saw that she comprehended all that had occurred, and expected that she would shriek again and throw herself wildly on the body. She did not—she merely clasped her hands and looked on the body with such a pitiful gaze of fixed sorrow that Crawford could not bear it and turned away his eyes, while Webster found sudden and unexplained necessity for blowing his long nose.
Suddenly, and before a word had been spoken by either of the soldiers, a new thought came to the young girl and a terrible look of fear and sorrow swept over her face.
"It is night and we cannot bury him!" she said, her voice broken and agonized. "How can I leave him unburied? Gentlemen—gentlemen—how can I leave my poor grandfather unburied?"
"He shall not remain unburied!" said Crawford, instantly and earnestly.
"He should not, Miss, if I had to make a ground-hog of myself and dig his grave with my own hands!" put in Webster, who had scarcely spoken before during all the sad scene.
"Oh thank you!—thank you both!" she began—then suddenly pausing, she said: "But how—I do not understand—it is night, and we have nothing—"
"In half an hour we will be at camp, God willing," answered Crawford, "and Colonel Warren will send a guard of soldiers to watch the body until morning and then to bury it with all honor. Do you understand, Miss Hobart?"
"I do," answered the young girl, her sad calmness returning at once. "You are both very good and kind, and may God bless you. You want to go? We must go, I suppose; and we can do poor grandfather no good now by staying. Good-bye, grandfather—poor grandfather! I shall never see you again, and you do not seeme, even now! Good-bye! oh, grandfather, grandfather! I am so lonesome I so lonesome!"
For one moment she threw herself forward on the pallet and embraced the body of the old man, in uncontrollable sorrow, while both the two Zouaves found themselves shedding tears very inappropriate for the evening of a day of battle. Then she rose to her feet, put her fingers to her eyes as if pressing out the moisture that had gathered unbidden under the lids, and said:
"Shall we go? I am ready."
Reverently, Crawford drew the sheet over the face of the corpse, hiding it forever from the eyes of the bereaved granddaughter as it was so soon to be hidden from the eyes of all the living; and then the doubly-orphaned girl and her new-found friends took their way from the scene of death. She was dressed only in light delaine and had neither shawl nor bonnet; but the night air was not too cool, and Webster wrapped his Zouave jacket around the slight form, while Crawford supplied her with his handkerchief as a covering for her head They took their way at once from the house, now little more than a heap of darkening coals,—and struck south-eastward over the spur of the hill and through that portion of the woods least likely to retain any ambushed rebels, towards the quarters on Malvern. The sounds of battle had almost entirely ceased, it being now some ten o'clock in the evening; and only occasionally the boom of a cannon half a mile away to the south-westward showed that the opposing forces yet remained near each other. The thick smoke which had shrouded all the country during the day, had almost all rolled away, the young moon had disappeared in the west, and the stars looked down as clearly and beautifully as if no such things as war and death could exist in a world gazed upon by such pure eyes.
Scarcely a word was spoken by either, during the short walk to the top of Malvern Hill. The young girl leaned upon the uninjured arm of John Crawford, with a touching confidence and trust, an occasional convulsion of grief shaking her frame and on occasional sob breaking from her; while Bob Webster acted as scout and guide, carrying both rifles, and perhaps not the more on that account prepared to repel any sudden danger. But no such danger came. The rebels had indeed retired, and the various corps of the Union army had been gathered in to their respective quarters, preparatory to the march to Harrison's Landing, which was to be pursued at daylight. Not all of them, however. It was well that the course of Crawford and his companions did not lie across Carter's Field; for if it had done so, they must have seen hundreds of lanterns moving about, and hundreds of dark figures moving and toiling—the fatigue-parties burying the Union dead and planting the soil of the Old Dominion with more of that martyr seed which may yet spring up to the redemption of the land and the glory of the nation. This would have been a sad and harrowing sight for the young girl, after so lately leaving her last relative to be made a prey for worms; and fortunately she was spared it.
Perhaps half an hour after leaving the burned house, the Zouaves and their charge reached the bivouac of the Advance Guard, half way down the slope towards Carter's Field. The loss of the corps had been but trifling, in spite of their furious charge; and though tired and hungry, those who had not dropped down in their places to sleep, were merry and jubilant. The Union forces had won one last great victory in defeat, and they knew it and knew that the army was safe. Crawford had ever been a favorite with his corps, respected by the men and even petted by the officers; and he was recognized with shouts of welcome by many, as he made his way, with his charge on his arm, towards the Colonel's tent.
"Hallo, old fellow! Safe eh, after all!" cried one who recognised him; while another said: "Thought you had gone to Richmond, without waiting for the rest of us!" and another, but in a lower tone that perhaps Marion Hobart did not hear: "I say, Jack, where the deuce did you pick up a petticoat, and a white one at that?"
Colonel Warren received the young Zouave, and heard his story, paying all respect to the young girl under his protection. He at once promised, at Crawford's request, that a file of soldiers should go down to the burned house and perform the rites of burial before the corps left the hill; whereupon the face of the young girl more fully repaid him by its expression of true gratitude, than did even her words of sad thankfulness. There are men who have called Colonel Warren not only a martinet but a man devoid of feeling: let his action on this occasion prove how little those know him who speak of him thus coldly.
"Some of the wagons are leaving for the Landing just now," he said to Crawford, after the latter had explained the nature of his wound and briefly told the story of the protection he had promised the young girl, which he would have no difficulty in finding for her in the company of his brother and sister. "Some of the wagons are going down now. You are of no use here, and you had as well take the lady down at once. Make her as comfortable as you can in one of the wagons. The ride is only a short one; and perhaps you may be able to find a berth for her on board one of the boats at the Landing. Stay, Crawford, a despatch-boat will be going down to Monroe in the morning. You are a faithful fellow and a good soldier. I will see to it, in the morning, that you have a furlough for a month. I think we shall do nothing more for a month, and you may need that time to get a new arm. Take Miss Hobart at once to New York, and place her with your sister. That is all—now look for a place in one of the wagons. Good night—I will see about the rest before the boat leaves."
Crawford's warm "God bless you, Colonel!" was more softly, but not less earnestly echoed by the "I thank you, sir, very much. You are very good and kind!" of the young girl; and the two left the tent to follow out the directions of the officer. Bob Webster, unwounded, was already with his companions, picking up what he could find left in the way of rations, and telling over, for the sixth time already, the adventures of the night.
Not to linger upon what no longer needs particular description, let it be said in a word that Crawford succeeded in securing transportation for the young girl and himself to Harrison's Landing; that they reached that return terminus of the campaign against Richmond, a little after midnight; that a place was found on board one of the boats at the Landing, for Miss Hobart, under the kind care of the colored chambermaid; that Colonel Warren kept his promise and procured the wounded Zouave, (whose arm had been examined by one of the surgeons, and found to be badly torn and lacerated, though none of the bones were broken), his furlough for a month "or until recovered;" that they went down the next day on the despatch boat to Fortress Monroe, whence General Wool at once sent them on to Washington; and that on the evening of the Fourth of July they reached the city of New York, and John Crawford had the pleasure of placing his sacred charge under the protection of his brother, whom he found yet so sadly an invalid,—and of his sister, who received her with a warmer and more considerate kindness than he had ever before known her to exhibit towards any living object.
Judge Owen and his Domestic Discipline—Two Criminals at the Bar, with a Special Edict following—A Row At Wallack's, and one more Recognition.
It has again been unavoidable, in following the fortunes of other characters connected with this narration, to lose sight of those who have prominently figured in the mansion of Judge Owen—the Judge himself, his wife, his daughter Emily, Aunt Martha, and the two lovers who fought over that very pretty little bone as if they had been dogs and she a tit-bit of very different description. But it is one of the first principles of conducting the successful march of an army, that no stragglers should be allowed to lag too far behind, lest a sudden onslaught upon them might cause a panic extending to all the other portions of the force. Let the Judge and his family, then, be kept up as nearly as possible to the march of the main body; and especially let not pretty Emily Owen and her mischievous printer-lover be lost from the ranks by any contingency.
Aunt Martha saw farther into futurity than her niece, when she decided that the row between Frank Wallace and Colonel John Boadley Bancker, if it came to the Judge's ears, would be likely to make affairs much worse instead of better; and Emily and she had some serious conversation over the prospect, that night of the street accident, after both the rivals had gone,—which did not tend to make the young girl go to her white pillow with the most blissful of anticipations. The younger lady thought it doubtful whether the matter need come to the knowledge of her father at all, as she did not believe that the Colonel would so far bemean himself as to make a complaint to the father of the young girl he was pursuing, of the advantages which another suitor might possess over him in the mind of the girl herself. Aunt Martha, who had seen somewhat more than her niece of the world and its meanness, did not consider the Colonel too proud to take such a course, if he believed himself likely to gain by it; and besides—she remembered, what her niece did not, that they were by no means alone in the house when the little affair occurred. Servants—those important personages, who in modern days keep the houses and permit their masters and mistresses, on the payment of a round sum per week, to live in the house with them—those ubiquitous personages, who seem to have the faculty of being precisely where they are not wanted, when any family trouble is to be ventilated,—servants were in the house at the time, and there was no guaranty whatever that they had not been sufficiently near to hear every awkward word that had been spoken.
The good Aunt felt that she had the more cause to be apprehensive in the latter direction, from some observations that she had accidentally made a few weeks before. Not long after the coming into the house of Miss Hetty, cook and kitchen girl, (she is certainly entitled to the prefix of "Miss," at least once, from the fact of her holding her head a little higher than any member of the family) a little after her advent, we say, Aunt Martha happened one evening to pass through the lower hall, in list slippers, and accidentally became aware that two persons were talking in a very low tone, just within the door of the dining-room. Perhaps it may have been accidentally, but possibly on purpose, that she took one glance through the crack of the door, herself unobserved, and noticed that the talkers were Judge Owen and Hetty. The tone was certainly confidential, and the two stood very near together. Had Mrs. Martha West not been aware of certain points in her brother's character which would make a criminal flirtation with a servant-girl in his own house impossible, she might have drawn the conclusion that some impropriety of that kind was on foot. As it was, she became satisfied that some of her previous suspicions were correct, and that Judge Owen, who habitually went to the intelligence-offices and selected the servants when any change became necessary, was capable of the ineffable meanness of bribing his domestics to play the spy on his own household and detail all the occurrences to him! Where the estimable man had picked up that particular meanness, she had no idea, nor is this a place in which to hazard a suggestion. If it was so, it might be suggested that the practice of hearing and allowing weight to spy testimony, caught through key-holes and the cracks of doors, or picked up by lounging at people's elbows on sidewalks and in bar-rooms, had possibly some connection with the application of the same system to his own household.
Perhaps there may be persons upright and straight-forward enough themselves, and unsuspicious enough of the vices and meannesses of others, to doubt whether such things as those just hinted at, exist in the great city. To such it might not be amiss to say, that there are operations of this character, in what is called "respectable society," so much worse than the mere procured espionage of servants, that they make that atrocity almost endurable. Fancy the husband of a second wife keeping his eldest daughter by a former marriage, herself a married woman, in the same house with his wife, with orders to keep that wife constantly in view, to watch her when she receives company, dog her when she goes out, and dole out to her the necessaries for the family from closets, chests and cupboards of which she [the daughter] keeps the keys! Fancy these things, and the wife submitting to them, perforce! And then understand, what is the humiliating truth, that the lady subjected to these practices is a most beautiful and accomplished favorite, delighting thousands by her public appearances, envied by all, and supposed to be rolling in wealth and revelling in comfort!
Not long ago there was a story going the rounds of the press, of some spicy sporting operations in England, in which one trainer and jockey threw one of his creatures, in the disguise of a stable-boy, into the stables of another, to watch the appearance and action of his horses, to overhear what he could of the conversation of the trainer, to discover for what cups and matches they were about to be entered, and to make weekly reports to him, through letters pretendedly addressed to the boy's "mother," so that he could take advantage of the knowledge so unfairly attained, in making up his betting-book. By a mere accident the trainer discovered what kind of an emissary of the enemy was quartered in his stables, and instead of kicking him out he merelygave him plenty to report. He managed to have the boy overhear all sorts of manufactured conversations, rode his horses unfairly on the training-course, stuffed him with false reports of the matches for which they were entered, and, in short, gave him such budgets to send home to his master, that the latter grew completely mystified, bet on the losing chances instead of the winning ones, and lost about twenty thousand pounds, which went into the pocket of the intended victim. The story is a good one, and for the honor of humanity ought to be true.
Not many years ago a jealous old husband in this city, who had fallen into the misfortune of a young and handsome wife, grew jealous of her without the least cause, and descended to the execrable meanness of putting one of the chamber-maids under pay to play the detective and report to him what letters her mistress received and all the "goings on" in the house. Biddy was not quite keen enough for her new position, and the bright eyes of the young wife were not long in discovering that she was watched and dogged! What did the outraged wife? Send the vixen packing, bag and baggage, with a boxed ear for a parting present, as she might have done with all propriety? Not at all—she retained her and kept her own discovery a secret, merely adopting the same plan as our friend the trainer, and giving hersomething to tell. The wife fortunately had half a dozen male cousins, living at a distance, and as many female friends, living near. Between these two corps of assistants she managed to receive such letters, accidentally dropped for the servant-girl to finger, and received such clandestine visits when her husband was absent and at suspicious hours, as left no doubt whatever in the mind of areasonableman like the husband, that she must be terribly false to her marital vows. The catastrophe of all this need not be given: it was final enough, in all conscience, and sent the husband down town one day with a dim consciousness that he had made himself the greatest fool since Adam, and that an early burial would not be so great a calamity after all!
Unfortunately Judge Owen, of this writing, had no such sharp-witted and reckless opponent, and his meanness was left to work itself out in a natural manner. Aunt Martha's apprehensions were not idle, as was proved very soon after. The Judge and his wife returned from their little trip up the Hudson, on the second day after their departure; and within three hours after their arrival, before the Judge had been absent from the house a moment and before Colonel Boadley Bancker could by any means have managed to see him, the storm of paternal wrath and indignation burst on the devoted heads for which it was intended.
The gas had just been lighted on the floor below, and Aunt Martha and Emily were seated enjoying the summer twilight in the front-room of the latter, up-stairs, when the stentorian voice of the Judge was heard bawling from the hall:
"Martha—Emily—come down here a moment!"
"There it is! there is trouble ahead! I knew it!" said Aunt Martha.
"Hecannothave heard anything about it, yet," said the niece.
"Hehas, I am sure of it!" answered the Aunt. "We may as well go down and take the thunder-storm, at once, as have it hanging over us for a month."
"Oh, Aunt, I cannot endure to have Papa scold, when he is in one of his terrible humors," said the frightened girl. "I have done nothing, that I know of; but you don't know what rough words he says to me sometimes, and I have been almost afraid that he would strike me with that heavy hand! I believe I shoulddieif he did."
"No, child, you would notdie, I think," said the more practical Aunt, "but something might occur for which your father would one day be quite as sorry—your last particle of love and respect for him might die, and that would be sadder than the death of many bodies. But come, Emily; we shall be called again in a moment."
Aunt and niece descended the stairs to the parlor, the latter trembling like a leaf in the wind and the former in a strange flutter that was part trepidation and part indignation. They found affairs in the parlor in a very promising condition, as the aunt had suspected. Judge Owen was too angry to sit in his large chair, as he would have liked to do, and receive the culprits with judicial dignity. He was walking the floor, with his hands behind his back and every indication of very stormy weather on his countenance. He looked bigger and more burly than ever, and less than ever like what the brother and father should have been, to the two who entered. Mrs. Owen sat in a rocking-chair, swaying backward and forward, with her hand to her eyes and very much the appearance of a whipped child who had been set down in that chair with orders to be "good." It was not supposable that the Judge had been whipping her, physically; but he had unquestionably been "getting his hand in" for the exercise that was to come, by reading her a severe lecture upon everything that she had done and everything she hadnotdone, since the day they were married.
"So then!" he broke out, the moment the culprits appeared in view. "This is the kind of order you keep in my house—myhouse!" and he emphasized the possessive pronoun so severely that the poor little word must have had a hard time of it among his strong front teeth.
Emily, as yet, replied nothing. But Aunt Martha said:
"Well really, brother, I do not see that the house is in very bad order! Perhaps that rocker is a little out of place, and theetagere—"
"D—n it, woman, I am not talking of the furniture, and you know it!" thundered the Judge.
"William Owen!" said Aunt Martha, who had not gone through fifty or a hundred such conflicts without deriving some controversial profit from them—"I do not choose to be sworn at, inyourhouse or the house of any other man. If you were a gentleman, you would not be guilty of the outrage."
Emily trembled. Here was Jupiter plucked by the beard, and called hard names to his face, by one of the mere underlings of his dominions! William Owen not a gentleman!JudgeOwen not a gentleman! Could human presumption go farther? What would be the end of this?
"I will swear as I like, and when I like!" said the Judge, after a pause of an instant. But he did not swear again immediately, and not at all again at his sister, during the whole interview, it was noticeable. Brutality is not best met by brutality; but it is a mistake to suppose that it is best met by abject submission. What it needs, as its master and corrective, isdignified firmness.
"So this is the way, is it," the Judge went on. "The moment my back is turned, my house is full of low characters, and quarrelling and fighting become the order of the day."
"When did all this occur?" asked Aunt Martha, innocently.
"The very evening I left!" thundered the Judge.
"And how have you found it all out, so soon?" queried his sister, looking him very calmly in the eyes.
It may be a libel, for which an action would lie, to say that Judge Owen blushed at this home-thrust. He certainly reddened, but that may have been with anger—not shame.
"How do I know it? What business is that of yours, woman? It is enough to say that Idoknow it, and that I will break all that sort of thing up, or I will break half a dozen heads!" This was a favorite simile of the Judge's, because it brought in the word "break" twice, in such an effective manner. "Well, Miss Emily Owen, what have you to say to all this?" It may be libel, again, to say that the Judge was sheering off his vessel from a battery that worried him, to engage one that seemed comparatively helpless; but really the whole thing bore that appearance.
"I, father? I have nothing to say," returned the daughter, "and for that reason I have not said anything."
"You do not deny, then," thundered the Judge, his voice rising higher because he had a younger, lower-voiced and less formidable antagonist, "that on the very night I went away there was low company in this house, and that—"
Perhaps Emily Owen had never presumed to interrupt her father half a dozen times during her life, but we have before seen that shecoulddo so, even wickedly, when fully aroused, and the temptation to do so in the present instance was overpowering. Besides, she had just caught a lesson from her aunt, in the "womanlyart of self-defence," the muscular development for which lies in the tongue.
"Do you call Colonel Bancker low company, father?"
"Colonel Bancker? No, girl! Colonel Bancker is a gentleman and a soldier," replied the Judge. "I am speaking of that low, contemptible scoundrel, Wallace."
"Andhehas been in the habit of coming here with your consent, papa," answered the daughter, "and so I do not know how we were to blame for receiving the visits of people when you were gone, whom you were in the habit of receiving when you were at home."
"Hush, child! Hush, Emily!" Mrs. Owen felt it necessary to say at this moment. She had not before spoken a word, but she may have felt that that incarnation of reason and dignity, her husband, was "taking damage" at the hands of very ordinary mortals. "Hush, child—do not bandy words with your father."
"No, miss, do not bandy words withme!" roared the Judge, put exactly upon the right track, from which he had before strayed a little, by the words of his wife. "Iam master in this house, as I mean to let you know!" Humble Judge!—hehadlet them know it, long before, quite as much as lay in his power. "I will not allow myself to be run over in this manner, any longer!" Ponderous and self-sacrificing Judge!—apart from the fact that no one in that house had ever tried the experiment, what a vehicle it would have been that could "run over" that man without danger from the encounter! And now gathering strength and force as well as anger, as he rolled down the mountain of denunciation, he went on: "I have called you down, both of you, and you especially, Emily, to make a final settlement with you! I have told you before that you should marry Colonel John Boadley Bancker, and I need not tell you again, for by G—youshall! And now I tell you something more. If you ever permit that d—d low-lived, miserable, contemptible puppy, whom you call Frank Wallace, to cross the door-step of this house again, I will break every bone in his infernal carcase; and when he goes into the street, you go with him! Do you hear?"
"Yes, father, I hear," said his daughter.
"Yes, we both hear, as I suppose you intended it for both of us," said his sister.
"I intended it foreverybody!" roared the Judge. "Now let us see whether you obey or not! Come, Mrs. Owen, is supper ready?"
Probably the Judge supposed that he had supplied both the others with quite as much supper as they needed, as he did not extend the invitation to either. He certainly had done so: they were both "full," in one sense of the word if not in the other. His daughter was "full" of trouble and anxiety; and Aunt Martha was "full" of a more dangerous feeling—outraged pride and indignation.
"Poor Frank!—he cannot come to the house any more!" said the young girl, when they had left the parlor. "What shall I do? Aunt—Aunt—don't scold me, but Ilove him. That is the truth; and don'tyouscold me, but help me if you can."
"Until this hour, Emily," said the aunt, gravely, and taking the hand of her niece kindly in her own, "I had simply been determined that you should not be forced into a marriage with Colonel Bancker, if I could prevent it. Within this half hour I have made up my mind to go farther. I know that you love Frank Wallace; I believe him to be a good man, and I know him to be a brave one; and now you shall marry him, if any aidIcan offer will help you to that end!"
"Aunt! Aunt! dear, good, kind Aunt!" cried the young girl, throwing herself into the widow's arms and giving her such a hug and such a storm of kisses as would have made Frank Wallace whistle "Hail Columbia" and "Abraham's Daughter" for forty-eight hours in succession.
Such was the radical effect, towards carrying out his determination in regard to each of the two rivals, produced by Judge Owen's ultimatum. He was not the first man, and he probably will not be the last, to pour the drop too much into the bucket of endurance and add that last feather to the load which weighs down the camel of patience. Something more of the "effect" will be seen in this immediate connection.
Judge Owen had occasion to attend a political caucus, at one of the down-town hotels, early in the evening of the second day from that on which the collision with his sister and daughter had occurred; and he consequently did not go home to dinner when his court adjourned. He dined at the hotel where the caucus took place, and afterwards strolled up Broadway, airing his portly figure, and intending to take the Third-Avenue cars at Astor Place or Fourteenth Street. When he came opposite Wallack's Theatre, at about nine o'clock, the lights shone brightly before the door, the placards announcing the "Returned Volunteer" and "Mischievous Annie" looked tempting, and as Judge Owen had an eye for the drama and was officially marked "D.H." on the book at the gate, he concluded to see the balance of the performance.
He passed in. Florence was just indulging in that terrible war-dance of jealousy which follows the supposed discovery of the fact that the wife of Bill Williams has taken up with a Picaninny, and the laughter and applause were uproarious. The Judge found some acquaintances in the lobby, and chatted with them while he watched the piece and while waiting for the next.
Finally another friend, a family acquaintance, came up the aisle, from the orchestra-seats, probably on his way to those pleasant lower regions in which refreshment to the inner man is dispensed. As he shook hands with the Judge, he said:
"Ah, Judge, I did not know that you were here. I saw your daughter, just now, down in the orchestra, but I am sure she did not come in with you."
"My daughter!" said the Judge, surprised, "I think you must be mistaken. Mrs. Owen did not speak of coming to the theatre this evening."
"Oh," said the acquaintance, "Mrs. Owen is not here. I should have seen her if she had been. Your daughter came in with a young man, and they are sitting together down there in the second row from the front."
"You do not know the young man?" asked the Judge, on whom the compound noun for some cause produced an unpleasant effect.
"No," answered the acquaintance, "I do not know him. He is a rather good-looking young fellow, short, with brown curly hair, and a moustache, and dressed in light-gray. No doubt you know him by the description."
Judge Owendidknow him by the description, but too well! That short good-looking young man with the curly hair, the moustache and the light-gray clothes, was as certainly the man he had forbidden his house and the company of his daughter, as his own name was Owen and his dignity a judicial one!
Here was an outrage!—witness it ye fathers whose daughters do not always obey your high behests. Here was a call for the exercise of the highest qualities of authority!—bear witness to that, all you good people who have at one time or another dragged your wives out of churches because you did not like the ritual, or who have dragged themintochurches because suitors armed with money-bags or aristocratic names or political influence, stood within and beckoned! Here was a necessity for proving what Judge Owen had only a day or two before so loudly asserted—his ascendency in his own household. Here was an opportunity to show to the public that Judge Owen, arbiter of the legal destinies of his fellow-men when they did not range beyond a certain insignificant number of dollars, was at once a Solon and a Draco in his own domestic relations. Great menwilldevelope themselves at some period or other in their lives, however they may previously have been kept back by adverse circumstances; and Judge Owen had never yet enjoyed the opportunity of showing half his mighty energies. Armed with the double power of a parent and the law, he felt that he could combat anything—even a young and delicate woman: gifted with a rigid sense of right which rose above all personal considerations, he felt that to that right he could sacrifice anything—even the privacy and sanctity of his domestic relations.
The great men of old had done something in that way: Brutus had laid his son, without a tear or a groan, on the altar of his country; Virginius had slain his daughter when her perilled honor demanded that violent deed; and only half a century before his own time, Napoleon had given up a beloved Empress and married a royal nobody, for the sake of preserving the dynasty that his people so demanded. It only remained for William Owen, Judge, to emulate those great examples and drag his daughter out of the theatre!
It may have been that Judge Owen did not think of quite all those great examples, as he walked broadly and pompously down the aisle, disturbing the audience just when the curtain was rising on the second piece; but he certainly bore himself as if he remembered all of them and a few hundreds more. Anxious spectators looked at him as he came down, speculating painfully whether he was likely to take his seat in front ofthem, and calculating what would be their chances of seeing in that event. But the Judge was not going to sit down—no! At the gate he encountered a momentary obstruction, in the shape of the usher who looked after the orchestra tickets; but he swept him away as a spring freshet might carry away a bundle of obstructing sedge, by a majestic wave of the hand and the information that he was merely going down there for a moment on business.
Then he strode on down the aisle, unobserved as yet by the lovers, who sat in the seat next the front and within three or four places of the end of the row, enjoying the dramatic entertainment and each others' company about equally. Perhaps they sat a very little closer together than they might have done had there been no parental objection in the way; and under the folds of Emily's dark mantilla, which lay upon her lap, there may have been two hands clasped together. Let the young and the loving, whose province it is to make such follies half the material of their lives, decide whether affairs were likely to be exactly in the shape suggested,—as also, whether at any time during the evening, when it had become necessary for Frank Wallace to make a remark to his companion, he had or had not leaned down his lips so close to her ear as almost to kiss its pink pendant.
The first intimation had by the absorbed lovers that the paternal bomb was bursting in the neighborhood, was conveyed by the Judge halting at the end of their row, leaning over the two or three people between, without any apology, stretching out his arm, and saying in his loud, coarse voice:
"Miss Emily Owen, you are wanted at home."
The blood flew to the face of the young girl in an instant, though it was the blood of anxiety and not of shame, and she asked:
"Is any one ill—hurt?—My mother—"
"Your mother is well, and there is no one sick at home," said the Judge, determined that his lesson to his daughter should not be balked by any one of the audience thinking him less a brute than he was. "But I find you here in improper company and against my orders; and I command you to leave that man and come home with me instantly."
Decided sensation in the orchestra-seats, and even on the stage, where Mrs. Florence paused in the middle of one of her most effective Yankeeisms, to know what caused the interruption. Sensation in a good many fingers, that they would like to be applied violently to the ears of the man who could speak in that manner to so sweet-looking a girl, no matter under what provocation. A few hisses and cries of "Hush-h-h!" "Hush-h-h!" Poor Emily had sunk back in her chair, the moment her anxiety was relieved by mortification, merely saying in a pleading voice, as if to disarm her tyrant:
"Oh, father!"
Frank Wallace, meanwhile, had sprung to his feet, the moment the opprobrious epithet was applied to him; and though he distinctly saw that the intruder was the puissant Judge Owen, Emily's father, and large enough, physically, to eat him for lunch—he was on the point of springing across the intervening space and giving him a taste of his gymnastic quality. This would have been terribly improper, no doubt, towards a man much older than himself, and the father of the girl he yet hoped one day to make his wife; but the spectators, had he done so, and could they have known all the facts of the case, would have been much more likely to forgive him than the miserable hound (now a miserable secessionist—thank Heaven for his choice!) who bore a military title to his name, a few years ago, and sat still in one of the theatres of this city, without daring to lift a hand in opposition, while the just-married wife by his side was brutally caned by her millionaire father for daring to marryhim! High temper may be dangerous, and the rough hand something to be avoided and reprobated; but there is something worse in the extreme opposite, and humanity worse sickens at the sight of an abject poltroon, than at any other worthless fungus that springs as an excrescence from God's footstool.
All the saints be praised for these little women! Theyare, after all, the balance-wheels of life, and the whole machinery would run riot and go to destruction without them. They bring us to ourselves, often, and so save usfromourselves. When they advise peace and patience, they are generally right, for at such times violence is seldom politic. Frank Wallace would probably have carried out his violent first intention, but for the hand of Emily which dropped upon his arm almost before he had risen, and the soft voice which spoke in his ear, very hurriedly:
"Don't, Frank, formysake! Let me go, and sit still. You shall see me again in a day or two.I'llpay Pa for this!"
Very much consoled by these words, and especially by the last clause, Frank Wallace resumed his seat, merely indulging in a remark which was heard by many around him, and which may or may not have been heard by the person at whom it was aimed:
"Bah! you big brute!"
A little suppressed clapping of hands in the neighborhood, which the actors probably thought intended for themselves, but which certainly was not. Meanwhile Emily Owen, dropping her hand by some kind of unexplainable intuition to the very spot where Frank's was lying, gave it a quick squeeze, then stumbled gracefully over the legs of the persons sitting between her and the aisle, and followed her father. As she passed two or three steps up the aisle, the Judge leading pompously, and the gate-keeper calculating the chances of being able to crush him by accidentally letting the iron gate slam to against his legs,—she encountered a recognition that was almost an adventure. A young girl who sat in the next to the end seat of the back-row of the orchestra, leaned over the gentleman outside and caught her hand, saying:
"Emily Owen—I know it is! Do you not remember me?"
"Josephine Harris! How glad I am to see you!" was the reply of Emily, the moment her eyes fairly took in the face and figure before her.
"I could not see your face before, and did not know that you were here. How long it is since I saw you!—ever since I left Rutgers, and you were still hammering away there!" said Josephine Harris, who was indeed the other, having come down to Wallack's with a party of friends, for the evening, and who had not before had a chance to recognize her old friend and school-fellow at the Rutgers Institute.
"Come and see me. Papa is in a hurry, and I cannot wait," said Emily, doubtful whether her friend had or had not observed the preceding movements. "I have not time for a card—look in the Directory and send me yours. Good night!" and in a moment she was gone, following the Judge to that mental slaughter involved in riding home with him in his present mood, and leaving the performance to pass on again as if no interruption had occurred.
As may be supposed, Frank Wallace was something of an "object of interest" for the small remainder of the evening; but he had no acquaintances in the neighborhood, and not much remark was ventured. One man behind him, indeed, leaned over and said: "Lost your girl, eh?" but Frank's "Ya-a-s!" was so broad and discouraging for any further questions, that the inquiry was not pursued. Most men, under similar circumstances, would have left the theatre at once, to avoid observation and to hide annoyance: he did not, and he may have acted wisely or unwisely in that course of conduct.
Josephine Harrishadobserved the preceding movements on the part of Judge Owen, and it was through recognition of his figure that she looked after and recognized Emily. Had the latter been left quietly sitting beside her lover, her schoolmate would probably not have seen her face, they would have left the theatre without recognition of each other, and Judge Owen's house might have escaped a very early visit destined to work important changes in the relations of residents and visitors. The puissant and pompous Judge had effected twocoups d'etatwithin as many days. The one had driven Aunt Martha fairly over into the ranks of the enemy: had the second introduced Joe Harris, an electric wire full charged with destruction, into the immediate vicinity of his domestic magazine?
Another Scene at the Crawfords'—Joe Harris playing the Detective, With Musical Accompaniments—A Strange Conversation, and a Strange Visit to a Strange Doctor.
Some chapters back in this narration, we saw Colonel Egbert Crawford playing volunteer physician to his invalid cousin Richard, and applying a certain bandage more or less suspicious in its character, while Josephine Harris held a very ambiguous position behind the parlor-door and drew certain deductions not complimentary to the character or intentions of the gallant Colonel. To take up the dropped thread of relation at that point—the Colonel left in a few moments afterwards, and Joe, from her position in the room up-stairs, watched his departure. By that time, the fearful agitation which had at first oppressed her, had somewhat moderated, and she was much more capable than before of thinking with clearness and acting with decision. "A perfect little fool" in many of her first confidences (as some of her friends paid her the doubtful compliment of calling her), Josephine Harris had yet a vein of distrust in her character, not difficult to touch; and when that vein was touched there was not "poppy or mandragora" enough in the world to lull to sleep her suspicions, until they were either proved true or fairly exploded.
Frank and generous natures will sometimes discern more clearly than subtle and designing ones, just as the naked eye will sometimes take in particulars in any scene more readily than when assisted by the glass. The power of discernment may be aided, in some degree, by the fact that they are not guarded against as some are because they bear the look or reputation of being dangerous. Many a man has taken off the outer garb of his soul and gone in his mental shirtsleeves (so to speak) from the impression on his mind that he was in the company of the confiding and the unobservant; and many a bad man has found detection and ruin in the experiment.
Josephine Harris had seen something in the eyes of Colonel Egbert Crawford, when directed towards his invalid cousin, which said: "I hate you, and I would put you out of the way if I could!" She had remarked the terrible agitation of Richard Crawford when she made her random observation to that effect. Now she had overheard enough to put her in possession of the conflict of interests; and she had at the same time witnessed the application to the body of the invalid, of a preparation that was expressly ordered to be kept from the knowledge of the physician. Taking all these things together, and jumping at a conclusion with a rash haste which such people will sometimes exhibit—away down in the depths of her mind she whispered the word "poison!" She might never have thought of the existence of an outward poison dangerous to human life, but she had read Mrs. Ann S. Stephens' touching story of "The Pillow of Roses," and remembered how the life of the first lover of Mary Stuart had been sacrificed by the introduction of a deadly bane into the silken pillow—the very gift of love on which he so confidingly laid his head. Might not this be something of the same kind—a murderous practice unknown to the great body of people, and yet in the knowledge of some peculiarly instructed? What more likely than that a lawyer whose line of business led him into the company of criminals and made him acquainted with their secret confessions, should have arrived at a knowledge so dangerous and resolved to apply it for his own benefit and the removal of a rival?
Such were the reflections of Josephine Harris, when her blood had a little cooled down from the terrible fever of fright and anxiety into which she had been thrown at the first discovery; and how nearly right she was in the most important particular—the fact of an attempted poisoning by outward application—all will recognize who remember the interview between the lawyer and the Obi woman of Thomas Street, with thedark pastewhich he brought away with him as the result of that visit.
At all events, the young girl felt that she had seen enough to remove any doubt of the propriety of making farther researches, and to do away with any shame that she had originally felt in playing the part of a spy and listener. Ardent natures like hers may possibly be blamed for adopting so readily the maxim that "the end justifies the means," and for plunging so determinedly into what cannot be considered their own business; but let those blame them who will, the good they accomplish may well be made a set-off for any evil they unwittingly cause; and the parable of the man who "fell among thieves," and the heartless wretches who "passed by on the other side," should make us a little slow in blaming the "good Samaritans" who work so enthusiastically even if uninvited and unskilfully.
The plain English of all which is, that Josephine Harris had determined to fathom the whole of the mystery lying between Richard Crawford and his cousin, no matter what deceptions she might be called upon to pursue in carrying out her plan, or what amount of time and trouble might be necessary for that purpose. She might have applied the rules of Egbert Crawford's own profession to him, in expressing this determination, and said that enough had been proved against the suspected person, to put him on his trial before a fair and impartial jury—that jury being herself in the first instance. Herself and herself only. For once Joe Harris determined to suppress her propensity for talking everywhere and to everybody, and to admit no confidant whatever into a knowledge of her suspicions. What else she intended to do, will in due time develop itself in action.
As a first step, she smoothed down her face with her hands, under some kind of impression that she could in that way remove the redness from her cheeks and the startled look from her eyes. Then she ran into Bell's chamber, assuming all the nonchalance she could pick up on the way, to ascertain whether that young lady was likely to remain away from the parlor for a brief period longer. She found her very busy among a miscellaneous heap of dresses and millinery (this was before the visit to the sorceress, which gave her something else to think about—let it be remembered,) and in that occupation she was safe to remain for an indefinite period. No visitors coming in, then, she was likely to have the field below-stairs to herself for a short time at least, and that time must be used vigorously.
She ran lightly down-stairs and into the empty parlor. There was no sound whatever coming out of the little room of the invalid—he was no doubt still alone. With the same care which she had before taken, she stepped to the glass doors, slid them apart as before, and looked through. Richard Crawford was yet lying on the sofa, and he wasbuttoning up his vest. A very simple and natural movement, and one not at all noticeable under ordinary circumstances; but to Josephine Harris, at that moment, it seemed very significant. Therewaspoison; that poison lay in the bandage; hehadsuspected his cousin, allowed him to change and replace that bandage, and the moment he believed himself alone and unobserved, hadtaken it off! To say that Joe Harris's eyes sparkled at this proof of her suspicions, would be quite insufficient—they flashed, danced and radiated with delight, in such a manner as made it very fortunate for the peace of mind of the whole male sex that she happened to be alone.
Richard Crawford had taken off that bandage, and that bandage must come into her possession at once, while the preparation was fresh. But how was it to be obtained? Where had he put it? From the fact that he had been re-arranging his clothes while yet in a recumbent position, the chances seemed to be that he had taken off the bandage, if at all, without getting up, and that he then had it somewhere about him, intending to lock it up or put it away when he rose to go to the bed-room. He was very neat in his personal habits, as well as somewhat nervous in disposition; and on the score of cleanliness he was not likely to have put it into one of his pockets, while if he indeed felt it to be poison he would have been quite as unlikely to retain it so near his person. Joe felt that if removed, that bandage must be somewhere about the sofa. How to get it, even then? He would not be at all likely to go to bed, leaving it there; besides, she wanted itat once! He must be got suddenly out of the room, and he was too weak and suffering to remove often or on small provocation. The piano!—ah, yes, she would try the piano!
Joe's musical performances were always pyrotechnic; except on particular occasions when the sad soul that underlay the merriment came uppermost, and then they were mournful enough to tempt suicide. To say that she knew nothing about music, would be untrue of any one taught at the same trouble and expense; but to say that she understood it, taking the knowledge of other people as a standard, would be equally incorrect. When studying music under an excellent teacher, it had been found impossible to confine her to any set rules, and quite as impossible to make her execute her lessons properly. When she should have been performing that routine duty, her eolian piano at home was half the time turned into a banjo or a harp, tinkling a serenade, or into an organ, playing some ponderous old anthem or sobbing out some dirge of a broken heart. These were all well enough, in their way, but they were not studying the piano. As a result, she could produce all those effects upon the instrument, that no one else would ever have thought of attempting; the only penalty being, that what any one else could have done, she could not do at all. This did not suit some people, but it suited Miss Joe, exactly; and as she was pleased, perhaps no one else had a right to complain. If any onedidcomplain he or she was likely to be at once treated to one of the lugubrious compositions before mentioned, producing the "dumps" for a month after.
On this occasion Joe threw open the lid of the piano with such dexterity as to tangle the cover inextricably with the lid, set up the stool with a whirl, and dashed into the midst of a composition that might have been conceived by a mad musician and wailed out on an instrument possessed, like Paganini's fiddle, one night when the demons of the storm were playing at hide-and-seek among the Hartz Mountains of Germany. It went from the top to the bottom of the scale, in such moanings, and wailings, and sobbings, intermingled with such fiendish dashes of exultation and laughter, that the nerves of a strong man might have been thrown into permanent disorder by it, while those of a sick one could not do otherwise than suffer the most exquisite torture.
"I think that will do!" said Miss Joe to herself, pausing for an instant and then going on again. She was right, for at the next partial pause she heard the voice of Dick Crawford, from the back-room, yelling out with more energy than the man himself had before thought that he possessed:
"Sto-o-o-op!"
She did stop—ran to the sliding-doors and opened them at once, to find Crawford sitting upon the sofa, with his hands to both ears.
"Eh? what's the matter, Dick? Does the music disturb you?" she asked, as naturally as if she had not before been aware of the fact.
"Disturb me? Itmurdersme—you know it does, you torment!" was the reply of Crawford.
"I am so sorry," said Joe, with the least perceptible pout on her lip. "I suppose that I must go home, then, and play."
"No," said Crawford, who had no idea of being guilty of the ungallantry of driving a lady out of his house, especially dear, delicious, tormenting Joe. "No, don't go home. But if you must play, why not play something Christian and respectable—something that a man can listen to without gritting his teeth and stopping his ears more than half the time?"
"Well, thatiscomplimentary!" sighed Josey. "Just when I was doing the very best that I could! Besides, I wasn't playing foryou. You were not in the room, but stuck away off there in a corner. I'll tell you what I will do, Mr. Dick Crawford. Let me help you out here to a sofa inthisroom—the air will not hurt you, but do you good,—and I promise to play for you the very tunes you wish. If not—"
"Oh, you need not mention the alternative," said Crawford, remembering the preceding performance and afraid of a repetition. "Come here, give me your arm, and Iwillcome out for a few minutes."
"Bravo!" thought wild Joe, but she did not say it. Very gently and tenderly she assisted the invalid from his sofa and to a standing position, and then quite as tenderly through the door and to the sofa that stood nearly opposite the piano. Then she ran back andclosed the sliding-doorsagain, for fear, as she said, that there might be too much draught of air on the invalid. So far, so good! Richard Crawford had been coaxed out of his room and into the parlor that he scarcely entered once a month. What next?
"Play me a wreath of Scottish melodies," said Crawford, with the feeling of the old blood coming up within him. "And be sure that you throw in 'Roy's Wife' and 'Annie Laurie.' Will you?—That's a good girl?" Dick spoke more cheerfully than had been his late habit, and settled himself to an easy position on the sofa with more the air of a man ready to enjoy, than he had for some time manifested.
"Has there been an incubus suddenly lifted from his breast?" Joe Harris asked herself, noticing the change.
If there was anything that she reallycouldplay on the piano, her forte lay in those very Scottish airs, which she certainly rendered with exquisite feeling and with skill enough for the moderate demands of that class of music. And on this occasion she felt bound to exert herself, to repay the obligation of Crawford's coming out to hear her, though her brain was all in a whirl for fear something might occur to drive the patient back into his room, and her fingers, as they touched the white keys, itched to be busying themselves about the cushions of the invalid's sofa. For a few moments, while "Within a Mile of Edinboro' Town," "Roy's Wife," "Charlie is My Darling," "Bonnie Doon" and half a dozen others of the Scottish wreath were dripping from her fingers, and while Richard Crawford was enjoying his favorite music better than he had before enjoyed anything for many a week,—for this few moments Joe Harris was nonplussed. How should she get out of the room? Oh! Suddenly she remembered that there was some music on one of the tables up-stairs, and she acted upon that excuse for absence.
"Oh, Dick, please lie still a moment. There is a piece up-stairs that I must bring down and play for you. I know you will like it. One of Gottschalk's—'Las Ojos Criollos.'" She had caught sight of that composition lying at the top of the heap of music near her, and without being observed by Crawford she caught the sheet, rolled it up in her hand, and was out of the room in a moment.
"Tut! tut! what a pity that that girlnevercan be still a moment and do exactly what any one asks her to do!" was the mental comment of that gentleman as her flying skirts disappeared through the door.
Of course Josephine Harris did not go up stairs. She had no real errand whatever in that direction. There was a door opening from Richard's little bed-room, adjoining his study, into the hall; and her hope was to find that door unlocked. If not, some other excuse must be made to get into his room, to invent which she must play a few more tunes, and run a little more risk of being interrupted. She stepped very lightly to the door, with a repetition of that cat-step which seemed that day suddenly to have come to her. She turned the knob—itwasunlocked—it opened. One dart through the other door and to the sofa. The cushion was a moveable one, as she knew, and very likely to be made a temporary hiding-place for any small article, by one lying upon it. She lifted the edge of the cushion, her heart beating at trip-hammers again, and her whole being almost as much excited as it had been half an hour before. Human life is full of blunders, but happily there are some movements that arenotblunders; and this was one of them. A small, round roll of linen, three or four inches wide, was stuck a little distance under the edge. She drew it out, hastily unrolled it until she saw that a dark plaster lay in the middle, then, with a "Whew!" of triumph, quite as hastily rolled it up again and thrust it into her pocket. Half a minute more, and she had softly ascended a dozen steps of the stairs, and descended again with plenty of noise, springing down with a decided bump on the landing. Then she burst into the parlor with herpiece of music, and sat down once more to the piano.
"Excuse my running away, Dick. Haven't been long—have I?"
"No, not very long," answered Crawford, whose impressions of Joe's steadiness were not enthusiastic. "You know I should not have been surprised if you had not come back in a week."
"Fie! fie! Dick Crawford! I have half a mind not to play for you at all, after that insult." But she did attempt to play, and to play "Las Ojos Criollos." If she ever could have played that most brilliant and difficult of all Gottschalk's pieces, which was very doubtful, she certainly was not capable of doing it when her fingers were in such a tremor, and with the mysterious package in her pocket; and though it may be an ungallant and improper thing to say of a lady's performance, she "made a mess of it."
"Pshaw!" she said, as naturally as if really vexed. "That piece is very difficult. I thought that I had mastered it, a dozen times, yet here it is bothering me again. Never mind!—I know what Icanplay—something that you like, or if you do not, you should!" And very much to Crawford's delight, for she did not often sing, though she frequentlyhummed,—she broke out with voice and instrument into that finest, though worst-hackneyed, of modern love-ballads—"Ever of Thee." There are unaccountable fancies, in music as well as in personal regard, and one piece will sometimes make itself the very key-note of a human heart, without being in itself so pre-eminently beautiful as to command that distinction. Crawford had before many times heard Josephine Harris humming that air, or touching it lightly on the keys of the piano, but he had never before heard hersingit. Before half of the first stanza was finished, he knew that it supplied to her a need in music that all the compositions of all the great masters would fail to fill; and before she had finished the last, he believed that some painful secret of her young life must be bound up in it. He was the more painfully confirmed in that belief, when he saw her rise from the piano the moment after she had concluded the song, and dash her hand to her eyes with the unmistakeable gesture of wiping away a tear.
"Joe—dear Joe," he said, "come here a moment."
She crossed the room at once and stood beside him. He held out his hand to her, and she took it as a sister might have taken that of a dearly beloved brother. There was nothing of heat or tremor in the touch, though there was everything of kindness. Absorbed in something else, both had for the moment forgotten the feeling before predominant—Crawford his sickness and crippled condition, and Joe Harris her anxieties and her plans with reference to him.
"Josephine Harris," he said, very kindly, almost tenderly, "answer me one question, as candidly as it is asked. Will you?"
"You could not ask me an improper question," she replied, "and so I could have no reason for refusing to answer you. I will."
"You have been singing 'Ever of Thee,'" he went on. "Your whole heart was in it when you sung, and when you stopped your voice was broken and your eyes were full of tears. Tell me—is there a sad secret of your life connected with that song? Consider me your brother, and do not be afraid or ashamed to answer me."
"Richard Crawford, Idoconsider you as a brother," the young girl replied—"adearbrother, in whom I would confide as in one of my own blood. I mean to prove to you, some day, what a true sister I am. I am neither afraid or ashamed to answer your question. I have no grief or sad memory connected with 'Ever of Thee,' any more than with any other sadly beautiful piece of music with words of the same character."
"Indeed!—I thought otherwise!" said Crawford, with something of disappointment in his tone. "And yet it moves your light heart very strangely."
"It does," said Josephine Harris. "I never sing it or hear it sung without the tears gathering in my eyes, even if they do not fall."
"And you can give no reason for this peculiar feeling?"
"Oh yes," answered the young girl, "though no doubt you will laugh at my reason when you hear it."
"I think not," said Crawford. "Tell me."
"You think me very gay and merry," said Josephine. "So I am, but I suppose that I have something deeper in my nature, that 'crops out' occasionally, as the geologists say. I suppose that I am a visionary in some respects and among my visions is a love worthily fixed and fully returned. So few seem to find this, that I fear I shall miss it—either miss it altogether or find it too late. The thought is a sad one, and that song seems insensibly to blend with it. When I am singing 'Ever of Thee,' I am singing to my ideal love that may be escaping beyond the reach of my fingers forever."
True woman of the golden heart!—God in heaven grant that to you and such as you this vision may be no dim unreality! God grant you true hearts against which your own may beat, and faithful arms upon which you may lean when the day of your probation is accomplished I And failing this fruition, the same God of love and peace grant you a truer and more enduring union with hearts that pulsate truly to your own, in that land where the sad wail of "Too Late!" is never heard and where no binding link fetters the limbs or galls the spirit!
"I understand you now," said Richard Crawford. "And yet yours is a strange fancy and would be a dangerous one in many minds. But you are a brave girl, I believe, and that makes all the difference. Besides, you have health and strength, and most of the time high spirits. An invalid—a miserable cripple like myself, housed and shut away, can scarcely hope to understand or appreciate anything that comes freshly in out of God's sunshine!" The old sad and repining spirit had once more come over Richard Crawford, perhaps invoked by something in the young girl's words; and she saw the shadow almost as soon as he felt it. From that moment she was the rattle-pate again, and he caught no more glimpses into the sanctuary of her inner heart. He was to catch no more, forever; for the next time they spoke together in private was after certain events already related had occurred—after her hand had lain in another, in so significant a pressure that no time or change could ever take away the tingle of the blood which it communicated—after her eyes began to open on a new phase of destiny—and after "Ever of Thee" ceased to be a sad abstraction.
Just now she rattled on, as she assisted the invalid back to his room, endeavoring to rouse his once-more sinking spirits, with all her old gayety and abandon.
"You call me brave, do you?" she said. "Dick Crawford, if I was not a little ashamed of you for allowing yourself to have these fits of low spirits, I would tell you something to prove how 'brave' I am! Well, Iwilltell you, because I know that it is exceedingly improper and I ought not to do so. Two or three weeks ago, spending an evening at Mrs. R——'s, her daughters showed me a suit of clothes belonging to a stripling brother, just gone away to the war. One of them bantered me to put on the suit and go down-stairs among the gentlemen. I thought it would be a good joke, and I tried it. The girls said that I made a very handsome boy—hem! and I suppose that I did. At all events, I went down-stairs and opened the parlor-door, bold as a sheep, when—what do you think happened? Why, I thought, all at once, that all the clothes were sticking tight to my limbs; and when one of the gentlemen came towards me, I grabbed the cloth from the centre-table for a cloak, and played hob with some Bohemian glassware and a few Parisian ornaments, finishing by skedaddling up-stairs a good deal more rapidly than I came down. Was notthere'courage' for you?"
"No want of it, certainly," said Crawford, who had been laughing a little, spite of his low spirits, at the naivete of the relation. "It was modesty and not want of personal courage that drove you out of that very funny position."
"Think so?" said the wild girl. "Then as Iama coward and mean to be known for what I am, I must tell you another story. A few weeks ago I went into a menagerie, and one of the lions made a rush at the bars of his cage—probably because he sawme. There was about as much danger of his getting out, I suppose, as there would have been ofmydoing so in the same circumstances; but of course I made a fool of myself, got frightened, yelled, and had all the visitors in the menagerie looking at me. How wasthat? No want of courage? Eh?"
"That," said Richard Crawford, sententiously, "that was thewoman."
"Humph!" said Joe, as she once more assisted the invalid to dispose himself comfortably on his usual couch. "Now you will not agree to my estimate ofmyself, perhaps you will think better of my estimate ofyou."
"Perhaps so," said Crawford. "Try me."
"Well, then, I have been watching you half the afternoon, and I have made up my mind about you more nearly than ever before."
"And what am I?" asked Crawford, with just a dash of impatience in his tone.
"A hypochondriac!" said Joe. "You are a little sick, and you think yourself much worse. You look better and feel better within the last hour—"
"Eh, what?" said the invalid, startled apparently by some sudden thought connected with the words.
"I say that you look better and feel better, within the last hour, than you have done for weeks. You are getting better, and you have neither the honesty to acknowledge it or the grace to thank God for it! Dick Crawford, if you ever die—and I suppose you will, some time—you will commit suicide by taking an over-dose of low spirits!"
How flippantly the wild girl spoke!—and yet she was right, and Dick Crawford felt that she was right. The supplying cause of his malady removed, such a lecture, from such ready lips, was precisely the thing that he needed, to break up the habit of despondency—the habit ofenjoying and nursing suffering(that phrase may express the fact as well as another) which settles so often like a murky cloud upon the minds of those who have been kept for weeks or months as confirmed invalids, after lives of previous activity. She was right, too, as to the suicide of low spirits. The red devils of Pandemonium may be terrible, fresh from the flames of the pit; but they are nothing to their brothers in blue, who people the air, overcloud the eyes and set up torture-chambers in the brain. Bunyan, in that ever-living "Pilgrim's Progress," paints no tyrant so terrible as "Giant Despair," and no obstruction to the way so fatally impassable as the "Slough of Despond." And we have never read over the sorrowful conclusion of the "Bride of Lammermoor" without believing that the young master of Ravenswood, on that sombre November morning, sunk the sooner and the more fatally in the quicksands of the Kelpie's Flow, from the weight of the leaden heart he carried in his bosom.