CHAPTER VIII.FATAL LOVE.
Childhood’s lip and cheekMantling beneath its earnest brow of thought;And in the flute-like voice murmuring low,Is woman’s tenderness, how soon her woe!Her lot is on thee, silent tears to weep,And patient smiles to wear through painful hours,And sumless riches from affection’s deep,To pour on broken reeds—a wasted shower!And to raise idols and to find them clay,And to bewail that worship—therefore pray.—Hemans.
Childhood’s lip and cheekMantling beneath its earnest brow of thought;And in the flute-like voice murmuring low,Is woman’s tenderness, how soon her woe!Her lot is on thee, silent tears to weep,And patient smiles to wear through painful hours,And sumless riches from affection’s deep,To pour on broken reeds—a wasted shower!And to raise idols and to find them clay,And to bewail that worship—therefore pray.—Hemans.
Childhood’s lip and cheekMantling beneath its earnest brow of thought;And in the flute-like voice murmuring low,Is woman’s tenderness, how soon her woe!Her lot is on thee, silent tears to weep,And patient smiles to wear through painful hours,And sumless riches from affection’s deep,To pour on broken reeds—a wasted shower!And to raise idols and to find them clay,And to bewail that worship—therefore pray.—Hemans.
Childhood’s lip and cheek
Mantling beneath its earnest brow of thought;
And in the flute-like voice murmuring low,
Is woman’s tenderness, how soon her woe!
Her lot is on thee, silent tears to weep,
And patient smiles to wear through painful hours,
And sumless riches from affection’s deep,
To pour on broken reeds—a wasted shower!
And to raise idols and to find them clay,
And to bewail that worship—therefore pray.—Hemans.
He came, even before be was expected. By some happy chance the train was in half an hour earlier than usual.
Old Mrs. Lyon had gone into the “study,” to have a chat with the judge.
Drusilla was alone in the drawing-room, when a cab dashed swiftly up to the street-door, the bell rang sharply, and was answered quickly; and there was a pleasant bustle of arrival in the hall, and Mr. Alexander burst into the drawing-room.
He looked not fatigued or travel-stained, but flushed and excited with exercise and anticipation.
With an irrepressible cry of joy, Drusilla sprung to meet him, and then suddenly recoiled, blushed and trembled between delight, timidity and embarrassment.
Alexander caught her hand, gazed in her face, and exclaimed:
“Why—Who are you? I ought to know. Your face seems familiar, and yet—Drusilla!” he suddenly cried, as he recognized and caught her up in his arms, and covered her face with kisses.
“Welcome! Oh, welcome!—I am so glad you have come at last!—I never was so happy in my life!” she tried to say, as she dropped her head upon his shoulder and wept with delight.
“And my child is the first one to welcome me!” said Alexander, sitting down on a sofa and drawing her upon his knee, where she sat, painfully embarrassed yet unwilling to move, lest she should wound his affection on this, the first day of his return.
“All are well?” he inquired.
“Quite well,” she answered.
“Ay, so the servant told me at the door. Where is my mother?”
“Just stepped from the room. I expect her back every instant.”
“Why, what a beautiful girl you are growing to be!” he said, looking down with earnest admiration at the long, black eye-lashes that, being cast down, shaded and softened the crimson cheeks.
“Come! look up at me; I wish to see if your eyes are changed. I never could decide whether they were gray or hazel. Let me see!” he said, putting his hand under her chin to lift her face.
She looked up with a quick and quickly withdrawn glance, and her cheeks deepened in their hue. She hated to sit on his knee, where years ago she had sat a hundred times, and she hated to hurt his feelings by leaving him; and she doubted whether she loved him now as well as she did then, and whether her love was not turning into something very much like distrust and dread; and she wondered why this should be so, and secretly blamed and disbelieved in herself.
“Am I so altered by travel that you don’t like to look at me?” he asked, smilingly.
“Oh no, sir, you are not altered, except to be—improved,” she forced herself to say, with courtesy.
They were interrupted.
“She is too great a girl for that sort of thing now, Mr. Alexander, if you please. Be so good as to put her down, sir.”
It was the voice of the housekeeper that spoke, as she entered the room.
“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Sterling,” said Alexander, laughing, and releasing his favorite; “but it is hard to realize that my little pet is growing up.”
“She is thirteen, sir,” curtly answered the housekeeper.
“Dear me! Is she so? Why I dandled her when she was a baby! What an old man I am growing to be, to be sure!”
“Not quite old enough to be her father, Mr. Alexander, and therefore too young to make a pet of her.”
“Come, now, this is a pretty way to welcome me home with a rebuke the first thing.”
“I am very glad to see you home, sir, however; and—Here is Mrs. Lyon!”
The housekeeper cut her speech short, as the old lady entered the room.
“Oh, my son! my son!” she cried, and fell sobbing for joy in his arms.
The housekeeper withdrew, taking her daughter with her, and leaving the mother and son alone together.
Arrived in her own room, Mrs. Sterling sat her daughter down before her, and began to lecture her.
Drusilla—she preached—must not allow Mr. Alexander to pet her and caress hernow, as he had done before he went away. Drusilla was too great a girl now, for that sort of thing. Truly, she was not a woman yet; but she was growing into one, and so the familiarities that were quite innocent when she was a child, would be extremely improper now that she was almost a young woman. Such was the purport of the sermon.
Drusilla trembled excessively, and wept a little over this exordium. In her heart she agreed with it, but grieved over it.
It was just such a lecture as any prudent mother mighthave given her growing daughter under the circumstances. But Drusilla, while acquiescing in its propriety, was shocked by its plainness.
Their interview was interrupted by the voice of Mrs. Lyon, who came herself in search of her favorite.
“Where are you, Drusilla, my dear? Come and thank your benefactor for all that he has done for you, and show him how much you have profited by his kindness,” said the old lady, as she came in.
Blushing and embarrassed, the girl followed the lady to the drawing-room.
Mr. Alexander had changed his travelling suit for an evening dress, and was sitting talking to Judge Lyon about the voyage home.
Drusilla, at a sign from Mrs. Lyon, seated herself near the talkers.
“I want you to see how much your protegée has improved, Alick,” said Alick’s mother.
“Oh, Ihaveseen, Madam,” answered Alexander with a smile.
“After supper I want her to sing and play for you. She has a wonderful proficiency in music,” said Mrs. Lyon.
“I shall be glad to have a specimen of her skill, mother,” said the young man, turning to his father, and taking up the thread of the broken conversation, in order to relieve Drusilla, who was embarrassed by all this notice.
What between her own half-consciousness and her mother’s severe lecture, Drusilla was perplexed and distressed. The great pleasure she had anticipated from the arrival of Alexander was mixed with strange pain—a pain not the less poignant because she could not understand it. To become the cold and formal stranger to him that her mother wished her to be, seemed impossible; while to continue the familiar child-pet that she had hitherto been to him was not to be thought of. If he had only been herbrother, so that she might have had a right to his caresses, how happy she could have been, she dared to think.
But as it was, she could scarcely venture to glance at him, because each glance thrilled her soul with such strange, wild emotion, half delight, half dread. Ah, friends, she was a child of the sun, fervent, earnest, devoted in all her ardent soul. She was already, all unknown to herself, deeply and passionately attached to Alexander Lyon. The budding love of years had this evening burst into full bloom. And yet it was even more religion than love, and more worship than passion.
Supper was announced and every one arose.
“Come, Drusilla, you are the only young lady present,” said Alexander, taking her hand to lead her in to supper.
He felt that small hand flutter and throb within his own like the heart of a captured bird. He turned suddenly and looked at her. Her eyes were cast down, and her cheeks were crimson. He gazed on her for a moment in grave silence, and then slightly frowning, led her on into the dining room, and placed her in a chair at the table. He paid her all due attention at the supper, but with a certain reserve that he had never used with her before.
The evening meal was, notwithstanding this, a very happy one.
The judge chatted gaily with his restored son, encouraging him to talk of his wanderings in the old world.
The old lady listened with pleased attention, and only once in a while broke her silence to ask whether he had been presented to all the queens in Europe, and which was the most beautiful woman among them, or some such question as that.
Her son answered that he saw no woman in Europe prettier than some he found at home; and he glanced at Drusilla with a smile.
The girl beaming in the light of his countenance, anddrinking in the music of his voice was intensely happy and—vaguely wretched.
When supper was over they went back into the drawing-room, and Mrs. Lyon made Drusilla sit down to the pianoforte and play and sing for Alexander.
He shrugged his shoulders at the proposition, but politely acquiesced and prepared to be bored. Alexander was a connoisseur in music, and he had heard the very best singers of the day. Consequently he had little patience with the crude efforts of young misses.
She, Drusilla, began with a very simple song—chosen in compliment to the newly-arrived son:
“Home again! home again! from a foreign shore,And oh, it fills my soul with joy to meet my friends once more.”
“Home again! home again! from a foreign shore,And oh, it fills my soul with joy to meet my friends once more.”
“Home again! home again! from a foreign shore,And oh, it fills my soul with joy to meet my friends once more.”
“Home again! home again! from a foreign shore,
And oh, it fills my soul with joy to meet my friends once more.”
At first her voice trembled slightly; but the tremor only added to its pathos; and as she went on it gained strength and volume. She sang with much feeling and expression. And Alexander was surprised, and pleased and profoundly affected.
“My child, you sing well; I tell you so, who have heard the best singers in the world. Your voice has reached the depths of my heart, Drusilla, and awakened it to a deeper consciousness of its joy in home-coming,” he whispered as she finished her song.
She bowed her head, partly in meek acknowledgment of this praise, and partly to conceal the blush that overspread her cheeks.
“Oh, that little song is very pretty and very appropriate, but it is nothing to what she can do. Sing Casta Diva, my dear,” said Mrs. Lyon.
Drusilla raised an imploring glance to the old lady’s face, but met with no reprieve there.
“Come, my dear! the Casta Diva!” she repeated.
With a deprecating look at Alexander the girl took downanother volume of music, and turned to the selections from Norma. The piece chosen by Mrs. Lyon was a great trial to any immature and half-cultivated voice like Drusilla’s, however excellent the quality of that voice might naturally be; and Drusilla knew this, and thence her imploring and deprecating glances.
“You are too exacting, mother. She cannot sing that; I do not think any woman under thirty years old could, unless she had had a very remarkable and precocious experience,” said Alexander, laughing.
“Ay, you say that because you know nothing of the intuitions of genius. You must hear your protégée sing, and you will understand better,” said Mrs. Lyon.
Thus urged on, Drusilla began to sing. Her voice arose tremulously, as at first, like a young bird fluttering out of its nest, but then it soared and swelled, gaining power and volume, until it filled all the air with the music of that wild, impassioned, agonized, terrible invocation and appeal.
Certainly Drusilla had never known remorse, anguish or despair, yet all these wailed forth in her soul-thrilling tones.
She ceased, and dropped her head, exhausted, on her book.
Alexander made no comment, but took her hand and led her from the instrument, and then went and resolutely shut it down.
“There! what do you think of that?” demanded the old lady, triumphantly.
“I will tell you some other time,” said Alexander, and he took and lighted a bedroom candle, and put it into Drusilla’s hand, and said:
“Good night! go to bed, my child.”
Drusilla took the light and turned to the old lady, and held up her face for a kiss.
And Mrs. Lyon stooped and touched her lips, saying, with a smile:
“I suppose I may kiss younow.”
Alexander held the door open until the girl had passed out, and then he shut it after her and returned to his seat.
“Do you know, Alick, why I said to Drusilla just now, ‘I suppose I may kiss younow?’”
“No, mother.”
“Then I’ll tell you. You remember how you kissed her when you went away?”
“I do.”
“Ah, Alick! your departure nearly killed your poor little pet. If you had been her own father, she could not have grieved after you more than she did. She had a low fever, and after she got well she would not let any one kiss her. She said that you had kissed her last, and that no one else should touch her lips until you should return and kiss her again.”
“Did she now, really,” exclaimed Alexander, with emotion.
“She did indeed, and she kept her word.”
Alexander reflected a moment, and then spoke:
“Mother!”
“Eh!”
“Tell her teachers that I do not wish and will not permit, Drusilla to learn opera music or love songs. Let her confine herself to sacred music only.”
“But Alick, my son, how absurd! I am particular enough, the dear knows, but I don’t see any harm in good opera music. All young ladies learn it, and you desired that she should learn all that young ladies do.”
“I was hasty; and now I say that she must give up opera music and such like. Let her learn and practice sacred music to her heart’s content and her soul’s salvation. Let music be the means, not of drawing her affections down to earthly follies, but of fixing them more steadfastly upon heavenly things.”
“Alick, you do astonish me.”
“I astonish myself, sometimes.”
“Pray have you got religion, as the phrase goes?”
“No; I wish to the Lord I had. But I want her to have it. Mother!” he said, with sudden energy, going towards the old lady, “you don’t knowhowI love that child; you can’t feel how I love her—how near and dear she seems to me—how near and dear she has always seemed since I first looked into her soft, sweet, patient eyes.”
“I believe you love her as much as if you were her father.”
“Her father! well, I suppose my affection for her has something paternal in it, but fathers seldom love their daughters as I love her. Instance: Fathers are willing to give their daughters away in marriage, but I am very sure that I would rather see Drusilla dead than married.”
The old lady stared at the young man, utterly unable to comprehend him. He continued:
“Mother, I tremble for that child. I trembled when I heard her sing that Casta Diva as I never heard a good or happy woman sing it. There could not have beenmemory—there must have beenprophecyin those wild, despairing wails.”
“There was intuition, and nothing more. But you have been to Germany, and I suppose you have grown mystical,” said Mrs. Lyon.
“By which you mean mad. Very likely. Perhaps my previsions are illusions: but mother, I nevertheless mustinsistthat Drusilla shall drop opera and take up church music. Let her teachers know.”
“Certainly, Alick. And now light my candle and wake up your father; it is bed time.”
Alexander lighted and handed the wax taper to his mother, and then gently roused his father, who had been comfortably napping in his easy chair.
And the trio separated and went to rest.