"Ah, life is sweet when life is young,And life and love are both so long!"
"Ah, life is sweet when life is young,And life and love are both so long!"
"TO BE, OR NOT TO BE."
Ah, me! what matter? The world goes round.And bliss and bale are but outside things;I never can lose what in him I found,Though love be sorrow with half-grown wings;And if love flies when we are young,Why life is still not long—not long.
Ah, me! what matter? The world goes round.And bliss and bale are but outside things;I never can lose what in him I found,Though love be sorrow with half-grown wings;And if love flies when we are young,Why life is still not long—not long.
—Miss Muloch.
"It has been almost a month since I saw you," Conway says, drawing the small hand of Lulu within his arm as they saunter down a shady path where the crape myrtle boughs meet over their heads, showering pink blossoms in prodigal sweetness beneath their feet.
No answer. She is looking ahead at a little bird hopping timidly about the path, and only turns to him when he goes on pathetically:
"I have missed you so much."
"You know where I lived," she answers, dryly.
An amused smile outlines itself around the corners of his handsome mouth.
"So you think it is solely my own fault that I have missed you—have not seen you. Well, perhaps it is—yet——"
"Yet what?"
"Oh, nothing—it does not matter."
"No, I suppose not," she responds, a little scornfully. "Nothing seems to matter much to you, Mr. Conway. I believe you have found the fabled Lotos. It would suit you, and such as you,
"In the hollow Lotos land to live and lie reclinedOn the hills like gods together, careless of mankind."
"In the hollow Lotos land to live and lie reclinedOn the hills like gods together, careless of mankind."
"Whew! since when has my little Brownie learned to be sarcastic?" he queries, in genuine astonishment, trying to look into her face, but it is turned away from him, and she is idly strippingthe thorns from the stem of a rose she has just broken. Ah! if she could only as easily eradicate the thorns that rankle in her gentle heart!
"Why don't you talk to me?" he says, pettishly.
"And have I not been talking?" turning an innocent, unconscious face toward him, a piquant smile on her lips.
"I know, but without taking any interest," he says, in an injured tone. "Don't you care to talk? Are you weary of me?"
"Weary of you!" she laughs. "Ah! that gives me a pretext to quote poetry to you," and she repeats, with a very faint tremor in her voice, the delicious lines of Mrs. Osgood:
"Weary of you! I should weary as soonOf a fountain playing its low lute tune,With its mellow contralto lapsing inLike a message of love through this worldly din."
"Weary of you! I should weary as soonOf a fountain playing its low lute tune,With its mellow contralto lapsing inLike a message of love through this worldly din."
He looks down into the faintly flushed face with a light, triumphant smile she does not see. He knows as well, and better than herself, how much she means the poetry that she has repeated in that light, jesting tone.
"Thank you," he answers only. "I wish I could think you meant it."
She stoops suddenly and breaks off a half-dozen great purplish velvet pansies from a bed on the side of the patch, and puts them into his hands.
"'There's pansies—that's for thoughts,'" she says, gayly. "Think what you will."
"May I think that you love me?" he queries, audaciously, as only Bruce Conway can do.
"I have said think what you will," she answers, growing suddenly crimson. "But why are you throwing my pansies away?"
A faint flush crimsons his fair forehead, too. Their eyes look at each other as he answers:
"I—I do not like pansies; they are too sad. Sometimes when I stroll down this path with my morning cigar, Lu, they look up at me bathed in glittering dew, and—I am not romantic, child, but they always remind me of blue eyes swimming in tears."
"They always remind me of the velvet darkness of Grace Winans' eyes," she says, meditatively.
"'There'srue!'" he says, and is suddenly silent. The little, irresistible feminine shaft has struck home.
He looks down at the flickering sunshine lying in spots on the graveled path, and reflects on the acute perceptions of woman—this little woman—in particular. She sees his pain, and is sorry.
"I wonder"—stirring up a little drift of pink blossoms on the path with the tip of her small slippered foot—"I wonder if all our life-path is to be flower-strewn!"
A light flashes into his handsome dark eyes as he clasps in his the small hand lying within his arm.
"Lulu dearest," he murmurs, "if you will promise to walk hand in hand with me through life, your path shall be strewn with all the flowers love's sunshine can warm into life."
A shiver thrills her from head to foot; the blue heavens darken above her head; the warm and fragrant air that rushes down the myrtle avenue sickens her almost to fainting. Passionate bliss is always closely allied to passionate pain.
"'To be, or not to be!'" he questions softly, bending over the drooping form, though he feels very sure in his heart what the answer will be.
She is silent, leaning more heavily on his arm, her face growing white and mournful.
"Dear, am I to take silence for consent?" he persists, as though talking to a petulant child who is going to yield, he knows. "I asked you is it to be or not to be?"
"Not."
She outdoes his usual laconics in this specimen of brevity. It is fully a minute before he recovers from his astonishment enough to laugh:
"Don't jest with me, Lulu, I am in earnest."
"So am I."
For answer he lifts her face and scrutinizes it closely. The soft gaze meets his—half-happy, half-grieved—like a doubtful child's.
"You are not in earnest, Lulu. You do love me—you will be my wife?"
"I cannot."
He stops still under a tall myrtle and puts his arm around her slim, girlish waist.
"Brownie, willful, teasing little fairy that you are—you cannot, you will not deny that you love me—can you, honestly, now?"
"I have not denied it—have I?" her gaze falling before his.
"Not in so many words, perhaps; but you refuse to be my wife—if you loved me, how could you?"
"If I loved you I would still refuse."
"Brownie,why?"
"Because——"
"That is a woman's reason. Give me a better one."
"How can I, a woman, give you a better one?" she answers, evasively, tilting the brim of her hat a little further over her face. She does not want him to see the white and red flushes hotly coming and going.
"Because a better one is due me," he persists, his earnestness strengthened by her refusal. "Surely, a man, when he lays his heart, and hand, and fortune at a lady's feet, deserves a better reason for his refusal than 'because.'"
Her cheek dimples archly a moment, but she brightens as she says, almost inaudibly:
"Well, then, it is because you do not love me."
"Lulu, silly child, why should I ask you to be my wife then? I do love you—as love goes nowadays—fondly and truly."
"Ah! that is it," she cries, bitterly, "as love goes nowadays—and I do not want such love—my heart, where it loves, resigns its whole ardent being, and it will not take less in return."
"And have I offered you less?"—reproachfully this.
She nods in silence.
"Lulu, dear, unreasonable child that you are—why do you think that I do not love you? Be candid with me and let us understand one another. I will not be offended at anything you say to me."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing! If you can show just cause why and wherefore such a thing as my not loving you can be, I surely cannot be offended."
"I know you love me a little," she returns, trying hard to speak lightly and calmly, "but I also know, dear Bruce, that your heart, it may be unconsciously to yourself, still retains too much of its old feeling for one I need not name, for you to love me as I should like to be loved. Understand that I am not blaming you for this, but you know in your heart, Bruce, that were she free, and would she listen to your suit, you would not look twice at poor me."
Another home-thrust! He stands fire like a soldier, rallies, and meets her with another shot.
"This from you, Lulu! I did not think it in you to twit me with loving another man's wife!"
"I did not mean it that way," she answers, flushed and imploringly. "I meant—only meant to show you, Bruce, that I could not—oh! that I cared too much for you to be happy with you unless your love was strong and deep as mine."
"I did not think you could be so jealous and exacting, child."
"I am not jealous nor exacting. I am only true to my woman's nature," she answers, sweetly and firmly.
"Nonsense!" he answers, brusquely, "let all that pass—I do love you, Brownie, not as I loved her, I own it. But you are so sweet and lovable that it will be easy for you to fill up my heart, to the exclusion of all other past love. Try it and see, dear. Promise me that you will give yourself to me."
"I cannot."
"Is that final?"
"Final!" she gasped, as white as her dress, and leaning unwillingly against his shoulder.
"Why, Brownie, child, dearest, look up—heavens! she is fainting," cried Bruce, and taking her in his arms, he ran into a little pavilion near by, and laying her down on the low, rustic bench within, opened the gold-stoppered bottle of salts that swung by a golden chain to her belt, and applied it to her nostrils.
She struggled up to a sitting posture and drew a long breath, while tears rolled over her cheeks. Both lily white hands wereuplifted to prevent another application of the pungent salts.
"Don't please," she said, "you are taking away all the breath I have left."
"You deserve some such punishment for your cruelty to me," he retorts, in a very good humor with himself and her, for he feels he has done his duty in his second love affair, and if she will not marry him, why that is her own affair, and he cheerfully swallows his chagrin, and also a spice of genuine regret as he smiles down at her.
"I am going back, if you please." She steps out of the pavilion while speaking, and he attends her. As they walk silently on he gathers a flower here and there, the rarest that blow in the garden, and putting them together they grow into a graceful bouquet before they reach the house. Then he presents it with the kindest of smiles and quite ignoring the unkind cut she has given his vanity.
She takes it, thanks him, and notes with quick eyes that no roses, no white ones at least, nor pansies are there—those flowers are sacred to memory, or, perchance, remorse.
"We may be friends at least?" he queries, trying to look into the eyes that meet his unwillingly. And "always, I hope," she answers, as they reach the piazza steps.
Mrs. Winans is at the piano singing for her hostess. A dumb agony settles down on Lulu's racked heart as the rich, sweetly trained voice floats out to them as they ascend the steps, blending its music with the deep melancholy notes of old ocean in the plaintive words of an old song that is a favorite of Mrs. Conway's:
"Oh! never name departed days,Nor vows you whispered then,O'er which too sad a feeling playsTo trust their tones again.Regard their shadows round you castAs if we ne'er had met—And thus, unmindful of the past,We may be happy yet."
"Oh! never name departed days,Nor vows you whispered then,O'er which too sad a feeling playsTo trust their tones again.Regard their shadows round you castAs if we ne'er had met—And thus, unmindful of the past,We may be happy yet."
"Let us take that for an augury, little one," he says, cheerfully; "'we may be happy yet.'"
"OTHER REFUGE HAVE I NONE."
"There's a stone—the Asbestos—that flung in the flame,Unsullied comes forth with a color more sure—Thus shall virtue, the victim of sorrow and shame,Refined by the trial, forever endure."
"There's a stone—the Asbestos—that flung in the flame,Unsullied comes forth with a color more sure—Thus shall virtue, the victim of sorrow and shame,Refined by the trial, forever endure."
—Osgood.
Mrs. Winans sat in her dressing-room before the mirror in the softest of easy-chairs, the daintiest of dressing-gowns, under the skillful hands of Norah, whom she had retained as her personal attendant.
It was a chilly night in November, but a soft warmth pervaded the rooms, which were heated by Latrobe stoves in the basement of the house, and the light, and fragrance, and beauty within seemed even more delightful by contrast with the cold winds that whistled sharply and sullenly without. A look of sadness was noticeable on Norah's rosy face as with gentle touches she brushed out the long curls of Grace's hair that crinkled and waved in spite of all effort to straighten it.
"Norah," Mrs. Winans had said, a moment before, "it is the fifteenth day of November—do you recollect? Little Paul—dear little baby—is two years old to-night."
"And sure did I not recollect?" answered Norah, brushing away a quick-starting tear; "but did not speak of it to you hoping it had escaped your own memory."
"As if I could forget," murmured Grace, looking down, and beginning to slip the diamond ring that blazed on her taper finger nervously off and on; "as if I could forget."
"'Tis so strange he can't be found," mused Norah, keeping time to her words with the brush that she was plying on that lovely hair, "and such a great reward offered by his father for his restoration—forty thousand dollars—why that's a fortune itself. Mrs. Winans, have you heard nothing of the matter lately?"
"Miss Clendenon received a letter from her brother yesterday—shecame around to tell me this morning—in which he stated there was positively not the slightest cue yet. The supposition is that—oh, Norah, think of it!—is that my little boy isdead. Captain Clendenon is coming home by Christmas—he has been in Europe ever since February, now, and even he, hopeful as he was, has given up the search in vain!"
"And your husband, ma'am? Has he also given up the search? Is he, too, coming home?" asked Norah, cautiously.
"He has put the whole affair in the hands of skillful detectives to be kept up six months longer; then if unsuccessful to be abandoned as hopeless. Captain Clendenon has the management of his business affairs, and will take charge of this as of the others. Senator Winans himself, Norah, has gone over to Paris—to France."
"To France?" Norah echoes in surprise, "why there is a war there—the French are fighting the Dutch."
"Yes, there is a war there," comes the low reply, "my husband is by birth a Louisianian, Norah, and partly, I believe, of French extraction—his whole sympathies are with that nation. He has joined the French army and is gone to fight the Germans—ah! there goes my ring—pick it up, Norah. It has rolled away under the sofa."
Norah obeys and in silence replaces the ring on the little hand that in spite of the warmth pervading the room is cold and icy as she takes it in hers.
"You are nervous," she ventures to say, watching the still, impassive face, "will you take some valerian, wine, or something?"
"Nothing, Norah," but, all the same, Norah goes out and comes back with a silver salver holding a small Venetian goblet of ruby wine.
"Just a few drops," she urges with loving voice, and touching the glass to the pale lips.
"I think you always take your own way, Norah," her mistress answers, as she takes the goblet and drains it obediently. "Now, finish my hair, please, and you can go. It is almost eleven o'clock."
Silently Norah obeys, gathering up the shining mass in herhands, and twisting it into a burnished coil at the back of the small head where she confines it with a diminutive silver comb. Then with a wistful sigh, and pitying backward glance, she says good-night and Grace is left alone.
Alone! how cruelly alone! All her life-time now it seems to her she will be thus solitary. She leans her small head back, and stares vacantly at the face whose wondrous beauty is reflected there in the mirror, and a light scornful smile curves her lips as she thinks:
"Is this the form—That won his praise night and morn?She thought: my spirit is here alone,Walks forgotten, and is forlorn."
"Is this the form—That won his praise night and morn?She thought: my spirit is here alone,Walks forgotten, and is forlorn."
Rising suddenly she threw up the window and looked out into the night. A gust of cold wind and rain blew into her face. She faced it a moment, then, shutting down the window and dropping the crimson curtains together, passed into her sleeping apartment. But she could not rest. Her downy pillows might have been a bed of thorns. She rose, and gliding across the floor and, pausing one moment in grave irresolution, put her hand on the sliding door of the adjoining nursery, pushed it open and entered by the light that streamed from her own apartment.
All was still and silent here. Shadows lay on everything as heavy as those that clouded her life. She stood gazing mutely around her for an instant; then, with a low, smothered sob of agony, rushed forward, and pushing up the sweeping Valenciennes canopy of the rosewood crib that stood in the center of the room, buried her face in the small pillow that still held the impress of a baby's head.
Then silence fell. Some women carry beneath a calm, perhaps smiling, face, a deeper pain than was ever clothed in words or tears. The acme of human suffering crushes, paralyzes some hearts into terrible silence. It was thus with Grace. Her sorrow had sunk to the bottom of the sea of anguish, so deep that not a ripple on the surface, not a sparkling drop, leaped up to show where it fell.
Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes went by. She lifted her face at last—as white and chill as that of the dead, but lighted by
"Melancholy eyes divine,The home of woe without a tear."
"Melancholy eyes divine,The home of woe without a tear."
She comes to this room as to a grave. Over the grave of the child of her heart she may never kneel. She fancies it in her mind sometimes away off under foreign skies, lying in the shadow of some frowning English church, with not a flower on its low mound, unless Nature, more loving than cold humanity, has dropped it there like a jewel in the grass. She sees the sunshine lying on it in the quiet days, hears the birds—the only thing that ever sings in a graveyard—warbling matin songs and vesper hymns in the ivy that clings to the imaginary old church.Thereshe may never kneel—here are gathered all her simple mementoes of him—
"Playthings upon the carpet,And dainty little shoes—With snow-white caps and dressesThat seem too fair to use."
"Playthings upon the carpet,And dainty little shoes—With snow-white caps and dressesThat seem too fair to use."
There is the crib where she has watched his rosy slumbers; there in the corner is the little bathing-tub where she has seen the dimpled struggling limbs flashing through the diamond spray of cold water, like polished marbles; there upon the wall, smiling down at her in its infantile beauty and joy, hangs the pictured semblance of the face that her foreboding heart whispers to her is moldering into kindred dust beneath the coffin-lid. This room is to her alike a shrine and a grave.
How it rains!
In the dead, unhappy night, when the rain is on the roof, with what vivid distinctness does memory recall scenes and hopes that are past. Poor Grace hears the winds and the rain as they hold their midnight revels outside, and shudders as the thronging ghosts of memory flit by. Her brief and exquisite wedded happiness, her love for the dark-eyed husband who has wronged her so cruelly—she shudders and tries to put these thoughts away.
But she cannot. She has tried before. So long as her childwas left, with "baby fingers" to "press him from the mother's breast," she had tried to put her husband away from her heart; tried to be content with his darling little prototype; tried with all the strength of her resolute young soul to crush her love for him. But there are some things that the strongest and bravest of us cannot do. Love is "beyond us all;" the battle is not always to the strong; success does not always crown the bravest efforts. It is something to know that they who fail are sometimes braver than they who succeed.
Now, when the little child that was such a darling comfort to her sad, lonely life is so rudely wrested from that yearning heart, her thoughts irresistibly center about the father of her child. She had loved her baby best—the maternal love was more deeply developed in her than the conjugal—but even then her husband had been blessed with a fervent, tender worship that is the overflow of only such deep, strong natures as hers—natures prodigal of sweetness. Latterly, when the terrible news that he had six months before joined the army of France had come to her with all its terrible possibilities, she had only begun to fathom the depths of her unsounded love for him. It amazed herself—she put it from her with angry pain, and rushed into the whirl of social life to keep herself from thinking; wore the mask of smiles above her pain, and sunned herself in the light of admiring eyes, but though fashion and pride and station bowed low to the Senator's deserted wife, acknowledging her calm supremacy still, though sympathy and curiosity—(softly be it spoken) met her with open arms, though the wine-cup circled in the gay and brilliant coterie, it held no Lethean draught for her, and weary and heart-sick she turned from it all, and sought oblivion in the seclusion of home, and the ever welcome company of cheerful Lulu Clendenon. But her heart would not be satisfied thus. Failing in its earthly love and hope, true to itself through all her mistakes and follies, the heaven-born soul yearned for more than all this to fill up its aching vacancy, for more than all this to bind round the tortured heart and keep it from breaking.
"Where shall I turn?" she asked herself, as with folded arms she paced the floor with rapid steps, keeping time to the falling rain outside that poured in swift torrents as "though the heartof heaven were breaking in tears o'er the fallen earth." Human love, human ties seemed lost to her, earth offered no refuge from her suffering. Poor, wronged, and tortured young spirit, "breathing in bondage but to bear the ills she never wrought"—where could she turn but to Him who pours the oil of comfort on wounds that in His strange providence may grow to be "blessings in disguise?"
She paused in the middle of the floor, lifting her eyes mournfully upward, half-clasping her hands, wavered an instant, then falling on her knees, lifted reverent hands and eyes, while from her lips broke the humble rhymic prayer:
"Other refuge have I none,Helpless to Thy cross I cling;Cover my defenseless headWith the shadow of Thy wing."
"Other refuge have I none,Helpless to Thy cross I cling;Cover my defenseless headWith the shadow of Thy wing."
Surely, if "He giveth his angels charge concerning us," that pure, heart-wrung petition floated upward on wings seraphic.
A NEW YEAR'S GIFT.
"And why, if we must part, Lulu!Why let me love you so?Nay, waste no more your sweet farewells,Icannotlet you go—Not let you go, Lulu!I cannot let you go!"
"And why, if we must part, Lulu!Why let me love you so?Nay, waste no more your sweet farewells,Icannotlet you go—Not let you go, Lulu!I cannot let you go!"
—Mrs. Osgood.
On the following Christmas morning Mrs. Clendenon, Mrs. Winans and Lulu, together with the returned captain, all attended divine service at the Protestant Episcopal Church.
It seems strange how many of us become recognized members of the Church of Christ under religious conviction, without ever having any great and realizing sense of the saving power of God, not only in the matter of the world beyond, but in the limitless power of sustaining us among the trials of this.
This had been peculiarly the case with our heroine. She hadfor years been a member of the Episcopal Church, and, as the world goes, a dutiful member. But religion had been to her mind too much in the abstract, too much a thing above and beyond her to be taken into her daily life in the part of a comforter and sustainer. She had gone to the world for consolation in the hour of her trial. It had failed her. To-day as the glorious old "Te Deum" rose and soared grandly through the arches of the temple of worship, filling her soul with sublime pathos, she began to see how He, who had dimly held to her the place of a Saviour in the world beyond, is an ever-present Comforter and sustainer in the fateful Gethsemane of this probationary earth.
Captain Clendenon, as he sat by her side and heard the low, musical voice as it uttered the prayerful responses to the Litany, thought her but little lower than the angels. She in her deep and newly roused humility felt herself scarcely worthy to take the name of a long misunderstood Saviour on her lips. Few of the congregation who commented, on dispersing, relative to the pearl-fair beauty and elegant apparel of the Senator's deserted wife, fathomed the feelings that throbbed tumultuously beneath that pale calm bearing as they left the sacred edifice.
"Lulu," she queried later, as up in the young lady's dressing-room they had laid aside their warm wrappings and furs. "Lulu, what do you do for Christ?"
Lulu turned about in some surprise:
"What do I do for Christ?" she repeated. "Oh, Gracie, too little, I fear."
"'Tell me," she persisted.
"Well, then, I have my Sabbath-school class, my list of Christ's poor, whom I visit and aid to the best of my ability, my missionary fund, and finally, Gracie, dearest, whatever my hand 'findeth to do,' I try to do with all my might."
Gracie stood still, twisting one of the long curls that swept to her waist over one diamond-ringed white finger.
"Darling, why do you ask?" Lulu said, with her arm about the other's waist.
The fair cheek nestled confidingly against Lulu's own.
"I want to help you, if you will let me—let me go with you on your errands for Christ. I belong to the world no longer.Show me how to fill up the measure of my days with prayerful work for the Master."
One pearly drop from Lulu's eyes fell down on the golden head that had pillowed itself on her breast.
"God, I thank Thee," she murmured, "that there is joy in heaven to-day over the lamb that has come into the fold."
She whispered it to Brother Willie that day at a far corner of the parlor when they happened to be alone for a moment together.
He glanced across at the slender, stately figure standing at the window between the falling lace curtains, looking wistfully out.
"It is natural," he said. "A nature so pure, so strong, so devotional as hers must needs have more than the world can give to satisfy its immortal cravings. Poor girl! she is passing through the fire of affliction. Let us thank God that she is coming outpure gold."
After awhile, when Lulu had slipped from the room, leaving them alone together, he crossed over to her side, and began telling her of his experiences and adventures abroad. She listened, pleased and interested, soothed by his kind, almost brotherly tone.
"You do not ask me after Winans," said he, playfully, at last.
She did not answer, save by a heightened flush.
"You did not know that through his reckless bravery, his gentleness and humanity to his men, he has risen to the rank of general in the army of France?" A soldierly flash in the clear gray eyes.
"Yes," she answered in a low voice; "I have seen it in the newspapers."
"You have? Then you have seen also that he——"
He paused, looking down at her quiet face in some perplexity and doubt.
"That he—what?" she asked, looking up at him, and growing slightly pale.
"I do not know how to tell you, if you do not know," his eyes, full of grave compassion, fixed on hers.
One of her small hands groped blindly out, and clung firmly to his arm.
"Captain Clendenon, I know that the Franco-Prussian war is ended. Is that what you mean? Is he—my husband—is he coming home—to America?"
She read in his eyes the negative she felt she could not speak.
"Tell me," she said, desperately, "if he is not coming home, what is it? I am braver than you think. I can bear a great deal. Is he—is he—dead?"
"May God have mercy on your poor, tired little soul," he answered, solemnly. "It is more than we know. In the last great battle, General Winans was wounded near unto death, and left on the field. When search was made for him he was not found. Whatever his fate was—whether he was buried, unshrouded and uncoffined, like many of those poor fellows, in an unknown grave, or whether an unknown fate met him, is as yet uncertain. We hope for the best while we fear the worst."
One hand still lay on his coat-sleeve—the other one followed it, clasped itself over it, and she laid her white face down upon them, creeping closer to him as if to shield herself against his strong, true heart from the storms that beat on her frail woman-life. One moment he felt the wild throb of her agonized heart against his own; then all was still. Lifting the lifeless form on his arm, he laid it on a sofa and called to Lulu:
"I had to tell her!" he exclaimed. "She did not bear it as well as we hoped. I am afraid I have killed her."
Ah! grief seldom kills. If it did, this fair world would not have so many of us striving, busy atoms struggling for its possession.
She came back to life again, lying still and white in Lulu's loving arms. Captain Clendenon and his mother went out and left them together. They would not intrude on the sore heart whose wound they could not heal.
"After all we can hope still," Lulu said, cheerily. "All is uncertainty and mere conjecture. We can still hope on, until something more definite is known."
"Hope," repeated the listener, mournfully.
"Hope, yes," was the firm reply. "Hope and pray. One ofBrother Willie's favorite maxims is that hope springs eternal in the human breast!"
"I can bear it," came softly from the other. "I have borne so much, I can still endure. With God's help I will be patient under all."
"Whom He loveth He chasteneth," answered Lulu.
When New Year's Day came with its social gayeties, receptions, and friendly calls, one of Lulu's latest and most surprising visits was from our old friend, Bruce Conway. He had not called on her for a long time, and she had heard that he was in Washington. The warm blood suffused her face as she stood alone in the parlor, with his card in her hand, and it grew rosier as he entered, and with his inimitable, indolent grace, paid the compliments of the season.
"You do not ask me where I have been these many days," he said, as he sipped the steaming mocha she offered him in the daintiest of China cups. She never offered her friends wine.
"I had heard that you were in Washington," she answered, apologetically.
"Right—and what was I doing there? Can you undertake to guess?"
"I am sure it is beyond me." This with her most languid air. "Flirting, perhaps."
A light smile curves his mustached lip. Certainly this little beauty, he thinks, is "good at guessing."
"Have your callers been many to-day?" he asked.
"Quite a number of my friends have called—all, I think. I expect no more this evening," she answers, demurely.
"I am glad of that. I shall have you all to myself, Lulu—willful, indifferent still, since you will not ask my object in Washington, I will e'en tell you anyhow."
"Go on—I am listening."
Putting down the cup he had finished, he seated himself on the sofa by her side, good-humoredly taking no notice of the fact that she moved a little farther away from him.
"How pretty you are looking,ma belle. Your blue silk is the loveliest shade—so becoming; your laces exquisite. Scarlet geraniums in your hair—ah! Lulu, for whose sake?"
"Not for yours," she flashes, with a hot remembrance that he has always liked her in scarlet geraniums.
A slow smile dawns in his eyes—his lips keep their pretense of gravity.
"Her hair is braided not for me,Her eye is turned away."
"Her hair is braided not for me,Her eye is turned away."
he begins to hum.
"All this is not telling me what mischief you were at in Washington?" she interrupts.
"Oh," trying to look demure, but woefully failing, "no mischief at all—only paying off old scores—spoiling Fontenay's fun for him as he did for me last winter.
"Satan finds some mischief stillFor idle hands to do."
"Satan finds some mischief stillFor idle hands to do."
"Miss Clendenon, you are hard on a poor follow. Why don't you askhername; if she is pretty; if she is in the 'set;' if she is rich; and so on,ad infinitum?"
"I hardly care to know," she answers, with pretty unconcern.
"Hardly care to know—now, really? I shall tell you anyhow. Well, she is an heiress; is pretty; in her second Washington season; father in the banking business, and Fontenay, despairing of winning you, has transferred his 'young affections' to her. She rather likes him—will marry him, perhaps, but then——"
"But then?"
"She likes me, too, and I have teased the gallant captain considerably. Oh, the drives I have had with the fair Cordelia, the gas-light flirtations; the morning strolls to the capitol; the art-gallery; everywhere, in short, where you went with the major. I am not sure but she would throw him over for me altogether."
Her heart sinks within her. Has his fickle love turned from her so soon to this "fair Cordelia?" Better so, perhaps, for her in the end; but now—oh! she has never loved him so well as at this moment, sitting beside her in his dusk patrician beauty, with a certain odd earnestness underlying his flippant manner.
"Mrs. Conway is well, I hope?" she says, to change that painful conversation.
"Is well?—yes, and misses you amid the gay scenes of the capital. What haveyoubeen doing secluded here in your quiet home, little saint?"
"Oh! nothing particularly."
"You have not been falling in love, have you?"
"Why?" with an irrepressible blush.
"I wanted to know—that is all. Brownie, Aunt Conway, and I are going abroad this spring to stay, oh, ever so long."
He is watching her narrowly. She knows it, and changes her sudden start into one of pretty affected surprise.
"Oh, indeed! Will wedding cards and the 'fair Cordelia' bear you company?"
"Not if some one else will. Brownie, cannot you guess why I have come here this evening?" his voice growing eagerly earnest, a genuine love and earnestness shining in his eyes.
"To make a New Year's call, I guess," she answers, with innocent unconsciousness in her large dark eyes, and the faintest dimples around her lips.
"Guess again, Brownie?"
"I cannot; I have not the faintest idea," turning slightly from him.
"Then, Brownie," taking her unwilling hand in his. "I have come to ask you for a New Year's gift."
A scarlet geranium is fastened in with the lace at her throat. She plucks it out and holds it toward him with a mischievous smile.
"Will you take this? I am sorry it is all I have to offer."
He takes the hand that holds the flower and puts it to his lips.
"It is all I ask; so your heart comes with it."
Vainly she tries to draw back; he holds the small hand tighter, bending till his breath floats over her forehead.
"Lulu, I did not come here for the gift of a hot-house flower, though coming from you it is dearer than would be a very flower from those botanical gardens that are the glory of Washington. I wanted a rarer flower—even yourself."
Her face is hidden in one small hand. In low tones she answers:
"I thought this matter was settled long ago. Did I not tell you no?"
There is a long pause. Presently he answers, with a wondrous patience for him:
"You did, and rightlythen, for I did not fully appreciate your pure womanly affection. I thought I could easily win you, and having lost you I loved you more. Lulu, I am woefully in earnest. Refuse me now, and you, perhaps, drive me away from you for years—it may be forever. I love you more than I did then—a thousand times better."
Still she is silent.
"Brownie," he pleads, "I am not so fickle as you think me. I have fancied many pretty women, but only loved two—Grace Grey and yourself. My love for her is a thing of the past, and has to do with the past only—'echoes of harp-strings that broke long ago'—my love for you is a thing of the present, and will influence my whole future. You can make of me a nobler man than what I am. Willard is willing, your mother is willing, I have asked them both. Brownie, let us make of that Continental trip a wedding tour?"
Her shy eyes lifted, meeting in his a deeper love than she has ever expected to see in them for her.
"Let me see," he goes on, "Aunt Conway and I are going to Europe in June—that is time enough for you to get ready. Think of it, Brownie, I am to be gone months and months. Can you bear to let me go alone?"
"No, I cannot," she sobs, hiding her face against his shoulder; and Bruce takes her in his arms and kisses her with a genuine fondness, prizing her, after the fashion of most men, all the better because she was so hard to win.
WEDDING CARDS.
"Now she adores thee as one without spot,Dreams not of sorrow to darken her lot,Joyful, yet tearful, I yield her to thee;Take her, the light of thy dwelling to be."
"Now she adores thee as one without spot,Dreams not of sorrow to darken her lot,Joyful, yet tearful, I yield her to thee;Take her, the light of thy dwelling to be."
Fair Lulu found so little time amid the preparations that went so swiftly forward for her marriage that she was very glad to avail herself of Grace's offered assistance in looking after her poor people, her missionary box, &c., and so the lonely and depressed young creature found something to occupy her time as well as to fill up her thoughts. She was of great assistance, too, to Lulu in the selection and purchase of the bridal trousseau in which she took a pleasant feminine interest.
Lulu, who deferred always to her friend's exquisite taste, would suffer nothing to be purchased until first pronouncedcomme il fautby Mrs. Winans; and Bruce Conway, who had returned in the midst of the season from Washington, and haunted Lulu's steps with lover-like devotion, declared that his most dangerous rival in Lulu's heart was Mrs. Winans.
The old yearning passion he had felt for Grace had passed into a dream of the past; something he never liked to recall, because there was something of pain about it still like the soreness of an old wound—"what deep wound ever healed without a scar?" But they were very good friends now—not cordial—they would never be that, but still very pleasant and genial to each other.
Mrs. Conway, who was very well pleased to see Bruce about to marry, wished it to be so, Lulu wished it to be so; and these two who had been so much to each other, and who were so little now, tried, and succeeded in overcoming a certain embarrassment they felt, and for Lulu's sake, and not to shadow her happiness, endured each other's presence.
"Mrs. Winans," he had said one day, when some odd chancehad left them alone together in Lulu's parlor, "it is an unpleasant thing to speak of. Yet I have always wanted to tell you how, from the very depths of my soul, I am sorry that any folly of mine has brought upon you so much unmerited suffering. Can you ever forgive me?"
She glanced up at him from the small bit of embroidery that occupied her glancing white fingers, her eyes a thought bluer for the moment with the stirring of the still waters that flowed through the dim fields of memory and the pure young spirit came up a moment to look at him through those serene orbs.
"Can I, yes," she answered, gravely. "When I pray, nightly, that Our Father will forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass against me, my heart is free from ill-feeling toward any one. How else could I expect to be forgiven?"
And Lulu's entrance, with a song on her happy lips, had put an end to the conversation that was never again revived between them.
And days, and weeks, and months went by and brought June. In that month the wedding was to be, and Lulu and her mother, beginning to realize the parting that loomed up so close before them, began to make April weather in the home that had been all sunshine.
But "time does not stop for tears." The fateful day came when Lulu, in her white silk dress, and floating vail and orange blossoms, stood before the altar and took on her sweet lips the vow to be faithful until death do us part, and, as in a dream, she was whirled back to her home to the wedding reception and breakfast, after which she was to depart on that European tour.
Is there any need to describe it all? Do not all wedding breakfasts look and taste very nearly alike? Do not all our dear "five hundred friends" say the same agreeable things when they congratulate us? Is it not to be supposed that the bridal reception of the charming Miss Clendenon and the elegant Bruce Conway iscomme il faut? We are not good at describing such things, dear reader, so we will leave it all to your imagination, which we know will do it ample justice. We want to follow Captain Clendenon and Mrs. Winans as they slowlypromenade the back parlor where the wedding gifts are displayed for the pleasure of the wedding guests.
"Now, is not that an exquisite set of bronzes?" she is saying, with her hand lightly touching his arm. "And that silver tea-service from the Bernards—is it not superb? That statuette I have never seen equaled. Ah, see! there is the gift of Major Fontenay, that ice-cream set in silver, lined with gold. That is generous in him—is it not, poor fellow?"
"To my mind, that exquisitely bound Bible is the prettiest thing in the collection," he returns.
"It is beautiful. That is from her Sunday-school children. This ruby necklace, set in gold and pearls, is from Mrs. Conway——"
"And this?" he touches a sandal-wood jewel casket, satin-lined, and holding a pair of slender dead-gold bracelets with monograms exquisitely wrought in diamonds—"this is——"
"My gift to Lulu."
"Oh! they are beautiful, as are all the things. But, do you know, Mrs. Winans, that I am so old-fashioned in my ideas that I do not approve of the habit of making wedding presents—no, I do not mean where friendship or love prompts the gift—but the indiscriminate practice, you understand!"
"You are right; but in the case of your sister, Captain Clendenon, I think that the most of her very pretty collection of wedding gifts are the spontaneous expressions of genuine affection and respect. Lulu is very much beloved among her circle of friends."
"You, at least," he says, reflectively, "will miss her greatly. You have so long honored her by your preference for her society and companionship. How will you fill up the long months of her absence?"
She sighs softly.
"She has left me a precious charge—all her poor to look after, her heathen fund, her sewing society—much that has been her sole charge heretofore, and which I fear may be but imperfectly fulfilled by me. Still I will do my best."
"You always do your best, I think, in all that you undertake," says this loyal heart.
"Whatever is worth doing at all is worth doing well, I think,"she answers, with a faint flush evoked by his quiet meed of praise.
Then people begin to flock in to look at the wedding gifts and at Grace Winans, who is the loveliest thing of all. She has on a wedding garment in the shape of pale violet silk, with overdress of cool muslin, trimmed with Valenciennes, white kid gloves and turquois ornaments set in pearls. The wedding guests wore their bonnets, and she had a flimsy affair of white lace studded with pansies on the top of her graceful head. Her dress was somewhat after the style of fashionable half-mourning. She had selected it purposely because not knowing if she were wife or widow a more showy attire was repugnant to her feelings.
"This," she said, touching a costly little prayer-book with golden cross, monogram, and clasps. "This, I fancy, is from you."
"You are right," he answered. "This set of the poets so handsomely bound is from mother. But are you not weary of looking at all these things? Shall we not go and find Lulu?"
"By the way," she says, idly, as they slowly pass through the politely staring throng, exchanging frequent nods and smiles with acquaintances, and occasional compliments with more intimate friends, "there is a report—have you heard it?—from Memphis, Tennessee—of theyellow fever."
"Yes," he answers, slowly. "I have heard the faintest rumor of it," looking down with a cloud in his clear eyes at the fair inscrutable face. "Are you worried about it? I remember to have heard you say your nearest relatives were there."
"Only distant relatives," she answers, composedly. "I am no more worried about them than about the other inhabitants of that city. My relatives had little sympathy for me in the days of my bereavement and destitution, and though one may overlook and forgive such things one does not easily forget."
He was looking at her all the time she was speaking, though her eyes had not lifted to his. On the sweet, outwardly serene face he saw the impress of a growing purpose. What it was he dared not whisper to his own heart.
The cloud only leaves his brow when they reach his radiant sister. She stands beneath a bridal arch of fragrant white blossoms,roses, and lilies, and orange blossoms dropping their pendant leaves down over her head as she receives the congratulations and adieus of her friends before she goes to change her bridal robe for the traveling-dress in which she is to start for the other shores of the Atlantic. Conway is beside her, nonchalant, smiling, handsome, very well satisfied with himself and the world. As his glance falls on the fair, pensive face of the Senator's deserted wife, the smile forsakes his lip, one sigh is given to the memory of "what might have been," and turning again to his young bride, the past is put away from him forever, and he is content.
And presently the new-made Mrs. Conway flits up stairs with Gracie, to array herself in the sober gray traveling-silk.
Grace parts the misty folds of the bridal vail and kisses the pearl-fair forehead.
"Oh, darling!" she whispers, "may God be very good to you—may he bless you in your union with the man of your choice."
Lulu's tears, always lying near the surface, begin to flow.
"Oh, Gracie," she says, suddenly, "if all should not be as we fear—if I should chance to see your husband on the shores of Europe, may I tell him—remember he has suffered so much—may I tell him that you take back the words you said in the first agony of your baby's loss?"
"What was it I said?" asked Gracie, with soft surprise.
"Do you not remember the night you were taken ill, when you were half delirious, and he came to see you——"
"Didhe come to see me?" interrupts Grace.
"Certainly—don't you remember? You were half delirious, and you fancied your husband had hidden away the child to worry you, and you said——"
"I said—oh, what did I say, Lulu?" breathed the listener, impatiently.
Lulu stopped short, looking, in surprise, at the other.
"Gracie, is it possible that you were entirely delirious, and that you recollect nothing of your husband's visit and your refusal to see him?"
"This is the first I ever knew of it," said Grace, sadly; "but go on, Lulu, and tell me, please, what I did say."
"You refused to see him, though entreated to do so by Mrs.Conway; you said you would never see him—never, never—unless he came with the missing child in his arms."
"Did I say all that, Lulu?" asked Grace, in repentant surprise.
"All that, and more. You said that if he attempted to enter your room you would spring from the window—and he was in the parlor; he heard every word from your own lips."
"Oh, Lulu, I must have been delirious; I remember nothing of all that, and it has, perhaps, kept him from me all the time," came in a moan from the unhappy young creature, as she leaned against the toilet-table, with one hand clasping her heart.
Lulu caught up a bottle of eau-de-cologne and showered the fine, fragrant spray over the white face, just as Mrs. Clendenon hurried in.
"My darling, do you know you should have been down stairs before this time—hurry, do."
And too much absorbed in her own grief to observe the ill-concealed agitation of Mrs. Winans, or attributing it to her sorrow at losing Lulu, the mother assisted the young bride to change her white silk for her traveling one.
Then for one moment Lulu flung herself in passionate tears on her friend's breast, with a hundred incoherent injunctions and promises, from which she was disturbed by the entrance of Mrs. Conway, radiantly announcing that the carriage waited and they had no time to spare. And Lulu, lingering only for a blessing from her mother's lips, a prayerful "God bless you" from her brother's, went forth with hope on her path, love in her heart, and the sunshine on her head, to the new life she had chosen.
When the last guest had departed, the "banquet fled, the garland dead," Mrs. Winans removed her bonnet, and spent the remainder of the day in diverting the sad mother whose heart was aching at the loss of her youngest darling.
"It seems as if all the sunshine had gone out of the house with her," Willard said, sadly, to Grace, as they stood looking together at the deserted bridal arch that seemed drooping and fading, as if in grief for the absent head over which it had lately blossomed. "I fancied we should keep our baby with us always in the dear home nest; but she is gone, so soon—a wifebefore I had realized she had passed the boundaries of childhood."
"The months of absence will pass away very quickly," she said, gently, trying to comfort him as best she could, "and you will have her back with you."
"I don't know," he said, with a half-sob in his manly voice, lifting a long, trailing spray of white blossoms that an hour before he had seen resting against the dear brown head of his sister, touching it tenderly to his lips—"I don't know, Mrs. Winans. I don't believe in presentiments—I am not at all superstitious—but to-day, when I kissed my sister's lips in farewell, a chill crept through my frame, a voice, that seemed as clear and distinct as any human voice, seemed to whisper in my ear, 'Never again on this side of eternity!'Whatdid it mean?"
Ah! Willard Clendenon—that the fleshly vail that separates your pure spirit from the angels is so clear that a gleam of your near immortality glimmered through!
"RUE."